1 A. Vorotnikova The system of images and symbols in the novel by G. Grass “The Tin Drum” Among the outstanding works of German literature of the twentieth century, the novel by Nobel Prize laureate writer Günther Grass “The Tin Drum” (1959) rightfully occupies one of the central places. The success of the work was truly stunning. Yesterday, the still little-known author of several poems and plays overnight became a universally recognized celebrity. The polarity of reviews given to “The Tin Drum” by readers and critics could not affect the main conclusion: the crisis of the German novel ended with the arrival of Gunther Grass in great literature. It should be noted that in the work of the writer himself, his first-born turned out to be the pinnacle work, while subsequent creations, undoubtedly claiming the highest ratings, are more or less successful attempts by the author to get closer to the model he himself created. We can talk about the reasons for the popularity of “The Tin Drum” for an infinitely long time, but it would be more correct to dwell on the most important of them, which lies in the dual content of the ideological and figurative system of the novel. From the very first pages, the reader is overwhelmed by the elements of material, sometimes carnal, existence. Grasse's love for the material specifics of life and his increased attention to realities are well known. In presenting reality, the writer tends to indicate exact dates, geographical names, and real names of politicians. The outside world appears in “The Tin Drum” in all its completeness, tangibility, factuality and materiality. But in reality, behind the directly given images and situations, there is hidden a second, more significant layer of existence—ontological, enduring content. Existential problems invariably grow through everyday life. The secret, deep meaning of Grass's images often turns out to be paradoxically shocking, but without it it is impossible to comprehend the fullness of the author's intention, to reconstruct his worldview paradigm. BALTIC PHILOLOGICAL COURIER 267
2 The creation of the second philosophical plan of Grass’s work is served by a system of images and symbols. At the same time, it gives structural clarity to the mosaic episodes into which “The Tin Drum” is divided. The central place in the novel’s system belongs to the figure of the protagonist, to whom all other images are drawn and around which all other images are grouped. A detail of the material world that contains capacious symbolic content, the tin drum acts as an integral attribute of the main character and allows us to clarify a lot about his character. Baby Oscar, watching a moth circling aimlessly around a light bulb, perceives in the sound of its fluttering wings a resemblance to the beating of a drum, this most perfect form of protest against the meaninglessness of existence. Realizing from the moment of birth that life means nothing, Oscar tries to fill it with “sound and fury” by translating his story into the language of drumming. Verbal means, originally designed to organize reality and fit it into a clear conceptual framework, reveal their helplessness in the face of an absurd world. The drum serves as an exponent of the truth-seeking aspirations of the ambivalent nature of the protagonist. Oscar, who categorically denies his own affiliation with the Resistance movement, despite himself and his philistine position of non-intervention, turns out for some time to be a fighter against fascism, when, having climbed under the stands, he drowns out Nazi propaganda with his drumbeat, carrying away those gathered for the rally with Strauss melodies . The tin drum continues to broadcast the unpleasant truth about the world even after the war. In the company of the revived Biedermeier, his shot causes catharsis: visitors to the Onion Cellar, respected burghers, accustomed to suppressing the natural manifestations of nature, become participants in the bacchanalia started by Oscar, well-bred old men and women fall into childhood, regaining innocence and simplicity. The choice of the drum as a symbolic attribute is not accidental. The sharp sound of this particular instrument is capable of conveying the cruelty and inhumanity of the era. In addition to the above-mentioned meanings in the symbolic image of the drum, another aspect of it is extremely important, namely, its belonging to the toy world. Indeed, no matter how loudly Oscar's drumsticks bang, his favorite instrument is intended only for children's fun. In this regard, the active work of the little drummer, his energetic protest against reality turns into complete nonsense. The drum is not the only toy image in Grasse's work. It is noteworthy that all these images appear, as a rule, in dark, tragic moments of the novel's narrative. Thus, Jan Bronski carried away - 268 BALTIC PHILOLOGICAL COURIER
3 before being shot, he builds houses of cards, personifying the fragility and helplessness of an individual life in the face of evil fate. Greff weighs his own corpse on a cleverly designed musical scale. Herbert Truczynski, Oscar's friend and neighbor, meets his death by throwing himself in a fit of passion at the wooden galleon figure of Niobe. Jewish toy merchant Marcus commits suicide in his shop among scattered dolls, gutted teddy bears, and mangled tin drums. The toys surrounding the dead heroes of Grasse are intended to evoke in the reader a feeling of horror and the absurdity of human existence. Thanks to the introduction of toy images, not only life, but also death is dressed in the clothes of farce, buffoonery, buffoonery, losing its meaning, filling with illusory, deceitful content. A two-dimensionality of what is happening is born, mutually exclusive principles penetrate each other, life and death lose clear boundaries. The tragedy of their perception intensifies. It reaches its apogee in the chapter “Faith. Hope. Love”, which tells about the Jewish pogroms on Kristallnacht. This is one of the few episodes in the novel where a change in narrative perspective occurs: the suicide of Marcus, a close friend of Oscar, the keeper of the tin drums, serves as the starting point in the hero’s thoughts about the crimes of fascism. Here the historical