There Is No Finer Example of Inescapability . . .

I think of Robert Musil’s wisdom, his insight into the human condition, or perhaps, it would be better to say, the human “game.”  His wisdom is worldly wisdom, certainly, not Godly (re: the quote in the previous post), but, in many ways, Musil is the most unworldly of writers.  No one else writes as ably on the theme of “vanity of vanities.  All is vanity.”  At the heart of his work is the search for mystical truth--even though most of his characters squander their chances of ever finding it.  Instead, they find the decay, the vacancy, that all worldly pursuit eventually results in; the accumulation of experience without meaning.  I think of the passage from Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften:

Es gibt kein zweites solches Beispiel der Unentrinnbarkeit wie das, das ein begabter junger Mensch bietet, wenn er sich zu einem gewöhnlichen alten Menschen einengt; ohne Schlag des Schicksals, nur durch die Einschrumpfung, die ihm vorher bestimmt war!

and I need only look around me, or at myself, to know how true this is.  The only remedy is to stay spiritually youthful, or, as Musil would say, to stay always in love; to stay on the journey to the East . . .