What has to be said

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This is going to be a post that really breaks from the tenor of my regular offerings. It sort of has to. See, I normally avoid  religion and politics. It’s just not my thing. I certainly have opinions on these topics, but most of the time I’d rather be writing to a general audience.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned my grandfather and his stance on this. He often said something to the effect of, ‘Only fools and morons talk about religion and politics in polite company.‘ I can’t even begin to imagine what he’d think about this blogging lark. It’d probably take me a while to explain to him exactly what was going on here, and even then I’m not entirely confident that I could convince him.

Oh well.

Here goes:

Günter Grass, who is a Nobel Prize winner in literature, has caused an international incident by writing a poem that’s appeared in several major European newspapers. What could possibly be the subject  that’s caused all this controversy? Well, Israel of course.

I don’t know if you know one of the unwritten rules of international politics, but quite simply Germans don’t publicly criticise Israel. It’s just not done. There’s this little matter of the Holocaust, which for obvious reasons makes any relations between modern Israel and Germany rife with tension. Actually, the German government deals with this by publicly supporting Israel on nearly everything.

You could look at an incident such as this public poem as Germany really growing out of its postwar paralysis, when it comes to the world stage – that same way many people including me saw it when Joschka Fischer confronted Donald Rumsfeld  and insisted that he wasn’t convinced by the evidence leading to the  invasion of Iraq. I assure you that it’s not the way the Israeli government (or many of its citizens) sees Günter Grass and his outspoken opinions.  This German intellectual‘s position is not welcomed and his reputation is purportedly tarnished.

Here, the writer is quoted by Der Spiegel (an influential German news magazine):

The overall tenor is to not engage in the content of the poem, but instead to wage a campaign against me and to claim that my reputation is damaged forever,’ Grass said in an interview with a German public broadcaster on Thursday.

So without further ado, here’s the poem in the original German:

Was gesagt werden muss
Von Günter Grass

Warum schweige ich, verschweige zu lange, was offensichtlich ist und in Planspielen geübt wurde, an deren Ende als Überlebende wir allenfalls Fußnoten sind.

Es ist das behauptete Recht auf den Erstschlag, der das von einem Maulhelden unterjochte und zum organisierten Jubel gelenkte iranische Volk auslöschen könnte, weil in dessen Machtbereich der Bau einer Atombombe vermutet wird.

Doch warum untersage ich mir, jenes andere Land beim Namen zu nennen, in dem seit Jahren – wenn auch geheimgehalten – ein wachsend nukleares Potential verfügbar aber außer Kontrolle, weil keiner Prüfung zugänglich ist?

Das allgemeine Verschweigen dieses Tatbestandes, dem sich mein Schweigen untergeordnet hat, empfinde ich als belastende Lüge und Zwang, der Strafe in Aussicht stellt, sobald er mißachtet wird; das Verdikt “Antisemitismus” ist geläufig.

Jetzt aber, weil aus meinem Land, das von ureigenen Verbrechen, die ohne Vergleich sind, Mal um Mal eingeholt und zur Rede gestellt wird, wiederum und rein geschäftsmäßig, wenn auch mit flinker Lippe als Wiedergutmachung deklariert, ein weiteres U-Boot nach Israel geliefert werden soll, dessen Spezialität darin besteht, allesvernichtende Sprengköpfe dorthin lenken zu können, wo die Existenz einer einzigen Atombombe unbewiesen ist, doch als Befürchtung von Beweiskraft sein will, sage ich, was gesagt werden muß.

Warum aber schwieg ich bislang? Weil ich meinte, meine Herkunft, die von nie zu tilgendem Makel behaftet ist, verbiete, diese Tatsache als ausgesprochene Wahrheit dem Land Israel, dem ich verbunden bin und bleiben will, zuzumuten.

Warum sage ich jetzt erst, gealtert und mit letzter Tinte: Die Atommacht Israel gefährdet den ohnehin brüchigen Weltfrieden? Weil gesagt werden muß, was schon morgen zu spät sein könnte; auch weil wir – als Deutsche belastet genug – Zulieferer eines Verbrechens werden könnten, das voraussehbar ist, weshalb unsere Mitschuld durch keine der üblichen Ausreden zu tilgen wäre.

