Der deutsche Schriftsteller und 脺bersetzer gilt als einer der bedeutendsten deutschen Autoren der Nachkriegszeit. Er schrieb Gedichte, Kurzgeschichten und Romane, von denen auch einige verfilmt wurden. Dabei setzte er sich kritisch mit der jungen Bundesrepublik auseinander. Zu seinen erfolgreichsten Werken z盲hlen "Billard um halbzehn", "Ansichten eines Clowns" und "Gruppenbild mit Dame". Den Nobelpreis f眉r Literatur bekam Heinrich B枚ll 1972; er war nach 43 Jahren der erste deutsche Schriftsteller, dem diese Auszeichnung zuteil wurde. 1974 erschien sein wohl popul盲rstes Werk, "Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum". Durch sein politisches Engagement wirkte er, gemeinsam mit seinem Freund Lew Kopelew, auf die europ盲ische Literatur der Nachkriegszeit. Dar眉ber hinaus arbeitete B枚ll gemeinsam mit seiner Frau Annemarie als Herausgeber und 脺bersetzer englischsprachiger Werke ins Deutsche...
Heinrich B枚ll became a full-time writer at the age of 30. His first novel, Der Zug war p眉nktlich (The Train Was on Time), was published in 1949. Many other novels, short stories, radio plays, and essay collections followed. In 1972 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature "for his writing which through its combination of a broad perspective on his time and a sensitive skill in characterization has contributed to a renewal of German literature." He was the first German-born author to receive the Nobel Prize since Hermann Hesse in 1946. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages, and he is one of Germany's most widely read authors.
(Book 359 from 1001 books) - Gruppenbild mit Dame = Group Portrait With Lady, Heinrich B枚ll
Group Portrait with Lady is a novel by Nobel Prize winning author Heinrich B枚ll, published in 1971.
The novel centers around a woman named Leni, and her friends, foes, lovers, employers and others and in the end tells the stories of all these people in a small city in western Germany in the 1930's and 1940's. At the center of her struggle is her effort to prevent the demolition of her Cologne apartment building, a fight in which she is joined by a motley group of neighbors. Along with her illegitimate son, Lev, she becomes the nexus of a counter cultural group rebelling against Germany鈥檚 dehumanizing past under the Nazis ... and what looks to be an equally dehumanizing future under capitalism.
Construction and destruction of a narrative architecture - shown in the process of building, with the scaffold still raised to support the work, thus hiding vital parts of the architecture behind it.
B枚ll is obsessed with building and destroying materials, houses, evidence, characters. His stories are made up of Tr眉mmerlandschaften - those scary skeletons of German cities and their inhabitants during and after the Second World War, witnesses of bombed-out history. B枚ll's protagonists wade through the rubbish heaps of their former identities to find bits and pieces that make sense, that add to a cubist portrait of their self - brownish, grayish, broken up into shards of different sizes and colours.
A feeling for analytical cubism is required for the author to make sense of the fragmented story lines, with their shared hiatus in the war. But each character's hiatus is in a different spot, at a different moment. When did each person break, lose a part of their life, change into a new form? It depends. The detective work is made harder still by the synthetic cubist portraits the protagonists have created of themselves after the war. Into flat, undefined shapes, they have drawn minimalist lines to indicate the person they have become, starting at point zero, ignoring the broken shards of their past.
The plot seems easy, yet tedious in the beginning. A narrator, referring to himself as "the author", sets out to describe the life of a shy, but sensual woman called Leni Pfeiffer. There are numerous sources of information, which he interviews repeatedly to put together a complete picture of Leni's (love) life and friendships from the beginning of the war until the 1960s.
Naturally, the sources turn out to be biased, to have their own ideas about what happened and why, and as the story progresses, the "author" gets to know the interviewees much better than the woman he wants to write about. She remains strangely remote. It is a group portrait, but the lady stays in the background.
