Looking forward to reading this little book I’ve just acquired: Nachlass zu Lebzeiten (The posthumerous papers of a living author), 1936. I haven’t come across much commentary on it, but it is mentioned in the NYT:
In these ”Posthumous Papers,” Musil’s pleasure is to start small. The first essay, ”Flypaper,” begins with an almost pedantic description of the sticky substance. It proceeds to focus on trapped insects, briefly comparing them to a woman fighting off a strong man’s grip, and ends with the image of a fly’s moribund twitching, compared to ”a minuscule human eye that ceaselessly opens and shuts.” This is the patented Musilian cadence. An immensely sensuous and concrete prose carries us from the ordinary to the almost-surreal and near-apocalyptic, a progression that appears logical, if not methodical.
manwithoutqualities 