In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

INDIVIDUALITY VS. COLLECTIVITY
Individuality, according to a frequently expressed opinion, is not strong
enough to maintain its independence against a hostile and overwhelmingly
powerful society. Seemingly unaware of how widespread this impression
is among intellectuals in the political and cultural centers of the
West [see Center vs. Periphery], the journalist Antonio de Alcantara
Machado views the individual's inability to cultivate a personal sphere
of thought and emotion as a symptom of a specifically Brazilian form of
provincialism: "We still suffer from a very narrow and old-fashioned
social environment, in which everybody knows and fears everybody else.
It is a provincial world that confuses truth with boldness and tactlessness
with honesty. The individual sphere is not allowed to have secrets. The
whole community sees every movement and overhears every word"
(196). Robert Musil makes the opposite association. For him, it is the
almost hyperbolic ability to play all the roles offered by modern society
that gives Ulrich, the hero of his novel in progress, the flair of a particularly
urban character-but it is this same worldliness that makes it
impossible for Ulrich to develop an individual identity. Ulrich "discovers
that his existence is contingent, that he can see-but never reach-its
essence. Existence is not and will never be complete. It can adopt all
possible forms without ever losing the impression of being contingent"
(Fontana, 382). The plot of Bertolt Brecht's drama Mann ist Mann is an
extreme version of the same idea. Some colonial soldiers transform a
modest worker and family man into a fighting machine that combines
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