Hermann Ungar - Sexual horror and perpetual humiliation machine

Hermann Ungar, The Maimed, Trans. by Kevin Blahut (Twisted Spoon Press, 2002)

«Set in Prague, The Maimed relates the story of a highly neurotic, socially inept bank clerk who is eventually impelled by his widowed landlady into servicing her sexual appetites. At the same time he must witness the steady physical and mental deterioration of his lifelong friend who is suffering from an unnamed disease. Part psychological farce, Ungar tells a dark, ironic tale of chaos overtaking one's meticulously ordered life. One of only two novels Ungar wrote.»

«Originally published in 1923 and accurately described by Thomas Mann as depicting "a sexual hell," The Maimed is also one of the most provocative novels I have ever read.— Thomas McGonigle

«... a sexual hell, full of filth, crime and the deepest melancholy—a monomaniacal digression, if you will, but nevertheless the digression of an inwardly pure artistry, which one might hope will mature into a less one-sided view and representation of life and humanity.»— Thomas Mann

«Ungar's The Maimed captures the suffocatingly claustrophobic life of Franz Polzer, a life haunted by lies, deceit, brutality, blackmail, and physical and moral coruption.» — The Education Digest

«Ungar leads the reader through a maze of the foul, a catalogue of human failings, then pulls the plug with a rumbling inevitability. It can't really be described as a downward spiral, more a steady progress. Nobody could really drop any further, but they lose any misgivings about being so low. People do not become beasts: they just acknowledge that they are beasts.» — nthposition

«David Lynch and Patrick McCabe fans will fall right into this marvelously dark and psychotically twisted tale. It is a maniacal blend of sadism mixed with the vivid portrayal of an individual's descent into psychosis and his perceptions of the equally insane world around him: Blue Velvet meets Butcher Boy.» — New Pages

«Set in Prague with a bank clerk as the main character, The Maimed explores the breakdown of identity and culture in the unsettled, ominous years between the two World Wars. Franz Polzer is a fastidious bank clerk. But his fastidiousness comes to be seen as a desperate means to try to maintain a grip on the world around him and his self in it coming apart from the political, social, and historical pressures of the time. Ungar tracks the stages of the disturbance which ineluctably overcomes Polzer. Many stark, expressionistic woodcuts add to the tone of the novel. Not only the theme and writing style, but also the artistic design of this book from a publisher in Prague will draw readers of serious modern fiction to it.» — Henry Berry

«The novel is exceedingly grim, dwelling on themes of child abuse and sexual molestation, religious fanaticism, flesh-eating disease, whoring, crime, poverty, the slaughtering of animals and finally serial murder; and poor Franz Polzer is plunged into despair simply by the unfashionableness of his hat.» — furious ape!
«In Genesis, the patriarch Jacob is lamed at the hands of a man, identified by the prophet Hosea as an angel. Only Jacob's leg is lamed, though the angel undoubtedly possessed the power to kill. And only after this injury is he fit for the name Israel, and its inheritance. Achilles' heel is a greater weakness than Achilles' foot, and for that reason Achilles is fated to myth. Ungar will survive any maiming and will emerge stronger.» - The Prague Pill

