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| LAUREATE OF LETTERS | |
 October 1, 1999 
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This year's winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature is the 71- year-old German writer, Günter Grass, a chronicler of postwar German culture and history. After a background report, Elizabeth Farnsworth leads a discussion on Grass' work.
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There have been seven major novels, as well as poems, plays and essays. The Swedish citation refers to his black fables showing us a forgotten side of history. Journalists caught up with him outside his home in Lubeck in northern Germany. (Speaking German) "I'm happy," he said, "it's just begun to sink in, and I expect it to last some time."
Günter GRASS: (speaking through interpreter) It is no shock -- just joy and pride. I also felt justified, after all, I've not always received praise in this rather difficult fatherland of mine. I would like to take this opportunity to invite all my critics, who may regard themselves as my enemies, to stop chewing their fingernails and share my joy. |
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The Tin Drum |
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SIEGFRIED MEWS: Oh, there are various aspects and it is difficult to pin it down to a few sentences. But let me try anyway. First of all, the sheer exuberance of it in linguistic terms, in terms of imagination, in terms of far ranging fantasies, fantastic elements, but at the same time, a novel that is rooted in reality, if you wish, in Grass's native Danzig, today Gdansk. And the inventiveness is evident, for instance, in the major figure, Oskar Matzerath, a dwarf or someone who decides not to grow to retain, to stunt his growth by faking an accident. That is one of the elements. And it is... ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And what did that stand for? SIEGFRIED MEWS: There have been various interpretations for the stunted growth. Quite frequently, Oskar Matzerath, the protagonist, has been seen in connection with Germany, with Germany's past, with Germany's stunted development towards democracy, for instance, which was, of course, very much evident in the Nazi period. But the figure of the protagonist has also been viewed as a -- as bearing a strong resemblance to Hitler. Hitler was called the drummer and drumming is exactly what Oskar Matzerath is doing in the novel and in the film where it is very evident, where it can be seen quite clearly. |
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| Grass' roots and his literature | ||||||||||||||||||||
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MICHAEL HENRY HEIM: Yes, it did. And he reacted in the way only an artist can react. That's why we read him now. He turned it into something aesthetically exciting. And made it his own. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And explain what happened to him in those years, just briefly.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And, Mr. Mews, would you say reacting to that history and coming to terms with it and everything that happened during World War II, the Holocaust, those are his main themes? SIEGFRIED MEWS: Yes, absolutely. One sometimes forgets that because
of this exuberance and this enormous imagination, which he brings to
bear on his novels, that he is pursuing a serious purpose. One should
also not forget that at the beginning, when The Tin Drum appears,
readers were shocked. They thought it was blasphemous, it ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: I wanted to ask you, he's very harsh. He told a Washington, D.C., audience that in the basic German soul there is a sickness. It is my job to think and write about it. It hasn't offended Germans over the years greatly? SIEGFRIED MEWS: Oh, absolutely. But at the same time one must grant Grass the privilege of speaking out clearly and speaking out, addressing issues which concern him, and certainly the fate of Germany is one of those issues. And he has a right to say so. I happen to disagree with him on several issues, but nevertheless one has to grant him the right to speak his mind and even if it goes against the grain. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Heim, working with him as a translator, what is it like? What is he like? |
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| Writer and Renaissance man | ||||||||||||||||||||
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ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Heim, he's a Renaissance man, isn't he, he is a graphic artist, a poet, a playwright? MICHAEL HENRY HEIM: He studied art, never studied literature, thinks of himself as an autodidact when it comes to literature, and he really exudes enthusiasm, both for the work that he does and for his political views. Those views, as we heard, are sometimes controversial. He's a maverick. He makes the smug of any persuasion feel uncomfortable.
SIEGFRIED MEWS: That is perhaps one of his greatest achievements; when The Tin Drum was published there was a general recognition that here was a writer who had freed the language from Nazi jargons, from Nazi propaganda, who had invented a new quality of the language, so to speak, and who was so inventive, that he actually did coin new terms, new words, and that is what makes his reading, The Tin Drum especially but also some of his other works such a joy. You can go back to them after five or ten years and read again and make new discoveries and think about what certain things may mean, the imagery, the symbols, and so on. It remains a challenge for any reader. |
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| Unifying East and West Germany | ||||||||||||||||||||
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ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Mr. Mews, he opposed the rapid unification of East and West Germany. Why did he do that? He actually put out a book of essays about that and has that view changed?
