Thomas Frick read the manuscript in its first draft, chapter by chapter, with a writer’s and editor’s eye as it progressed. His always insightful comments and queries were wonderfully supportive and helpful.

I was fortunate in having a mathematician friend, Philipp Rothmaler (who is a logician to boot, like Ulrich), willing to hash out with me, in extended email exchanges and telephone sessions, several passages and formulations written in a scientific vein that were obscure to me.

I am grateful to Randy Cashmere for reading the book at a near-final stage and helping me to clear up needless obscurities by letting me know where a phrase or an image left him puzzled.

For full appreciation, Musil’s language needs to be heard or at least silently intoned while being read off the page. My wife, Susan, listened to me read the book aloud as the translation developed; her critical discernment and sensitive appreciation were the first proof of each sentence’s performative quality. For these gifts (and for her patience) I cannot thank her enough.

I gratefully acknowledge the financial support I received from the Literature Section of the Austrian Federal Chancellery.

And I owe very special thanks to Parabola, which was funded by the Nicholas Berwin Charitable Trust, for supporting this translation with a generous grant.

—J.A.

NOTES

like a heap of stones spilled out from a mosaic: This phrase, interpolated by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser in their translation, elucidates the image to both Musil’s and the reader’s advantage.

act of imagination and illusion: This was Eithne Wilkins’s and Ernst Kaiser’s solution to the implications of the word Einbildung in this sentence. I don’t think it can be improved on—or dispensed with.

Sister Human: The German Schwester Mensch is less peculiar and more evocative than it appears in English. It sounds Franciscan, or like something Adam might have said to Eve.

The austere fervor that had lit up his face . . . : I am adopting Eithne Wilkins’s and Ernst Kaiser’s lucid solution of a difficult problem posed by Musil’s phrasing.

something would have happened which, soon after, she was unable to name, as it was already gone: One wants to rephrase this odd sentence to: “something would have happened which, soon after, she would have been unable to name, as it would have been already gone.” But that is not what Musil wrote. The possibility that did not happen is as unknown to the reader as it is to Agathe—unknown even as a possibility—and that, I believe, is what Musil intended to express with this breach of grammatical convention.”

balletically disguised leap: This is Burton Pike’s ingenious solution to the challenge posed by Musil’s phrase tänzerisch bemäntelt.

will-o’-the-wisps of outings never taken: The will-o’-the-wisps, suggested but not named in Musil’s sentence, were invisible to me until I spotted them thanks to Burton Pike’s rendition.

Strolls Among the Crowd: The chapter title in German, “Wandel unter Menschen,” connotes a range of meanings that cannot be contained in a single English phrase. Musil’s French translator Philippe Jaccotet rendered it as “Promenades dans la foule,” which strikes me as a sensible solution.