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Հինգ կին
Ռ. Մուզիլի սիրային այս պատմվածաշարում ամփոփված են հեղինակի «Միացումներ» և «Երեք կին» ժողովածուներում ընդգրկված բոլոր հինգ ստեղծագործությունները, որոնցում թեև ընդգծվում է կանացի կերպարների առաջնահերթ կարևորությունը, բայց գրողի ուշադրությունն էապես բևեռված է տղամարդու հոգեմտավոր կարողությունների, այրամարդու ներաշխարհի բացահայտմանը: Մուզիլը փորձում է ցույց տալ, թե ինչպես ձգտումը դեպի հզորությունն ու ինքնիշխանությունը տղամարդուն դարձնում են սիրելուն անընդունակ: Հանդիպումը կնոջ հետ փորձություն է դառնում նովելների տղամարդ հերոսների համար:
296 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1924
26 people are currently reading
1140 people want to read
About the author
Robert Musil
308 books1,376 followersAustrian writer.
He graduated military boarding school at Eisenstadt (1892-1894) and then Hranice, in that time also known as Mährisch Weißkirchen, (1894-1897). These school experiences are reflected in his first novel, The Confusions of Young Törless.
He served in the army during The First World War. When Austria became a part of the Third Reich in 1938, Musil left for exile in Switzerland, where he died of a stroke on April 15, 1942. Musil collapsed in the middle of his gymnastic exercises and is rumoured to have died with an expression of ironic amusement on his face. He was 61 years old.
He graduated military boarding school at Eisenstadt (1892-1894) and then Hranice, in that time also known as Mährisch Weißkirchen, (1894-1897). These school experiences are reflected in his first novel, The Confusions of Young Törless.
He served in the army during The First World War. When Austria became a part of the Third Reich in 1938, Musil left for exile in Switzerland, where he died of a stroke on April 15, 1942. Musil collapsed in the middle of his gymnastic exercises and is rumoured to have died with an expression of ironic amusement on his face. He was 61 years old.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
October 30, 2016
Call it a modern woman’s weltschmerz but I was wary of this volume of short stories, titled as it is Five Women, written by a man in the early 20th c. (Somewhat confusingly this collection presents Musil’s work out of order--Three Women [pub. 1924] came out long after The Perfecting of a Love and The Temptation of Quiet Veronica [pub 1911] ). I was prepared for schlock, for Flaubertian flights of fancy; I prepared to encounter, in other words under-drawn, trivial and disappointing women.
I had the wrong idea. Musil eschews frivolity altogether. He is impressively disturbing. His stories depict the cloven psyches of utterly serious women and men alike--drawing attention to the basic fact of human opacity: even those closest to us remain unknown and unconquerable entities, as indeed we are also so often unknown to ourselves. Musil provides a lens into the interior world of his characters, revealing them to be generally decent, and yet also profoundly schizotypal: their thoughts cannot stay fixed. Yoked as they are to the vicissitudes of life and relationships, they vacillate, hovering always on the painful (and occasionally erotic) edge of indecision. In Musil’s paranoic universe everyone seems to be trapped in their own heads, increasingly disconnected from “reality.” Interestingly, it is easy to see how Musil may well be the great-grandfather of what Antoine Volodine calls Post-Exoticism.
There is quiet but resistant strength in Musil’s various service women, all of whom seem to elude the prying eyes of the men who stand in authority over them. The women, knowing the score, hold themselves forever in reserve. Musil is smart to see that for a disenfranchised women this is a strategy of self-preservation, and is as much an expression of their vulnerability as it is of their power. The men in authority invariably become obsessed with the fragile simplicity of the peasant women, and long to contain them--an impossible task given the imbalance of power. Even when the women submit they do not, and this is what makes his work stand out as surprisingly insightful and proto-feminist.
I had the wrong idea. Musil eschews frivolity altogether. He is impressively disturbing. His stories depict the cloven psyches of utterly serious women and men alike--drawing attention to the basic fact of human opacity: even those closest to us remain unknown and unconquerable entities, as indeed we are also so often unknown to ourselves. Musil provides a lens into the interior world of his characters, revealing them to be generally decent, and yet also profoundly schizotypal: their thoughts cannot stay fixed. Yoked as they are to the vicissitudes of life and relationships, they vacillate, hovering always on the painful (and occasionally erotic) edge of indecision. In Musil’s paranoic universe everyone seems to be trapped in their own heads, increasingly disconnected from “reality.” Interestingly, it is easy to see how Musil may well be the great-grandfather of what Antoine Volodine calls Post-Exoticism.
