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Masters of the Hovering Life: Robert Musil and R. L. Stevenson
- University of Wisconsin Press
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Masters of the Hovering Life Robert Musil and R. L. Stevenson To justify mentioning in the same breath Robert Musil—the Robert Musil of The Man Without Qualities, that is—and Robert Louis Stevenson might seem, on the face of it, to require some ingenious argument. On reflection , though, we may be just a little too ready to apologize for juxtaposing Stevenson with a writer of such high cultural seriousness as Musil. Might it not, perhaps, signal a failure in comprehension on our part? Superficially, there would appear to be some mildly interesting, if rather adventitious, affinities between the two. Both were the sons of engineers, both gave themselves—for varying periods but with almost equal distaste— to the study of engineering, both proved themselves inventive: Stevenson with his paper “On a New Form of Intermittent Light in Lighthouses” for which he got a medal; Musil with his invention (and patenting) of a chromatometer , which was still in use in the s. Both were determined to be writers. Less superficially, there is a certain amount of internal evidence to suggest that Musil, too, had played the sedulous ape—with Stevenson as his mentor. (Compare, for example, the description of the state of Kakania in part , chapter , with the description of the state of Grünewald in the first three pages of Prince Otto.) What really draws them together, however, is the importance they both attach to the essay and the practice of essay writing. One of the obstacles that has, for most of the twentieth century, impeded the proper evaluation of Stevenson’s work, is that his essays have tended to be both separated from, and overshadowed by, his fiction. I say “tended” advisedly for there have been a number of critics—particularly reviewers—who did recognize their importance to his oeuvre; and these were particularly conspicuous in the early days of his fame. In an unsigned review in The Scottish Leader in of Across the Plains, a volume of twelve essays, the author asks if it is in the essay that Stevenson’s true strength and vocation will be found. He goes on: “Is it among the romancers, with Scott and Dumas, that Mr Stevenson will stand, or among the essayists, the pleasant prattlers and gossips of literature, with Montaigne, and Addison and Lamb?” (Maixner : ). To number Stevenson among “prattlers” like these puts the reviewer’s condescension in perspective; nonetheless, his conclusion is clear: “While his fiction is sound and brilliant beyond all question, the best part of his work . . . has been done in the region of desultory imaginative prose.” Stevenson is “a delightful egotist—as entertaining in his way as Montaigne himself” (how casually he asperses the great progenitor of the modern essay!). “What justifies it all is, of course, that about the effect there is nothing vulgar: an air of delicate mockery saves everything, and we close the book, knowing that Mr Stevenson, to give us a charming essay, has been exploiting and exaggerating himself, and laughing at himself, too, and at us all the time” (). Richard Le Gallienne takes a far more serious and considered view of the essay and announces firmly at the beginning of his review in The Academy that “Mr Stevenson’s final fame will be that of an essayist, nearest and dearest fame of the prose-writer.” He makes a particularly perceptive point both about the nature of the essay and the nature of Stevenson’s essay writing: “In the essay, no octave-spanning architecture has to be considered , with a half heart which would fain be at the floriation of niche and capital.” While such architecture, he acknowledges, is no doubt the prerogative of the magnum opus, the essayist “cannot but feel the essential . . . limitation of the greatest monuments of art, monuments which attain their air of majestic completion, simply by shutting out the moon and the stars.” As he continues, expanding his metaphor, he helps to define Stevenson the essayist: “The essayist is essentially a son of Shem, and his method is the wayward travel of a gypsy. He builds not, but he pitches his tent, lights his fire of sticks, and invites you to smoke a pipe with him over their crackling. While he dreamily chats, now here now there, of his discursive way of life; the sun has gone down, and you begin to feel the sweet influences of the Pleiades” (Maixner : ). Le Gallienne’s point about the “unroofed” or...