THE BLACK COOK ON THIRD REICH’S SMOLDERING RUINS Kharkiv’s Folio Publishers uncovers Gunter Grass for Ukrainian readers
Ukraine’s familiarization with Western culture is taking place mainly at the household level: progressive detergents, hygienic articles, dissolving pills, brightly colored superior quality toothpaste, etc. Recently, a new discovery came its way from the literary domain. Gunter Grass, one of the most scandalous authors of the twentieth century.
Only a couple of years back his name could be found in just a couple of Ukrainian editions of postwar German authors, specifically in Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Boll’s two-volume collection of prose (Dnipro Publishers, Kyiv, 1989). The foreword reads that in the early 1960s most critics thought Boll was even “better than Gunter Grass who published his novel Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum) in 1959, scoring tremendous success.” Now, thanks to Folio Publishers, we have a four-volume collection of this unique German writer, albeit in Russian translation.
As a matter of fact, Grass has been writing a single novel, The Tin Drum, all his life (he marked his seventieth birthday late last year). As the years passed it evolved into what became known as the Danzig series, with sequels being created even now. Most likely, any other author would find such perception of his creativeness most offensive, but The Tin Drum’s perfection makes all his other excellent writings, particularly Hundejahre (Dog Years), fade in comparison.
German culture abounds in awe-inspiring figures who, smirking, would toss around ideas conceived at places like Auschwitz and Treblinka, decorated with disemboweled carcasses of gods, crucified over the back doors of mass consciousness, wasted in universal national suicide and everlasting collective guilt. Therefore, in the context of Nietsche, Heidegger, and especially Jaspers, Grass’ creative legacy emerges as that of a despairing buffoon laughing at death and lamenting life. Grass saw his greatest flaw precisely in his “chance survival” leaving him haunted by memories about the irretrievably lost Fatherland and Wehrmacht marching drills. Just like Heinrich Boll, his 10-year senior, Grass could not choose between an active affiliation to National Socialism and emigration (Remarque and Brecht had already emigrated). He found himself swallowed by the war, even if not for long. However, Boll’s literary catharsis was on a different plane from Grass’ self-abasement. The parallel between the two ended in a shared anti-Nazi fervor voiced with varying degrees of eloquence. Catholic Boll saw his literary landmark in a decent man in the street with his ecumenical tragedies and triumphs of spirit. Grass used the same character as a monstrous creature acting on the dog-eat-dog principle, the brutally grotesque embodiment of all established virtues. His hero in The Tin Drum consciously stops his physical growth as a sign of protest against total swinishness — which stems and evolves not so much from the Nazi New Order as from his own family where, hidden behind a virtuous front, were flaming hypocrisy, hatred, and lust. Grass’ immersion in the household realities of the provincial free city of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland, but an independent city-state between the wars — Ed.) determines the general commonplace setting of total ethnic and religious conflicts awaiting 3-year-old Oskar in his parents’ house. Unable to comprehend, even less so solve the ugly knot of adult problems, the boy trusts only his toy drum. He beats it and the tin sound is his response to daily happenings. War starts for Oskar at his own christening party. It breaks out in his mother’s heart as she had to divide herself between her husband and her lover, so that Oskar now has two possible fathers. This war finds and takes hold of Oskar. Silently, he passes a death sentence on one of them, then makes the other’s wife pregnant. Grass writes about this household war ignoring the horrors of the actual battlefield. His epic is devoid of colorful historical retrospectives, yet he combines stark realism with uncontrollable fantasizing. Never parting with his tin drum, Oskar discovers in himself a talent for destruction. Using his voice he can shatter windowpanes at a distance. He often uses this power to deter realities. Oskar is a cruel and cynical boy, and so is the author, GЯnter Grass.
The Tin Drum made his name by turning out so outrageously scandalous, not by its rather complicated style overburdened with lexical experimenting. From then on Grass would be known as the author of “fecal works.” Indeed, the brutal realism of certain scenes can make modern established gallows humorists feel lacking (watching her mother’s funeral, Oskar pictures her sitting up in her coffin and throwing up). Nietsche’s “anti-Christianity,” compared to Grass’ blasphemy, looks almost childish (Oskar often refers to Christ as a “gymnast” incapable of beating the simplest rhythm on his drum; he scorns the Virgin Mary and avidly takes in the Satan’s advice). And so the ruthless criticism that came pouring in the early 1960s was quite understandable. Incidentally, when the writer finally sued critic Kurt Ziesel (the man had outdone all others in building Grass a revolting image). He lost and the critic was affirmed in his right to continue to describe Grass as the “author of the most disgusting pornographic garbage” and “scoundrel casting aspersions on the Catholic Church.”
Most of his heroes, in novels and stories alike, are cripples, monsters in human form, heavily deranged characters. And for reasons best known to the author the historical setting remains the same: “magic theater” of the Third Reich. Grass is not bloodthirsty. It is just that his every story leaves one with the impression that the world has no solid basis and that man lives in this world suspended, relying on the it’s-the-end-of-the-world-but-I-feel-great principle. All rules and norms are falling apart, yet nothing changes. Heroism and suicide are very ordinary acts peculiar mostly to hysterical persons. A suitcase of psychology? Oh, sure. Grass has plenty, and even more of the general human perversions (a world outlook from the genitals, the everlasting disease of perception, death as a smart escape, inner problems best cured by incest, and river eels caught with pieces of rotting flesh as bait being the most delicious dish).
Grass’ writings form a refined guidebook on suicide, yet another truth about the world and how a child can be spared all problems (terminating a pregnancy is simple; you pierce any balloon with scissors and it will burst!). Progress backs down before entropy, stray dogs become the nation’s seeing-eyes, and a writer belonging to a lost generation cannot change his date of birth.
