The Clown by Heinrich Böll
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Era of Prostitution

Hans, the clown in question, is a petulant, socially awkward, articulate, but persistently sarcastic figure who identifies with both the Germanic Siegfried and the Jewish Christ. Although Protestant, he knows more about Catholic ritual and attitudes than most Catholics. He abhors clerics and their rituals when they pretend to more than aesthetic importance

Hans is an artist who lives for the aesthetics of his craft, which is grounded in the observation of the details of everyday life, the conventions that no one notices but which dominate human existence. "I am a clown," he says, "I collect moments." First he makes these hidden conventions visible, then he subverts them through mockery. He can't help it; this is what he has to do. He calls this his Niebelungen Complex.

As a sort of pronto-hippie, Hans rails against hypocrisy - in the state which ignores the unforgivable crimes of its citizens, of the church which has become a procedural machine concerned with politics rather than love, of the family which prefers conformity to creative expression by its members. He can't condemn however, merely marvel at the ability of his friends and family to deceive themselves. Everything in Germany - culture, politics, meaning - is prostituted - to the Americans, to TV commercialism, to insincere charitable drives.

Injury and emotional trauma force Hans into penury. No one he knows can or will help. He does the only thing possible for someone who finds himself an alien in his own land. At "the age less than thirty" he becomes Christ in the make-up of a clown miming the absurdity of everyday life on the steps of Bonn Central Station. Vox clamans in deserto so to speak.

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