so amazing
Later, when he had got over his adolescent experiences, Törless became a young man whose mind was both subtle and sensitive. By that time he was one of those aesthetically inclined individuals who find there is something soothing in a regard for law and indeed -- to some extent at least -- for public morals too, since it frees them from the necessity of ever thinking about anything coarse, anything that is remote from the finer spiritual processes. And yet the magnificent external correctitude of these people, with its slight touch of irony, at once becomes associated with boredom and callousness if they are expected to show any more personal interest in particular instances of the workings of law and morality. For the only real interest they feel is concentrated on the growth of their own soul, or personality, or whatever one may call the thing within us that every now and then increases by the addition of some idea picked up between the lines of a book, or which speaks to us in the silent language of a painting, the thing that every now and then awakens when some solitary, wayward tune floats past us and away, away into the distance, whence with alien movements tugs at the thin scarlet thread of our blood.
[ ... ] And so to such people the things that make demands only on their moral correctitude are of the utmost indifference. This was why in his later life Törless never felt remorse for what had happened at that time. His tastes had become so acutely and one-sidedly focused on matters purely of the mind that, supposing he had been told a very similar story about some rake's debaucheries, it would certainly never have occurred to him to direct his indignation against the acts themselves. He would have despised such a person not for being a debauchee, but for being nothing more than that; [ ... ] because his intellect lacked any emotional counter-weight -- that is to say, despising him always only for the picture he presented of something miserable, deprived, and feeble.
[ ... ] And as is the case with all people who are exclusively concerned with heightening their mental faculties, the mere presence of voluptuous and unbridled urges did not count for much with him. It was a pet notion of his that the capacity for enjoyment, and creative talent, and in fact the whole more highly developed side of the inner life, was a piece of jewellery on which one could easily injure oneself. He regarded it as inevitable that a person with a rich and varied inner life experienced moments of which other people must know nothing, and memories that he kept in secret drawers. And all he himself expected of such a person was the ability to make exquisite use of them afterwards.
And so, when somebody to whom he once told the story of his youth asked him whether the memory of that episode did not sometimes make him feel uncomfortable, he answered, with a smile: 'Of course I don't deny that it was a degrading affair. And why not? The degradation passed off. And yet it left something behind -- that small admixture of a toxic substance which is needed to rid the soul of its over-confident, complacent healthiness, and to give it instead a sort of health that is more acute, and subtler, and wiser.
'And anyways, would you try to count the hours of degradation that leave their brand-marks on the soul after every great passion? You need only think of the hours of deliberate humiliation in love -- those rapt hours when lovers bend down as though leaning over a deep well, or one lays his ear on the other's heart, listening for the sound of impatient claws as the restless great cats scratch on their prison walls. And only in order to feel their own trembling! Only in order to feel terrified at their loneliness up there above those dark, corroding depths! Only -- in their dread of being alone with those sinister forces -- to take refuge wholly in each other!
'Just look young married couples straight in the eyes. What those eyes say is: So that's what you think, is it? -- oh, but you've no notion how deep we can sink! What those eyes express is light-hearted mockery of anyone who knows nothing of so much that they know, and the affectionate pride of those who have gone together through all the circles of hell.
'And just as such lovers go that way together, so I at that time went through all those things, but on my own.'
from The Confusions of Young Törless by Robert Musil, my new favorite book ever probably?
[ ... ] And so to such people the things that make demands only on their moral correctitude are of the utmost indifference. This was why in his later life Törless never felt remorse for what had happened at that time. His tastes had become so acutely and one-sidedly focused on matters purely of the mind that, supposing he had been told a very similar story about some rake's debaucheries, it would certainly never have occurred to him to direct his indignation against the acts themselves. He would have despised such a person not for being a debauchee, but for being nothing more than that; [ ... ] because his intellect lacked any emotional counter-weight -- that is to say, despising him always only for the picture he presented of something miserable, deprived, and feeble.
[ ... ] And as is the case with all people who are exclusively concerned with heightening their mental faculties, the mere presence of voluptuous and unbridled urges did not count for much with him. It was a pet notion of his that the capacity for enjoyment, and creative talent, and in fact the whole more highly developed side of the inner life, was a piece of jewellery on which one could easily injure oneself. He regarded it as inevitable that a person with a rich and varied inner life experienced moments of which other people must know nothing, and memories that he kept in secret drawers. And all he himself expected of such a person was the ability to make exquisite use of them afterwards.
And so, when somebody to whom he once told the story of his youth asked him whether the memory of that episode did not sometimes make him feel uncomfortable, he answered, with a smile: 'Of course I don't deny that it was a degrading affair. And why not? The degradation passed off. And yet it left something behind -- that small admixture of a toxic substance which is needed to rid the soul of its over-confident, complacent healthiness, and to give it instead a sort of health that is more acute, and subtler, and wiser.
'And anyways, would you try to count the hours of degradation that leave their brand-marks on the soul after every great passion? You need only think of the hours of deliberate humiliation in love -- those rapt hours when lovers bend down as though leaning over a deep well, or one lays his ear on the other's heart, listening for the sound of impatient claws as the restless great cats scratch on their prison walls. And only in order to feel their own trembling! Only in order to feel terrified at their loneliness up there above those dark, corroding depths! Only -- in their dread of being alone with those sinister forces -- to take refuge wholly in each other!
'Just look young married couples straight in the eyes. What those eyes say is: So that's what you think, is it? -- oh, but you've no notion how deep we can sink! What those eyes express is light-hearted mockery of anyone who knows nothing of so much that they know, and the affectionate pride of those who have gone together through all the circles of hell.
'And just as such lovers go that way together, so I at that time went through all those things, but on my own.'
from The Confusions of Young Törless by Robert Musil, my new favorite book ever probably?