The Confusions of Young Törless by Robert Musil; Mike Mitchell; Ritchie Robertson

Author:Robert Musil; Mike Mitchell; Ritchie Robertson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2014-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

Törless, preoccupied with his thoughts, had gone for a walk by himself in the park. It was around lunchtime and the late autumn sun was casting pale memories over paths and meadows. Since in his restlessness Törless felt no desire to extend his walk, he simply went round the building and threw himself down in the bleached, rustling grass when he came to the side-wall that had almost no windows. The expanse of sky above him was that faded, sickly blue characteristic of autumn, and little white bundles of cloud scudded hastily across it.

Törless was lying stretched out on his back, in vague dreams gazing through the crowns of two trees in front of him that were shedding their leaves.

He thought about Beineberg. What a strange person he was! The things he had said belonged in a crumbling Indian temple, in deep hiding-places together with sinister idols and snakes that could do magic; but what were they doing in the daylight, here in the school, in modern Europe? And yet these things he had said, after dragging on for ever through a thousand twists and turns, like a path with no end or view, suddenly seemed to have been within reach of a goal…

And suddenly he noticed—he felt as if it were the first time it had happened—how high the sky actually was.

He felt a kind of sense of alarm. Right above him an unutterably deep little blue hole was shining between the clouds.

It seemed to him as if you ought to be able to climb up into it on a long, long ladder. But the farther he went into it, pulling himself up with his eyes, the more the shining blue background receded. And yet it seemed as if you ought to be able to reach it and hold it fast with your gaze. The desire to do so grew intense to the point of torment.

It was as if his vision, strained to the utmost, were shooting looks like arrows between the clouds, and as if, however far away it set its aim, they always fell a little short.

Now Törless thought about this, making an effort to remain as calm and rational as possible. ‘Of course there’s no end,’ he told himself, ‘things go on and on, farther and farther, to infinity.’ Keeping his eyes fixed on the sky, he repeated that to himself, as if trying to test out the power of an incantation. But to no avail; the words said nothing or, rather, they said something quite different, as if they were referring to the same object, but to a different, alien side of it that didn’t concern him at all.

‘Infinity!’ Törless knew the word from maths lessons. It had never meant anything special to him. It kept on cropping up; someone or other had invented it at some time in the past,* and since then it had become possible to perform calculations using it that were as reliable as those using anything fixed. It was just what it counted as in the calculation; Törless had never looked for anything beyond that.

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