The confusions of the pupil Törless

"Everything happens - that's all wisdom," is the phrase with which young Terles summarizes the painful experience of learning about himself and the world - bodily, sensual, whimsical, cruel and immoral. Just such a person, who is beyond the division into good and evil, high and low, permitted and forbidden. In an educational institution for boys, life moves according to a certain order, and it is not easy to change it. One pupil is caught stealing, and instead of revealing it to the school management, the classmates take it upon themselves to re-educate the young thief. They violently pounce on him, insult him, force him to serve, moralize in a mentor-like manner... But are they themselves worthy of being beacons of encouragement for good, if they step on the slippery slope, letting out the animalistic meanness that dwells in them? Which side will young Terles choose? Will he stand up for the thief, or will he take the side of "false justice" under the threat of his involvement? Will he let loose his lust, or rise to a bright sense of justice? Who knows where the line between true and false lies in each of us? And haven't we summed up some experience more than once like this: "Everything happens - that's all wisdom"? The Austrian Robert Musil created this expressionist masterpiece as early as 1906, and the themes touched on - these "eternal questions of existence" - are undoubtedly relevant even today.