きのうの引用箇所以外にも、じっと目を凝らしたくだりはいくらでもある。以下、いくつかコピーしておこう。文脈の説明はいっさい省略するので分かりにくいかもしれないが、少なくとも "The Perferction of a Love" の特徴、あるいは Robert Musil の作風がちょっぴりつかめるのではないかと思う。
.... her mind reeled with voluptuous, enervated horror as of some still nameless sin. She wondered whether he had noticed her looking at him, and her body filled with a faint, almost docile sensuality―a dark hiding-place for the stealthy urges of the soul within. (p.143)
And she felt herself lingeringly and softly enveloped in her own being, which was full of strange, not yet comprehensible resolutions whose origin was in that other realm. (p.144)
.... soundlessly the last shadow of her actions, strange even to herself, slipped back behind the walls of her inner being and these grew smooth again. (pp.145-146)
And yet she realised obscurely that it was not the stranger who tempted her, but simply this standing and waiting, a fine-toothed, savage, abandoned ecstasy in being herself, in being alive, .... (p.146)
.... she was moved by the haunting loneliness of those chords that were in quest of her, moved as by some vast diapason resounding far beyond the limits of the human being. (p.147)
ざっと５ページのあいだに、こんな表現がいくつも出てくるのである。あとは推して知るべし。これでカッと汗をかかなかったら文学青年、あ、老人とは言えないでしょう。
