Remembering Heinrich Böll and the Achill connection

By Tom Gillespie

THIS Sunday (July 16) marks the 38th anniversary of the death of German novelist Heinrich Böll, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, who visited Achill regularly during the 1950s and '60s.

His travelogue, Irish Journal, describes in loving detail his journey to Achill and his observations on island life.

Born into a liberal Catholic and pacifist family in Cologne in 1917, Heinrich, according to the Mayo Genealogy Group, was drafted into the German army and fought on the Russian and French fronts during World War Two. He was wounded four times before being captured and held in a US prisoner-of-war camp.

Following the war he turned to writing, basing his work on his experiences as a soldier. His first novel was published in 1949 and Heinrich Böll went on to have over 20 books of his work published.

Böll also translated the works of other authors into German, including Irish writers G.B. Shaw and J.M. Synge. It is possible that like Paul Henry and Graham Greene before him, Böll read Synge before travelling to Achill Island. Böll's work has in fact been compared to that of Graham Greene, both of whom are said to have combined an unorthodox Catholic belief with a sense of the absurd in human actions.

In 1972 Heinrich Böll was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in recognition of his humanist literature. An active supporter of writers in repressive regimes, Böll was the first to host author Alexander Solzhenitsyn after he was exiled from Russia in 1974. Heinrich Böll has been described as a literary spokesman for the disadvantaged.

Heinrich Böll first travelled to Achill Island in the early 1950s, crossing the country by train from Dublin to Westport with his family. The details of this visit, along with Böll's acute observations of Irish ways and customs - from tea drinking to priests wearing safety pins to the popularity of ice cream - are recorded in the humorous, moving and wonderfully readable book Irish Journal.

Life on Achill and in Ireland generally in the 1950s provided Heinrich Böll with plenty of material with which to indulge his penchant for the absurd and the incongruous, not least the casual relationship with time.

The German writer, whose first book was titled The Train Was On Time, began his experience of the west of Ireland agreeably enough, observing that his train arrived in Westport right on schedule.

From there on in, however, Böll was quickly introduced to the Irish saying 'When God made time he made plenty of it'. Recounting the time he went to the movies in Keel, this phrase obviously struck a chord with Böll as he observed that regardless of the advertised start time the movie could only begin when all the priests - ‘the local ones as well as the ones on vacation - are assembled in full strength'.

Böll's account of and meditation on the passage of time at the village hall in Keel between the advertised start time of the movie and the arrival of the priests following their post-supper conversation is worth recounting in full:

“The rosy glow from the shells on the walls gives out a feeble light, and in the semi-darkness the atmosphere is as lively as at a fair. Conversations are carried on across four rows of seats, jokes are shouted over eight; up front in the cheap seats the children are making the kind of cheerful racket heard otherwise only in school breaks; chocolates are proffered, cigarette brands exchanged, somewhere out of the dark comes the promising squeak of a cork being pulled out of a whiskey bottle; make-up is renewed, perfume sprayed; somebody starts singing, and for those who do not allow that all these human sounds, movements, and activities are worth the trouble of occupying the passing time, there remains time for meditation; when God made time, He made plenty of it.

“Meditation comes surprisingly easily and is pleasant enough in this fairground of light-hearted gaiety, where bog farmers, peat cutters, and fishermen offer cigarettes to and accept chocolates from seductively smiling ladies who drive around during the day in great cars, where the retired colonel chats with the postman about the merits and demerits of East Indians. Here classless society has become a reality." (Irish Journal, pp54-55)

Achill Island, with its 'classless society' and its casual attitude to time, appealed immensely to Heinrich Böll. He was also attracted to the poetry and humour of the Irish, which he contrasted with the stern and foreboding outlook in his native Germany.

Böll wrote: "When something happens to you in Germany, when you miss a train, break a leg, go bankrupt, we say: 'It couldn't have been any worse; whatever happens is always the worst'. With the Irish it is almost the opposite: if you break a leg, miss a train, go bankrupt, they say: 'It could be worse; instead of a leg you could have broken your neck, instead of a train you could have missed Heaven' ...” (Irish Journal, p109).

In a passage that could just as easily refer to 1980, 1990 or 2000 were it not for the closure of many rural railway stations, Heinrich Böll continues: “These farewells at Irish railway stations, at bus stops in the middle of the bog, when tears blend with raindrops and the Atlantic wind is blowing; Grandfather stands there too, he knows the canyons of Manhattan, he knows the New York waterfront, for 30 years he has been through the mill, and he quickly stuffs another pound note into the boy's pocket, the boy with the cropped hair, the runny nose, the boy who is being wept over as Jacob wept over Joseph; the bus driver cautiously sounds his horn, very cautiously - he has driven hundreds, perhaps thousands, of boys whom he has seen grow up to the station, and he knows the train does not wait and that a farewell that is over and done with is easier to bear than one which is still to come. He waves, the journey into the lonely countryside begins, the little white house in the bog, tears mixed with mucus, past the store, past the pub where Father used to drink his pint of an evening; past the school, the church, a sign of the cross, the bus driver makes one too - the bus stops; more tears, more farewells ...” (Irish Journal, p95)

Heinrich Böll's legacy to Achill Island is evident most prominently in two places: his cottage in Dugort which, thanks to his family, the Böll Stiftung in Cologne, and Mayo County Council, is now an artists residence, providing a short-term retreat for writers, poets and artists from Ireland, Germany and around the world. And Heinrich Böll's son, Rene, an artist, works and exhibits regularly on Achill Island.