There is quiet but resistant strength in Musil’s various service women, all of whom seem to elude the prying eyes of the men who stand in authority over them. The women, knowing the score, hold themselves forever in reserve. Musil is smart to see that for a disenfranchised women this is a strategy of self-preservation, and is as much an expression of their vulnerability as it is of their power. The men in authority invariably become obsessed with the fragile simplicity of the peasant women, and long to contain them--an impossible task given the imbalance of power. Even when the women submit they do not, and this is what makes his work stand out as surprisingly insightful and proto-feminist.
December 30, 2017
It is actually the two books in one. The first one (in my edition) "The Unions" is written well before the second one "Three women". And it is evident, as "Three women" are better: mastery, sharper and economic but very expressive. However, all five stories in the book, being different, are really insightful, especially for a man writing about woman's feelings.
Tonka is a real masterpiece written based upon Musel's personal story. I hope to write more about it in the review of the brilliant collection My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro when i have more time for myself.
One can see the shimmering genius in these 5 stories. It is a pity he did not have a chance to finish "The man without qualities" properly. Powerful as it is it might have been even better...
Tonka is a real masterpiece written based upon Musel's personal story. I hope to write more about it in the review of the brilliant collection My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro when i have more time for myself.
One can see the shimmering genius in these 5 stories. It is a pity he did not have a chance to finish "The man without qualities" properly. Powerful as it is it might have been even better...
October 25, 2007
the stories kept getting better as i went along, by the time i got to the fourth, i didn't want to finish for fear that the last story wouldn't live up to the trend. i needed not worry. this is now one of my favorites because i can see myself revisiting the stories and still finding new details.
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April 3, 2023Sometimes when a famous author
Five Women by Robert Musil
is primarily known for one major work, I go read a smaller work, for a couple of reasons. 1) I almost always like the major work better and well, that makes sense, since it’s the major. 2) I am often worried that when I like a writer, reading their major work will ruin anything else they’ve written. 3) Often the major work is a more challenging text to read.
In this case, it’s all three, especially given that Robert Musil’s major work is like 1800 pages long.
This small collection of stories, originally two books put together to introduce Robert Musil to a large Anglophone audience, contain five mini-epics about women in relationships with men.
I state that in that awkward way because these are not simple constructions around a man and a woman being together. Something about the circumstances of each complicates the overall connection.
“Grigia” – In this story, an engineer is working for a mining company far away from his family. As will happen in at least one of the other stories, he is taken in by the peasant charms of a local woman. You can imagine that this leads to some complications with her life. His selfishness or his thoughtlessness, as happens with lots of stories, destroys her life while merely inconveniencing his.
“The Lady from Portugal” – The set up for this story is so alien to my American sensibility. It involves a man who works as a man-at-arms/guardsman (but in a vaunted way) for a Bishopric. Unlike his compadres, he is married to a young woman from out of the country. She spends all her days away from him until 12 years in he is injured. As he convalesces she better connects with him. As he is healing, his fate is somewhat uncertain because the bishop dies. The company gets a cat, who then becomes very sick, and becomes a symbol of the dying nature of their enterprise.
“Tonka” – Another story in which a promising young man falls for a peasant-like girl from a far off land. In this one, he is Austrian, and a student of great promise, and she is Czech woman. Their subsequent marriage is mostly chaste, and so when she becomes pregnant it begins to complicate matter intensely.
“The Perfecting of a Love” – This story is about a “promiscuous” young woman who cannot seem to settle into her love for a man. She is troubled by her own feelings and by her own behavior and so begins a period of soul-searching to figure out what is going on. It sounds like it could be horrid, and rife with sexism, but because it focuses heavily on her sense of wanting stability instead of her internal chaos and doesn’t treat her like a depraved sinner, it works. This marks the change in the collection from the three later stories which are more like central European “tales” to much more psychological stories about the workings of a singular life.