In the end, even the objective role of the "author" shows cracks, and he reveals his weaknesses, biases, and his involvement in the delicate relationships between different characters - leaving the reader to suspect that the house the "author" built and hid behind the scaffold of his narrative progress looks quite different in reality- if there even is such a thing as ONE reality. Evidence (provided by unreliable sources) points to the opposite conclusion.
The novel shows with heartbreaking clarity how the war shapes people, how identities get lost, and are entangled in complicated, dangerous webs of interdependence, and how power structures evolve and influence relationships. The balance is changing all the time. In March 1945 it may still be safest to keep a Nazi facade, but in April, that may be outright dangerous, for example. What to do if all you want is to live? Love is in the strangest of places, and social boundaries don't count when you hide in a graveyard, waiting for the bombs to stop falling on your beloved city. The soldiers who survive the war often carry their fragmented past visibly with them, coming home as amputees. For Leni, the ordeal doesn't start until the war is over, and she has to face the hatred of her neighbourhood for raising a child by a Russian lover.
Everything is loosely connected, but not straightforward. Broken lines. Tr眉mmer.
Apparently, this is the novel that was singled out by the Nobel Prize committee when analysing B枚ll's work up to this point, describing it as his "most grandly conceived work" of which, I wouldn't argue. From what I've of read him thus far, this is certainly the most challenging and broadest in scope, as by tracing Leni Pfeiffer's life through half a century of German history, he paints with such scrutinizing detail a portrait of a woman, a city, and a nation. But I asked myself on completion did I prefer it to 'The Clown', 'Billiards at Half-Past Nine', or 'And Never Said a Word', and the conclusion is no. Two main reasons why - first, certain parts of it dragged on too long for me: it felt like walking up an escalator that was heading in the opposite direction. And second, he at times indulges in sort of sentimental whimsiness to my surprise, and forces a too easy, optimistic conclusion to his story. If I push these issues aside though, I still found much to like about it, mostly down to the fact that B枚ll has seldom moved any distance from writing realistic narratives of his homeland. He has shown less aptitude and interest in experimenting than many other writers who are left their mark on modern literature, in Germany and elsewhere.
Though she rents out rooms, Leni Pfeiffer, 48, faces eviction from her apartment in Cologne. She cannot keep her creditors away, and as a war widow, with her only son is in jail for forging checks to get her off the hook, she cannot hold on without his income. Her total indifference to profit and property are anomalous. The building she is in doesn't yield enough income, her roomers are foreign laborers, and despite the fact she has lived here all her life, that she's known the landlord for thirty years, that his grandson was her son's godfather when he was christened at the tail end of the war, times are changing and loyalties shift. Folk gossip about Leni as a loose woman, because she has taken up with one of her renters, yet she has had only four lovers in her nearly 50 years, including a love affair with a Russian prisoner, and much of the novel tells this tale. But with a difference. To paint what he pretends is a purely factual portrait of Leni, B枚ll himself appears in the book as 'The Au.' (the Author) working as a combination investigative reporter, sociologist and detective. In this guise he interviews the sixty characters who know or have known Leni at various points in her life, and what emerges from this wry pseudo鈥恉ocumentary is also a social portrait of Cologne from the 1920's to his present, a Joycean style evocation of a city and its assorted people.
B枚ll gathers his material to exhibit that, even in Germany, life goes on under the surface and the lies of history, despite the concussive power of ideologies and individual rapacity. By taking a biographical route, he dramatizes the impossibility of generalizing about people, and makes us feel the vast gaps that exist between political slogans and moral actualities, between those who slyly ride with the times, and those like Leni who could possibly lose their wealth, their family, and social position. B枚ll's decision to put a woman at the heart of Group Portrait with Lady could be seen as a more direct expression of his strong erotic and moral affection for women, which could be the result of a previously blocked energy due to the anger he so often feels toward German men and masculine society in general. In a way, compared to his earlier novels, Group Portrait with Lady can be seen as his anti-novel, and the more I think about it, the more it closely resembles a researched report. It's an impressive work for sure, and maybe his best achievement; but that doesn't mean it's my favourite.
