Five Women (Verba Mundi) (Paperback)

by Robert Musil; Frank Kermode (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The recent translations of The Man Without Qualities and Musil's Diaries have shown why the Austrian writer is often thought of as Germanic literature's Proust, and this newly translated English version of his five hefty stories demonstrates that the novelist's work in shorter fiction also bears his distinctive iconoclastic, bold signature. Opening the volume are a trio of tales, two of which, "Grigia" and "Tonka," investigate the sexuality of peasant women. Musil fearlessly delves into the pervasive notion of lower-class female sexuality as animal, accessible and perverse, even as he faithfully renders such women's limited social agency. "Tonka" aggressively ruptures its own moralizing, featuring an impoverished servant girl who has a liaison with a bourgeois student. The class difference between them becomes painfully obvious when Tonka gets pregnant: she withers while the student struggles with an ambivalent strain of love and a conviction that the child is not his. He is torn between pity for Tonka, whose unfaithfulness ends in tragedy, and confusion at his shaming devotion to her. In the last two stories in the collection, Musil's examination of the female erotic milieu is a high-strung foray into hysteria. In "The Perfecting of a Love," Claudine leaves her husband to visit her daughter (conceived in adultery during her first marriage), who is in boarding school in a remote village. Snowed in, she considers having an affair with a man she meets there, her thoughts a veritable witch's brew of forbidden desires. The protagonist of "The Temptation of Quiet Veronica" rejects an old suitor, who visits her one last time. This story is filled with hints of incest and bestiality, but these issues simmer tensely just below the surface. Musil's cerebral style seamlessly executes his explorations of the mind/body duality, the ways society and intellectual life affect, but do not eradicate, the truth of the carnal body. His attitudes toward femininity oscillate between fear, disenchantment and adoration, and in stories written over 75 years ago, this range of perception will be tantalizing for readers who value innovative classics. (Nov.)

Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review
"In his descriptions of love affairs and especially in the portraits of women in love, Musil is truly original; in managing scenes of physical love, he has not been approached by any writer of the last fifty years." --V.S. Pritchett

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Product Details

• Paperback: 222 pages
• Publisher: David R Godine; 1 edition (July 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1567920756
• ISBN-13: 978-1567920758
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #639,078 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Introduction for New Readers of Musil, June 5, 2000

By	James Cianci (New Hampshire, USA) - See all my reviews

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.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Precision and Soul, June 23, 2006

By	Arch Llewellyn "arch-l" - See all my reviews

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.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars funf Sterne, June 11, 2008

By	Alaric - See all my reviews

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.