“The Temptation of Quiet Veronica” – The collection ends with this story about a woman almost literally torn between desire of the mind versus desire of the body. She is trying to decide between two opposing forces in her body represented by the voices of two lovers she seems to be working through which to marry. But because both are strong and she is not simply trying to rationally decide but to allow the decision to emanate through her body to provide clarity, she is torn.
In this collection, there is a kind of fear that captures the hearts of the different men and women, and I would call it the disruption of a teleological view of life. That is, a view of life as a narrative with a beginning a middle and an end. There is a real fear of the disruption of a pre-ordained set of plans. Musil expertly captures how the plans made by a mind are disrupted by those made by the flesh (or heart if you’re being sentimental).
Five Women by Robert Musil
is primarily known for one major work, I go read a smaller work, for a couple of reasons. 1) I almost always like the major work better and well, that makes sense, since it’s the major. 2) I am often worried that when I like a writer, reading their major work will ruin anything else they’ve written. 3) Often the major work is a more challenging text to read.
In this case, it’s all three, especially given that Robert Musil’s major work is like 1800 pages long.
This small collection of stories, originally two books put together to introduce Robert Musil to a large Anglophone audience, contain five mini-epics about women in relationships with men.
I state that in that awkward way because these are not simple constructions around a man and a woman being together. Something about the circumstances of each complicates the overall connection.
“Grigia” – In this story, an engineer is working for a mining company far away from his family. As will happen in at least one of the other stories, he is taken in by the peasant charms of a local woman. You can imagine that this leads to some complications with her life. His selfishness or his thoughtlessness, as happens with lots of stories, destroys her life while merely inconveniencing his.
“The Lady from Portugal” – The set up for this story is so alien to my American sensibility. It involves a man who works as a man-at-arms/guardsman (but in a vaunted way) for a Bishopric. Unlike his compadres, he is married to a young woman from out of the country. She spends all her days away from him until 12 years in he is injured. As he convalesces she better connects with him. As he is healing, his fate is somewhat uncertain because the bishop dies. The company gets a cat, who then becomes very sick, and becomes a symbol of the dying nature of their enterprise.
“Tonka” – Another story in which a promising young man falls for a peasant-like girl from a far off land. In this one, he is Austrian, and a student of great promise, and she is Czech woman. Their subsequent marriage is mostly chaste, and so when she becomes pregnant it begins to complicate matter intensely.
“The Perfecting of a Love” – This story is about a “promiscuous” young woman who cannot seem to settle into her love for a man. She is troubled by her own feelings and by her own behavior and so begins a period of soul-searching to figure out what is going on. It sounds like it could be horrid, and rife with sexism, but because it focuses heavily on her sense of wanting stability instead of her internal chaos and doesn’t treat her like a depraved sinner, it works. This marks the change in the collection from the three later stories which are more like central European “tales” to much more psychological stories about the workings of a singular life.
“The Temptation of Quiet Veronica” – The collection ends with this story about a woman almost literally torn between desire of the mind versus desire of the body. She is trying to decide between two opposing forces in her body represented by the voices of two lovers she seems to be working through which to marry. But because both are strong and she is not simply trying to rationally decide but to allow the decision to emanate through her body to provide clarity, she is torn.
In this collection, there is a kind of fear that captures the hearts of the different men and women, and I would call it the disruption of a teleological view of life. That is, a view of life as a narrative with a beginning a middle and an end. There is a real fear of the disruption of a pre-ordained set of plans. Musil expertly captures how the plans made by a mind are disrupted by those made by the flesh (or heart if you’re being sentimental).
February 21, 2013
Musil is an Austrian writer of breadth, philosophical self-consciousness and champion of the perennial epiphany. That being said though, his shorter fiction is wanting for these very reasons. There just isn't the scope necessary to contain Musil's musings on love, betrayal, and man's viciousness to man (or woman, in the case of Tonka) in these stories. Anyone who has read "The Man Without Qualities" would agree that any one of the five stories in this collection is a mere tease, an interlude, or a 40-page meandering on Ulrich taking a dump. Movements in the right direction, but lacking the magnitude of Musil's thought. Imagine condensing a Cecil B. DeMille production in a 90-second commercial. Same thing. But they're worth reading anyway. Or maybe not. How about: "For the Completist".
May 4, 2010
"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
November 26, 2023
One would be enough for me :)
May 11, 2025
Musil depicts uncertainty in relationships: the mind fails to grasp self let alone others. Yet, he still seems to evoke an ideal of love as union.