«The Maimed by Hermann Ungar wonderfully terrifying descent into paranoia, perversity and the power of abuse. Well-written and captivating from the opening sentence, this novel tells the depressing story of Franz Polzer. Ungar leads us with a perfect narrative through a tale that offers no lasting happiness for the tortured soul of Franz or those around him.Thematically, we are dealing with repression, abuse, madness, homosexuality and sadism.
Doesn't that sound like fun? Read on, brave ones.
Franz Polzer's life starts off badly and never quite recovers even though for a time, he learns to maintain a routine through his systematic organization and superstitions. After losing his mother and being repeatedly beaten at the hands of his father while his aunt held him down, Franz becomes a timid and withdrawn fellow fearing most everything and everyone. Then one night he sees his father leaving his aunt's room and believes that they are having an affair. Franz develops an intense aversion to her which is impressed upon his memory the part in her black hair contrasted with the whiteness of her scalp. This imagery sticks with him and shows up later in the book causing him paralyzing anxiety as he thinks of his landlady, Frau Porges:
As soon as the shadow of his aunt fell across the lighted door, Polzer had known that a woman's nakedness was something horrid. Even before seeing his aunt's shadow, he was tormented by the horrible thought that her naked body was not closed. He felt the same way in the presence of Frau Porges--like he was plunging endlessly into a terrible slit. Like open flesh, like the folds as the edge of a wound. In galleries, he never wanted to see the pictures and statues of naked women. He wanted to touch the body of a naked woman. He felt it was the locus of impurity and a disgusting smell. He only saw Frau Porges during the day, when she was fully clothed. Yet he was tormented by the thought of her fat, naked body.The one thing that saves Franz from his miserable existence is his success in his studies and the meeting of Karl Fanta, a rich boy who attends the Gymnasium with him. Ungar describes a homosexual relationship between Karl and Franz even from the beginning, "Karl Fanta saw that Polzer was unhappy, and often both boys embraced, kissing each other while they cried." In 1923, this was quite a daring work and when Ungar submitted it to Kafka's publisher at the time, although liking it, thought he would be brought up on obscenity charges if he published it. Interestingly, the relationship between Franz and Karl is the only relationship, at least for Franz, where physical intimacy is an expression of love not a an act of compliance stemming from fear. Of course, in true Eastern European style, any happiness derived from his relationship with Karl is thwarted. Karl becomes ill and is sent away for treatment. Karl's father had agreed to pay Franz's way through his University studies, but once Karl is sick, Franz is forced to leave his studies and take a clerk position in a bank.
Due to his meager finances, he is forced to rent a room from Klara Porges, the fat and 'hairy' widow. He is frightened of her and repulsed by her. He consistently obsesses over her fat and the part in her black hair that reminds him of his aunt. Even though he avoids her, she manipulates him into spending more time with her as well as sleeping with her which turns out to be a humiliating and disgusting experience:
The breasts beneath her loose blouse were already touching his body. He lifted his hands to push her away, but his fingers only grasped th heavy mass of flesh.
That evening he was able to do it.
She had put out the light and was sleeping beside him. Her arm was around his shoulders.
That night Franz Polzer was seized by a great, incomprehensible and horrible thought.
It happened suddenly. The white line made by the part in her hair shimmered palely. Her body seemed soft and dark He longed for this body, and suddenly her remembered it was the body of his sister.
He knew the thought had no foundation. He had never had a sister. But the idea was too powerful and immediate for him to dispel it.
Franz Polzer rose and wrapped himself in his coat. He sat down at the table. It was as though he had slept with his sister. He remembered the nights at home when his father's heavy steps would creak over the rotten floorboards, and he would lie in bed, overcome by horror as he listened.As his relationship with Frau Porges progresses, it becomes more humiliating. Karl, who is now married and has a teenage son, becomes prominent once more in Franz's life. Now a paraplegic and rotting away from some unknown disease, he has become a hostile and paranoid man He confides in only in Franz and the weight of this is unpleasant and intimidating for Franz. But because of his feelings and loyalty to Karl, Franz never questions or objects. He does what is asked of him. At one point, Karl becomes so verbally abusive to his wife and son that the son, also named Franz, confides in Polzer providing another sexually confusing moment:
Polzer pulled him close. He pressed the boy's head to his chest. Franz Fanta's question had touched him For a moment his hand lay on Franz's soft hair. He pulled quickly away struck by indistinct memories of the boy' father, of the work from the assignment book, of tears of distant affection.
"I'm sure you won't get sick," he said.
"It bothers us," said Franz, "me and my mother. Mother thinks you could help us." Polzer held Franz Fanta tight. He felt his thin limbs against his body, felt the way Franz's chest rose and fell as he breathed.
The boy looked at Franz Polzer.
Polzer avoided his eyes. He felt the boy's heartbeat. It was a face he had seen before. Dora was right. Forgotten similarities filled Polzer with consternation and anguish.
Franz Fanta said:
"Do you love me, Polzer?"
Shocked, Polzer let go of the boy.Ungar gives us such a repressed story of homosexuality that it's difficult for the reader to ever think that Franz will find happiness. An infusion of oppression and desperation leads us from page to page, hoping that relief is soon to be found. But each of the characters in this book is truly tragic. Polzer is the ultimate victim--abuse brought on by others and fueled by his own defense mechanisms. But the others are sorrowful victims of their own self-imposed cages grasping for quickest way to feel powerful in hopes of garnering even the smallest moment of happiness. Abuse begets abuse and it was never more true than in this twisted and tragic tale of Franz Polzer.
What adds to this tragedy, are the eerily exquisite drawings by Pavel Rut. It's as if Rut has given us pencil drawings of all the people who are from the same town as the figure in Edvard Munch's The Scream. These illustrations merely enhance the sorrowful aesthetic. Hermann Ungar should be better known than he is and thanks to Twisted Spoon Press for putting this novel back in print. I am for sure going to check out the Ungar's other book, Boys and Murderers.» - Monica Carter

«Franz Polzer works in a bank, noting and filing papers. He speaks to no one, goes from his room to his work, and then back to his room. He eats a simple meal prepared by his landlady, the widow Klara Porges. He then sleeps, gets up and goes to work, arriving at exactly the same time he has for the last seventeen years.
But the widow craves affection, finally gets him to take her for a walk, and then seduces him --- much to his shame. Meanwhile, he meets with his friend Karl Fanta who has turned from being a handsome young man to a cripple who has lost both legs and one arm.
Karl whispers to Franz that his wife Dora is plotting against him, wants to steal his money, has hired on an attendant to kill him and take the inheritance. To get away from his wife, Karl and the attendant, Sonntag, move into Franz's apartment, and everything falls apart.
Well, not really. Like a Kafka novel, everything has been falling apart from the very beginning. Franz Polzer (the word means "weenie") worries about his fellow workers in the bank laughing at him; he worries about the widow stealing sheets of paper from him; he worries about how yellow and hairy she is; he worries about a hole in the knee of his best pair of pants; he worries - as all good neo-schizophrenics must - about worrying.
But with Sonntag and his knife (he used to be a butcher) and Karl his nutty ideas about people wanting to steal from him and kill him - with all these right down the hall, things go from being screwy to being downright scary. Klara Porges gets pregnant, and Karl, lying next to her in bed, thinks,
The child in her belly was breathing, the living child. Soon her belly would be opened and the child would lie before Polzer, naked, with tubular limbs and deep creases in the flesh at the joints, a girl, with a line between her legs...He did not want it, it should never be.
This meditation on his soon-to-be-born daughter leads him into a threnody on ugliness --- a song that is repeated again and again:
She was ugly and everything was a torment, But everything had to be a torment and everything had to be ugly."Everything had to be ugly:" Franz with his "big red hands." Karl with his stumps and suppurating wounds. Sonntag with his blood-stained apron. Frau Klara, with
the swollen belly, her breasts which fell to the side when she lay down, the hairs between them, her fat face, the hands that had grasped all over the bodies of the men.This is an absolutely riveting tale, told with an absolute minimum of detail - filled with quick, impressionistic sketches. With its repeated horrors out of the daily grind of life, it reminds one of the post WWI art of Weimar Germany known as Die neue Sachlichkeit - "the new matter-of-factness," or "the new resignation," possibly even, "the new blah" - with painters like George Grosz, Georg Schotz, Otto Dix, Otto Griebel, and Heinrich Maria Davringhausen.
The Maimed is thus first cousin to Die neue Sachlichkeit. There are no flowers here, no trees, no happy children, no happy people. The characters are trapped in a miserable merry-go-round, desperate for an escape and yet afraid of any escape that is offered to them. One is reminded of Sartre's La Nausée, West's Miss Lonelyhearts, the plays of Eugene O'Neill.
Kafka - a contemporary - is merry and bright compared to Ungar. At times, the world of The Maimed is so drab, so bleak, so miserable, so misogynistic that one wants to lay it aside, especially when the cripple Karl starts in to talking about Klara's body,
Her stomach is ugly, isn't it? Covered with folds of fat? You must be able to see it when she bathes...You say she is not very fit. Her breasts, her fat stomach, slap slap, flabby as boiled pork. Just like that, Polzer, slap slap, the mother sow!But The Maimed works on several levels besides one of naked disgust. There are the tiny details that tear the characters apart (and hold the novel together): the butcher's knife, and the blood-stain on his apron; Polzer's hat that people seem to laugh at; the Saint Christopher painting that hangs over his bed (that falls crashing to the ground); the suit that a stranger buys him; and - again and again - "the white part in Klara's hair." These are themes that bind the story tightly, symbols that come banging together at the very end when Klara Porges' head is found, in the stairwell, wrapped on a dirty cloth, chopped off at the neck.
This is one of two novels written by Hermann Ungar before he died in 1929 at the age of thirty-six. The present edition contains a brief fragmentary final chapter that the author himself rejected when the book was published in 1923. It should not have been included here; in four pages, it undoes much of the ambiguousness that lends such power to this story of cruelty and unrest and anxiety.» - Gunther Krause