La novela, que se podr铆a haber titulado de igual manera "Retrato de se帽ora a trav茅s de los ojos del grupo", trata unos cuantos temas muy propios del autor como es el servilismo a las normas sociales, bien por beneficio propio, bien por mera cortedad de miras; las instituciones religiosas en sus aspectos m谩s desagradables; las peque帽as, medianas y grandes miserias morales y vitales que un conflicto b茅lico es capaz de intensificar hasta lo inconcebible; la hipocres铆a (con sus vertientes postb茅licas de un pasado nazi o colaborador o la-cosa-no-va-conmigo); o la frialdad pol铆tica y econ贸mica del capitalismo, siempre propenso a la corrupci贸n y a la inclemencia. Todo ello muy bien mezclado y condimentado con una bonita historia de amor y hermosos sentimientos como la solidaridad, la amistad o el compromiso.
El estilo de la obra es particular, parodiando un informe policial confeccionado por un autor inocente unas veces, sarc谩stico otras, cada vez m谩s comprometido con la historia y los personajes investigados y cuyo 谩rido lenguaje va a ir suaviz谩ndose a medida que avanza la novela. No obstante, a pesar del fino humor que a veces despliega este bur贸crata entra帽able y de la ternura que en ocasiones en 茅l aflora, se agradece el cambio de estilo en la parte intermedia de la novela, donde son los testigos los que, con sus declaraciones, toman la voz narrativa.
Una novela amarga, dura a veces, tierna otras tantas, pesimista, que, por ponerle un pero, yo dir铆a que habr铆a tenido un mejor remate unas cuantas p谩ginas antes del final.
(indagine su una cittadina al di sopra di ogni sospetto. nel senso che 猫 lei, leni pfeiffer nata gruyten, che sembra non aver mai percezione piena della fatica di vivere nel mondo che attraversa. con i suoi quarantotto anni che potrebbero esser portati meglio, con la sua semplicit脿 che sfiora l鈥檌ncoscienza, con gli sconti che la storia (quella inventata da b枚ll, per il tramite di quella della germania nei primi due quarti del 鈥�900) non le ha mai fatto. il finto cronista che raccoglie materiale e testimonianze su di lei, finendo poi per impigliarsi lui stesso nella vicenda narrativa, prende una donna formalmente poco significante e la trasforma, con la sua indagine allargata, in uno dei personaggi pi霉 impastati di significato che io abbia incontrato da molto tempo in qua).
This is a book for your inner cow, something to chew over and digest multiple times. Lets walk through a gallery, glancing at the pictures around us until we reach this one; a group portrait with a lady. The central figure is a lady of a certain age neither poor nor wealthy, she isn't exactly obscure, but she is elusive. We look at the people around her, some affectionate, some critical, others conflicted, to try to understand her. We look for symbols and repetitions, anything to help us understand the picture better.
That is what this book is like. Except we are a little more removed from it than if we visited a gallery and admire the picture directly, the experience is more like listening to someone describe the picture, and talking about each figure in turn as we listen to their words.
B枚ll in this novel does not write to us directly, instead there is a Verfasser who is in the novel, at first an indirect presence, but eventually a person that we see travelling around, taking a bath at the end of the day, and always interviewing the people in the life of the central figure Leni Pfeiffer, war widow and single mother, retired and mostly living on the income from the rooms in her apartment that she sublets to a German couple, a Portuguese family, and three Turkish guest-workers (the latter have to share one room).
The Verfasser is mostly a self-effacing presence but this directly my attention more firmly on to his silences - who is he? why is he compiling this information about this woman? What is his relationship to her? Is he B枚ll or is he not? His presence reminded me of and the nameless representative of the Bishop with his tape recorder. Here the Verfasser works with pen and paper, there is no intention to create an illusion of word perfect precision and veracity. This kind of experiment in style will be developed in a different direction in .