August 11, 2016
This is a collection of stories that reminded me of Joyce's great collection, Dubliners. Musil's stories are grouped into two sections, "Three Women" and "Unions". All of the stories are linked by their erotic themes, the nature of love and its relation to knowledge. This is a foreshadowing of one of the themes of his magnum opus, The Man Without Qualities. In this collection the story "Quiet Veronica' explores bestial love, while in "The Perfecting of Love" it is profligate. "Grigia" and "Tonka" present variations on the seduction of a peasant girl, by a man of a higher social class and by a student, respectively. Musil uses these situations to explore deeper in the human consciousness with sex as the central ground of his exploration.
I was impressed with the authenticity of of the settings and the integration of peasant life with the themes of love and death.
"Love ran ahead like a herald, love was made ready everywhere like a bed freshly made up for the guest, and each living being more gifts of welcome in their eyes. The women could let that be freely seen, but sometimes as one passed a meadow there might be an old peasant there, waving his scythe like Death in person." (p 19)
The women in the stories experience love and guilt and the energetic ecstasy of turning points that shake their world. Musil draws fine distinctions like a scientist with a scalpel. The reactions of their lovers, the men with whom they interact are always finely drawn and sometimes deeply incisive.
"Volition, cognition, and perception were like a tangled skein. One noticed this only when one tried to find the end of the thread. But perhaps there was some other way of going through the world, other than following the thread of truth? At such moments, when a veneer of coldness separated him from everything, Tonka was more than a fairy-tale: she was almost a visitation.' (p 110)
All of the stories have obvious autobiographical elements, ties to the personal life of the author, but what stands out is his creative ability to both imagine these characters' lives and bring his intelligence to bear on their situation. The result provides the reader with a wealth of issues to digest, presented in a prose setting that brings the world of turn-of-the -century Austria alive. This is also an excellent introduction to the writing of one of the twentieth century's premiere novelist of ideas.
I was impressed with the authenticity of of the settings and the integration of peasant life with the themes of love and death.
"Love ran ahead like a herald, love was made ready everywhere like a bed freshly made up for the guest, and each living being more gifts of welcome in their eyes. The women could let that be freely seen, but sometimes as one passed a meadow there might be an old peasant there, waving his scythe like Death in person." (p 19)
The women in the stories experience love and guilt and the energetic ecstasy of turning points that shake their world. Musil draws fine distinctions like a scientist with a scalpel. The reactions of their lovers, the men with whom they interact are always finely drawn and sometimes deeply incisive.
"Volition, cognition, and perception were like a tangled skein. One noticed this only when one tried to find the end of the thread. But perhaps there was some other way of going through the world, other than following the thread of truth? At such moments, when a veneer of coldness separated him from everything, Tonka was more than a fairy-tale: she was almost a visitation.' (p 110)
All of the stories have obvious autobiographical elements, ties to the personal life of the author, but what stands out is his creative ability to both imagine these characters' lives and bring his intelligence to bear on their situation. The result provides the reader with a wealth of issues to digest, presented in a prose setting that brings the world of turn-of-the -century Austria alive. This is also an excellent introduction to the writing of one of the twentieth century's premiere novelist of ideas.
January 16, 2017
"But no one will blame him for doing neither one nor the other, despite these reasonings of his. For although all such thoughts and feelings may well be justified, nobody nowadays doubts that they are very largely figments of the imagination."
"... the tea now flowed, striking the bottom of each cup with a faint tinkle and then remaining poised in mid-air, straw-coloured, a translucent, twisted column of weightless topaz."
"And as the wind rose it seemed to her as though his blood were mounting from the earth on which they stood, mounting under her skirts, filling her body with stars and chalices, blue and yellow, and there was a light touch as of delicate tendrils and a very still, voluptuous delight such as flowers may feel when they conceive by the wind."
"... the tea now flowed, striking the bottom of each cup with a faint tinkle and then remaining poised in mid-air, straw-coloured, a translucent, twisted column of weightless topaz."
"And as the wind rose it seemed to her as though his blood were mounting from the earth on which they stood, mounting under her skirts, filling her body with stars and chalices, blue and yellow, and there was a light touch as of delicate tendrils and a very still, voluptuous delight such as flowers may feel when they conceive by the wind."