What is with these Czechs? It is not just Kafka:they all seem to be obsessed with the idea of forces acting against them, forces of motiveless malevolence. Franz Polzer is that quintessentially 1920s creation, the tormented bank clerk. His outer life is pristine, his inner one deeply unhygienic:fears of disorder plague him and when his landlady, Frau Polger, begins to make unmistakably sexual advances to him, his mind buckles into a state of helpless paranoia.Nor is that all:his best friend,Karl Fanta, is dying slowly of a hideous wasting disease which unsettles his reason.Everyone is drowning in a desperate search for security.The destinies of Franz, his landlady, Karl and a mysterious male nurse converge in a denouement of madness and murder.
Somewhere Polzer knows that whatever it is, it's not his fault, but he can never find the words:the text seems to hint that a sense of guilt is preferable to bewilderment.Polzer himself is a profoundly poignant figure: one of the novel's most moving moments has Frau Polger throw out the picture of St Francis which Polzer had always treasured:'It's just that he was always on the wall above my bed'. - Murrough O'Brien in The Independent on Sunday

This sobering account of one man's descent from irrational paranoia to self destruction is at once repulsive and captivating, and well worth a read if you can handle it. - Buzz Magazine

Polzer's life is entirely stifling and governed by fear.The grim matter-of-fact style entrenches the irony as his life cascades into the abysss. - Martin Tierney in The Glasgow Herald

First English translation of a bleak 1928 novel by a forgotten Czech member of the generation of Doblin, Brecht and Werfel. It's a closely concentrated analysis of the frail psyche of obscure bank clerk Franz Polzer, a timid paranoid whose obsessive pursuit of order and control lead ironically to helpless explosions of irrationality and violence, and to his eventual undoing. Ungar's understated prose (perfectly captured by veteran translator Mitchell ) trains a cold clinical eye on the processes through which Polzer - in effect, a country mouse adrift in a wicked city-is seduced by his promiscuous landlady and misled by his satanic 'best friend,' a moribund, wheelchair-bound misanthrope, thus set on a path toward self-destruction. Unusual and unsettling: what a film it would make. - Kirkus Reviews

It is a mystery why Hermann Ungar's remarkable novel The Maimed has taken seventy years to finds an English translation.A French version was published in 1928, five years after the German original, and Ungar's works were admired by many, including Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig, who described the book as 'Great and terrible, alluring and repulsive - unforgettable, although one would like to forget it and flee the evil sense of oppression it creates.' Ungar, a German-speaking Czech Jew, born in Moravia was often spoken of in the same breath as Kafka.
Despite its grimness, there is also a darkly comic element throughout the book. Ungar's economy of style maintains tension and pace, while the lack of writerly description increases the drama. The writing has a crisp modern edge which the translator Mike Mitchell renders into convincing and natural English. - Will Stone in The Times Literary Supplement

