I read The Class on the recommendation of Stewart at Booklit and was not disappointed by this complex psychological study of a school teacher.
Ungar was a Czech member of the Prague Circle of modernist German-Jewish writers. I enjoy reading these writers for their glimpses into a highly literary world of coffee-houses and late-night kitchen-table discussions which provoked such radical new directions in writing. You can get a flavour of this world by reading about a literary walking tour of Prague.
Poor Josef Blau seems to be totally lacking in self-confidence and also suffering from paranoia. He is convinced that he has no personal worth and that he only survives as a teacher due to an iron discipline which holds at bay the ravaging hoards of boys in his class. To his tortured mind, the slightest lapse of discipline would result in the collapse of his class and his expulsion from his profession.
To Blau, the boys seems to be a hostile army, constantly watching for opportunities to exploit his weak points and waiting for any opportunity to bring about his downfall. In reality of course, the class are a perfectly normal set of early teenage boys and the novel shows Blau’s complete failure to see them as individuals, such is his terror of what he sees as a disorderly mob.
The same feelings dominate his home-life, and Blau worries that his wife Selma is going to be seduced by a perfectly pleasant and honest fellow-teacher, Herr Leopold. Even though Selma is in the final stages of pregnancy, Blau persists in believing that at any moment she is about to leave him for a new life with Leopold and when the baby is born he is convinced that Selma is about to elope with Leopold who would make a much better father than Blau feels he could ever be.
It would be wrong to give the impression that this book is inward-looking and intense. There are many characters and scenes which provide a strong humorous strand in Ungar’s writing. I enjoyed the scene in which the ludicrous Uncle Bobek flirts with Blau’s elderly mother-in-law while taking part in a hilarious eating and drinking session in Blau’s apartment. At one point Blau leads his class in an outing to the countryside where Blau’s regimented class encounters another class led by Herr Leopold exercising half-naked in the open-air (much to the horror of Blau who cannot understand the relaxed attitude of Leopold who clearly loves his work).
Modlizki is another interesting character, a childhood friend of Blau’s who failed to make much of his life and is now employed as a servant, a role he only fills only by adopting an exagerrated appearance of servility which hides an attitude of total contempt for his employers. At one point Blau points out that he plays table tennis with his employer, to which Modlizki replies, “no, he only employs me to return the ball”.
Blau has a wife who loves him, a new baby son, supportive friends and colleagues and a good job, but everything is turned to dust because he believes that everyone is about to undermine him and desert him. However towards the end of the book, Blau has a sort of epiphany and begins to see through his paranoia. He returns to his friends and relatives with new insight into his life leaving the reader to wonder, “Will it last?”
Although this Hermann Ungar book is published by Dedalus European Classics, the Czech publishers Twisted Spoon publish two of his other books in English translation. For a biography of Herman Ungar see this page on Twisted Spoon’s website.
