Posthumous Papers of a Living Author

Acclaimed for The Man Without Qualities, a classic German novel of our century, Musil (1880-1942) published this witty collection of ""posthumous'' pieces in 1936. People, life, art and things are their resonant subjects. ``Doors and Portals'' explores these architectural openings in all their primitive and symbolic aspects: gallows, goal posts, entrances and exits denoting status or exclusion. In ``Sarcophagus Cover,'' two ancient monuments, male and female, seem to picnic on the grass near Villa Borghese. Touching vignettes view animals humanly: pathos is wrung from the sight of a fly dying on flypaper, a baby hare torn in the chase, sheep with the ``delicate skulls of martyrs,'' pelted, abused, lamenting in choirs. People-watching provides entertainment in ``Boardinghouse Nevermore,'' about eccentrics at a German pension in Rome, and in ``Binoculars,'' as the narrator peers through his window. The most intensely personal and extended is ``The Blackbird,'' in which the narrator records his experience of war, his mother's death, his reliving of childhood. Precious miniatures wrought from canny observation and a rich sensibility, these 30 charming sketches will please a range of readers. (March)