SOURCE: "An Inquiry into the Psychological Condition of the Narrator in Musil's Tonka" in Monatshefte, Vol. 64, No. 2, Summer, 1972, pp. 153-61.

In the following essay, Sjögren contends that the nameless narrator of Musil's Tonka exhibits the symptoms of schizophrenia.

Strictly speaking, there is no narrator formally interposed between author and reader in Musil's Erzählung Tonka, since the story is told in the third person; however, it must be noted that the point of view given is exclusively that of the protagonist, an unnamed "he." Memories of the protagonist are recalled haphazardly as in life, with little attention to accurate chronology, and are recounted without any correction by the author. Relinquishing his prerogative of "unhampered omniscience," the author almost never intrudes into the report, but pretends to submerge himself into the mind of the protagonist, imposing upon himself the limitations of that consciousness. Werner Hoffmeister, who considers this...