The Clown by Heinrich Boll, translated from the German by Leila Vennewitz
London: Calder and Boyars, 1972 (originally published in English 1965, original publication in German, under the title Ansichten Eines Clowns in 1963) ISBN 0714501689
I have reviewed Boll's Billiards at Half Past Nine previously, and found it an interesting and at times strange book. The Clown has had a similar effect on me. Although this book is less overtly about World War II than Billiards at Half Past Nine, it is still the over-arching shadow that hangs over everything that happens, which was the state of affairs in Germany in the Sixties. Those that can adapt themselves do, and we see those people doing as well in democratic Germany as they did in Nazi Germany, while the small acts of heroism that took place during the war are forgotten, along with everything else.
But the The Clown is not really about the war. It is a story of the developing society of Germany after the war, and the interactions between rich and poor, Protestant and Catholic, particularly the machinations of Catholic society, and the hypocrisy that lay at the heart of much of what they did in Germany at that time.
The plot revolves around Hans Schnier, son of a wealthy industrialist (mainly involved in coal mining, but with a finger in many pies). He eschews family, seduces Marie, the daughter of a local storekeeper, and runs away with her. Marie is Catholic, Hans a Protestant. Hans has developed a moderately successful career as a clown, but as the novel opens he is returning to his apartment in Bonn in the knowledge that his career is in tatters, and that Marie has left him for Zupfner, a Catholic, and part of the Catholic discussion group that Marie was a part of before she and Hans eloped.
Hans wanders around his apartment with a sore knee, a bottle of cognac and some cigarettes, he is down to his last Mark, and sets out to ring relatives friends and enemies in search of money, Marie's location, and revenge. Through the phone calls he makes, and the flashbacks that intersperse them, Hans takes us through not only his and Marie's history, but lays open the clubbishness, snobbishness and sense of superiority that was part of Catholic society and politics at that time.
Hans's devotion to Marie was absolute - he fails to understand why the outward forms of devotion, such as a marriage certificate or wedding in church are important, and how they could change how people feel. Boll, through Hans, has much to say about the institution of marriage and was ahead of his time to see it as bondage for a woman. His Catholic philosophizers are all men, and the women involved are seen only as followers. Hans is bereft without Marie - to him, even though they weren't married, her leaving him to marry Zupfner is adulterous, and Hans thinks marriage and Church teachings destroy more lives than they save.
The Clown is a also a story about theory versus real life. The Catholics theorize about things, discuss things interminably, while Hans is busy living. He balks at being labelled one way or another, and yet everywhere he goes and everything he sees is trying to put him in a box, to label him, to see if he is acceptable or not according to doctrine. Hans rejects that utterly. When his father comes to visit him, we learn that his father too may have felt that way, but has been ground down by expectations and his wife to do what was expected. Hans muses on his father's heroism in standing up to Nazi thugs in the final days of the War, and realizes that he is loved by him, even as his father leaves without offering him any money, as Hans won't work for it in any way.
Perhaps that is the main theme of The Clown: the danger of dogma. The death of Hans's sister Henrietta in the last days of the war, after her parents allowed her to join a Flak regiment to save the "sacred" soil of Germany from the "Jewish Yankees" broke Hans, and the failure of German society to move on (replacing Nazi dogma for democratic dogma, replacing racism with performative non-racist activities for consumption by everyone except Germans) disgust him. His decision to paint his face and show no emotion as he performs his transgressive skits is his way of coping with the trauma of the War, and the hypocrisy of 1960s German politics and culture.
This is a good novel, but it is a novel of its place and time, and it has dated a little. Sectarianism, as described in The Clown, no longer exists in the same way. Yet some of the things Boll writes about Catholics still hold - their sense of different-ness, a kind of pity for those who are not of the One True Church, and yet also a kind of persecution complex when discussing their faith. No group of believers finds it easy to dissect the more illogical and strange aspects of their belief, so I was surprised to learn that Boll was actually a committed Catholic. I imagine this book caused him some trouble when he went to church after it was published.
This book, while it covers the life-time of Hans, spans only one night in time, and finishes with Hans accepting his lack of money and of Marie, painting up and going out to busk. His life has collapsed, as Germany collapsed, and we the reader cannot be sure if he can rebuild it.
Heinrich Boll won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972 for his body of work. He is an important figure in post-war German fiction, and The Clown is worth reading not only as an insight into his writing, but also as an insight into a re-building Germany.
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