Customer Reviews

Five Women (Verba Mundi)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Robert Musil is not read much anymore; if he is known at all, it is usually through his monumental work, "The Man Without Qualities" - a piece comparable to both Joyce's "Ulysses" and Mann's "The Magic Mountain" in its complexity and elusiveness. Among the modernists, Musil is noted for his attempt to bring a sort of "mysticism" to the problems and philosophies of society; he was interested in the cacaphony of ideas which littered the modern world, drowning out the order of the past. This new collection of his short stories, previously published separately as "Unions" (1911) and "Three Women" (1924), provides an introduction to Musil for the uninitiated. As one reads these five stories (the "women"), one cannot help but notice the low hum of disorder welling beneath the surface - whether in "Grigia" with it's Poe-like ending, the retro-fairy tale of "The Lady From Portugal" or the seductive hopelessness inherent in "Tonka." These stories are set in a time and place not our own, but the reader is presented with the universal themes of love, death, and power - indeed, the very nature of our being. These works are challenging, they require effort, but ultimately they are rewarding and necessary. Musil once wrote of the "union of soul and economics" - the combination through literature of the ethereal and the real, the past and the present, the timeless and the mortal. This impressive collection is an entrance to Musil's world, to his ideas, and to a better understanding of our own condition.

Musil's great gift as a writer was to be scientifically precise about ineffable states of mind, and the stories in Three Women (1924) display his talent for creating an atmosphere of metaphysical tension or 'float' out of unremarkable situations with little inherent drama. Not much happens on the surface in these stories, but Musil infuses the not-happening with so much significance that the meaning of humanity's life on earth seems to hang in the balance.

All three involve prosperous, powerful men attached to women they scarcely understand who, in the process of trying to account for that attachment, come to peace with the fact of death. Musil's interests are those of a philosopher or psychologist who's chosen art as his instrument for dissecting the human soul. The metaphors aren't as sharp and memorable as they are in The Man Without Qualities, and the irony's considerably turned down. This lets you see Musil's mystical side a little more clearly, but it also threw my picture of him out of balance--I missed his tart, satirical sense of humor.

The two stories that round out the collection are from Union (1911) and show a younger Musil working up his chops.

Some of the stories are a bit long and not so engaging but there are a few that are really brilliant. One in particular is quite haunting. This is super high end, high brow literature, but it's the real deal. I will definitely read it again.

The first two stories are reminiscent of Ambrose Bierce, if you like(ed) those, 'In the Midst of Life' would be a good place to start. The third story, Tonka betrays his influences (Kafka and Nietzsche in particular) quite subtly and are a delight to chance upon since they are done better than your average derivative paraphrast is usually able to accomplish. #4 will test the patience, but its resolution as predictable it may be is worth sticking to it. The more lyrical observations have a heavy Ralph Waldo Emerson flair, and some are brilliant in their own right. The translation is fairly good, and the binding is strong for a paperback Five stars.

Five Women

The background and atmospherics of these stories, some written just before and some in the years following the first world war, reflect in differing ways the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire. This was the era that gave birth to psychoanalysis and in which Freud, Adler and Jung began their flourishing careers. The narcissism, sexual obsessions and fantasies that characterize Musil's themes mirror this fact.
Grigia and Tonka are intense, but readable - by far the best of the group. The Perfecting of Love and The Temptation of Quiet Veronica represent romanticism in its terminal phase. The prose is ornate, repetitive, convoluted, almost rococo. At least in this particular English translation it is at times barely coherent. If you wish to know what degeneracy looks like in its literary form, these last two stories are as good a place to start as any.