Review of Robert Musil's "The Confusions of Young Torless"

Despite its obvious second-class status behind Musil’s much more canonical “The Man Without Qualities,” this novel’s reputation still precedes it. Sometimes this can present an interpretive problem, and I think that is what happens here. Considering the overt mixture of both violence and masochism and their relationship to (especially political) power and the date of publication (1906), Musil’s novel is bound to be read as a critique of what “he saw coming” – the failure and abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the promise of a democratic Weimar Republic, and the eventual rise of the National Socialists and breakdown of liberal parliamentarianism as Germany had known it up to that point. There are certainly instances in which political circumstances are paramount in the consideration of a piece of fiction. I would never argue that this is an exception. However, to argue that Musil anticipated something like the rise of fascism an entire generation before it came to be would be to commit the critical mistake of a posteriori reasoning. 

The novel is horrifying enough without any knowledge of pre-Weimar Germany, but the entire piece – essentially a novel-length reflection on the brutality of power gone awry – can be read with political implications still. The novel opens with Torless being delivered by his blithely unsuspecting parents to an all boys boarding school. The events revolve around Torless (whose first name we never learn) and three others boys: Reiting, Beineberg, and Basini. One day Torless, Reiting, and Beineberg catch Basini stealing some money from one of the follow boys, and begin to threaten and ostracize him over it; in time, this turns into physical abuse, and eventually Reiting and Beineberg “taking turns” violently sodomizing Basini. 

Instead of evoking a pure disgust in Torless, a complex mixture of pure sexual passion and moral confusion ensues which provides the forward momentum for the novel. Torless’ own less-than-ambiguous homosexuality only adds to his feeling as an outsider, and to his “confusions.” He is at once physically drawn to Basini’s small, tender, epicene physique, but revolted by the violence that he endures at the hands of those who he thought to be his friends. When Torless finally advises Basini to report his abuse, a formal investigation comes to an unsurprising conclusion, but I won’t spoil it here. 

During his testimony, Torless gives a bewildering speech on the nature of the rational and irrational. It consists of an expansion on what Reiting says earlier in the novel in regards to torturing Basini: “If everyone, and there are no many, contributes just enough it’s enough to tear him to pieces. I like these mass movements as a rule. No one intends to do anything in particular and yet the waves grow ever higher until they crash together over everyone’s heads. You’ll see, no one will stir, yet there will be a raging storm. It gives me extraordinary pleasure to stage something like that” (130-131). Words like these, from the mouths of babes, make it easier to understand why “The Confusions of Young Torless” is so easily read as Musil trying to be yet another author-prognosticator.