March 28, 2021
Five Women is Musil's Three Women and Unions combined in a single volume. Former came after the latter so I assume it was put first as it is the weaker of the two. Each story is better than the last, which is good as "Grigia" (the first story) can be a bit difficult to get into.
If you have read Man Without Qualities and liked it, you will probably like this as well. If you are uncertain about taking on MWOQ, consider giving Five Women or the respective volumes a shot. These stories will give you a good sense of Musil's writing style.
If you have read Man Without Qualities and liked it, you will probably like this as well. If you are uncertain about taking on MWOQ, consider giving Five Women or the respective volumes a shot. These stories will give you a good sense of Musil's writing style.
July 13, 2008
I'm undertaking a project to reread forgotten books I stumble across in my shelves. I do seem to have had rather interesting taste at times.
August 26, 2021
This book has been on my shelf for ages and mainly I'm glad to have dispensed with it, though by the final story (the last two are earlier works and much much more opaque), I had absolutely no idea what was happening. Why was this man supposedly going to kill himself and what on earth was happening? In many ways more than being at all about sex these were about *class* to me, even though obviously Musil has a fixation on female desire and sensuality. But the first two, and possibly the last (literally, what is Veronica's role in this household?), are about the relationships men feel entitled to have with lower class women, the boundaries of that and the erotic thrill is clearly about that social transgression (which is permitted but still clearly a kick). The story about the happily married woman irked me the most--I disliked the way her earlier flings were portrayed in a mysteriously ark light. The offended, cheated upon victim in me also struggles to some degree; I'm not sorry when someone potentially is locked in a cave forever after cheating on his wife, even though I also couldn't tell if he felt closer to his wife during all of this, or if the beloved was the peasant woman. truly, it delves too far into the internal world to have connections to the external. And I'll say also that I understand the lure of the encounter with a stranger, the spark of an attraction, the thrill of that connection and the idea of other lives and paths one can walk down. It just didn't ring true for me in how it was presented perhaps. THE LADY FROM PORTUGAL was perhaps my favorite though all the later stories are more explicable. I would say these don't remind me of Proust but, especially in the early pieces, of Henry James, who veils what is happening (often sex) so well that you feel foggy in some of his novels.
This doesn't at all make me want to read THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES, which I guess is also about sex and transgression; ok Musil, you have an obsession, but your insights seem to me to be overwrought and only of use or interest to yourself and faintly distasteful to observe! Another one that might benefit from a seminar.
This doesn't at all make me want to read THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES, which I guess is also about sex and transgression; ok Musil, you have an obsession, but your insights seem to me to be overwrought and only of use or interest to yourself and faintly distasteful to observe! Another one that might benefit from a seminar.
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March 26, 2025Unions is excellent, I loved Tonka from three women as well. Was expecting….idk portraits of female promiscuity (which made me wary given the male author) but I don’t think there is anything uniquely feminine about the essentially existential crises these stories depict lol
“She no longer knew any intense pleasure or intense suffering; there was nothing that stood out in relief from the rest of her life, and gradually it had all become a mere blur. The days went by one like the other; and, one like the other, the years advanced. She still could feel that each year took something away from her and added something to her and that she was slowly changing with them; yet none of them stood out distinct from the others. Her sense of herself was now vague and fluid, and when she probed her own being all she could discover was the shifting of veiled, indefinite forms, as if she were touching something that stirred under a blanket, without being able to identify it. Gradually it became more and more as though she were living under a woollen blanket herself, or under a bell-shaped cover made of thin horn, which was becoming more and more opaque. Things around her were retreating further and further into the distance, losing their individual features, and her sense of herself seemed to be sinking into the distance too. Between her feelings and herself there was now a vast empty space, and in this void her body lived; it recognised the things around it, it smiled, it was animate, but whatever happened was without coherence or meaning, and often now a gluey disgust oozed soundlessly through this world of hers, smearing all sensations as with a mask of pitch.”