The book consists of interviews with people who know Leni Pfeiffer, these are arranged chronologically, so we read through her childhood, schooling, wartime experiences, post-war life, the novel culminates with the resolution of a threatened crisis which has the potential to disrupt the lives of Leni and those closest to her.
One aspect to the novel are the repeated references to Kleist's short story Leni also has a mysterious war time pregnancy, the father is a Russian prisoner of war, but in the novel Leni wrote an essay about the Kleist story which was so memorable the nuns who taught her mention it repeatedly to the Verfasser. Is there an idea her that literature can influence us, and if we engage too strongly with it at a sensitive age that sub-consciously that narrative may come to shape our lives? I also wondered why nuns were teaching that story anyway since it is about a conception out of wedlock, I had best warn you that this is a story with a lot of nuns in it, it has more nuns than in all the other books I've read this year put together.
The Verfasser never interviews Leni herself, we see only the moments when her life touched other peoples, but she does not get to speak for herself, there is a two and half page section towards the end of one chapter in which all her recorded utterances are gathered together. This left me thinking of the gospels - possibly though that was a side effect of all those nuns - are we meant to understand this Rhineland separatist, who knows one Kleist story quite well and can play two Schubert sonatas as a Christ figure, or possibly a Mary figure?
Well that is obviously crazy, but she does stand for community and communion, before of which lead her towards communism - though of her own sort I hasten to add. Religion and politics in her merge into a basic attitude towards oneself in society. She emerges, or not, in the context of her social network. The method of narration makes her into a still, silent centre of a novel full of the hustle and bustle of other people's daily lives. She is rather like an icon.
This would go well with reading which has a different take on living through the Nazi period, the war, and having to live in a new society formed by such violent recent experiences.
It is often the mark of a truly great book that style is at least as important as other aspects such a story line or character definition. I have found this literary quality to be true in masterpieces by James Joyce, Proust, Faulkner, Gaddis, Gass, Virginia Woolf and many other genius literary novelists. In fact, telling a tale in a new literary style distinguishes a good writer from a great one in my book. So much so that I tend to discount straight-ahead narrative styles as mundane and seek out novelists engaged in stylistic innovation. Heinrich Boll is a novelist who wants to narrate in a new way. He is focused upon German society during and after World War II when that nation was obliterated by Russian, American, British and French allies. Boll's story is presented as a portrait of a lady, Leni Pfeiffer, against the backdrop of a group her friends, family, colleagues, religious advisers and lovers. The Author (Au.) presents this portrait in such a way that we see the protagonist with incredibly precise brush strokes from the point-of-view of the Author making a bureaucratic inquiry of Leni and through his research we come to know her by way of what others tell him about her. In this sense we also come to know the Group based upon their perspectives in their narrations about the lady. Leni may well be one of the finest character studies of the 20th century because of the narrative style driving the story line. The story itself primarily has to do with members of German society, high and low, as they cope with the advance of American and Russian troops toward the close of World War II inside Germany. This time period was so intense that its impact became telling in the way it defined the characters by their wit, intelligence,resourcefulness and integrity under pressure. Boll introduces a cast at the outset as if the novel were a dramatic production. To gain the most from your reading I would advise you to spend a few minutes understanding the players at the start and then refer back to them a few times as you move forward. There are two Heinrich's, for example, in the cast and the Au. likes to abbreviate the players so that they sometimes may seem unclear as references in the narration. The author seems determined that you'll know his characters so well that you'll follow them even when he refers only to their initials. William Gaddis took a similar approach when in "JR" he declined to define any of the speakers in his National Book Award Winning Novel. Boll manages to create a 3D person from the 2D pages of his book in his narrative technique and is able to drive a story line through his use of actual events in WWII in Germany. The view from inside Germany during its capitulation is intriguing as told by Boll who fought in and lived through the war. The intensity of human experience tends to ramp-up exponentially, of course, when an Au. has witnessed first-hand what Boll actually saw inside Germany during WWII. At first I was a bit taken aback by the literary style and translation but with a modicum of patience it drove me into interiors of consciousness of the group and the lady in an uncommonly penetrating narrative. Of course, Boll became a Nobel Prize Winner and leading light within PEN International in large part because of the densely rich and enlightening narrative style of this novel. If you like literary novels, then odds are you will love this one: I would consider it a masterpiece by virtue of its invention in literary style.