background comes to the fore, obscuring a particular event; a single case becomes a source of far-reaching generalizations. The chapter about Crystal Night is written in a manner stylized as a Christmas fairy tale, which can be considered as a further development of the theme of a toy, “not real” world. Thanks to stylization, the effect of alienating the reader from the fatal events described is created. The author thus tries not so much to force the reader to understand what is happening with reason (as was the case with Brecht), but to recreate an ominous atmosphere. The black fairy tale about the mass extermination of people in gas chambers sounds much more convincing than the traditional realistic description. The feeling of nightmare is heightened by the introduction into the narrative of initially bright, radiant images of Father Frost and Baby Jesus. In the chapter “Faith. Hope. Love" we can talk about the emergence of a symbolic situation. The foundations of the Christian religion are completely discredited in the era of total destruction of entire nations. Love turns into nothing more than selfishness, hope gives way to hopelessness, faith gives way to unbelief. Savior Jesus and Santa Claus, the main characters of the Christmas mystery, throw off their masks and reveal their true devilishly frightening guises of heavenly gas workers. The whole world around turns out to be a gas chamber, which is activated by God or someone in whom the reader is naively accustomed to trust. BALTIC PHILOLOGICAL COURIER 269
4 The image of Christ, revealing its ambiguity, turns into a dark side and is identified with the figure of the Black Cook. The author attributes the words to the Son of God: “I am the savior of this world, without me you cannot cook.” 1. In Oscar’s interpretation, reality appears as a gigantic kitchen, in which everyone strives only to satiate their stomach, to satisfy natural needs. God in this biological world order acts as an inhumane principle, a soulless experimenter, the main cook who supports life and deprives it. Justice has been banished from the world where God cooks: the death of the good wizard Marcus is caused by the Nazi flayer Maine, who kills his four cats. The executioner remains unpunished, the victim unavenged. Hence the total pessimism that expands the boundaries of a specific time period and extends to the entire history of mankind. Marcus's death marks Oscar's final loss of faith: “He took with him all the toys from this world” (252). Oskar's nihilism and disappointment are traits that constitute the image of modern man, in whom God and the devil, Apollo and Dionysus, saint and sinner, artist and philistine coexist. The image of the main character is perceived by some critics not only as a symbol of an entire generation, but also as a caricature of it 2. It seems that if Oscar appears in a similar role, then only in episodes of his work as a model at the Academy of Arts, in which G. Grass ridicules the principles of expressionist art that brings certain features to the point of absurdity through excessive accentuation. In general, the image of Oscar seems much more complex than a simple caricature of humanity. He is capable of arousing ridicule in the reader, but also pity with his defenselessness and vulnerability, carefully hidden behind evil irony by a craving for love that remains unclaimed. The hero's tragedy lies in his deeply hidden fear of expressing feelings, in the forced reliance on the mind, and not on the heart, in assessing reality. According to V. Schwartz, the core of Oscar’s nature is the “arrogance of the intellect,” which gives him grounds to claim the role of the Messiah, ready to show humanity the true path 3. The place of the grandiose figure of the Savior is replaced by the symbolic image of a dwarf. The cynicism of the author, who dared to make such a blasphemous comparison, was generated by the bitter realization of the fact that there is no longer salvation for those living today. The novel is structured in this regard as a kind of new gospel, telling about the birth, growing up, years of preaching and departure from the world of modern Jesus. The text of the novel is interspersed with countless biblical allusions designed to form in the reader stable associations of the image of Oscar with Christ. Thus, the birth of the hero is compared with the creation of the Earth, the image of mother Agnes is doubled, containing the features of a libertine and the Virgin Mary, 270 BALTIC PHILOLOGICAL COURIER
5 Oscar's henchmen from the gang of cleaners resemble the apostles; the age of the Grasse drummer, leaving the society of people, is approaching the age at which the Son of God was martyred. All these blasphemous-sounding parallels allow us to perceive the novel as a parody of Holy Scripture. Therefore, the image of the main character must be interpreted not as an image of the Messiah, but as an Anti-Messiah. Many details in the work indicate the legitimacy of such an interpretation. This is the pagan name of the hero, and his devilish abilities (a voice breaking glass), and the attitude of those around him, who tend to perceive him as a representative of the underworld (Rozvita marks Oscar with a cross, sister Dorothea recognizes him as a tempter), and his closeness to the underworld ( participation in a gang, seducing respectable burghers into the path of theft). Oscar's very ability to discern the deep essence of everyday, familiar phenomena makes him more likely to be with the devil than with God, since the hero's insight excludes any condescension towards an imperfect world. Oscar's departure from human society to a madhouse carries a special meaning. The images that make up this symbolic situation, as often happens in Grasse, double up and turn to the reader with unexpectedly new sides. Oscar chooses to become, or rather remain, a fool, even though it is he who discovers the truth. It is no coincidence that the hero's madness is preceded by his acquaintance with a certain Vitlar, whose controversial image is associated with the Tempter Serpent, who offers Oscar the apple of paradise from the tree of knowledge. What does the hero’s newfound knowledge consist of? At the end of his life in human society, he comes