Posthumous Papers of a Living Author
Acclaimed for The Man Without Qualities, a classic German novel of our century, Musil (1880-1942) published this witty collection of "posthumous" pieces in 1936. People, life, art and things are their resonant subjects. "Doors and Portals" explores these architectural openings in all their primitive and symbolic aspects: gallows, goal posts, entrances and exits denoting status or exclusion. In "Sarcophagus Cover," two ancient monuments, male and female, seem to picnic on the grass near Villa Borghese. Touching vignettes view animals humanly: pathos is wrung from the sight of a fly dying on flypaper, a baby hare torn in the chase, sheep with the "delicate skulls of martyrs," pelted, abused, lamenting in choirs. People-watching provides entertainment in "Boardinghouse Nevermore," about eccentrics at a German pension in Rome, and in "Binoculars," as the narrator peers through his window. The most intensely personal and extended is "The Blackbird," in which the narrator records his experience of war, his mother's death, his reliving of childhood. Precious miniatures wrought from canny observation and a rich sensibility, these 30 charming sketches will please a range of readers.Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.