Ecco un vero capolavoro, un libro che racconta un'epoca storica ben precisa, ma al tempo stesso valido ed attuale in ogni epoca. Boll (l' Autore) racconta la storia di Leni attraverso le testimonianze di chi l'ha conosciuta negli anni terribili del nazismo e della guerra, raccolte con teutonica metodicit脿 e con discreti interventi in prima persona. Gli intervistati, come sempre accade, pi霉 che della protagonista di cui dovrebbero parlare, parlano di loro stessi sebbene in relazione a Leni.
Ed 猫 cos矛 che si sviluppa 鈥渓a foto di Gruppo鈥�: galleria di ritratti indimenticabili, abbastanza 鈥渄iversamente tedeschi鈥� e spesso paradossali, primo fra tutti quello della suora ebrea coprofila che muore in odore di santit脿 dopo le privazioni e la segregazione cui le consorelle la obbligano per salvarla dall'olocausto (!).
Al centro della foto Leni, che non compare quasi mai e non prende mai la parola, ma nondimeno 猫 uno dei personaggi indimenticabili della letteratura: prima benestante figlia di famiglia collusa con il nazismo, poi caduta in disgrazia, due volte vedova durante la guerra, ha un figlio da un prigioniero russo, nel dopoguerra affitta la casa a 鈥済astarbeiter鈥� turchi ed italiani a prezzo irrisorio attirando le censure dei parenti proiettati nella nuovamente opulenta Germania. Leni attraversa tutte queste vicende con naturalezza ignorando la parola pregiudizio e paura del diverso.
Lettura salutare e sempre attuale. Oggi pi霉 che mai.
B枚ll: il premio Nobel delle macerie e della ricostruzione del dopoguerra tedesco.
Nel'anno del suo Nobel, correva il 1972, al pi霉 prestigioso riconoscimento letterario mondiale erano candidati anche ben tre autori italiani: Riccardo Bacchelli, Eugenio Montale, e Alberto Moravia. Probabilmente la forza, il tema e l'originalit脿 di architettura stilistica di questo romanzo deve invece avere dato un contributo importante all'assegnazione del premio a Heinrich Theodor B枚ll.
E ridendo e scherzando, anche se quando si legge B枚ll c'猫 sempre veramente poco da ridere e pure i tempi nostri di oggi cos矛 cupi, direi quasi apocalittici, mal si coniugano ad alcun tentativo di letizia o serenit脿, comunque dicevo vabb猫 che, ridendo e scherzando, sono arrivata al mio quarto Boll. Con Foto di gruppo con signora(titolo assolutamente cinematografico) siamo pi霉 dalla parte de L'onore perduto di Katharina Blum piuttosto che di E non disse nemmeno una parola, che invece 猫 pervaso da una dolenza che, all'et脿 in cui lo lessi, mi aveva totalmente sopraffatto, laddove invece abbandonai proprio Opinioni di un clown che peraltro desidero riprendere. Oggi invece mi sentirei di affermare di essere una Bolliana di ritorno. Appunto siamo pi霉 dalla parte de L'onore perduto di Katharina Blum perch茅 questo romanzo ha un' atmosfera quasi da spy story, tiene in sospeso il lettore infondendo quella sensazione che qualcosa di sconvolgente debba accadere, lasciandolo quasi fino all'epilogo sulla soglia psicologica di un'attesa. Se poi accadr脿, non accadr脿, si verificher脿 quel qualcosa, qui e ora non mi 猫 dato dirlo, nemmeno sotto le torture pi霉 spietata dell'inquisizione spagnola.
