Günter Grass (1927 – 2015)

[Marcus1]

Renowned German writer, social critic and Nobel Prize winner has passed away.

9537

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/world/europe/gunter-grass-german-novelist-dies-at-87.html?_r=0

[Pompey Bum]

I remember liking The Tin Drum back in the day. Too bad Grass turned out to have been in the SS, but at least he owned up (eventually). It's an upsetting thought, but the experience probably helped to make the book more powerful--in its own upsetting sort of way.

[lichtrausch]

Too bad Grass turned out to have been in the SS, but at least he owned up (eventually). It's an upsetting thought, but the experience probably helped to make the book more powerful--in its own upsetting sort of way.
I don't think the actual fact that he joined the SS was such a big deal. It's a mistake that most 17 year old boys in his circumstances could have made, and there is no evidence that he took part in any of the SS's atrocities. It only took on real significance by the fact that he kept it secret for so long, while at the same time berating the whole country for decades that it should live up to its Nazi past.

[NikolaiI]

Everything is upsetting to you, isn't it Pompey?

It's certainly complicated, but no reason to be upset - -

If anything is important, and it should cause a change in our behavior - then that is all, a change in behavior.

I haev known since a child that nothing should be 'upsetting' - if something requires action, then act, if it requires change, then change. But if your emotions can be controled by anything outside you, then you give up power to those things. . .



For we get most work done when we are calm, and concentrated, when we are upset or frayed -- then we don't get hardly much of anything at all done. .


Yes, it is a complicated case. Reactive emotions don't help at all, though.

[Pompey Bum]

It only took on real significance by the fact that he kept it secret for so long, while at the same time berating the whole country for decades that it should live up to its Nazi past.

Yeah, oh I agree. It made him look like a hypocrite. But ironically unspoken participation in the Nazi past was what the Tin Drum was all about--or at least it was an underlying presumption. I just wonder if the burden of carrying his own "dirty secret" made him more able--or maybe more unable not to--express what he did as art. Maybe it allowed him to speak to the horror of that silence with more legitimacy. He should have come clean at the time, though. Easy to say now, though.

[NikolaiI]

And how do you personally relate to those to whom you've done wrong, Pompey?

Who offer you the olive branch and say, "Do not worry, be happy, all is well."

And who say "I am not the weak, fearful, cowardly persona you tried to thrust upon me, but I am strong, healthy, and happy, and never asked for you to try to thrust fear, weakness and negativity into my heart?

For if we cannot make - who are so alike in so many ways, except in the one way that matters, that I continually offer peace, and you continually refuse -- how can the rest of the world make peace?

You and I matter - we are writers and creators of the world - and do every single person in the planet matter, equally. Perhaps you don't think so.

Anyway - peace or war starts and ends with us, begins in the heart, and only this way can anything truly lasting and good be done in the world.