Adrift at the end of the world

Proust and James Joyce are acknowledging masters of the European novel; the Austrian Robert Musil is less well known, although Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (The Man Without Qualities) possesses as many claims to greatness as A la recherche or Ulysses. It is possibly modern German literature's most remarkable achievement and certainly its 20th-century masterwork.

The gifted only child of artistic parents, Robert Musil was born in 1880 into a world of privilege, financial and intellectual. Educated initially at the military academy at Eisenstadt in the Burgenland, and later at the school in Moravia where only a few years earlier Rilke had been so unhappy, Musil seemed destined for a military career. Shortly before being commissioned in Vienna, he changed his mind. In 1887, he began studying engineering. From engineering, he turned to maths and science, inventing a chromatometer, and by 1908 had completed a degree in philosophy. Two years earlier his first novel, Young Torless, had appeared to much acclaim. Based on life in a military academy, it is a devastating parable about the abuse of power and could be read as prophetic of the rise of Nazism.

The Man Without Qualities became his life's work and many aspects of Ulrich's character reflect Musil's intellectual complexities. Moving to Switzerland when it became clear that Hitler's Germany would destroy him and his work, Musil continued working on the book, slowly and laboriously, until his death in 1942. The result is a literary unfinished symphony: elegant, surprisingly hard-edged, realistic and unforgettable.

Not only is the book heroically long, it also remains unfinished, and the existence of Musil's posthumous papers, the first English translation of which appeared in 1995, have added more than 600 pages to a text already running to 1,130 pages.

It was published in German between 1930-43, and revised in 1952-7. The first English translation appeared in 1953-60, but the first complete German edition was not published until 1978. An English version soon followed. In 1995 Sophie Wilkins's translation was published in the United States and later in Britain in a handsome hardback edition, complete with the 600 posthumous pages, which take the story in several directions. However, Wilkins has concentrated on the novel as Musil left it at the time of his death in 1942. Her translation is superb: fresh and funny, true to Musil's irony and his genuine perplexity at the chaos of human emotions, as well as to his relentless philosophising.

This edition is now available in a bulky Picador paperback (£15 in UK). Although the posthumous papers are not included - no paperback spine could hold such bulk - this is the best opportunity to return to, or discover, a wonderfully wise, candid and vivid portrait not only of one man but of his society as it slides towards war and collapse.

It is primarily the story of Ulrich - "his family name must be suppressed out of consideration for his father" - a cultivated, handsome, eligible man of independent means who is still young and directionless. " `God help me' he thought, `surely I could never have meant to spend all my life as a mathematician?' But what had he really meant to do? At this point he could have turned only to philosophy." Although his hard-working father despairs of him, Ulrich is well-connected and free to move within Viennese high society. An ex-soldier, seducer, philosopher and scientist, Ulrich - convinced he is without qualities - is in fact an astute observer and an individual of immense faith who just happens not to believe in anything. A tireless thinker, he is particularly obsessed with morality in its widest context. Every person, every event, each sensation is subjected to intense if non-judgmental scrutiny.

Having been attacked in the street, an incident he finds more interesting than outrageous - "Even as the hooligans were cursing at him he toyed with the notion that they might not be hooligans at all but citizens like himself . . . whose attention had fastened on his passing form and who now discharged on him the hatred that is always ready and waiting for him or for any stranger, like a thunderstorm in the atmosphere" - Ulrich is rescued by a kindly stranger who turns out to be a beautiful nymphomaniac. Musil has no intention of allowing either his book or his hero to be idle.

A strong political undercurrent runs through the narrative, although Musil chooses to satirise it. Nationality, and particularly the question of whether Austria is a real country, is central to the book: "Patriotism in Austria was quite a special subject. German children simply learned to despise the wars sacred to Austrian children, and were taught to believe that French children, whose forebears were all decadent lechers, would turn tail by the thousands at the approach of a German soldier with a big beard . . . in Austria, the situation was slightly more complicated. For although the Austrians had of course won all the wars in their history, after most of them they had had to give something up."

In the light of the obvious tension between Germany and Austria, Austrian aristocrats and bourgeoisie unite in an attempt to honour the approaching 70th anniversary of the accession of Emperor Franz Josef, overshadowing in the process their German cousins. Despatched by his father to the salon of Diotima, his physically ample, intellectually high-minded and socially ambitious cousin, Ulrich is recruited into acting as secretary to the Parallel Campaign. Far from committed to the project, which is never more than vaguely discussed in the many gatherings hosted by Diotima, Ulrich when in her presence muses over her attractiveness, imagining her as "a young, tall, plump heifer of good stock, sure-footed and studying with a deep gaze the dry grasses she was feeding on . . . But when Ulrich came back to earth from such a flight of the imagination, what he found before him was an ambitious middle-class mind eager to associate with aristocratic ideas." She meanwhile has become besotted with Arnheim, a Prussian and a natural rival for Ulrich.

When not assessing his cousin's virtues, Ulrich visits his old friend Walter, now married to Clarisse, a charming child-woman bored with her husband and desperate for adventure. As the increasingly unhappy couple crash their way through Wagner's music, it is obvious the two men, now rivals, no longer like each other. Even more apparent is Clarisse's growing insanity. Ulrich's interest in the women in his circle, as well as their obsession with him, is handled with much humour. Musil cleverly catches the internal confusion most of the characters live in.

Finally, Ulrich's father's death brings him back to the family home. There, he is reunited with his sister Agathe whom he has not seen since childhood. Their reunion is quickly complicated by a mutual physical attraction.

Despite Musil's tendency to lengthy philosophical passages and Ulrich's self-absorption, the characters are vividly drawn and the dialogue is very funny. Musil's sly comic flair is brilliantly rendered by Watkins.