In realt脿 猫 una ricostruzione documentaria paziente, pedante, meticolosa in cui un giornalista A. (P.s. B枚ll utilizza le iniziali per identificare i personaggi che affollano il romanzo e che sono piuttosto numerosi ingenerando anche una bella confusione pertanto consiglio di farsi uno specchietto) ricostruisce la personalit脿 di una donna Leni Gruyten.
Di lei B枚ll dir脿: Ho tentato di descrivere, o di scrivere il destino di una donna tedesca che si avvicina alla cinquantina, e che ha dovuto portare tutto il peso della Storia tra il 1922 e il 1970. Perch茅 猫 un romanzo intriso della storia delle due Guerre e soprattutto del dopoguerra tedesco, visto e vissuto dall'interno del popolo invasore, con il peso anche inconsapevole della colpa.
Paradossalmente Leni, di cui B枚ll scrive per circa 350 pagine, 猫 in realt脿 la grande assente perch茅 di lei si parla quasi sempre per interposta persona, ma ugualmente di lei si sapr脿 tutto. E Leni 猫 una donna a cui mi sono affezionata particolarmente, che B枚ll ricopre di una colata di sospetta intensa ambigua sensualit脿, con il paradosso che era sensuale, proprio perch茅 non lo era del tutto.
Farsi un'idea su qualcuno 猫 una attivit脿 che mette sempre in moto il nostro consolidato sistema di pregiudizi. Ci portiamo sempre appresso un filtro, uno scanner a cui pi霉 o meno consapevolmente sottoponiamo le nuove conoscenze. Ma davanti ai personaggi di un libro questo filtro fa irrimediabilmente cilecca. In genere ce li beviamo cos矛 come sono, e pi霉 difetti hanno pi霉 vanno gi霉. Heinrich B枚ll, uno scrittore che vale molto di pi霉 del premio Nobel che gli diedero nel '72, in questo gagliardissimo libro (di lettura non sempre fluida, ad esser onesti), ci getta fumo negli occhi dalla prima all'ultima pagina. Noi che tentiamo di catalogare, identificare un soggetto, ci troviamo in imbarazzo davanti all'antieroina Leni Gruyten-Pfeiffer e al gruppo di personaggi, vera e propria corte dei miracoli, che le orbita attorno. Siamo provocati a farci un'idea. E' perfetta o 猫 una sporcacciona? Ha ragione o ha torto? E' buona o 猫 cattiva? Nazista o comunista? Sguscia ad ogni categoria, la bella e silenziosa Leni, misteriosa ma con semplicit脿. Danza leggera in un romanzo dove l'autore (che compare nella storia come l'A.) pone l'accento sulle controversie pi霉 futili, sui dettagli pi霉 oziosi. Sulle ghirlande per i morti, sulla miscela del caff猫, sull'esame mattutino degli escrementi in un collegio femminile. Apoteosi del superfluo, dell'indagine bislacca, delle testimonianze pi霉 ridicole, pi霉 pedantemente e dettagliatamente marginali. Un tappeto che si srotola tra macheccefrega e sticazzi assortiti, una gran collezione di sabbia. Un machimmelofaff脿 che ronza di continuo in testa, minacciando l'interruzione della lettura. Eppure... Quando qualcuno sostiene che in mezzo alla merda c'猫 un diamante, io in genero per lo meno diffido (e non mi tuffo a pesce). Non mi piace chi volendo fare il controintellettuale arriva a sostenere che in un quadro totalmente bianco vi sia chiss脿 quale recondita profondit脿 artistica. In un libro come Foto di gruppo con signora - che per certi versi assomiglia molto all'Opera galleggiante di Barth - c'猫 il sottinteso rischio di non saper giustificare l'inesorabile fascino che ne abbiamo sub矛to davanti a chi per esempio ha b枚llato il libro di giochetto avanguardista da quattro soldi. Ma io prover貌 a stilare ein