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Heim, tell us about the book you're translating now or the book you've just finished translating and I believe comes out this year in English.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: All right. Thank you both very much for being with us. |
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NICK
GLASS, ITN: Günter Grass was born a shopkeeper's son in Danzig, modern
day Gdansk 72 years ago next month. In his work and in his life, he's
always chosen to take a stand on moral, political and social issues.
He was a speechwriter for the social Democrat chancellor, Willy Brandt
in the 1970s. He once said, "one of the lessons I've learnt in
a country which burnt books first and then people, is that there's no
place to hide." 
In
most cartoons down the years, Grass is shown banging a drum for the
obvious reason that his literary reputation began and probably ultimately
rests on his debut novel, Die Blechtrommel, The Tin Drum,
published 40 years ago and filmed 20 years later. It's based on his
childhood memories of life under the Nazis. In Volker Shlondoff's film,
the part of the boy Oskar, who stops growing at the age of three, was
hauntingly played by a child actor. In its citation, the Swedish Academy
said, "it was not too bold to assume that "The Tin Drum"
will become one of the most enduring literary works of the 20th century.
ELIZABETH
FARNSWORTH: And with me now are, Michael Henry Heim, chair of Slavic
languages and literatures at UCLA -- he has translated Günter Grass'
new work, My Century, into English; and Siegfried Mews, Professor
of German Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
-- he has written widely about Grass. Thank you both for being with
us. Siegfried Mews, tell us about The Tin Drum and why it is
considered such a great work. 
ELIZABETH
FARNSWORTH: Mr. Heim, as we just heard, Günter Grass grew up in Danzig,
now Gdansk. We have a map that shows where it is now. It was German.
It's now Polish. Actually, it was a free city. But it is now Polish.
He said that was for him what the South was for Faulkner or Dublin was
for Joyce. Growing up there just thrust him right into the worst part
of the history of our century, didn't it? 
MICHAEL
HENRY HEIM: He was a young man at the time. He was taken out of school.
He was conscripted. He was then in the Luftwafa. Afterwards, he was
made a prisoner of war, he was in an American camp for a year. Meanwhile,
his parents were sent west. In other words, the entire area was evacuated.
And they had to resettle in the west. 
was
obscene, pornographic, and so on. And, in fact, the movie "The
Tin Drum," was even banned briefly, I believe, in Oklahoma, lately
during the 1990's. So you can see that Grass still has a certain effect
on people, that they react to him strongly. 
MICHAEL
HENRY HEIM: Well, he's a dream, actually, for a translator. He does
something that no other author I know has done. He's established a seminar
for all his translators. He's been doing this now for 15 years. The
translators meet in Germany for three days, three days of discussion
with him. He's there all the time, on all the time -- he and his wife
both. And we discuss the work. He says he likes working with the translators
because translators are the -- or tend to be the most astute readers
of literature. Of course, translators have to deal with every single
word. He sometimes even alters the work on the basis of that discussion.
ELIZABETH
FARNSWORTH: And Mr. Mews, what has he done to and for the German language?
SIEGFRIED
MEWS: Yes, that is a stance which, particularly after unification or
reunification actually took place, was viewed very unfavorably and brought
him a lot of criticism and a lot of grief. Now, one must say that Grass
has been concerned with the fate of Germany and questions such as German
unification since at least the 60's. So he is not Johnny Come Lately,
not someone who was displeased about the rapid reunification and as
some claim, the colonization of the East by the West, the disappearance
of socialism in favor of rampant capitalism, and the profit motive and
so on. So Grass has a record of speaking out on these issues. And what
he actually did advocate was a kind of confederation that is a loose
organization or a loose alliance of two German states under which the
two states would continue to exist more or less independent but closely
allied and of course united by their common language, by their common
culture. 
MICHAEL
HENRY HEIM: Yes. It will be coming out in mid-November in English. It's
called My Century. And it is about his century, his century being
Grass's century. It's a hundred stories, one for each year. And each
story has a different narrator. It's wonderfully inventive. It has the
humor that his other works have, and the depth, the view from below
that he is known for. It's a wonderful work.