“She no longer knew any intense pleasure or intense suffering; there was nothing that stood out in relief from the rest of her life, and gradually it had all become a mere blur. The days went by one like the other; and, one like the other, the years advanced. She still could feel that each year took something away from her and added something to her and that she was slowly changing with them; yet none of them stood out distinct from the others. Her sense of herself was now vague and fluid, and when she probed her own being all she could discover was the shifting of veiled, indefinite forms, as if she were touching something that stirred under a blanket, without being able to identify it. Gradually it became more and more as though she were living under a woollen blanket herself, or under a bell-shaped cover made of thin horn, which was becoming more and more opaque. Things around her were retreating further and further into the distance, losing their individual features, and her sense of herself seemed to be sinking into the distance too. Between her feelings and herself there was now a vast empty space, and in this void her body lived; it recognised the things around it, it smiled, it was animate, but whatever happened was without coherence or meaning, and often now a gluey disgust oozed soundlessly through this world of hers, smearing all sensations as with a mask of pitch.”
November 19, 2018
The Austrian Robert Musil whose novels are well known as being characterized by a subtle psychological element, in these five stories displays another face, one that is by turn extravagant, sensual, mystical, and autobiographical. They’re written as crucial to understand his immense literary influence & significance as Joyce's Dubliners to Ulysses. Opening the volume are a trio of tales, two of which, "Grigia" & "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. These stories are elaborate attempts to use fiction for its true purposes, the discovery and regeneration of the human world and here where’s the uniqueness of this book is materialized, I guess.
February 16, 2025
“Tão pouco se sabe daquilo que se julga saber, tão pouco se quer aquilo que se quer.”
“O querer, o saber e o sentir estão enrolados num novelo; só se dá por isso quando se perde o fio à meada: mas será que se pode caminhar pelo mundo sem ser pelo fio da verdade?”
“O querer, o saber e o sentir estão enrolados num novelo; só se dá por isso quando se perde o fio à meada: mas será que se pode caminhar pelo mundo sem ser pelo fio da verdade?”
October 17, 2009
Musil's stories are nostalgic essays, just like Proust's In Search of Lost Time. He can spend a good forty pages describing a woman on a train missing her husband and thinking of him as a pathetic cuckold, with little to no narrative pull from sentence to sentence. Okay. I'm sure this broke some ground at the time. I'm sure modernism rocked the worlds of plenty of readers. I'm also sure that I find most of it trivial and meaningless, and most damningly not entertaining. Tell me a story Musil.
That being said, I did enjoy the first three stories of this collection (which were written later in Musil's life) as opposed to the last two, which indulge in tedious minutiae and leave little impression of the world the characters inhabit. Those first three stories hint at the disappearance of personal identity in modernity in a lovely subtle way.
"Grigia" is the gradual withdrawal of a man from his worldly duties and responsibilities, which leads to his ecstatic extinction as an individual. Musil calls this man Homo. Come on.
"The Lady from Portugal" is another tale, though more allegorical, from some mythic middle ages Central Europe out of Hesse, that tells of a man losing himself quietly, becoming something he doesn't know at all. The kitten is damn cute.
"Tonka" tells of the natural objectification of a woman from a lower class, not the sexual objectification we know, but a sort of two-way mirror, where Tonka is sectioned off from the student, for his pleasure and observation.
The collection could have been cut off right there. I'd much rather read Three Women than Five Women let me tell you.
That being said, I did enjoy the first three stories of this collection (which were written later in Musil's life) as opposed to the last two, which indulge in tedious minutiae and leave little impression of the world the characters inhabit. Those first three stories hint at the disappearance of personal identity in modernity in a lovely subtle way.
"Grigia" is the gradual withdrawal of a man from his worldly duties and responsibilities, which leads to his ecstatic extinction as an individual. Musil calls this man Homo. Come on.
"The Lady from Portugal" is another tale, though more allegorical, from some mythic middle ages Central Europe out of Hesse, that tells of a man losing himself quietly, becoming something he doesn't know at all. The kitten is damn cute.
"Tonka" tells of the natural objectification of a woman from a lower class, not the sexual objectification we know, but a sort of two-way mirror, where Tonka is sectioned off from the student, for his pleasure and observation.
The collection could have been cut off right there. I'd much rather read Three Women than Five Women let me tell you.
December 12, 2014
This collection of Musil's short fiction shows the evolving writer discovering his true voice. Plot elements seem to be of less importance, as most of the stories here seem like platforms for exploring the psychology of his characters, a quality that Musil perfects with these stories, making possible the creation his masterwork, "The Man Without Qualities". While I found these stories shoddy and poorly constructed, the strength of Musil's imaginative and passionate writing made the effort worthwhile.
