Franz Kafka wrote this letter to his father, Hermann Kafka, in November 1919. Max Brod, Kafka’s literary executor, relates that Kafka actually gave the letter to his mother to hand to his father, hoping it might renew a relationship that had lost itself in tension and frustration on both sides. But Kafka’s probing of the deep flaw in their relationship spared neither his father nor himself. He could not help seeing the failure of communication between father and son as another moment in the larger existential predicament depicted in so much of his work. Probably realizing the futility of her son’s gesture, Julie Kafka did not deliver the letter but instead returned it to its author.
Eithne Wilkins Reihenfolge der Bücher (Chronologisch)
Contains: A Sort of Introduction The Like of it Now Happens (I)"It would be useless to attempt a synopsis of Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, not only because of its length and complexity, but also because the real action lies not on the surface, in what the characters do (though that is often dramatic enough), but within, in their states of mind, the fluctuations of their emotions, their theories, and the counterpoint between the thoughts and the behaviour of them all, in themselves and in relation to each other, especially to the Man without Qualities himself, who is the nucleus, and in relation to the demands of the indefinable pattern of this world we live in."(From the Foreword by the translators)
Ulrich heißt der 'Mann ohne Eigenschaften', er ist Mathematiker, Philosoph und stellt sich permanent selbst in Frage. Ulrich steht für Robert Musils literarisches Vorhaben, die Wirklichkeit als das ziellose Ergebnis einer Überfülle von Möglichkeiten zu schildern. Der Held dieses Romans begegnet einem wahren Panoptikum aus Mit- und Gegenspielern: Akteuren der Wiener Diplomatie und des Großkapitals, Schwärmern, Revolutionären, einem Sexualmörder, einer esoterischen Salonkönigin. Der Leser blickt hier in das 'unbestechliche Bild eines Zerrspiegels' – gebannt und fasziniert.