klein unn枚tig Dekalog dei motivi che mi spingono a considerare questo libro una bizzarra meraviglia: 1) l'A.: l'io narrante della storia 猫 un tizio davvero simpatico. Non 猫 una voce fuori dal coro, non resta affatto dietro le quinte. Muove le fila della storia immergendovisi con passione, con enorme interesse verso i dettagli oziosi di cui sopra. In genere l'io narrante 猫 solo un espediente narrativo, qui invece 猫 tanto centrale quanto caustico, divertente, tenero; 2) La Storia della Germania vista attraverso il prisma delle vicende di personaggi assolutamente secondari: l'esperimento 猫 ovviamente gi脿 visto - v. la nostra Ginzburg - ma 猫 qui rielaborato in questa forma documentaristica ricca di humour che lo rende speciale; 3) Per B枚ll, i personaggi pi霉 inetti (o presunti tali) sopravvivono a tutto; i perfetti (o presunti tali) sono destinati a breve vita; 4) Non c'猫 retorica; non c'猫 traccia di rivendicazione nei confronti di nessuno, nazisti o sovietici che siano, non ci sono "cattivi" da disprezzare n猫 buoni per cui parteggiare; 5) Il pi霉 basso, il pi霉 "corporale", il pi霉 amorale e il meno nobile trovano qui una certa santit脿; 6) B枚ll non strizza l'occhio al lettore, non lo alliscia mai; anzi lo fa passare pi霉 volte per fesso, con garbo ma senza mezzi termini; 7) Sembra che B枚ll voglia far sue, quasi con amore paterno, tutte le pecche del "cattivo romanzo"; "didascalico" vi suona storto? Beh, lui adora sfacciatamente la didascalia. Secondo voi l'autore non dovrebbe entrare ad ingombrare una storia con le sue riflessioni? Beh, leggetevi questo libro, vi far脿 rabbrividire. 8) Lo diceva Ges霉 di Nazareth, che si sta meglio in compagnia dei peccatori e delle prostitute; B枚ll 猫 perfettamente in linea, 猫 scandalosamente cattolico. Nel senso di cattolico che crea scandalo. Suor Rahel - di indubbia genealogia ebraica, proprio come Ges霉 in fondo - 猫 il personaggio che racchiude in s茅 questo tratto meraviglioso; disprezzata, trova nelle occupazioni pi霉 infime (e quando dico infime...) una gioiosa occasione per amare; 9) La 'scena madre' della tazza di caff猫 offerta da Leni al russo Boris - mentre l'avanzata tedesca si sbriciolava a Stalingrado - 猫 uno degli esempi pi霉 alti di dissacrazione del nazionalismo; 10)Questo vale pi霉 per l'autore che per il libro in s猫. Dopo dodici anni di nazismo la Germania era giunta al suo anno zero letterario. Gli scrittori si erano ammutoliti, dopo anni di assordante propaganda in stile G枚bbels. Quest'uomo ha rappresentato, col suo inconfondibile umorismo, la Fenice della letteratura tedesca contemporanea. Non 猫 poco, direi.
n.b. B枚ll si pronuncia B'll, come una linguaccia. Fate finta che quella "o" non esiste. E spargete la voce.
This must be called Experimental Fiction, conflicted and preoccupied as it is with 'equivalent' ways of telling the story.. Let's start again.
For some reason author B枚ll hits on the idea that mindless categorizing, cross-filing, a relentless focus on hierarchies and designations... an accountant's myopia, of receipts and stubs .. well, no, there is some method to all that.. Once again.
A book so willingly obtuse, bloodyminded and so obsessively nitpicking that .. no, once more.
There are somewhere near 125 persons who come into play in Heinrich B枚ll's experimental novel Group Portrait With Lady. Sixty-one of them are outlined in the helpful List Of Characters in the front of the book.
