Intimate Ties

Intimate Ties (2018. Original: Vereinigungen, 1911) comprises two novellas centred on repressed sexuality, taboo, and female desire.
In The Culmination of Love (Die Vollendung der Liebe), thirty-year-old Claudine leaves her husband at home and sets off on a train journey to visit her daughter at a boarding school. She is musing on her past love affairs, when a heavy snowfall forces her to delay her journey and to sleep overnight in a hotel. Overcome by a desire to feel passion once again, Claudine perversely starts to consider infidelity as a twisted way to sanction her love and to consummate her wedding vows: “a state that was like giving herself to everyone and yet belonging only to the one beloved”
In The Temptation of Quiet Veronica (Die Versuchung der stillen Veronika), the eponymous protagonist lives with an aunt. When the novel opens, she is talking with a younger friend, the cerebral, would-be-priest Johannes, about another man, the more sensual Demeter. We have the feeling that the latter somehow threatens their moral conceptions, and that Johannes and Veronica are both attracted to and repelled by him. Then, Johannes leaves, and Veronica believes he is going to commit suicide. She starts to muse about her inability to consummate a relationship with men, as well as her memories of being erotically attracted to animals as a child.
The narrative evolves in stream of consciousness, as a sequence in a dream, and things seem to happen from the inside out: Musil is not as concerned with plot as he is with setting a particular mood, and enveloping us in it, like he does with his characters. Reading this book in translation adds yet a layer of strangeness to the whole experience: like trying to transpose a writing style (which is already challenging in its original German) not only to a different language, but also to a different narrative tradition.
Both Claudine and Veronica’s sexualities are equated to animalistic desire and taboo practices: they are both, at once, the angel and the beast. They are fascinated and tempted by the lust they feel, and, at the same time, they feel disgusted at picturing themselves as subjects of desire: “the only thing that matters is that one should be like the act and not like the person enacting it.”
In a blurring of images and feelings, Musil further complicates his protagonists’ already nuanced relationship to sex: instead of two conflicting realms, body and mind feed each other as one: the bestial impulses are prompted not by the body but by thoughts, and those, in turn, seem to be as devoid of freedom and choice as a necessary bodily function. As much as he was testing the limits of language, the book feels very much as if the author were also probing the limits of what people can do and still consider themselves as human.

A superb new translation of a 20th century classic of experimental literary Modernism. These novellas deserve as much attention as the better-known 'Confusions of Young Törless' and 'Man Without Qualities'; and this edition is the best among existing translations and perhaps the best entry point into Musil's fiction for beginners.

Exquisite stories from a master soryteller. In these novellas, Robert Musil showcases his masterful exploration of human psychology. Musil delves into the intricacies of love, desire, and identity with a keen, almost clinical eye, unraveling the complexities of his characters' inner lives. His prose is dense yet precise, often intertwining philosophical musings with narrative progression. The reading can be a bit elusive, and demanding, but it's nevertheless rewarding, for those who prevail. The works in this volume not only highlight Musil's literary prowess but also offer profound insights into the human condition, making them compelling reads for those interested in the intersections of emotion, intellect, and existential inquiry.