SOURCE: "Mystical Selfhood, Self-Delusion, Self-Dissolution: Ethical and Narrative Experimentation in Robert Musil's Grigia," in Modern Austrian Literature, Vol. 17, No. 1, 1984, pp. 59-77.

In the following excerpt, Jennings argues that Homo's search for a unified identity in Grigia is undermined by his self-delusion.

Grigia opens with a brief recounting of the geologist Homo's station in life. The sententious introductory paragraph sets up his life as a normal and perhaps even paradigmatic one: "Es gibt im Leben eine Zeit, wo es sich auffallend verlangsamt, als zögerte es weiterzugehen oder wollte seine Richtung ändern." Homo's concerns and problems indeed seem chosen for their typicality: his spouse, child and profession have all presented him with difficulties. The recurrence of and importance attributed to the idea of "Trennbarkeit" signals, however, the emergence of a particular problem which marks Homo as a man apart. The notion of separability first emerges in association with Homo's...