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Genese Grill

@genesegrill.bsky.social
2K followers 1.6K following 257 posts

Essayist, Translator, Bibliophile, Working on the First English-Language Biography of Robert Musil for Yale University Press. genesegrill.wixsite.com/website www.thisissplice.co.uk/essays/porta…

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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
Full reading and meeting schedule for our year-long exploration of Musil's The Man Without Qualities.
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
What is this book, The Man Without Qualities, by Robert Musil? And why might you want to spend a year reading it with me and @samantharhill.bsky.social ? open.substack.com/pub/genesegr...
open.substack.com
The Man Without Qualities
apropos of upcoming reading group with Samantha Rose Hill
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
This, by @susannacrossman.bsky.social , is sure to be marvelous! electricliterature.com/the-orange-n...
electricliterature.com
Telling My Lost Child the Story of His Life - Electric Literature
An excerpt from THE ORANGE NOTEBOOKS by Susanna Crossman, recommended by Rachel Cantor
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
I am co-leading a year-long Man Without Qualities Reading Group with @samantharhill.bsky.social , starting on Monday, October 13th. Join us! Details can be found here: genesegrill.substack.com/p/man-withou...
genesegrill.substack.com
Man Without Qualities Reading Group
Starting October 13th
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 15/07/2025
Aristotle and Plato are One! Aesthetics and Ethics are One! open.substack.com/pub/genesegr...
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
open.substack.com/pub/genesegr...
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Return to the Beginning
Some notes from my first forays into writing Musil's biography
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 28/06/2025
open.substack.com/pub/genesegr...
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Unanswer{able}ed Questions?
I had a wonderful conversation with the first reader of my biography book draft last night.
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
"What M[usil] is always about, why he haunts: looking for a place the individual can fit in in a deadened, shallow world. .. cf. Rilke, the goal of art is to produce in reader a moral imperative to change his life." genesegrill.substack.com/p/excerpts-f...
genesegrill.substack.com
Excerpts from Burton Pike's Musil Notes
"...looking for a place the individual can fit in in a deadened, shallow world."
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
Yes, such a beautiful, rich, wide-ranging and important essay. Thank you, Gabe.
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
open.substack.com/pub/genesegr...
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How it's going
Dispatch from the Writing Trenches
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 06/04/2025
open.substack.com/pub/genesegr...
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"Susanna's Second Letter (Our Men)"
A piece of Musil's small prose from Thought Flights
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
Some Notes on Musil and Rilke open.substack.com/pub/genesegr...
open.substack.com
Some Notes on Musil and Rilke
"This gemlike stillness amid a never-halting movement"
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
Sharing a draft I'm struggling to weave in to the biography narrative on Musil's take on the "new human being" and attempts to create a new world after WWI: activism, anarchism, aesthetic edcucation, ethics, socialism, totalitarianisms. open.substack.com/pub/genesegr...
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The New Human Being?
Activists, Anarchists, Nihilists, Aesthetes: Musil and post WWI dreams of a New World
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
I had the pleasure of interviewing David Lazar about his new book for On the Seawall: www.ronslate.com/the-natural-...
ronslate.com
“The natural warmth of detritus”: David Lazar in Conversation on Stories of the Streets – On the Seawall
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
open.substack.com/pub/genesegr...
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"Musil's Political Discontent"
Listen now | From Klaus Amann's introduction to Literature and Politics
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
A podcast of me reading Musil's "Susanna's Letter" from Thought Flights. More to come. open.substack.com/pub/genesegr...
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"Susanna's Letter"
Small Prose from Thought Flights
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
open.substack.com/pub/genesegr...
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Sausage Machines, Handcuffs, Broken-Off Bridges (Musil on his Struggles with Writing)!
I have been able to work the sausage machine, through which the novel must pass, more quickly .
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
Summary of the Musil-Mann Relationship: genesegrill.substack.com/p/mann-and-m...
genesegrill.substack.com
Mann and Musil, Continued
The Great Man of Letters and his Worthy Rival
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Hubbub🕊️ 🇪🇺 @hubbubbub.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
This beautiful book arrived today, thank you very much for this gift of poetry by the incomparable Hannah Arendt... @samantharhill.bsky.social @genesegrill.bsky.social www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/164... www.patheos.com/blogs/ecopre...
poetryfoundation.org
For the Love of the Word
Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine.
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
Still working on my summary of the Musil-Mann relationship. In the meantime, a little very rough draft excerpt from the bio-in-progress on Mach, Kant, Bahr (and the marvelous Marie Bashkirtseff!). open.substack.com/pub/genesegr...
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Kant, Mach, Bahr and the "Unsalvagable I"
A very rough draft excerpt from the biography
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
Musil Contra Mann: Just a taster for my longer analysis of the complex relationship between these two men (coming soon): open.substack.com/pub/genesegr...
open.substack.com
Musil contra Mann
A particularly nasty dig from Musil's notebooks
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
open.substack.com/pub/genesegr...
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Robert Musil's Book Recommendations
In my last post I wrote a bit about how Musil helped other writers in the years between WWI and WWII.
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Yuliya Komska @ykomska.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
“Through thoughtlessness, we render the world sterile and lifeless, but when we write thoughtfully and beautifully … we make the world thoughtful and beautiful.” Review of @samantharhill.bsky.social & @genesegrill.bsky.social’s book of/on Arendt’s poetry www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/164...
poetryfoundation.org
For the Love of the Word
Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine.
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
open.substack.com/pub/genesegr...
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Bread Work
Musil's struggle for existence