Excerpt:
The widow was pale and thin when Polzer moved into her house as her lodger
after Karl Fanta had left for the south. The mourning dress hung loosely
about her body. It was in the first months after her husband's death. Her
skin was yellowish, like old paper. Only later did her figure fill out, her
hips broaden.
She was called Klara Porges. Afterwards it seemed to Polzer as if her name
had been the cause of everything. From the very first the name had annoyed
him. The combination appeared both incredibly ridiculous and irritating at
the same time.
Polzer lived alone with Frau Porges. One of the rooms was empty. The chairs
in that room were draped in linen dust-covers. Frau Porges had to do all the
housework herself, for there was no maid. But Polzer cleaned his own shoes.
The widow wanted to take on that chore as well, but he would not let her. He
had always attached great importance to polishing his shoes himself and he
had never come across anyone whose shoes shone like his. To a brief glance
they looked like patent-leather shoes. At home he had had to polish his
father's and his aunt's shoes, but he had not taken great pains with them.
He devoted half an hour every morning to cleaning his shoes. He used several
brushes and cloths of varying fineness one after the other. Frau Porges
expressed the opinion that it was a task unsuited to a man. Polzer, however,
knew how pleasant, how refreshing it was to go out in the morning with
properly polished shoes on your feet. He pointed out that there was nothing
unmanly at all about this occupation, reminding Frau Porges that everywhere
where they had manservants, in hotels or rich people's houses for example,
the task was performed by men.
From the very first the widow surrounded him with care and attention. He let
her deal with everything he found disturbing. That was above all any
out-of-the-ordinary events that might occur. The least departure from
routine filled him with anxiety and consternation. The knowledge that on one
of the next days he would have to go into a shop to buy something made him
uneasy. Immediately he felt as if he had no time for anything else, as if he
had no room for anything else in his whole life. His thoughts constantly
revolved round it, the fear of forgetting tormented him. He worked out the
amount of time necessary and prepared what he would say. Things might crop
up that could not be foreseen. In particular, the price demanded might be
greater than the sum he had with him. Payments, such as the rent, which were
due on specific days, kept him awake for weeks beforehand. He would spend
the nights counting the money. During the day, when his mind was on other
things, or at night while he was asleep, he would suddenly start at the
realisation that at that particular moment he had forgotten about it, and he
reproached himself for being able to forget something he should not. But
Frau Porges was prepared to take his salary at the beginning of every month
and see to everything herself. She gave Polzer a few crowns each week to pay
for his lunch at the office and his tram ticket. Now she even purchased new
articles of clothing for him, so that he did not have to go into the shop,
or even know anything about it.
This all happened despite the fact that Polzer's attitude to Frau Porges
remained distant. He was alarmed by the tender, motherly looks in which she
tried to ensnare him. There was something uncomfortable about them, a desire
to come closer, a closeness. Polzer did not see her very much, only when she
brought his breakfast in the mornings and his supper in the evenings. He
avoided her eyes and refused to get into conversation with her. He lived in
the next room to the widow, he could hear her breathing at night, could hear
her bed creak when she turned over in her sleep. But in all the years, he
had never been together with her in the same room for more than a few
minutes.
From the very first, the presence of Frau Porges had filled him with
disquiet. Her hair gave off a smell that reminded him vaguely of soap. She
had a parting down the middle, like his aunt. On top of that, whenever he
saw her, he didn't know why, but an image of her naked body immediately
appeared unbidden in his mind. It filled him with a deep sense of shame and
disgust. It was the image of an indefinite, black body. This image became
more and more obsessive, the more her figure filled out.
Since the earliest days of his youth such images had filled him with
revulsion. In the years before he took the room with Frau Porges, Polzer
would not have gone with women if Karl, who did not understand his
revulsion, had not taken him and forced him to have intercourse with them.
Polzer often threw up after he left the brothel where Karl had taken him.
Even as a boy the sight of women had filled him with alarm. He avoided Milka
because he could sense, beneath the loose blouse which drew his eye, the
constantly changing shape of her round breasts. He did not dare look at
Milka's breasts. When Karl told him that the older lads used to go to the
woods to meet Milka, he avoided touching Milka's hands when he was alone in
the shop and had to take a coin from her. Milka's hands filled him with
horror. Milka must have noticed that he kept out of her way and she often
tried to grab him and pull him to her. Once she came across him on the dark
staircase. He pressed himself against the wall in an alcove where the
Saviour hung on a wooden cross. She came up to him and laughed, she could
see that he was afraid. Her hands grasped him. He did not move. She fumbled
with his buttons. He trembled. She took hold of his penis. Milka laughed
when his sperm came and gave him a shove that sent him staggering.
When the shadow of his aunt had appeared in the light of the open doorway,
Franz Polzer already knew how terrible a woman's nakedness was. At the
shadow of his aunt, as at the sight of Frau Porges, he was tormented by the
terrible thought that this naked body was not closed up. That a ghastly slit
yawned on bottomless depths. Like flesh cut open, like the folds of skin
along a gaping wound. He refused to look at the pictures and statues of
naked women in art galleries. He did not want ever to touch the body of a
naked woman. It seemed to him there must be uncleanness there and a
disgusting smell. He only saw Frau Porges during the day, in her clothes. In
spite of that, he was tormented by the image of her fat, naked body.
When Frau Porges came into his room, Polzer kept his eyes on the newspaper
and avoided looking at her. Despite that, he noticed how her figure became
more rounded year by year. Sometimes he could feel her eyes on him. At such
moments he did not dare move. He never understood how it had come to that
first conversation between them. He had thought she scarcely paid any
attention to him either. It happened one evening when she brought him his
supper. Everything started with that evening. (Translator: Mike Mitchell )

Hermann Ungar, Boys & Murderers, Trans. by Isabel F. Cole (Twisted Spoon Press, 2006)

read it at scribd

«Boys & Murderers is the first complete collection of novellas and stories in English from Hermann Ungar, author of the highly-acclaimed novel The Maimed. A writer of unique talent whose life was prematurely ended by illness, he was much admired by Thomas Mann, who prefaces this volume, and known as the "Moravian Dostoevsky" for his analysis of the human psyche. In fiction that is often grotesque and comical, Ungar explores the depravities of the heart and delusions of the mind. Taking Prague as well as his hometown of Boskovice for his settings, he can be located in that illustrious tradition of both Prague German writers (he was associated with Max Brod in the Prague Circle) and Jewish writers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, such as Joseph Roth.
Forgotten for decades, Ungar's work has experienced a renaissance over the past years with translations appearing in a number of languages and new editions appearing in German, which has allowed him to take his place among the greats of 20th-century European literature.»