Und zugegeben: ich schweige nicht mehr, weil ich der Heuchelei des Westens überdrüssig bin; zudem ist zu hoffen, es mögen sich viele vom Schweigen befreien, den Verursacher der erkennbaren Gefahr zum Verzicht auf Gewalt auffordern und gleichfalls darauf bestehen, daß eine unbehinderte und permanente Kontrolle des israelischen atomaren Potentials und der iranischen Atomanlagen durch eine internationale Instanz von den Regierungen beider Länder zugelassen wird.

Nur so ist allen, den Israelis und Palästinensern, mehr noch, allen Menschen, die in dieser vom Wahn okkupierten Region dicht bei dicht verfeindet leben und letztlich auch uns zu helfen.’

Here’s The New York Times‘ response to all of it:

Günter Grass’s Poem About Israel Provokes Intense Criticism

And the article in the International version of Der Spiegel:

Nobel Laureate Under Fire: Grass Says Campaign Against Him ‘Injurious’

I could spend my time translating the poem, but instead I’ll update this when a decent English version is released. Instead, I’ll just say that I’m very conflicted on all of this. Generally, I’m very sympathetic to Israel. I have a lot of Jewish friends, and I cannot begin to fathom what it’s like to live in a country where all of your neighbours want your nation destroyed.

Anyone who says this issue is black and white is either lying to themselves or to you. Or even more probably, they’re lying to both.

Someone who understands rhetoric knows that it’s more effective to show both sides with equal respect. I’ve said  nice things about Jewish people and Israel’s predicament, and now you’re waiting for me to offer you the other side. Well before I do that, I just want to say that those aren’t empty thoughts. I’m not desperately waiting to get around to supporting the other side.

As a matter of fact I’m not even going to talk about the Palestinians other than to quickly mention them. It’s not that I don’t also sympathise with their plight. In fact, I do. But there’s no way I can begin to address that in the limited time I have. That’s too big an issue and would distract me from what I feel needs to be said. Or as the poet’s title says, ‘What has to be said.’

So what is it? What exactly is the What that has to be said?

Grass goes on in Der Spiegel article:

‘It has occurred to me that in a democratic country in which freedom of the press prevails, there is a certain forced conformity which stands in the foreground along with a refusal to even consider the content and the questions that I cite.’

One of his main points is that the German government should no longer be selling Israel submarines that could or would be used in an attack on Iran. The response from the Israeli government was covered in the same Der Spiegel article:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted to the poem with particularly harsh words.Günter Grass‘ shameful moral equivalence between Israel and Iran, a regime that denies the Holocaust and threatens to annihilate Israel, says little about Israel and much about Mr. Grass,” a statement released by Netanyahu’s office read. “For six decades, Mr. Grass hid the fact that he had been a member of the Waffen-SS. So for him to cast the one and only Jewish state as the greatest threat to world peace and to oppose giving Israel the means to defend itself is perhaps not surprising.’

But the thing is that the writer didn’t make any moral equivalence between the nations of Israel and Iran. That was neither what he said nor what he implied. It’s true that the Nobel Laureate was in the Waffen-SS when he was a teenager, and he only admitted it after including it in his 2006 book Peeling the Onion.

Does that mean he can no longer speak his mind about his country’s military involvement? Because of Germany’s deplorable atrocities in the mid Twentieth Century, have its government and its citizens been stripped of the right to speak out on matters of international importance?

Really?

(update: here’s The Guardian‘s translation of the poem -it’s not the whole thing…I’ll be watching for more of it to be translated)

What Must Be Said by Günter Grass

But why have I kept silent till now?

Because I thought my own origins,

Tarnished by a stain that can never be removed,

meant I could not expect Israel, a land

to which I am, and always will be, attached,

to accept this open declaration of the truth.

 

Why only now, grown old,

and with what ink remains, do I say:

Israel’s atomic power endangers

an already fragile world peace?

Because what must be said

may be too late tomorrow;

and because – burdened enough as Germans –

we may be providing material for a crime

that is foreseeable, so that our complicity

wil not be expunged by any

of the usual excuses.

 

And granted: I’ve broken my silence

because I’m sick of the West’s hypocrisy;

and I hope too that many may be freed

from their silence, may demand

that those responsible for the open danger we face renounce the use of force,

may insist that the governments of

both Iran and Israel allow an international authority

free and open inspection of

the nuclear potential and capability of both.

update: There’s been plenty in the German press, as well as the international media, about the response to this story about Günter Grass and his poem. I thought I’d include something from the often satirical left-leaning Berlin newspaper die tageszeitung. Although this paper dealt with the topic seriously and critically, they saved a bit of space on their last page to poke a stick in Grass’s eye. To put this in context, Good Friday (the last Friday before Easter) is a national holiday and there are no newspapers sold that day.

