Chapters 45 - 49 Summary

Chapter 45 delves into an issue concerning the stage of life. Old age and youth are viewed in some relation to one another. One reveals to the other some sense of self-acceptance and of the compromises people make with real life over the years. Musil writes that in the end it seems to have happened rather quickly than slowly. Musil also makes reference to the forces of nature as being greater than mankind. Chapter 46: Arnheim shakes off a spell and Musil has the narrator explain how the pure soul with its unbridled behaviors is changed and affected by factors such as bourgeois education that sometimes peculiar results come about.

Chapter 47: "What all others are separately, Arnheim is in one person," (p. 218). The intelligentsia began to be attracted to Diotima's salon; this is viewed as being a good sign. Chapter 48: Arnheim's fame has...