FIVE WOMEN

by Robert Musil ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 19, 1966

Robert Musil died in 1942 but his great reputation all over the world (he has been classed with Joyce, Proust, Kafka, Lawrence, Mann) rests on a small body of work-- his unfinished magnum opus The Man without Qualities (1953-1954) and the earlier Young Torless (1955). This consists of five short stories, three of which were published in Europe in 1924 and two in 1911, although all seem as contemporary as anything written today. Of the earlier two, The Perfecting of Love is the most interesting and the most representative of Musil's rather extraordinary, claustrophobic concentration on states of mind and feeling-- the attempt to stabilize the most impalpable sensations, intuitions, thoughts, apprehensions. As Frank Kermode comments in his introduction, he attempts an ""erotic metamorphosis of consciousness"" but it is entirely subjective, and necessarily, solipsistic. His women, not only here, exist in the half light of reverie-- thinking, feeling, remembering, wondering. Of the later three stories (and all of them deal with an attempt to isolate love through sensory experience) Tonka is the strongest in which a young man resists and affirms his responsibility for a simple, common little creature who nevertheless objectifies a certain innocence and purity-- ""a snowflake falling all alone."" The stories, sometimes opaque, sometimes arcane, sometimes ambiguous, are all interesting and they have been faultlessly translated by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser. Attention seems certain.

Pub Date: April 19, 1966

ISBN: 1567924018

Page Count: -

Publisher: Delacorte

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1966

Categories: FICTION