I’m finally reading A Man Without Qualities, thanks to you (thus thank you!) this bird reminds me of a couple of chapters, 18 and 20 (?) where the mistress in encaged (?) and on the second instance the woodworker and killer make an allusion of a dog that would be tempted to
Play with the caged bird.
As an aside, the allusions he creates with this imagery is transfer of blame from the personal to circumstances or the other by the character in play.
Fascinating connection...the transfer of blame from personal responsibility to "just the way the world is" comes up often in Musil's thinking. In some cases, as in Moosbrugger, doing so is obviously absurd, but in others there is a wisdom to acknowledging that nature is cruel sometimes and we all are complicit in the cruelty, and thus no one is more to blame than anyone else.... so glad you are reading Musil!
This might be irrelevant but fledglings are not supposed to stay in the nest. They fall to the ground somehow and it is just another stage of being a baby bird. The mother goes to the ground to feed them as they move around on the ground albeit being in an extremely vulnerable state of affairs. One need not “rescue” a fledgling by putting it back up in the nest or taking it home and caring for it; it’s supposed to be on the ground now learning how to get around and practicing flying. The mother stays around and keeps an eye on it and continues to feed it.
Well, I doubt Musil knew such details, but of course he would have found the fact relevant. I see the little vignette as an analogy for his own sense of being abandoned.
I’m finally reading A Man Without Qualities, thanks to you (thus thank you!) this bird reminds me of a couple of chapters, 18 and 20 (?) where the mistress in encaged (?) and on the second instance the woodworker and killer make an allusion of a dog that would be tempted to
Play with the caged bird.
As an aside, the allusions he creates with this imagery is transfer of blame from the personal to circumstances or the other by the character in play.
Fascinating connection...the transfer of blame from personal responsibility to "just the way the world is" comes up often in Musil's thinking. In some cases, as in Moosbrugger, doing so is obviously absurd, but in others there is a wisdom to acknowledging that nature is cruel sometimes and we all are complicit in the cruelty, and thus no one is more to blame than anyone else.... so glad you are reading Musil!
Yes, I like the way Musil plays with fate sometimes, if we can call fate the circumstances, or sociocultural context where things occur.
This might be irrelevant but fledglings are not supposed to stay in the nest. They fall to the ground somehow and it is just another stage of being a baby bird. The mother goes to the ground to feed them as they move around on the ground albeit being in an extremely vulnerable state of affairs. One need not “rescue” a fledgling by putting it back up in the nest or taking it home and caring for it; it’s supposed to be on the ground now learning how to get around and practicing flying. The mother stays around and keeps an eye on it and continues to feed it.
Well, I doubt Musil knew such details, but of course he would have found the fact relevant. I see the little vignette as an analogy for his own sense of being abandoned.
The outtakes are so good.
Oh no! But coming from you, whose outtakes are so good, I will just have to learn to deal with the pain of knowing we can't put everything in!!!????