July 18, 2008
Each story in this collection is strikingly different - from a dark Nordic fairy tale to and intricate, breath discerning examination of love, seduction, love, not love, here and not here. Musil travels the inner terrain without ever losing the quality of a particular milliu (sorry, I can't spell this word, goddammit!
March 6, 2011
From the collection, I liked "Grigia" the best, a story of a man retreating into a dream life until it is too late to escape. "Tonka" is a fine story too but seems to be more personal and as a result more difficult to grasp (Musil himself had a similar affair), a story about an inexplicable bond and irrational trust an educated man feels towards a simple woman.
April 30, 2011
Onerous going and a reminder why I abandoned A Man Without Qualities about 400 pages in. Admittedly, I loved the way he describes the fickleness of human feeling and a gajillion nuances about it, but after the second story it just became tiresome at best and kind of mock worthy at worst. Just not my thang.
December 10, 2023
Musil wrote these stories like novels; his deliberate inertia in narration showed me that he was in no hurry to go on, with a mischievous look on his face. He stripped time from his stories, forcing me to be his captive, unable to remove myself. Since stories do not come to an end, I am not released.
March 1, 2012
read 2 out of the 5 stories: didn't want to meet that many women, I guess! I'm sure I'll give Musil another shot down the line, but these stories read like really fancy smut romance novels. too kinky for me.
January 17, 2009
He's like a house with locked doors. All he has done is within him, like a gentle music perhaps - but who can hear it?
-Robert Musil, Five Women
-Robert Musil, Five Women
April 6, 2009
It really bored me. It was a disappointment after "The Man Without Qualities".
October 21, 2010
I couldn't finish this--or I suppose I could but felt no need whatsoever. Pales in comparison to the Man Without Qualities.
February 28, 2013
Interesting look at some of the problems of life; using five different women as excuse. I have to confess that I found it a little bit dense; but I really enjoyed some of the stories.
June 5, 2025
3.5
"A yearning that was like the softness of a broken-shelled snail faintly twitching in its search for another, yearning to stick to it tightly even as it dies. (p.202)
Musil was an exceptionally talented writer, and 'Five Women' demonstrates that this ability wasn't limited to a single style. Unfaithful women really are the through-line because each story otherwise feels like it was written in a different genre. Except that the cover tells me so, I never would have supposed that 'Tonka', 'The Lady from Portugal', and 'The Temptation of Quiet Veronica' were authored by the same person.
'Grigio', the story opening the collection, has a sort of fable-like quality set against a romanticized countryside.
'The Lady from Portugal' is a dreamy fairy tale for adults, full of little moments that feel symbolic, even if what they symbolize isn't initially (or ever) clear.
'Tonka' is probably the most straightforward of all five stories, and feels like a continuation of 'Grigio' had that story verged off on a different path. Personally, I liked this one the least if only because everyone in it was incredibly unlikeable without being interesting.
In 'The Perfecting of a Love', things take a turn for the more cerebral as we follow a woman caught in a swirling thicket of emotion and thoughts and near stream of consciousness caprice. It was probably my favourite. Despite (or perhaps because of) the lush writing of a quite mundane situation: a woman contemplating an affair, 'Perfecting of a Love' felt the most grounded of all five stories and captured emotions I think a lot of people reading it would be familiar with, even if that admission is uncomfortable. That is to say: every person would be branded neurotic and egocentric if our thoughts were taken down the way Claudine's is, because, well, every person is a little neurotic and certainly egocentric and internally tempestuous even if externally very little is going on.
'Perfecting of a Love' is a perfect example of what writing as a medium is so good at: capturing the juxtoposition of internal chaos with the rigidity of external experience. In one illustrative scene, Claudine spirals out while thinking about herself as a physical being and gets lost in the sensations of her clothes against her skin, the rug she's standing on. But despite this frenzy of internal activity set at 100, all that's physically happening is that she's standing still in a dark room.
Finally, the collection ends with 'The Temptation of Quiet Veronica.' If 'Perfecting of a Love' swept us up in Claudine's inner world, this story drowns us in Veronica's. Plot, what plot? This is an ocean of words that come at you in an unrelenting onslaught from sentence one. It's like being on acid except that Musil's saying being on acid is just what the inside of the human mind is like.
