The Confusions of Young Master Törless (Translated by Moncrieff 2013) by Robert Musil

Author:Robert Musil [Musil, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature
ISBN: 9781847493545
Publisher: Alma Classics
Published: 1906-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

11

BUT THE NEXT DAY brought bitter disappointment. In the morning he bought himself a popular edition of the great volume that he had seen in the maths master’s study, and set about reading it during the first break. But what with all the brackets and footnotes he didn’t understand a word, and as his eyes dutifully followed the phrases it felt as if an old, bony hand was gradually unscrewing his brain from inside his head.

When after half an hour he stopped, exhausted, he had got no further than the second page, and his forehead was covered in sweat.

Gritting his teeth he managed to read another page before the end of break.

That evening, however, he couldn’t bring himself even to touch the book. Was it fear or revulsion? He wasn’t sure. There was only one question that consumed him – that the maths master, pitiful little man that he was, had this book lying around open in his study as if it were an everyday pastime for him.

It was in this frame of mind that he bumped into Beineberg.

“So how did it go with the maths tutor yesterday, Törless?” They sat in a window alcove and pulled a coat rack full of overcoats in front of them, so that all that reached them from the classroom was an intermittent humming noise and the reflection of the lamps on the ceiling. Törless fiddled absent-mindedly with the coats.

“Are you still asleep or something? He must have given you some kind of answer, didn’t he? Mind you, I can imagine that he was ever so slightly flustered!”

“Why?”

“Because he wasn’t expecting such a stupid question – that’s why.”

“It wasn’t a stupid question: in fact, I can’t get it out of my mind.”

“I didn’t mean it like that – just that it must have seemed stupid to him. They all learn their subject off by heart like a priest does the catechism, but as soon as someone asks them something slightly off-script they get flustered.”

“Well he certainly wasn’t flustered when it came to an answer. He had one ready and waiting, he didn’t even let me finish what I was saying.”

“And so how did he explain everything?”

“He didn’t, actually. He just told me I wasn’t in a position to understand it yet, that they were axioms that only become clearer to those who have studied them in depth.”

“That’s just the same old con! They’re incapable of explaining this stuff to people whose minds aren’t fully trained. It only works when someone’s had it hammered into him for ten years. By then he’s done thousands of calculations based on those principles, and constructed vast great edifices that will hold until the end of time; by that point he believes in his subject like a Catholic believes in the Revelation, it has always amply proved its worth… so it doesn’t take much skill to talk someone like that into believing the evidence, does it? Quite the reverse: no one would be able to convince him that even

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