The short article is called an ‘Open Letter to Günter Grass‘, and it’s written in an overly polite tone. Here’s how it looks in German:

‘Sehr geehrter Günter Grass. Sie haben gestern ein politisches Gedicht veröffentlicht, das in den Medien wie eine Atombombe eingeschlagen ist. Es dauerte auch nicht lange, bis wir von ganz oben dazu aufgefordert wurden, uns etwas dazu zu überlegen: “Das ist doch eine Steilvorlage für Satiriker! Das könnt ihr euch nicht entgehen lassen!” Uns gar nicht dazu zu äußern, kam also nicht in Frage. Wir überlegten darum hin und her und her und hin, was wir von dieser verschnarchten Altherrenpoesie denn nun halten sollten. Bereits durch die flüchtige Lektüre des lyrisch-rheumatischen Mahnmals um etwa drei Jahrzehnte gealtert, kamen wir schließlich zu folgendem Ergebnis: Herr Grass, hätten Sie dieses Scheißgedicht nicht erst einen Tag später veröffentlichen können? Dann hätten wir nämlich frei gehabt. Auch das musste einmal gesagt werden.’

Essentially, it says: You released an atomic bomb in the media, and of course the powers-that-be here at the paper insisted that we satirical writers couldn’t let an opportunity like this pass us by. So, we kicked the idea back and forth of what satirical thing we could say. Something appropriate to respond to this snore-fest of an old man’s poetry. We’ve aged as a result of having to read the volatile teachings of this lyrical and rheumatic monument of a writer, so here’s what we decided to say to him: Hey Mr Grass! Couldn’t you have waited just one more day to release this crap poem? Then we writers could’ve actually had the day off. That had to be said, as well.

(my very loose translation)

20 comments

  1. Wow, Ken. Your grandfather might well call you a moron over this.

    It’s a great piece, though. I guess you have the twin perspective as an ‘outsider’ living in Germany.

    I shoved the poem through Google Translate and got the gist: this bit -“all people who live in this hostile region occupied by the delusion jammed close together”- hit the nail right on the head.

    One of the issues is that though many of us that are lucky to live in a country where there is separation of church and state, it’s not actually that common. Politics in many countries are the domain of religious nutters and also those that pay lip service to religion in the name of their own quest for power.

    It makes no sense to me at all, this Abrahamic religion thing. So I worked out how you could explain it to an alien:

    You’ve got a group of people who all homo sapiens, right? The same species. Not even that far apart genetically. Then you add religion. So they all believe in basically the same God. And then some of them follow this guy they call “Jesus” -of whom there is no contemporaneous accounts and who in all likelihoods didn’t exist. Pretty well all theologians excuse the fact that every story in the Bible is clearly manufactured or at best highly distorted and stylised by saying words to the effect that they reflect a higher truth (and I don’t disagree, the mythical Jesus is used to portray some pretty good ideas). So some of them love Jesus, some not so keen. Then some of the guys who dug Jesus decide that they’ll add a 6th century bandit in as a sort of super-prophet, and give Jesus a slight demotion from Son of God to Wise Prophet..

    So then, they all get together and say “I’m right, you’re wrong,. therefore you must die to make me happy”

    Back to Iran and Israel, the guy that runs Iran is clearly the biggest whackjob on the planet today. World leaders are seeing the Israeli leadership through that prism: “We can’t back the loon who runs Iran, so we must support Israel”.

    With regard to the sickening madness that was The Holocaust, Germany needs to collectively grow up. Whilst exactly the opposite of Japan, who simply lie to their citizenry even today about their actions in WWII, the time is past to just keep saying “We’re sorry, end of discussion, how about another submarine, Benjamin?”. It’s time to put this event in it’s historical context and learn from it.
    And the lesson to learn is that it is never right to discriminate or subjugate or persecute on the basis of race, which of course, no-one is asking Israel to learn, except the Palestinians, who of course love a bit of discrimination on their own, on the basis of belief and gender in particular.

