The infantile ethics of Heinrich Böll

Shocked, just shocked to hear that Heinrich Böll received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his Group Portrait With A Lady. It is a damn sentimental tale of a love affair between a German girl and a Russian “prisoner” (slave, in fact) during WW2. Consider some of the moral points of the tale (which no doubt occasioned the Nobel Prize).

1. In the book much is made of the fact that the girl did not sleep around. This is a round-about way of saying that her carnal relations with the Russian must have been caused by true love. That is to say, “true love justifies everything”. (At least sin, anyway). OK?

2. The girl’s fundamental goodness is underscored by the fact that she never remarried. (Which is a backhand way of condemning all widows who remarry as somehow less perfect).

3. Much is also made of the woman’s ostracism by the post-war society on the “wrong but understandable” grounds of her having had an affair with the enemy (“slept with a Russian while out boys at the front…, etc.” (Could it be remotely possible that our boys at the front slept with the local girls there?)

4. And of the said postwar society’s essential goodness since in the end a group comes to the widow’s financial aid. (They’re not a bad lot, really, the Germans).

What the novel tells me abut Böll’s (and Germany’s) moral discourse -- conventionally trite -- is depressing. What it tells me about the Nobel committee is damned shameful. They should have given him the prize for his Irish Journey, a fine wrought piece of travel writing free of hackneyed (and questionable) moral points.