![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
You are in: Entertainment | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![]() |
|
![]() |
Wednesday, 16 October, 2002, 07:11 GMT 08:11 UK
Guenter Grass: The history man
![]() Grass [R] is known by readers and writers across the world
Guenter Grass, who celebrates his 75th birthday on Wednesday, is the best-known living German writer in the world. The pinnacle of international recognition came three years ago when Grass was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. His works include novels, plays, poems, stories, drawings, sculptures, essays and even recipes.
The Tin Drum, published in 1959, chronicles the life of the young boy Oskar Matzerath in Grass's home town of Danzig. Oskar experiences the rise and fall of Nazism there, and the immediate post-war years in Germany. Oskar narrates the story and is a unique observer of events, as he has taken the decision to stop growing. His adult voice in a child's body gives him an unfettered, but also unreliable perspective.
The novel caused an immediate furore in Germany. It was in complete contrast to the sparse, sober literature of the 50s, when many German authors felt they were writing in a language which had been "polluted" by the Nazis. Earthy, erotic Grass has since said the book was motivated by "pleasure, fun, and playfulness", and it certainly bursts with vitality and humour. The language of The Tin Drum is earthy and direct, its subject-matter political and erotic.
But it was too much for some. Grass was branded a pornographer - accusations which only stopped after he took legal action in 1967. Whilst his subsequent work has failed to have the same resonance abroad, in his homeland Grass has been a constant commentator on German affairs past and present, through his fiction, essays and speeches, and also in interviews and talk shows.
But it has not always been an easy relationship. When the SPD lost power to Helmut Kohl in 1982, Grass became a party member. Ten years later, he turned in his party card in protest at the SPD's support for Kohl's policy of tightening the asylum laws.
On many political questions, Grass has been in step with a sizeable number of his compatriots. He has opposed the stationing of American nuclear weapons in Germany; he has spoken out against xenophobia and neo-Nazism; he is sympathetic to green issues and critical of what he sees as unthinking support for technological progress. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 however, he ploughed a relatively lonely furrow. Grass called for a "confederation of two German states", saying that the East could contribute a "non-violent, revolutionary impulse". He warned that a reunified Germany would want to flex its muscles as a major power. Events have so far proved him wrong. Grass's latest novel, Crab Walk, takes him into another controversial area. It deals with the 9,000 German war dead from a refugee ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff, which was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine in January 1945.
It was felt inappropriate, even plain wrong. But Grass now says this taboo was "self-inflicted". "It is our right", he says, because "history cannot be put to one side". Facing up to history was the impulse behind The Tin Drum in 1959 and it is the impulse behind Crab Walk in 2002. It is a sign of the integrity of purpose of Grass's work down the years - whatever the ups-and-downs of its critical reception in Germany.
|
![]() |
See also:
![]()
08 Feb 02 | Europe
01 Oct 99 | Entertainment
21 Jun 02 | Europe
Internet links:
![]() The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites Top Entertainment stories now:
![]() ![]() Links to more Entertainment stories are at the foot of the page.
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Links to more Entertainment stories |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To BBC Sport>> | To BBC Weather>> | To BBC World Service>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © MMIII | News Sources | Privacy |