Das Ich in Anderer Gestalt: Weiblichkeit und Männlichkeit in Robert Musils Roman Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften by Vladimira Valkova (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Das Ich in Anderer Gestalt: Weiblichkeit und Männlichkeit in Robert Musils Roman Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften by Vladimira Valkova Pamela S. Saur Vladimira Valkova, Das Ich in Anderer Gestalt: Weiblichkeit und Männlichkeit in Robert Musils Roman Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2022. 415 pp. In her 2022 book, Das Ich in Anderer Gestalt, author Vladimira Valkova offers considerable discussion of literary theory and history as context for her central aim, namely, analysis of masculine and feminine identities in Robert Musil's lengthy and important but unfinished Austrian novel, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (1930, 1931). The subtitle of Valkova's book is "Weiblichkeit und Männlichkeit in Robert Musils Roman Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften." She refers in the text several times to this book project as her "dissertation." However, the book hardly seems like a fledgling foray into scholarly work. The complex and extensively researched volume is over 400 pages long; it incorporates references to numerous developments in literary theory, from nineteenth-century trends to postmodernism, poststructuralism, and feminism, as well as such theorists as Freud, Weininger, Lacan, Irigaray, Kristeva, and Foucault. Even strict professors who do not allow their students to quote dissertations in their term papers ought to accept this volume's scholarly stature; after all, it has recently been published by Königshausen & Neumann. Moreover, the author has several other scholarly publications to her credit, including other studies on Musil. If one does search for features reminiscent of the classroom, one might note an overly zealous impulse toward comprehensiveness and exhaustive detail, particularly in the three opening chapters providing literary and historical background. Indeed, the passages defining literary movements in sequence resemble classroom notes. Some of the lists or brief mentions of literary movements, ideas, and theories or theorists are too long to be easily comprehended or give the impression that the writer is rushing forward, combining disparate items or leaving names or analytical points unexplained. Examples of such bewildering combinations are "Rousseau, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wedeking, Kraft-Ebing, Hirschfeld und Freud" (39) and "Dekadenz, Jugendstil, Ästhetizismus, Expressionismus und Lebensphilosophie" (40). The novel Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften is discussed to some degree in early chapters but does not take center stage until the fourth chapter, beginning on page 159. The three opening chapters are titled "Das Geschlecht in [End Page 112] der Musil-Forschung," "Theoretisch—methodologische Grundlagen," and "Über die Konstruktion von modernen Geschlechteridentitäten." Following a passage on the development of modernism, the third chapter emphasizes relationships between Musil's philosophy and creative work and the ideas of Freud, Weininger, and Musil's own professor, Georg Simmel. Valkova asserts that Musil, like other modernist writers, links gender issues to problems of language, culture, identity, and the self. However, Simmel analyzes these problematics as primarily men's realms, while Musil includes women as subjects confronting their own issues of identity. In the book's title, setting the word "Weiblichkeit" on a par with "Männlichkeit" conveys the message that "Das Ich" (the self or ego) in whatever form or even if defined as "other," refers to female as well as male identities and qualities. Several sections of the book concentrate on particular women characters in Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften. Accordingly, chapter titles in the table of contents include seven female names: Leona, Bonadea, Diotima, Gerda, Rachel, Clarisse, and Agathe. As this list indicates, the book presents a variety of manifestations of "Weiblichkeit." Some chapters present descriptions or experiences from the women's lives, but Valkova places the most emphasis on their mental, emotional, and sexual states and conditions, frequently using Freudian terms. This emphasis is highlighted in the chapters on Clarisse's breakdown and confinement to a mental facility, namely "Vor der Internierung" and "Nach der Internierung." Examples of diagnostic psychiatric terms applied to Clarisse are "neurotic," "psychosomatic disturbance," "disassociated stupor," "synesthesia," "narcissism," "hysteria," and "oedipal drama." Freud is also mentioned in a reference to a mole on her arm that Clarisse values as a meaningful "fetish": "Der Fetisch, der sich nach Freud als sein Schutzschild gegen Kastrationsdrohung und ein Ersatz für den Phallus der Frau bewährt […]" (223). Psychological and psychiatric concepts are also applied to other book characters...