    Hey Ken’s Grandfather, I’m a moron too

    1. Well Robert,

      I’m not going to even touch your take on the Abrahamic traditions. Although I see what you’re saying, I just don’t think I want to go into the Jesus who ‘…in all likelihoods didn’t exist’. That’s just asking for trouble my ranting Australian friend.

      But I do like that you’re here, and I’m sure my grandfather would’ve been very civil to both of us. He wasn’t a jerk about it.

  2. Whatever is said in the media, will create a “response” from the public. And it the response from the ” public” giving a far greater insight into matters, than what is said in the media

  3. There’s a lot here. A lot to process. I love these posts, the ones that make me think. Well, I love them all, but these most especially.

    I’m not going to address the politics, at least not directly. I’m not qualified to. Not in the least. The poetry, though – I can address that. I have a degree that I’ll be paying for for the rest of my life that tells me I can. I have no idea where I’ve stashed it, but it’s around here somewhere.

    I love the poem. And I love the urgency of it, from the title, to the fact that Grass had to know how it would be received, yet he still published. It couldn’t have been easy for him, which makes me love it more. Poetry with teeth, and poetry with consequences. So much more important to me than pretty words and clever turns of phrase.

    You touched on what, to me, is very important, here. Have you lost your right to speak out, based on the past? That’s a huge issue. An important one. Should the poet not write the truth as he or she sees it, based on the reception that is anticipated?

    I’m curious what the followup will be toward him in the German press. Will you keep us updated?

    Thank you for this. I’m going to find some more Grass work this month. It’s Poetry Month; it seems appropriate.

    1. I’ll definitely keep all of you up to date on this topic.

      All the press dealt with it today and there was some very critical, as well as even a bit of humour in one of the papers. I know, right? Humour about the German writer who criticised the Israeli government? Yes, indeed.

      The poem was ridiculed and panned by many in the press, but I really don’t get that part. I think they don’t like his idea or his point and they’re trashing the artistic merit to sidestep the issue entirely.

      1. I think that’s what small-minded people do when they disagree with something creative – trash it. It’s an easy way to…oh, what’s the word I want, diminish it, maybe? Dismiss it?

        I don’t know if, even if I deeply disagreed with something being said in a poem, I could easily write off how well it was written. I’d like to think I’m bigger than that.

  4. i can’t even tell you how confused i am about israel. i mean, for a state created as a haven for a people who had experienced concentration camps i don’t know how they can look themselves in the eye the way they treat the palestinians.

    and i have no idea why there is not more international anger. can it ALL be because of guilt?

        1. Yes, I’ve been writing about it elsewhere, and like many Germans I’m really sick of the whole topic now. I’m sure we’ll get back to completely over-reacting to every little thing that everyone says about this topic, but for now…please let’s move along.

    1. I’m not sure what to say about your blogpost that was linked to here.

      It seems a bit disjointed, but maybe I just have to get used to your writing. Thanks for coming and commenting here. I’m not always as earnest as I have been here.

      1. There’re quite a few things you mention that I know nothing about. I agree with the conclusion you came to, but I didn’t get many of the references.

  5. Oh that’s what you mean. It’s only natural because you’re possibly not a theologian, a latin scholar, a historian, etc ? The same as were a Physicist to write an explanation in ways of using funny looking letters.
    The main point of the article being, it’s time we move away from divisionism, and see ourselves or what we ” all” are = human beings

  6. Well, I am a little late giving a comment here. It is an interesting situation Germany finds itself in. I just saw something that suggests Greece doesn’t want to pay its debt to Germany because of lives lost in WW ll.
    How many generations have to pay for the sins of the past?
    I think it took almost 90 years for the U.S. to get over the War of 1812. And all Britain did was try to burn the White House down.
    I admire the courage of the poet, who of course has the gravity that comes with age, to dare to speak his mind.
    There is too much of this “political correctness” fear of speech. People claim to want to hear the truth, but just their version of it. It doesn’t serve us well to hold back from expressing what we think.
    Thanks for the post, Ken. You keep writing what is in your heart and I will keep reading.

    1. It’s exactly what he’s being criticised about. His poem, his ideas, but also that he’s a crotchety old man.

      Many wish he’d just shut the hell up.

      Sadly. Even if you disagree with him, I think every society need more opinionated and outspoken older folk.

      It’s only a matter of time, right? With the greying of nearly every Western country.

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