By surreptitiously refocusing (or maybe zooming out) from his central character (the lady) B枚ll manages to render the collective insanity of Germany in the war years and thereafter, or maybe it is the madness of a century that produces this Germany. By overdoing the scrutiny on the minima of the era, the author is able to slowly reveal the wider impact. Somehow the war and horror is more felt than told-- when detail is so foreground that the reader must read into the subtext for the headline events. There is so much raw data being racked up that the reader has to listen for reverberations trailing in the distance to get any sense of the overall world at hand.
As mentioned, there dozens of characters, which means dozens of narrators, dozens of threads; they are called informants in the book, witnesses nearly all so unreliable that truth seems laughable. As may be appreciated, these add up to a very palpable sense of the wartime realities of these people-- only detail and minima in the frame, and yet danger and moral collapse an epidemic all around.
The cruelty of wartime scam and black marketeering, fantasias like the Siegfried Line, forced labor for unknown beneficiaries ... the morbid fakery wherein wartime Memorial Wreaths are switched out post-funeral to new clients as they enter the cemetery, and billed for each appearance... stolen papers, false IDs, mislabeled gravesites begin to exert the kind of grim wear & tear on the reader that leads to insight.
B枚ll has written a grandly complex novel here, something that touches along the lines of the cinema's Sorrow And The Pity and The Third Man. But he's got little bits of insanity to include.
The flow chart of the book goes from the cited 'raw data' approach, the listings and dry analyses-- which begin to form the ground on which his agents will move, characters who will work randomly against any set storyline-- toward human folly and delirium. A centerpiece at this point is the 'miracle of the roses' event, which provides a kind of mystical comic relief, after and because of which -- our author (author-in-the-book) sees fit to passionately kiss a catholic nun. His attentions are unexpectedly requited, without much ado, and she is swept into the narrative.
At times B枚ll seems mad, but he's after bigger game than just injecting an absurdist touch; his book is at once a Great-Big-Unrelenting-Shop-Of-Horrors, but also a sly rendition of the fragility of human ties, the lightning-quick sting of reversed allegiances. A difficult read, but intriguing. Nobel Prize for literature, 1972. ________________
I gather from what I've read elsewhere that there are intricacies of Translation that may not show B枚ll's work to it's best effect; an example that has been noted is that this translation gives the writer-character's interjections the title of 'author' whereas the German tilts more toward 'editor'. That might be a very big shift in what transpires here, or maybe not so much. Regardless, I'm taking a one-star rain check here; the German text may plainly be well worth another star or more if the tone has been so altered.
The titular character Leni is seen via the point-of-view of a number of characters; heartless harlot, timorous and timid, empty-headed and sensitive and open to art, the depiction of Leni is a testament to the many different and often contradictory ways by which other see us. Boll employs a number of different styles, often dependent on the narrator, often these act as pastiches and parodies, whether it is the lazy and jocular cliches of journalese or the highfalutin style of post-modernism, Boll explores and utilises these various styles to depict the lives of the characters Leni interacts with. Beneath all of this lies the Nazi regime in which most of the the novel takes place and the sense of madness and paranoia it engenders. Indeed the vast, almost innumerable number of characters can be slightly discombobulating for the reader, who is left dizzy by Boll鈥檚 ever-changing, jittery and frenetic style; an interesting and original, if not always entirely successful form of literary experimentation, 鈥楪roup Portrait With Lady鈥� is perhaps more of an intellectual than emotional success.
libro bellissimo che ho letto - mea culpa - male, nel senso che l鈥檋o interrotto pi霉 volte poi riprendendolo, senza perdere il piacere di una lettura fuori dal comune, ma (costretta a leggerlo in cartaceo - perch茅, Einaudi, perch茅? -, e quindi non potendo giovarmi della possibilit脿 di risalire con un tocco ai precedenti incontri con vari personaggi) perdendo fatalmente il contatto con qualche parte della storia. Da rileggere, quindi.