Youth Without God

I had never heard of Horvath before this year, and now this is the second book I've read by him? I'm totally blaming Neversink Library.

So yes, this is another selection from Neversink LIbrary at Melville House Books. I tell you, their website is dangerous. Six of the books I've read this year were published by them, five of which I bought (one was from the library), and I have at least one more on my shelves and at least two on back-order. (I'm afraid if I check on the back-orders, I'll end up buying five more books, so it's best just to wait.)

Okay, so I loved this one. Much more accessible than The Eternal Philistine, this is a dark, dark story, even without the seedy satire. Youth WIthout God reads more like classic morality tales show more from Kafka and Camus. It is all the more impressive for its depiction of the heartlessness of the rising Nazi state when one is reminded that it was written before either Germany's annexation of Austria or its invasion of Poland. It's a place where the cruelty of schoolchildren isn't corrected, but encouraged as long as it is in the direction of the scapegoats of the state. Opinions contrary to official propaganda are suppressed and erased. Individual morality and conscience disappear. So where is there room for God?

It would be easy to read this story as simplistic and shallow, because it is so accessible. But there is a lot going on here just under the surface. Mediations on culpability, conviction and man's capacity for evil. A rewarding, but disturbing read. show less

Falls squarely into the "should have cut the first 50 pages" basket. The first few chapters contain some fine polemic ("someone should invent a weapon that nullifies other weapons"), but the book really gets going once our narrator stops looking outward, and starts looking at himself. Despite the fascism, the anomy, the picture of disgusting youth (still relevant), the murder, and the turpitude of the narrator, this is ultimately a kind of farcical comedy: the narrator confesses to his wrongdoing, and that confession itself leads, after some time, to a kind of justice. As befits a man who fled the Nazis to Paris but was killed by a falling tree limb in 1939, the justice is bloody and discomforting, but justice nonetheless. The narrator show more himself enters a life of penitence, which will make very many contemporary readers very uncomfortable, and not in the silly "art must make us uncomfortable" way--instead, in the "life makes me rather too uncomfortable" way. show less

Ödön von Horváth's 1937 novel Jugend ohne Gott breathes the same atmosphere as William Golding's Lord of the Flies. In both novels a group of children degenerates into a lethal mob, culminating in the killing of one of their comrades. In Lord of the Flies, evil arises from within, as the children find themselves cut loose from civil society on an uninhabited island. In Jugend ohne Gott the children are the product of the increasingly fascist society. At the beginning of the book, the children rebel against their teacher, who is cowed into submission. Distrust and hatred come to a culmination point during a summer camp, and lead to the muder of one of the boys. While the teacher in anxious to conceal his role in the drama, he does show more have the moral strength to tell the truth in the end.

The two novels could be seen as pendants, with Lord of the Flies representing nature, versus Jugend ohne Gott representing nurture. As the parallels with Lord of the Flies, which was published in 1954, show, Jugend ohne Gott is a compelling book which still has a story to tell, sadly once more very apt in our time. show less

Schlichte Sprache, aber gezielt schlicht - denn es hat Melodie. Inhaltlich sehr poetisch; brennender Idealismus, von dem schmelzende Nihilismus tropft - in der Hinsicht erinnert es mich an "Fabian", auch wenn Horváth im Gegensatz zu Kästner ein optimistisches Ende wählt.
Erst durch die Anmerkungen wurde mir völlig klar, wie viele Anspielungen und Bilder zwischen den Zeilen vorhanden sind.
Wirklich großartiges Buch!

I'll always associate one bad memory with this very good book. It was one of the ten we had to read for our oral exams at finals, it was the only one I didn't have time to reread and, of course, it was the one my teacher chose to test me in. Because I had liked it when we read it, I thought I remembered everything. When I didn't know the easy answer to the question, "why did he kill?", it was obvious that I'd miscalculated. It's been 10 years since then and I don't think I'll ever forget why he killed. Because he wanted to see someone die. And just because. That said, it really is a good book.

... ma noto affinità inquietanti tra QUEI giovini e QUESTI ggiovani.

Al igual que hizo Michael Haneke muchos años después en La cinta blanca, Ödön von Horváth narra en Juventud sin Dios los orígenes del nacionalsocialismo. Nos muestra cómo la semilla del mal ya estaba presente en los jóvenes y en su educación. El narrador de Juventud sin Dios es un joven profesor a quien el director del colegio le pide que no corrija a un alumno que afirma que los negros son infrahumanos, y le recuerda, además, que su obligación es «educar para la guerra». Los valores patrióticos se inculcan en una especie de campamento paramilitar en el que se producirá un crimen misterioso. Horváth escribió esta obra en el verano de 1937, exiliado en Henndorf, en las proximidades de Salzburgo, y se publicó ese mismo show more año. La novela alcanzó rápidamente una gran popularidad, incluso en el extranjero. Fue traducida a diez idiomas en los dos años siguientes. Las referencias a la realidad del nazismo son el elemento central en una obra en la que el autor describe una curiosa mezcla de la Alemania nazi con la Austria prefascista. show less