Word: au
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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BOLL did not produce this Au. as a satire. Obsession with fact and quantification is a German neurosis, he indicates, and the image of Nazi Germany that this methodology produces is neither dry nor statistical. It is spirited and ironic, yielding intense descriptions of the Pain and occasional Beatitude of a collection of domestic victims of the war--of their collective Suffering. The Au.'s doggedness is of the same guilt-ridden stripe as the repetitive and brutal naturalism of Gunter Grass: that, if it is too simple to condemn Nazi Germany with bombastic self-righteousness, maybe we will...
...narrator of Group Portrait admitted that he was a persona from the beginning, stated plainly that he was "the Au." and not some imperious ego-less reporter. The Au. said candidly that he was too fond of Leni; while the poor, nameless narrator in The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum repressed all affection for his heroine, denied his own "psyche" until he broke with exasperation at the way his story had eluded his control on page 98 ("Too much is happening in this story"). One would rather trust the unashamed lust of the Au. for his main character which finally...
There is, still, a dogmatism here: Boll's assumption that such persistent reporting will in a minute and factual way produce the truth. The gross destruction of the World War is enough, perhaps, to confirm as corollary the Au.'s more subtle conclusions that this war machine also injured, with the grindings of its internal gears, a sensitive and beautiful woman. Or maybe also his suggestion, that, because this woman was endowed sensually and spiritually with qualities that transcended the simple realism of, say, another citizen or soldier, she was thus somehow justified in her utter ignorance till early...
...Au. is, admittedly, a sentimental man whose confessed fondness for Leni fuels his excavation of her past and who confesses, in a defensive way late in the narrative, that he is concerned with what Virgil called Lacrymae rerum, or the quantity of suffering/tears that is endemic to life. That is about as generalized as the Au. ever gets about his pursuit. The rest of the time he simply measures and records, indefatigably, such essentials as the number of air-raids over Germany in 1944 during which Leni found time to have intercourse with a secret Russian lover, and the number...
...Au. does not stop with interviews and superficial calculations concerning Leni's whereabouts and occupation. He must quantify much more metaphysical occurences, and for this purpose develops a code near the start of his narrative. Tears, Weeping, Laughing, Beatitude, Pain and Suffering are all human intangibles that he knows he must reckon into his Factual account if he would emerge with a judgement. And so T., W., L., B., P., and S. are all defined briefly but methodically, and suubsequently designated by their initials, as useful coordinates for plotting the lacrymae rerum of any one of the clump of characters...