On December 8, 1924, Musil wrote to his friend, Franz Blei, who had solicited a short piece for his journal, Roland ( the piece under discussion would appear in the January 15th, 1925 edition):
“As I laid this letter aside yesterday as too gloomy, something came to me that I noted down. A little travel sketch with the code word coquetry; overnight it turned into a scheme. It is not at all original and is called ‘Susanna’s Letter’ because I turn the thing on its head and see it from the woman’s perspective. In a few days you will receive it and more can come after. You’ll have to take the lack of originality that comes with the letter form and with the disguise as a woman in stride if the rest of it is god; for this masquerade is personally fun for me, and my mood is in need of such a stimulus, even if it is a somewhat cheap one; on the other hand, the extraterritoriality of the woman in the world of men is an easy standpoint from which everything that one wants to discuss can be expressed in the same tone. This time it is only a little gossip within the realm of flirting but the next time, or soon after, something else could follow…I don’t want to sign these letters as Musil, but rather as Rychtarschow [Matthias Rychtarschow, a pseudonym Musil occasionally used, constructed from his paternal grandfather’s first name and birthplace in Moravia], since I havenot written anything serious for too long; in this way I do away with inhibitins which would otherwise certainly restrict me.”
There was a second letter, which I will record for you soon. It also may help to know that Musil had injured his eye while clearing out his parent’s apartment and had to wear an eye-patch for a while. So he, presumably, could be conceived of as the one-eyed looker in this story. Before he had the inspiration for this piece he had written to Blei that he was “one-eyed” and had “no idea how I shall fulfil your call for support [i.e., for submissions]. In the cupboard hangs neither bacon nor fat. And my head produces nothing; that’s the bad news.” But then, he turned a defect, as Susanna says, into an arousal. May we all be so deft.
If you care to read this piece and more of Musil’s marvelous small prose, you can find Thought Flights here: https://www.contramundumpress.com/thought-flights
You can look at the original printed version and other issues of Roland here:
https://www.arthistoricum.net/themen/textquellen/illustrierte-magazine-der-klassischen-moderne/die-zeitschriften/roland
The cover of the January 15th, 1925 issue is not available due to copyright issues, but some of the other covers looked like this:
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