Masters of the Hovering Life: 'Robert Musil and R. L.Stevenson'

Abstract

To justify mentioning in the same breath Robert Musil-the Robert Musil of The Man Without Qualities, that is-and Robert Louis Stevenson might seem, on the face of it, to require some ingenious argument. On reflection, though, we may be just a little too ready to apologize for juxtaposing Stevenson with a writer of such high cultural seriousness as Musil. Might it not, perhaps, signal a failure in comprehension on our part? Superficially, there would appear to be some mildly interesting, if rather adventitious, affinities between the two. Both were the sons of engineers, both gave themselves-for varying periods but with almost equal distasteto the study of engineering, both proved themselves inventive: Stevenson with his paper "On a New Form of Intermittent Light in Lighthouses" for which he got a medal; Musil with his invention (and patenting) of a chromatometer, which was still in use in the 1930S. Both were determined to be writers.