#torless

In neither of these states did they recognize the symptom of a particular spiritual development. Instead they had seen both their son's pain and its abatement as being more or less a natural consequence of the prevailing conditions in the school. They failed to see that this was their son's first unsuccessful attempt, thrown upon his own devices, to develop his own inner strength. Törless was very discontented now, and groped around in vain for something he might use as support.

Soon after that, awoken by a gust of wind that rustled through the dry grass, he could barely feel his body, and a pleasant coolness float up from his feet, keeping his limbs in a state of sweet langour. Something mild and tired now mingled with his former fear. He still felt the sky staring down on him, vast and silent, but now he recalled how often he had had such an impression in the past, and as though in a state between waking and dreaming he ran through all of those memories, and felt as though all their associations were spinning him into a coccoon. First of all there was that childhood memory in which the trees had stood as serious and silent as enchanted people. Even then he must have had that feeling that later returned to him again and again. Something of it had even been present in the thoughts he had had at Božena's, a particular foreboding, something more than those thoughts suggested. In that moment of silence in the garden outside the windows of the cake shop, before the dark veils of sensuality had fallen, that had been like that too. And Beineberg and Reiting had often, within the fragment of a thought, became something alien and unreal; and finally, what about Basini? The idea of what was about to happen to him had utterly torn Törless in two; one moment it was reasonable and ordinary, the next it had assumed that same silence, with images flashing through it, which had gradually seeped into Törless' perception and now, all of a sudden, demanded to be treated as something real and alive; just as the idea of infinity had before. Törless now felt that silence surrounding him on all sides. Like distant, dark forces, it had probably been threatening for ever, but he had instinctively retreated from it, and had only shyly glanced at it from time to time. But now an accident, an event, had sharpened his attention and focused it upon it, and as if responding to a sign it was now crashing in from all sides, bringing with it a terrible confusion that spread further with each new moment. It came upon Törless like a madness, experiencing objects, processes and people as things with ambiguous meanings. As something fettered by some inventor's power to a harmless explanatory word, and as something wholly alien that seemed at every moment to threaten to break its bonds. Certainly: there is a simple, natural explanation for everything, and Törless knew that too, but to his fearful astonishment it only seemed to rip away an outer most shell without laying bare the interior, which Törless, as though with eyes by now unnatural, saw always glimmering as a second layer behind it. Törless lay there, entirely wrapped in a coccoon of memories, from which alien thoughts grew like strange blossoms. Those moments that no one forgets, situations in which there is a failure of the associations that normally allow us to reflect our lives whole within our understanding, as though the two things were running along side by side and at the same speed — coming confusingly close to one another. The memory of the terribly still, sad-colored silence of certain evenings alternated suddenly with the hot, tremulous unease of a summer afternoon that had once rippled glowing across his soul, as though with the twitching feet of a hissing swarm of gliteering lizards. Then he suddenly remembered a smile of that young prince — a glance — a movement — from the time when they had profoundly broken with one another — with which the prince had suddenly — gently — freed himself from all the connections that Törless had spun around him — and stepped into a new and strange expanse which — as though concentrated into the life of a single indescribable second — had opened up unexpectedly. Then once more there came memories from the wood — between the fields. Then a silent picture in a gloomy room at a home, which had later suddenly reminded him of his lost friend. Words from a poem came to his mind ... And there are other things too, goverened by that incommensurability of experience and understanding. But it is always the case that what we experience in one moment, whole and unquestioning, becomes incomprehensible and confused when we seek to bind it to our enduring ownership with the chains of thought. And what looks big and inhuman while our words reach it from afar, becomes simple and ceases to be unsettling the moment it enters our live's field of action.

That surfeit of desire had existed for a long time - with Božena and long before that. It was the secret, unspecific, melancholy sensuality, free of any human object, of the maturing boy, which is like the damp, black, seed-bearing earth in the spring and like dark, subterranean waters that need only an arbitrary cause to rise and break their walls.

What if Beineberg from the hit book The Confusions of Young Törless was a MLP Pony? That would be horrible, actually. I mean, his beliefs are already bordeline magical, imagine how far he would go with real magic. He gives me unicorn vibes since he's more of a cerebral character. If there are any pain causing spells (and if pony civilization is anything like ours, there definitely are), he would use them.

Young Törless is in the public domain, by the way. If any studio executives are thinking of cool properties to snatch, this is the one. Please.

Meanwhile Basini had been standing up for some time; he noticed his companion's fixed, absent gaze, quietly picked up his clothes and crept away. Törless saw him - as if through a fog - but let him go without a word. All his attention was consumed with the effort of rediscovering that point within himself where the transformation in his inner perspective had suddenly occurred. But every time he approached it, he felt like someone trying to compare something close to him with something far away: he could never capture the remembered images of the two feelings at the same time, like a quiet click, there came a feeling that corresponded to something in the physical realm, those barely perceptible muscular sensations that accompany the focusing of the eye. And each time, precisely at the crucial moment, it claimed all his attention, the activity of comparison interposed itself before the object being compared, there was barely a noticeable twinge - and everything stood still. And Törless would start again from the beginning. This mechanically regular procedure lulled him into a rigid, waking, ice-cold sleep that kept him fixed motionlessly in his place, and for an indefinite amount of time.