This Book Addresses Both experts and a more general audience. It brings together scholars from Austria, Germany, France, Italy, North America, and the United Kingdom who have collaborated to offer an overview of, and fresh insight into, Robert Musil's life and works. When Musil died in exile in Switzerland in 1942, he was largely forgotten, his reputation dimmed by his failure to complete his major novel. But he did leave behind a substantial body of creative work published during his lifetime and a vast collection of manuscript material. Over the sixty-five years since his death this literary heritage has helped to restore and indeed enhance his status as a writer. His works have been translated into many languages, including English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Scandinavian languages, Hungarian, Turkish, Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Japanese, and others. Now, in the early years of the new millennium, Musil is ranked with Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, and Günter Grass among the foremost German-language authors of the twentieth century and belongs in the canon of great writers of European literature.

It is Musil's language that reaches out to us today; accordingly, Musil's German has, in this Companion, been given the prominence that it deserves, as will be seen in the considerable scope provided for quotations in the original. English translations are furnished for those not fluent in German. Those who read Musil in languages other than German may derive some comfort from his own observation: “Der Schriftsteller im Verhältnis zum Leser schreibt eine Fremdsprache” (The writer, in relation to the reader, writes a foreign language). Whether one approaches Musil through one's own or through another language, a spark of creative understanding must leap the gap between author and reader. We hope to help to generate that spark.

The editors

May 2007