Abstract

During the mathematics lesson dealing with imaginary numbers, Törless, the young hero of Robert Musil’s novel, The Confusion of Young Törless, is truly amazed. Imaginary numbers are impossible: numbers which, put to the square, give a negative number cannot exist. Still, these imaginary numbers seem to be used to reach quite definite and concrete results. This looks to Törless as if mathematics could make you walk steadily on a bridge which had only a beginning and an end and nothing in between, as if the bridge were complete