FEW NOVELS have attracted so much attention because of the way they begin than Musil's The Man Without Qualities. The novel's first chapter contains a narrative in status nascendi — a ferment of voices, focal points, actions, and motifs, which, however, do not coalesce into a steady flow of storytelling. Instead, the opening chapter represents a state of affairs that appears to defy any mimetic impulse — any form of representation other than that of statistical enumeration. However, a meteorological analysis does not convey a sense of what it is like to actually experience the weather conditions in question. On the other hand, a traditional expression such as “It was a fine day in August 1913,” is considered “old fashioned” and “only fairly accurate” (3). The juxtaposition of a prosaic and poetic description of the world raises the essential question whether there is a third possibility — an alternative beyond “epic naiveté” (790).

According to a comparison that reoccurs throughout the novel, starting with the introduction of zoological metaphors in the first chapter, civilization has reached a developmental stage that is as complex as the organism of a beehive or ant colony. It is no longer possible to have a picture of society as a whole. Rather, Musil communicates a sense of what it is like to live in the modern world by undercutting, withholding, or explicitly retracting the figures and tropes that establish the topography of a classical narrative, that is, a narrative that allows the reader to identify where and when the reported action or event is taking place, who is reporting it, and from which perspective.