Robert Musil (1880–1942), one of the greatest Austrian writers of the twentieth century, is known mainly for the novel “The Man Without Qualities,” which became his life’s work. However, his very first work - a novel about Törless (1906) - is an extraordinary phenomenon. “The Mental Troubles of a Pupil Törless” is a story about a teenager, a pupil of a closed educational institution. The so-called “school novels” were very popular at the beginning of the last century, but Törless stands out sharply from their background... The novel unfolds a picture of a terrifying lack of humanity: the gap between friends occurred “because of stupidity, because of religion.” Nothing stopped Törless from executing Basini’s pupil in humiliation of human dignity. No commandments of religion or morality interfered, as if no prohibitions or limits had ever existed. The philosophical, psychological and mathematical studies of the young twenty-six-year-old writer are intricately intertwined here with autobiographical plots, forming a unique style of tart and dense prose. What’s interesting is not so much the tragic clash of light and cold analysis with the dark and warm element in the hero’s soul, but the tossing and worries of a teenager who discovers unusual experiences in himself and strives not to get lost in them and to recognize himself... Clashes between students in a closed educational institution also give rise to cruelty, and love... Frankly homoerotic motifs, almost for the first time since ancient times, returned with this novel to high literature, blossoming later in T. Mann, Proust, Zweig, Gide.