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David M Rubin @six18sfoundry.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
Thought Flights Robert Musil @genesegrill.bsky.social
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
open.substack.com/pub/genesegr...
open.substack.com
A Bright, Sharply-Edged Circle of Light
In 1932, Musil asked Wolfdietrich Rasch what he thought about the reception of his books.
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 18/01/2025
Musil's Love for Euripides: open.substack.com/pub/genesegr...
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Musil's Love for Euripides
Since I just finished reading Euripides’ Bacchae in Greek, with help from Abby and Emer and The Catherin Project, it seemed an appropriate moment to share Musil’s thoughts on this great Greek writer.
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
If you are interested in what happened to the Musil's apartment in Vienna when they fled into exile in Switzerland (and the tragic story of what happened to Martha's sister, Johanna Casper), here you go: open.substack.com/pub/genesegr...
open.substack.com
Swiss Exile and the Rasumofskgasse Apartment
Robert and Martha left Austria about five months after the Anschluss with the German Reich, carrying with them only the necessary manuscripts to continue writing the unfinished Man Without Qualities, ...
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
open.substack.com/pub/genesegr...
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Inbox | Substack
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
I'm Starting A Substack.... Writing Robert Musil's Biography open.substack.com/pub/genesegr...
open.substack.com
Inbox | Substack
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 31/12/2024
Hannah Arendt and Martha Musil. Could be cousins. Happy , Healhthy, Inspired New Year to you all. Thanks for being in this crazy world with me. Trying to understand, trying to love, trying to communicate.
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 31/12/2024
The last four months of 2024 have been difficult (illnesses, dread about the world, --violence and floods), but high times too: Sicily, Musil talk at Society Library, restoring Walking Book, Arendt poems, Musil biography work, with your encouragement.
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St Brigid Press @stbrigidpress.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
Just in time for holiday reading by the woodstove here — the collected poems of Hannah Arendt, translated and edited and introduced by @samantharhill.bsky.social with @genesegrill.bsky.social . #arendt #poetry #writing #hannaharendt
The cover of the book “What Remains: The Collected Poems of Hannah Arendt,” translated and edited by Samantha Rose Hill with Genese Grill.
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
Post stroke, in the cafe, after the movies (he loved Mae West and Chaplin), Musil had to choose between a Kaffee Hag (decaffeinated) or a regular coffee with a Sedobrol (sedative). There were even cigarettes without nicotine at times.
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
Most of the works of Iran's most popular translator "are a hodgepodge of source text mixed with his own additions and musings ... In some cases, the author of the book Mansouri was supposedly translating didn’t even exist." yalereview.org/article/amir...
yalereview.org
Amir Ahmadi Arian Goes in Search of Iran's Most Famous Translator
Was Zabihollah Mansouri secretly a prolific author?
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
Here is a funny video of @samantharhill.bsky.social and I reading an Arendt poem . I in German, she in English; I in dark brocaded Vermont; she in sunny minimalist west coast. Everything is translation. www.instagram.com/p/DDpjyxQSk0...
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
"—certainty, that hallmark of bad authority, dictators, and thugs. For Arendt, poetry was a place to know problems [...] Arendt’s poems.. serve as a reminder that poetry and thinking matter because they aren’t safe spaces." Katie Peterson lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-pl...
lareviewofbooks.org
A Place, Not a Refuge | Los Angeles Review of Books
Katie Peterson reviews “What Remains: The Collected Poems of Hannah Arendt,” translated and edited by Samantha Rose Hill with Genese Grill.
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
"Imagine a buffalo, who has grown, in place of his powerful horns...two ridiculously sensitive corns. This creature with the powerful brow that once bore weapons and now bears corns, is the man in exile." Musil in a letter, Jan. 20, 1941.
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
The Musils' last domicile in Geneva: a tiny house they called a dolls' house, blessedly quiet: the roosters weren't allowed to crow (were operated on so they wouldn't!?). Above the bathtub, where Robert died, was a skylight through which one could see blue sky and white clouds.
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
Musil, in exile, 1940, feels like "someone who somehow just manages to grasp a support that holds in falling but then loosens immediately afterwards...it's really an ongoing anxiety dream. And obviously one that has very real chances of becoming reality."
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Daisy Rockwell @shreedaisy.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
4/4
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
From What Remains: The Collected Poems of Hannah Arendt, out yesterday. Edited by @samantharhill.bsky.social and translated by Samantha and me. Book launch tonight at The Strand in New York City (I won't be there, but Sam will be brilliant as usual!).
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
Second scam attempt on this site in two weeks. This one, @georgearmstrong1.bsky.social , pretends he is an employment agent for @simonandschuster.bsky.social and says they have lots of work for me. He can't write proper English. Not sure what the trick would be, but he is obviously a fraud.
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St Brigid Press @stbrigidpress.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
Happy Publication Day to *What Remains* — the collected poems of Hannah Arendt, translated and introduced by @samantharhill.bsky.social with @genesegrill.bsky.social #poetry #writingcommunity #hannaharendt #arendt
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
Thought I would repost this for any new followers who are interested in Musil.
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
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Genese Grill @genesegrill.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
lithub.com/snapshots-in...
lithub.com
Snapshots in Verse: On Hannah Arendt’s Long-Lost Poems
Lit Hub is excited to feature another entry in a new series from Poets.org: “enjambments,” a monthly interview series with new and established poets. This month, they spoke to Samantha …
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Samantha Rose Hill @samantharhill.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
Next Wednesday night December 11th at The Strand Bookstore in NYC! Join me and the brilliant Heather Clark to celebrate the publication of What Remains: The Collected Poems of Hannah Arendt! 7pm Come say hi! Tickets here: www.strandbooks.com/what-remains...
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