THE CLOWN

by Alfred Kern ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 7, 1960

Born in Basel at the end of the 19th century to a poor and strife-ridden family, Hans Schmetterling (Butterfly) soon discovers the effectiveness of self-mockery and mimicry as a means of easing and disguising his sensitivity and ugliness. He leaves home to join a circus and is taken under the guiding wing of the wise circus manager, Franz, an elderly and thoughtful man. He eventually becomes the lover of Martha, the owner of the circus and a dynamic and beautiful woman, replaces Franz as her man of affairs, and never escapes her spell. Innately condemned to the role of non-participant but an acute observer of life, Hans is always painfully alone in a time which is a confused period of transition ""in the diversity of the old and the new world"". And Hans, who assumes the classic stance of the clown ""between the sublime and the ridiculous"" also realizes that there is a loneliness in himself which he can never obliterate. In a desperate and half-conscious attempt to overcome the unreality of his existence, he sets fire to the circus and in so doing, shatters the scaffolding of his life. At the end, having witnessed the destruction of the circus, Martha's agonized death and the slow war-death of Europe he acknowledges that he has used hatred ""against that vast indignity"" to hide his own and revolted against the war as against his own fate.. Perhaps too long, but an excellent novel of particular appeal to the introspective and philosophically inclined reader.

Pub Date: Sept. 7, 1960

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1960

Categories: FICTION