Home | Books By Year | Books from 1906


The Confusions of Young Trless

Buy The Confusions of Young Trless now from Amazon

First, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the book. And once you've experienced the book, tell everyone what you thought about it.

Wikipedia article




'The Confusions of Young Trless' , or 'Young Trless', is the literary debut of the Austrian philosophical novelist and essayist Robert Musil, first published in 1906.

Plot introduction



Musil's novel is ostensibly a 'Bildungsroman', a story of a young disoriented man searching for moral values in society and their meaning for him.

The expressionistic novel, based on Musil's personal experiences at a boarding school in Hranice (in Austria-Hungary, now in the Czech Republic) was written according to Musil "because of boredom". In later life, however, Musil denied that the novel was about youthful experiences of his own. Due to its explicit sexual content, the novel at first caused a scandal among the reading public and the authorities of Austria-Hungary.

Later, various prefigurings of Fascism were identified in the text, including the characters of Beineberg and Reiting, who seem to be orderly pupils by day but shamelessly abuse their classmate psychologically, physically and sexually by night.

In 1966, the German director Volker Schlndorff made the film 'Der junge Trless' based on the novel.

Synopsis



Three students of an Austrian boarding school, Reiting, Beineberg and Trless, catch their classmate Basini stealing money from one of the three and decide to punish him themselves instead of turning him in to the school authorities. They start with bullying and abusing him, first physically and then psychologically and sexually, while also blackmailing him by threatening to denounce him. Their abusive treatment of Basini becomes openly sexual and increasingly sadistic; nevertheless, he endures all the torture even when, after being deprived of any dignity, he is discredited by the entire class.

Trless' moral and sexual confusion leads him to join Beineberg and Reiting's degradation of Basini; he is both sexually attracted to Basini and Beineberg and repelled by them. He observes and takes part in the torture and rape of Basini while telling himself that he is trying to understand the gap between his rational self and his obscure irrational self; he is a disturbed and despairing observer of his own states of consciousness. Basini professes love for Trless and Trless comes to reciprocate somewhat, but is ultimately repelled by Basini's unwillingness to stand up for himself. This disgust with Basini's passivity ultimately leads him almost off-handedly to stand up to Beineberg and Reiting. When the torment becomes unbearable, Trless covertly advises Basini to turn himself in to the headmaster as a way out of the situation.

An investigation is commenced, but the only party to be found guilty is Basini. Trless makes a strange existential speech to the school authorities about the gap between the rational and irrational ("...after all, things just happen"), which puzzles the authorities more than anything else. They decide he is of too refined an intellect for the institute, and suggest to his parents that he be privately educated, a conclusion that he comes to on his own.

Other subplots include Trless' experience with the local prostitute Boena, his encounter with his mathematics teacher, and his analysis of his parents' attitudes toward the world.

Editions and translations



* 'Die Verwirrungen des Zglings Trle'. Wien/Leipzig: Wiener Verlag, 1906.

* 'Die Verwirrungen des Zglings Trle'. Mnchen/Leipzig: Georg Mller, 1911.

* 'Die Verwirrungen des Zglings Trle'. 11th.-15th. thousand. Berlin: Ernst Rowohlt, 1931 [Revised edition; published Dec. 1930].

* 'Die Verwirrungen des Zglings Trle'. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 1998. (rororo 10300.)

* 'Die Verwirrungen des Zglings Trle'. Based on the revised edition 1930; with detailed commentary. Ed. by Werner Bellmann. Epilog: Filippo Smerilli. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2013.

*'Young Trless'. Translated by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser. Pantheon Books, 1955.

*'The Confusions of Young Trless.' Translated by Shaun Whiteside, with an introduction by J. M. Coetzee. Penguin Classics, 2001.

*'The Confusions of Young Master Trless'. Translated by Christopher Moncrieff. Alma Classics, 2013.

*'The Confusions of Young Trless'. Translated by Mike Mitchell, with an introduction and notes by Ritchie Robertson. Oxford University Press, 2014.

Bibliography



* Bernhard Grossmann: 'Robert Musil, Die Verwirrungen des Zglings Trless. Interpretation'. 3. Auflage. Oldenbourg, Mnchen 1997.

* Klaus Johann: 'Grenze und Halt: Der Einzelne im Haus der Regeln. Zur deutschsprachigen Internatsliteratur.' Universittsverlag Winter, Heidelberg 2003, (= Beitrge zur neueren Literaturgeschichte. 201.). [http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/exlibris/aleph/a18_1/apache_media/MA259C2EG8M7FG43YLP5GD6JBQBG8A.pdf content (pdf-Datei)], [http://www.literaturkritik.de/public/rezension.php?rez_id=9141 Rezension] pp. 206422. '(The most extensive interpretation of Trle.)

* Roland Kroemer: 'Ein endloser Knoten? Robert Musils Verwirrungen des Zglings Trle im Spiegel soziologischer, psychoanalytischer und philosophischer Diskurse.' Fink, Mnchen 2004. (Dissertation) [https://web.archive.org/web/20121226164731/http://www.toerless.de/]

*Carl Niekerk: 'Foucault, Freud, Musil: Macht und Masochismus in den 'Verwirrungen des Zglings Trless'. In: Zeitschrift fr deutsche Philologie 116.4 (1997) pp. 545566.

* Oliver Pfohlmann: 'Robert Musil'. Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2012 (= rowohlts monographien), pp. 1922 (chapt. 'Als Zgling in Eisenstadt und Mhrisch-Weikirchen') and pp. 4349 (chapt. 'Die Verwirrungen des Zglings Trle'),

* Andrea Rota: 'I grovigli del racconto: metafore tessili e disarticolazione narrativa ne Die Verwirrungen des Zglings Trless di Robert Musil.' In: 'Studia Austriaca.' 15/2007, pp. 175192.

* Renate Schrder-Werle: 'Robert Musil. "Die Verwirrungen des Zglings Trle". Erluterungen und Dokumente'. Reclam, Stuttgart 2001.

* Filippo Smerilli: Moderne Sprache Krper. Analysen zum Verhltnis von Krpererfahrung und Sprachkritik in erzhlenden Texten Robert Musils. V & R Unipress, Gttingen 2009.


Buy The Confusions of Young Trless now from Amazon

<-- Return to books from 1906



This work is released under CC-BY-SA. Some or all of this content attributed to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1104783023.