Ulrich Bach, Stanford University

Transcending Central Europe: Robert Müller, the poet of transgression

Robert Müller, the restless Viennese expressionistic author, who also worked as literary manager and publisher during the first two decades of the 20th century, today is no longer considered within the standard literary canon. Yet, from 1911 onwards, through a constant flow of critical essays in such well-known literary magazines as "Der Brenner" and "Der Ruf," Mueller became one of the most colorful and fascinating figures of the Viennese cultural scene. Especially noteworthy is his literary feud with Karl Kraus and the resulting essay: "Karl Kraus oder Dalai Lama: Der dunkle Priester, Eine Nervenabtötung" (1914). During the First World War he served as a volunteer in the Austrian military press corps(with his friend Robert Musil). Sadly, shortly after the war he faced the impending bankruptcy of his publishing ventures, which is likely reason for his suicide in 1924.

Tropen: Mythos der Reise (1915), Müller's brilliant but often overlooked novel, is one of the most interesting contributions to Viennese literary expressionism. On the surface, this exotic travel narrative features the protagonist Jack Slim and the story unfolds with a complex cacophony of narrative threats. Thus, Tropen functions as an early example for the “essayfication” of the novel. By adopting the essayistic style, Müller can detailthe social dysfunction of the Habsburg society. However, the novel form also allows him to offer a utopian vision in the form of a global fusion of the human races. The impetus of this vision of fusion can be related to the confrontation among and within the ethnic groups in the Habsburg monarchy and the “exotic” strangeness of the various nationalities comprising that polyglot empire. On several occasions in his rich collection of political essays (3 vols.), he is concerned with the question of the relationship between the capital, cosmopolitan Vienna, and the empire’s peripheral nations. As the paper illustrates, it is in these texts, where Müller shows how Austria assessed and --at the same time-- influenced the cultural arena in the peripheral countries shortly before and immediately after the First World War.