«In the two novellas Boys & Murderers Ungar demonstrates an almost disconcerting mastery. Here, in utterly sharp, utterly clear, almost violently naked language, the author relates two fates with an intensity equaled by few of today's luminaries. Unyielding, steely as a screw, a cruel psychology bores its way into people, down to the innermost core of their being: you falter, you shudder to read on, but with the relentless grip of a man on fire he thrusts you inexorably into his narrative will, not releasing you until the final page. I rank this little book among the most powerful to have emerged from Austria or Germany in recent years. From now on the greatest hopes, the highest expectations, will be pinned to this new name.» — Stefan Zweig

«As with his notorious first novel, the stories in Boys & Murderers plumb the depths of desperation and depravity, suggesting both Robert Walser's sense of the abject and Franz Kafka's brutal irony.» — Rain Taxi

«Ungar's use of language in this remarkable translation paints the reader a portrait of the grim realities of the lives of those who often pass us by in the streets as invisible, tortured beings. This collection represents the work of a man whose literary talent has remained unknown to most of the world until now. It is a spectacular example of literature that had its own limited time on Earth, the German-Jewish literature of the Czech lands.» — Slavic and East European Journal

«Kafka is often suggested as a reference point to Ungar's work, but that is not right: the crazed Old Testament morality to some of the writing reminds one more of Flannery O'Connor. Ungar is convinced of our fated lives. We struggle to maintain order and propriety but, for his characters, the struggle is inevitably doomed.» — Mark Thwaite

«The perpetual humiliation machine in Ungar's fiction never winds down; it blocks both pleasure and resolution, ratcheting ever further into horror... In [the] minor arena of sexual horror, Ungar is unsurpassable.» — Diana George

«Its title less Freudian than factual, a bald statement of theme, Boys & Murderers is obsessional literature, harrowing and pitiless. In its first story, "A Man and a Maid," a boy leaves his orphanage for America, where he endeavors to make a fortune, only to return to his Moravian town (based on Ungar's native Boskovice) to enslave the orphanage's charwoman, whose sexuality so preoccupied his childhood. Other stories similarly confront a world in adolescent decay, a modernity beset with the basest desires: Ungar's people are almost invariably nymphomaniacs and killers, soldier-drunkards humored by the occasional barbering hunchback. In these pages, there's little history to parse, and hardly any psychology. Topos matters little; the names may change, but we stay the same — our demons follow us everywhere.» — The Forward

«A masterpiece, with such a wealth of psychological relationships, symbolism, harrowing experience, comedy and misery, bold moral statements and artfully evoked mystery that one has this feeling: this comes from a fullness; here is a talent that musters its forces for deeds that will make a stir... extraordinary artistic courage and inspiration, a vision that has left its mark on me forever.» — Thomas Mann

«For all its psychological horror, Ungar's writing nevertheless unearths certain truths about the human condition that manage to seriously affect the reader's waking dreams. Boys & Murderers is a book for people who dream while they're awake, who aren't afraid to name their most personal fears.» - Think again

Hermann Ungar, The Class, Trans. by Mike Mitchell (Dedalus, 2004)

«Josef Blau is a high school teacher who comes from a poor background, poorer than that of most of his pupils. The insecurity this causes him leads to an obsession with order and discipline. He senses his pupils watching him, waiting for the slightest weakness; the least infringement, he feels, will lead to the complete collapse of his tightly ordered world. The other focus of his obsession is his attractive wife. Despite all the evidence and her assurances, he cannot believe she will be faithful to him. He forces her to shave her hair and wear clothes that are no more than shapeless sacks, yet still cannot conquer his fears. Catastrophe is looming and, once the first breach is made, inevitable. 'We are all schoolchildren', Blau says, 'in one great class.'. »

«The first English translation of Czech author Ungar's extremely interesting second novel, published in 1927, preceding the better-known The Maimed. Josef Blau, schoolteacher, has a full-blown case of paranoia, driven by an unrelenting sense of inferiority from having been born to the working class. Now, he's absolutely certain that his group of 18 high-school boys-all from the very well-off classes-are simply biding their time, waiting for him to make some mistake that will let them get the upper hand and ride rough-shod over him, revealing that his authority over them is baseless, humiliating him utterly. A more strict keeper of order, therefore, you could hardly imagine than Josef Blau, so stiff and formal that Ungar never even mentions him except by his full name: Josef Blau-not even in the scenes in his apartment at home with his pregnant (and very pretty) wife Selma, his mother-in-law, and their frequent visitor Uncle Bobek, gourmand, souse, sponge, nostalgist, braggart. What will happen? On an outing into the countryside, Josef Blau is certain he hears his boys taunt him-especially when he then senses them turning toward Herr Leopold, the handsome, companionable, athletic new instructor. Things only worsen as Josef Blue runs into money trouble, thinks Herr Leopold is wooing Selma, and believes that the richest boy in his class has a secret that he's about to use to humiliate his instructor. Josef Blau's childhood friend, the very strange and bitterly class-conscious Modlizki, suggests a plan to turn the tables and get something to blackmail the boy in return-by spying on him in the red light district. But there's a snag, and the plan brings results more horrifying thanever intended or imagined, and the question becomes one of whether Josef Blau can survive at all. Like a glimpse three-quarters of a century back into a world that has wholly vanished: formal, constrained, class-ridden, quintessentially European. Fascinating.» - Kirkus Reviews

