Abstract

Abstract:

This essay offers a reading of Robert Musil's 1911 story "Die Versuchung der stillen Veronika" through the concept of Stimmung. In his diaries, Musil presents Stimmung as a central aspect of aesthetic experience that emerges directly from descriptions of objects and events, rather than abstract statements about mental and emotional states. "Veronika" repeatedly presents subjects, objects, and space as linked in a complex and dynamic web. The relational networks that emerge from these descriptions are an expression of Stimmung. Moreover, the story articulates these fluid and multidirectional relationships through a discourse of sound and voice. Thus, Stimmung as a sonified relational network becomes an aesthetic principle in Musil's early writing.

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