Robert Musil’s art of characterization.

During his lifetime he was not widely recognized as a writer. His work never appealed to the public at large, and in his later years the cultural policy of the Third Reich reduced the circulation of his writings even further. Only years after his death his qualities as a writer were discovered. A brief examination of his life may shed sane light on his present position in the literary world. Musil grew up in a wealthy home and was educated according to a traditional pattern by which difficult children were sent to military academies. Musil, deciding against a military career, studied engineering and later philosophy and psychology, specializing in logic and experimental psychology