A contemporary of Franz Kafka, Ungar was similarly a German-speaking Jew living and writing in the former Czechoslovakia. Like Kafka, Ungar suffered an untimely death. Although highly regarded in his day, Ungar's reputation diminished over the years as that of Kafka's grew. Thankfully, Dedalus have unearthed another treasure in their wonderful series of European classics, giving readers a chance to acquaint themselves with this hitherto unfairly neglected writer.
The Class is a nightmarish depiction of a man on the brink of mental collapse. Feverishly intense yet written in a prose of extreme care and precision, the work it most resembles is Dostoesky's Notes From the Underground, presenting the reader as it does with a world vision distorted by the central character's overwhelming sense of isolation and self-persecution. Ungar wrestles with matters metaphysical, but underscores everything with a fine line in dark humour, which spares this from being as cheerless as it is probably sounds. At times an uncomfortable read, but a very rewarding one for those in the mood. - Michael Harcourt in The Leeds Guide

Two new editions of Ungar's novels are being published, as part of Dedalus's aim to rescue major works of literature from being out of print. Although The Class was written in 1927, its themes remain timeless: the struggle of a teacher to regain power over his unruly class and the personal trauma involved in keeping a dying marriage alive. Joseph Blau does not have a good life. His pupils are out of control, his enigmatic wife, Selma, is too attractive to other men, and his mother-in-law, Mathilda, is a loud, coarse embarrassment who lives in his house.
The Class has dark undertones, as Blau's struggles to overcome his insecurities and to remain ordered and in control, propels him towards catastrophe. Ungar portrays obsession, poverty and deceit with a wonderfully grotesque attention to detail: the character of Uncle Bobek does not just eat, he wipes the fat off his moustache with the fleshy back of his hand, and washes the half-chewed hunks of flesh down with gulps of wine.
Joseph Blau's exaggerated sense of guilt ultimately leads to his downfall in this well-translated novel. - Vanessa Curtis in The Herald

By the time his second novel The Class was published in 1927, Hermann Ungar was considered one of the most formidable writers of his generation, a provocative figure in an extraordinarily fecund period of German literature. Ungar was born in 1893 into an affluent Jewish family in the small Morovian town of Boskovice. His writing career commenced in 1920 and his short stories soon attracted the attention of Thomas Mann. Before long it was not uncommon for Ungar to be spoken of in the same breath as Kafka. After the publication of The Class, Ungar increasingly suffered from failing health, and after an aborted trip to Palestine, suffered an acute appendicitis and died in October 1929, aged only 36.
The Class concerns the fate of schoolmaster Joseph Blau, who comes from a poor background but teaches the sons of the wealthier citizens. His insecurity in the presence of the smartly attired, well nourished pupils is extreme, a hysterical manifestation of his own lack of self esteem. Blau believes he is being hunted down like a wild animal by the pupils. But instead of savagery, it is the silent mockery and secret disobedience which aggravate the tension and cause Blau to become ensnared in extravagant delusions.
Blau's overriding fear is that fate is governed by the slightest act, word or random event, that our destiny is linked to the seemingly innocuous utterances of others, that we are all horribly bound to one and another. To counter this, Blau enforces a monotonous regime of strict discipline, to subdue the pupils who he knows will one day erupt and overwhelm him. Naturally his behaviour only alienates the pupils even more and allows them to be easily marshalled against him under their leader Karpel. Central to the ensuing drama is the servant Modlizki, a rebellious and destructive Mephistophelean figure. This novel bristles with angst, and Ungar's revulsion at the monstrosity of human entanglements is only partially tempered in the final pages with a suggestion of the redemptive power of forgiveness and love. The Class will not easily let go of its reader. - Will Stone in The Independent on Sunday

