THE POETICS OF FRAGMENTATION IN ROBERT MUSIL’S SHORT STORY “THE BLACKBIRD”

Abstract

The article undertakes an exploration of the poetics of fragmentation in the short prose of the Austrian writer Robert Musil, with a particular focus on the short story “The Blackbird”. The study’s relevance is outlined, stemming from the need for a comprehensive examination of this artistic device as a key element of the author’s creative worldview. Using a comprehensive methodological approach, the research identifies the technique of fragmentary incompleteness, which, in the context of the transformation of the traditional realistic narrative, forms a fundamental basis for the artist’s prose. In this regard, attention is paid to the multifaceted functions of the fragment through the prism of the author’s reflection on the crisis of consciousness, identity, and language.The article systematizes and summarizes the findings of literary scholarship that point to the specifics of destructive, thematic fragmentation in the writer’s prose. Using “The Blackbird” as an example, the study outlines the fragment’s potential, which, as in the Romantic tradition, combines semantic openness with internal completeness, yet acquires a new existential significance and symbolizes the disintegration of the individual’s inner world in the era of modernism. The paper highlights the ways in which Musil’s concepts of “the other state” (der andere Zustand) and “the union” (die Vereinigung) are realized, becoming central to his image and genre formation. The significance of symbolic images (the blackbird, the nightingale, the double) is underscored, as they function as metaphorical markers of a lost unity. It is demonstrated that these images emphasize the insurmountable chasm between fragmented reality and the striving to achieve the ideal wholeness of the “I-person”. The conclusion is drawn that Musil uses fragmentation not only as a stylistic device but also as a means for a philosophical exploration of the crisis of the individual in the modernist era.