I could give you the barest idea that the story has something to do with Veronica, obviously. There's a guy she seems to have an on-again, off-again relationship with (possibly 2 guys, and one of them is Demeter), and she lives with her aunt. And the on-again, off-again guy doesn't die in the end. Probably. But it doesn't really matter because the plot feels secondary to Musil's primary goal to strangle you with his sentences, each its own strange metaphor or image or flicker of emotion. Not to say it's difficult for the sake of it -- genuinely the medium feels like the message, but it will demand one hundred percent of your attention and even then there are no participation prizes; you will either get it or you won't, but Musil definitely left it all out on the page for you if you're brave enough to give it a try.
I could have done without the bestiality stuff. But that's just me, I guess.
"A yearning that was like the softness of a broken-shelled snail faintly twitching in its search for another, yearning to stick to it tightly even as it dies. (p.202)
Musil was an exceptionally talented writer, and 'Five Women' demonstrates that this ability wasn't limited to a single style. Unfaithful women really are the through-line because each story otherwise feels like it was written in a different genre. Except that the cover tells me so, I never would have supposed that 'Tonka', 'The Lady from Portugal', and 'The Temptation of Quiet Veronica' were authored by the same person.
'Grigio', the story opening the collection, has a sort of fable-like quality set against a romanticized countryside.
'The Lady from Portugal' is a dreamy fairy tale for adults, full of little moments that feel symbolic, even if what they symbolize isn't initially (or ever) clear.
'Tonka' is probably the most straightforward of all five stories, and feels like a continuation of 'Grigio' had that story verged off on a different path. Personally, I liked this one the least if only because everyone in it was incredibly unlikeable without being interesting.
In 'The Perfecting of a Love', things take a turn for the more cerebral as we follow a woman caught in a swirling thicket of emotion and thoughts and near stream of consciousness caprice. It was probably my favourite. Despite (or perhaps because of) the lush writing of a quite mundane situation: a woman contemplating an affair, 'Perfecting of a Love' felt the most grounded of all five stories and captured emotions I think a lot of people reading it would be familiar with, even if that admission is uncomfortable. That is to say: every person would be branded neurotic and egocentric if our thoughts were taken down the way Claudine's is, because, well, every person is a little neurotic and certainly egocentric and internally tempestuous even if externally very little is going on.
'Perfecting of a Love' is a perfect example of what writing as a medium is so good at: capturing the juxtoposition of internal chaos with the rigidity of external experience. In one illustrative scene, Claudine spirals out while thinking about herself as a physical being and gets lost in the sensations of her clothes against her skin, the rug she's standing on. But despite this frenzy of internal activity set at 100, all that's physically happening is that she's standing still in a dark room.
Finally, the collection ends with 'The Temptation of Quiet Veronica.' If 'Perfecting of a Love' swept us up in Claudine's inner world, this story drowns us in Veronica's. Plot, what plot? This is an ocean of words that come at you in an unrelenting onslaught from sentence one. It's like being on acid except that Musil's saying being on acid is just what the inside of the human mind is like.
I could give you the barest idea that the story has something to do with Veronica, obviously. There's a guy she seems to have an on-again, off-again relationship with (possibly 2 guys, and one of them is Demeter), and she lives with her aunt. And the on-again, off-again guy doesn't die in the end. Probably. But it doesn't really matter because the plot feels secondary to Musil's primary goal to strangle you with his sentences, each its own strange metaphor or image or flicker of emotion. Not to say it's difficult for the sake of it -- genuinely the medium feels like the message, but it will demand one hundred percent of your attention and even then there are no participation prizes; you will either get it or you won't, but Musil definitely left it all out on the page for you if you're brave enough to give it a try.
I could have done without the bestiality stuff. But that's just me, I guess.
March 7, 2025
The perfecting of a love might be my favorite short story I’ve ever read. Musil goes through painstaking detail on a characters oscillating psychology and musings. He captures the heartbreak and beauty of being alive, of being in love, unlike any other author. I highlighted every line in this book!!! Highly rec esp for women at a fork in the road in their lives
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August 15, 2020Half read. Unreadably boring, and as far as I remember not at all like his major novels.
This degenerated ino a very long story about the impenetrable thoughts of a woman on a train journey.
This degenerated ino a very long story about the impenetrable thoughts of a woman on a train journey.
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