Chapter One
He knew the boys were watching his every move; the slightest chink in his armour could expose him to disaster. In that year he was faced with eighteen boys. They sat in front of him at their desks, two by two, and looked at him. He knew disaster would come. He had to resign himself to appearing to be cruel. He knew that he was not. He was fighting for his livelihood, he fought for every day of reprieve. His severity was one element in a system designed to put off the end. He had to gain time. Any day might prove to be his salvation, for on that very day he had gained he, the teacher Josef Blau, might perhaps, by summoning up all his strength, be able to obtain a mitigation of what he had brought down on himself.
He fought with all the means at his disposal to maintain discipline. Once it was relaxed, everything was lost. Once the first stone was loosened, the whole building would collapse. He knew he would be buried beneath the debris. There were examples he had heard of from which he had learnt that leniency and indulgence were not the way to keep boys in check. That had led to the downfall of other teachers. Goodness and compassion, so people said, were characteristics of the human race; if that was so, then fourteen-year-old boys did not belong to the human race. They were cruel at heart. He knew that once the restraint of discipline had gone, everything would be in vain, whether the reminder of the threat to the teacher’s position or a plea for mercy. There would be no respite once they sensed, even for a moment, that their mocking laughter would pursue him when he was forced to flee, humiliated, head bowed, deprived of his livelihood.
The school was in a district of the town where the well-to-do part of the population lived. He himself came from a poor family. The boys were well-fed and well-dressed. He was aware of the freedom of movement and self-confidence a well-to-do background gave a person, if they enjoyed it from birth, and that it could not be replaced by education, not even by the acquisition of culture and wisdom. He was afraid this was where the first chinks in his armour might appear. He could feel the boys’ eyes scrutinising his movements and his clothes.
He stood facing the class, unmoving, his back against the wall. His eye held them, individually and as a whole. He knew that he must not miss the least flicker of a smile, however secretive, on one of the faces turned towards him. It could be a smile of arrogance and the beginning of the revolt. If he saw it in time, he could extinguish it with a look. He could also find some excuse to punish it. The most important thing was to keep concentrating for every moment of the lesson on the goal of not letting discipline slacken under any circumstances. That was why Blau avoided the habit other teachers had of walking up and down the classroom. It broke the tension, transformed motionlessness into motion, it was a release and released forces he could not control. It blurred the boundary between authority and the uniform block of those subject to it, the system was not rigid any more, movement made it flexible. The two weights could not shift spatially without endangering the balance. He knew that at his very first step the whole class would let out its breath, their taut bodies would relax. In addition to that, his own fixed position offered less chance of exposing his movements to the boys’ scrutiny than would be the case if he were walking up and down. Despite the danger of another pupil whispering the answer, he made the boys answer from their desks instead of making them come up to the blackboard, as was usual. That change, as with movement on his own part, would have created a new, disruptive grouping. The bipartite order would have become tripartite and the straight line of sight from them to him and from him to them would have been diverted by the third point, the third weight.
The classroom door was level with the first row of desks, facing the wall with the windows. The windows looked out onto the playground. Three paces from the desks, in front of the wall to which the blackboard was fixed, was the dais with Josef Blau’s desk. His desk was positioned at the edge of the dais closest to the windows. If Josef Blau, like other teachers, had gone across the room, through the narrow passageway between the podium and the boys’ desks, to hang his hat on the coat-stand intended for the teacher in the corner between his desk and the wall, he would have had his back to the eyes of some of the boys all the time. He avoided this by going straight from the door up onto the dais and across it to his seat. In doing so, he described a semi-circle, not only in his forward movement, but at the same time on his own axis, so that he did not have to let the boys out of his sight. He signed the class register, then positioned himself by the first window in such a way that the wall shielded his back from being seen from outside. He stayed there, facing the boys, until the end of the lesson. He left the room in the same manner in which he had entered it.
His clothes as well as his movements could give the boys just as much cause for mockery, if not more so. Nothing, Josef Blau felt, was more suspicious to well-to-do people than poverty. Even their compassion had an element of arrogance. He knew that good clothes were essential for him, even if it meant he had to make sacrifices to acquire them. At the beginning of each school year he had a new suit made. But despite the most painstaking care lavished on every article of clothing, he was aware — and ashamed — of how poorly dressed he was the moment he entered the classroom. He was so disturbed by the fear that the material on the seat of his trousers or his elbows might be shiny that he pulled his sleeves in towards his body a little and kept his arms pressed against his sides during the whole of the lesson.
Almost without exception the boys were dressed in blue sailor suits with wide open necks plunging to a point above their stomachs. The open neck revealed part of the chest and the white, hairless skin of their bodies. They wore tight-fitting trousers, which sometimes stopped well above the knee, and short socks, exposing even more flesh.
The way the boys were dressed filled Blau with revulsion. He felt it as a rejection of him, of his whole existence, it seemed to be directed against him, to be intended as a challenge to him. He was small and skinny. Since he found anything which flapped loose disturbing, and also from a sense of order, he wore his coat tightly buttoned up. His had thin legs, and he even concealed the skin of his neck with a high, starched collar. When awake he was visited by visions, as embarrassing as they were tormenting, of himself in a sailor suit being discovered by the boys, who mocked and shamed him, not least because of his hairy chest, till he wanted to crawl away and die.
In the boys’ eyes he saw the lustful desire to cross the barrier and come close to him. Since, as long as he did not lose hold of the reins, that was impossible by force, they tried it with cunning. They followed him in the street. In the long run it was impossible, whatever precautions he took, to prevent them from seeing Selma. They must know of her existence, and whilst they were looking at him, their teacher, with the taut expression of obedient attention, their minds might be indulging in lascivious thoughts about his marriage. They might be stripping him of the cover of his clothes, down to his gaunt flesh, and imagining him with Selma in those situations which brought him down to the level of a dog in the street. Once they knew Selma, once one of them had seen her in her close-fitting clothes which revealed her full, rounded shape, then these imaginings would have real flesh to feed on. They must not be allowed to see Selma. Like the commander of a besieged fortress, he must make the land all around, even fertile land, into a desert, using any means to render the enemy’s approach as difficult as possible.
