MUSIL (Robert).

L'Homme sans qualités. Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1957. 4 volumes in-8, paperback, untrimmed. First edition of Philippe Jaccottet's excellent French translation. One of 55 copies on vélin neige, the only large paper. Unfinished and partly posthumous, The Man Without Qualities is a classic of twentieth-century European literature, like Joyce's Ulysses or Proust's Recherche: "This sparkling book, which maintains in the most exquisite way the difficult balance between essay and epic comedy, is no longer, thank God, a 'novel' in the usual sense of the word: it is no longer so because, as Goethe said, everything 'that is perfect in its kind, transcends that kind, to become something else, something incomparable'" (Thomas Mann). A very nice copy as issued, mostly uncut. Slight discoloration to the headpieces of one volume, slight creases to the spines.