Robet Musil was a writer plagued by low demand throughout his literary career, though The Wall Street Journal coronated The Man Without Qualities as one of the three best novels of the twentieth century (the others being Ulysses and In Search of Lost Time).¹  I was looking at a collection of some of his of short stories, essays, and briefer articles, Volume 72 of “The German Library In 100 Volumes”, and came across his essay Monuments (Die Denkmale), written in 1932, the thesis of which is the “conspicuous inconspicuousness” of monuments.  Here is just a passage from that essay, which, though it focuses on the fate of monuments, bears relevance to contemporary public art and exhibitions with “open air” components such as Documenta, or inSite San Diego/Tijuana.

Everything permanent loses its ability to impress.  Everything that forms the walls of our lives, so to speak the stage set of our consciousness, loses the ability to play a role in this consciousness.  After a few hours we no longer hear a constant, bothersome noise.  Pictures we hang on the wall are sucked up by the wall within a few days; it happens very seldom that one places oneself in front of them and looks at them.  Half-read books which one has shelved in the magnificent rows of books in one’s library will never be read to the end.  For sensitive people it is sufficient to buy a book whose beginning they like, but they will never thereafter pick it up again.  In this case the process is aggressive, but one can also pursue its inevitable course in the higher feelings, and there its is always aggressive, for example in family life.  The firm possession of marriage is distinguished countless times from inconstant desire by the sentence: Must I tell you every fifteen minutes that I love you?  How much greater must be those psychological disadvantages to which the permanent is exposed in phenomena of brass and marble!

If one is well-disposed towards monuments, one must inexorably draw the conclusion that they make claims on us which run against our nature, and satisfying them calls for special arrangements.  If one were to make warning signs for trucks as inconspicuous in color as monuments it would be a crime.  Locomotives, after all, whistle shrilly and not timidly, and even mailboxes are painted in attractive colors.  In a word, monuments today should do what we all have to do, make more of an effort!  Anybody can stand quietly by the side of the road and allow glances to be bestowed on him; these days we can demand more of monuments.  Once one has grasped this thought — which thanks to certain cultural currents is slowly making headway — one can realize how backward the art of monuments is compared with the contemporary development of advertising.

Articles which mention Die Denkmale:

The Monument Is Invisible, The Sign Visible – Werner Fenz – October  #102

Monument: antimonument – Jeremy Melvin – Architectural Review (Oct 2002)

Commemorative Monuments – Lisa Moran – presented at Dublin City Council 2007

1. http://www.bookslut.com/fiction/2006_08_009654.php [↩]