There must be no other relationship between him and the boys than the professional one. The professional relationship had its norms, its fixed procedures. Once he had abandoned the ground on which these norms operated, a return was impossible. The impersonal relationship, independent of the individuals behind the roles of teacher and pupil, would have been replaced by a personal, individual one, and that for good. He had to be ruthless when the boys occasionally tried to entangle him, like a fish in the meshes of a net, in a private conversation. When they approached him, as he stood leaning against the wall in a corner of the long corridor during the break between lessons, he would turn them away with harsh words. He was not unaware of the articles people he had known as a student had published on the relationship between pupils and teachers. But there was no choice. The boys possessed the arrogance of the well-fed, the self-assurance of the well-dressed, their laughter would have destroyed him if they had been able to grasp the weakness they suspected within him.
There was one among them who did not wear a sailor suit. His name was Bohrer, Johann Bohrer. His father was a clerk in a lawyer’s office. Bohrer wore a brown jacket and long trousers. His sleeves had shiny patches at the elbows. His hands were not white like the other boys’, they were red, as if swollen by frost. Josef Blau avoided looking at this boy or addressing a question to him. He felt that Bohrer might suddenly get up from his seat, go up to Josef Blau, his teacher, and pat him familiarly on the shoulder, to roars of laughter from the rest of the class. He was afraid of the possibility that the boys might compare him, their teacher, with Bohrer, with whom they shared the food they brought for the break because they felt sorry for him. No one could understand his fear as well as Bohrer. Although he suspected what the answer would be, there was something stronger than him, something that brought him to the edge of the abyss, that made him ask Bohrer what he wanted to be when he left school. Bohrer did not raise his eyes as he replied in a low voice, as if he understood the shame it would bring Blau, that he wanted to be a teacher. For a moment Blau lost his composure. He felt for the wall behind him. He closed his eyes. But already a rustle of movement had arisen in the class and reached his ear. Was this the end? Did the boys now realise there was hardly any profession open to a clerk’s son who attended a high school than that of teacher? That Josef Blau’s profession was a profession for poor people? Would they see them together from now on, Josef Blau and Johann Bohrer with his hands swollen by frost? Would the shame remain with him for good?
He pulled himself together, his eye turned the restlessness back into rigidity. He realised he would have to resort to harsher measures in order to give his authority a firmer foundation. He thought of the means available to teachers of earlier generations, when they still had corporal punishment. They could have the punishment on one boy carried out by another, thus at the same time creating disunity among the boys, playing one off against the other, just as fate, to whom all humans are subject, plays one person off against another. Corporal punishment was more than other kinds of disciplinary action such as official reprimands, bad marks, detention or lines. They were punishments that did not hurt, that the boys’ arrogance could dismiss with a smile. Corporal punishment would have made the pupils’ physical subjection to the power of the teacher visibly apparent. Blau respected the principles that had led to the abolition of such punishments. He would nonetheless have employed them, had they been permitted, because the boys too would surely have used such means to destroy him. He would not have hesitated, since it was a matter of his livelihood. He had to suppress fits of leniency if he did not want to give up the fight for lost from the very outset. Josef Blau knew that the final catastrophe was inevitable but he fought for every hour of reprieve. He did not know where the horror would start. Danger loomed on many sides, in the world of the school and in the other world, which was not part of the school. Contact between these two worlds would have increased the danger, accelerated the catastrophe. He was aware he was grasping at straws in fighting against his fate. But straws were all there was to use against the law that was against him in all its cruel harshness.
He left the classroom with eighteen exercise books covered in blue paper under his arm. He heard the babble of voices that arose the moment the door closed behind him. Josef Blau could not see the boys any more, but he knew they had got up from their seats and were crowding round the desk where Karpel sat. At fifteen, Karpel was the oldest. Blau sensed that the enmity of the pupils towards him united and multiplied in Karpel. If the end were to come, and if it started here and not at home, the initial impulse would come from Karpel. Karpel’s face had lost the smooth, womanly look the other boys’ faces still had. It was pale and narrow, the nose was prominent and there were blue shadows under his eyes. The woolly black hairs sprouting from his cheeks made them seem grubby. The idea that this pupil’s body also already had male hair was disturbing, especially since Karpel wore the same low-cut suit as his classmates, as disturbing as the sight of a man dressed as a woman would be for a prudish person, since they would be afraid a part of the body with male hair might be exposed without warning.
Josef Blau felt the arrogance of this boy, who despised him, even if he had not yet expressed his contempt out loud. He was surely gathering his strength and his hatred of his teacher in order to let it break out when the time had come for him to give the others the sign to fall on their prey. The pupil had nothing to lose. If he was expelled from the school his rich father would find something else for him. But the teacher was armed. It was not going to be made easy for them under his gaze, which he never took off them, under his eye, which held and saw through them. Karpel lowered his head when Blau’s gaze met his. He hid his fingers under his desk when the teacher’s eye rested on him. Why did he not leave his hands, with their carefully manicured nails, lying there? What could the reason be for hiding them from the teacher’s view if not because he knew that Blau’s nails were not manicured, that the sight of his hands shamed the teacher and that the time to shame Blau had not yet come?
Josef Blau quickened his step. Already he could hear the noise of the boys approaching on the stairs above him. He went out into the street and stepped into the first entrance he came to. He wanted to let the boys pass him. Now they were coming out of the building. They did not see him, standing there in the dark archway. But he could see them, jumping down the steps from the school gate into the street, flexing and stretching their bodies. They swung their books fastened with a strap. They were standing opposite him, Karpel in the middle. Karpel said something and Blau, in the entrance on the other side of the street, heard the voices joined in laughter. Karpel stood there, his hands casually in his pockets, his books stuck carelessly under his left arm. That boy was experienced already. He had experienced forbidden lusts. Perhaps a woman even. Blau was ashamed of his pupil’s experience. Karpel was not ashamed. Karpel took a piece of paper out of his pocket. It went from hand to hand. The boys laughed. Without doubt it was an obscene drawing Karpel was showing them. Perhaps even one portraying him, Blau, their teacher drawn by the experienced Karpel, in a situation which exposed him to ridicule. Josef Blau could not step out, right in the middle of the boys, and confiscate the picture. He would have been crowded in from all sides. Scorn and arrogance in all of them. He would have been greeted with laughter, since for a moment they would still see him, the subject of the drawing, as Karpel had portrayed him. Out here there was no order to which the boys were subject, no order which kept the place facing the boys ready for him. Out here, among people, buildings, cars, in the noise of the street, he would have been forced to create that order. They were standing, their order was dissolved, they were in motion. Out here their victory over him was easy. He did not intend to let them achieve it like that.

Josef Blau waited. When the boys had gone he stepped out of the dark archway into the street.