Great. Now I’m crying because this could have been written by me.
55th finished book of the year: Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß by Robert Musil
(English: The Confusions of Young Törless)
This book struck a chord with me. It tells the story of Törleß, a teenage boy living in a boarding school, who is getting involved in the bullying of a fellow class mate. Together with two other boys Törleß finds out that a class mate of them, Barsini, has stolen some money from them in order to cover his debts with other boys. This usually should be reported to the head of the school and would lead to the expellation. However Törleß’ friends decide it would be much more fun to use their knowledge to humiliate and abase Barsini by, in turn forcing themselves on him or beating him. Though Musil does not go into detail regarding the sexual abuse, his descriptions of some of the beatings are stomach turning enough. Törleß never hurts Barsini himself, and though he watches the other two beat Barsini at first he stops participating though not exactly because of his good morales. He is simply bored by it. Törleß only lashes out at Barsini with his words and non-actions, and that I find is to some extent even more cruel than the physical harm the other two inflict on Barsini.I have been bullied myself in high school, thankfully never phisically though I’m still struggling with some of the effects of the verbal abuse I had to take, so this book was a bit hard to read for me as it brought up memories of what was probably the worst time in my life so far.
The book was published first in 1906 and the German used is very old-fashioned and takes some getting used to. Once I got used to it though I could appreciate the beauty of the words. All in all this is a very good, very intriguing book and I recommend it for anyone looking for a book with a more serious tone to it.
On Reading
Recently, whilst jogging home from work, I started to think about the reason why I read books and by the time I arrived at my apartment I had an entire essay composed in my head on this very topic. It is a shame really that it took me three days to find enough motivation to actually sit down and write it. So why do I read? The answer to that question is actually two-fold, as I have to make a distinction between my reasons for reading fiction and non-fiction books.
Currently I read about 5 or 6 books simultaneously and I just can’t decide on which one to focus my entire attention so that I can finish it and then decide again on which one to focus next. This always happens when there are a couple of books I really, really want to read but obviously I can only read in one book at one point in time and not in two books at the same time so I have to decide which book to read or with which book to spend the next couple of minutes/hours. In the end I spend more time pondering which book to read than actually reading any of them and make no progress whatsoever which in turn annoys the hell out of me. And there is another Amazon package on its way with 3 very, very interesting books I can’t wait to get my hands on.
Reblog if you have an imaginary life inside your head
hundred and hundreds of AUs
thousands actually
MILLIONS
Every particle of the world is a mirror,
In each atom lies the blazing light
of a thousand suns.
Cleave the heart of a raindrop,
a hundred pure oceans will flow forth.
Look closely at a grain of sand,
The seed of a thousand beings can be seen.
In each atom lies the blazing light
of a thousand suns.
Cleave the heart of a raindrop,
a hundred pure oceans will flow forth.
Look closely at a grain of sand,
The seed of a thousand beings can be seen.
“
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