to the same conclusion that he made at birth: the purpose of existence is to return to the embryonic state, that is, to nothing. Thus the circle closes, leaving Oscar alone with his total loneliness. Leaving the big world marks an internal liberation for the Grasse drummer, the value of which is not diminished by the fact that he becomes a prisoner in a psychiatric hospital. But the microcosm in which Oscar hopes to find support and justification for his long-suffering earthly life turns out to be fragile, as evidenced by the hero’s persistent nightmare - the demonic figure of the Black Cook, generated by the sleep of his mind. This is one of the leitmotif images that appears for the first time in a song repeated by neighboring children. The latter seems no coincidence, since the world of childhood, traditionally considered pure and innocent, appears in Grass’s novel as the focus of evil (let us at least remember that the main character, in whom the satanic element is so strong, remains a child forever). It is to children, as carriers of destructive energy, that the final truth is revealed. BALTIC PHILOLOGICAL COURIER 271
6 about the dark side of life. Without realizing it, the little “baptized pagans” (99) call in the midst of their games to the Black Cook, the messenger of the otherworldly chthonic world. Gradually, this image is filled with new gloomy connotations and acquires tragic associations, appearing, as a rule, in moments of the most difficult shocks for the hero. Critics associate the symbolic image of the Black Cook with a sense of guilt that drives Oscar crazy and does not let him go even in the hospital 4. Oscar is ready to take responsibility for the murder of his two fathers, the death of his mother and the death of his mistress Rosvita, for which he is even guilty, then only indirectly. His murder of his sister Dorothea is equally unprovable. However, in all these cases we are talking not so much about a specific guilt of a legal nature, and not even so much about the guilt of the entire German nation (although such an interpretation is not excluded), but about guilt in its broad existential interpretation. This is a primordial guilt that haunts a person from his very birth and ultimately serves as the reason for his departure into another world. The eternal, unredeemed sin of humanity weighs heavily on Oscar. He takes it upon himself and carries it like a cross, due to which his image takes on the features of a great martyr, closely intertwined, as is often the case with Grasse, with well-known ironic connotations. The idea that Oscar, deep down in his soul, strives to atone for the original sin of humanity is embodied artistically in the symbolism of flowers. In the fantasy dream that Oscar had when he was hiding in the closet, a real cycle of colors appears. Red, personifying the life of passions, instantly turns into a black symbol of death, from which we can conclude about their closeness and interpenetration, since they are based on the general law of biological existence. Passions, primarily love, appear in Grasse exclusively in their carnal form. Love is devoid of any spirituality in the novel, which is why it lacks life-giving, generative power. This allows the author to equate death and love, giving the latter the status of one of the links in the biological cycle. The next color that appears in Oscar's vision, yellow, is associated with decay and develops the theme of death. Blue heavenly paint symbolizes hope for an afterlife, but is rejected by the nihilist hero as the color of lies, since the law of decay, embodied in yellow, is omnipotent, and eternity and heaven are fiction for believers. Oscar accepts only the green color of nature, the real world, in which he grazes like the lamb of God (another biblical allusion). But Oscar immediately clarifies the function of green; his coffin will be painted this color, from which it follows that for the main character, reality is about - 272 BALTIC PHILOLOGICAL COURIER
7 only earthly life succeeds, after which man will finally merge with the natural world. Physical, bodily existence is the homeland of the living and the dead, the first and last refuge, the only one in which one can preserve one’s whiteness, that is, innocence. But innocence is akin to the barren death of black. The kaleidoscopic cycle, which so fully embodies Oscar's worldview, ends with a return to red, namely the red crosses on the nurses' coats. This color turns out to be universal, therefore it symbolizes medicine, which is responsible for maintaining life, but at the same time has a direct relationship with death. Red, black, white, varying, appear countless times on the pages of the novel. Most critics tend to give them a narrower meaning than that suggested above 5. In doing so, they interpret black as a symbol of guilt, red of evil, and white as Oscar's craving for purity. The answer to the question why the main character cannot free himself from his own guilt until the very end seems obvious. Not accepting the existing cruel world order, Oscar himself takes the side of evil. His methods of confronting the inhuman world are from the same world, therefore all his attempts to fulfill the role of a prophet destined for him from the moment of birth fail. In this regard, the image of a circle takes on a special meaning. We have already spoken above about the cycle of colors and the vicious circle in the movement of the author’s thought. The leitmotif of the circle also appears in the images of the carousel and the escalator, which lacks the first step. It seems to Oscar, standing on the escalator, that he, like Dante, is ascending from hell (read: the human world, which he must finally leave), but on the top step it is not a representative of heaven who is waiting for him, but the same Black Cook, a fiend of the underworld , from which he tried in vain to escape by living in the big world. On the narrative plane, at the end of the novel, there is also a merging of the present tense, in which Oscar resides, drumming about life, and the past tense, which he talks about on his tin. Not only the personal life of the hero, but also world history moves in a circle, establishing the law of bad repetition of sin, inescapable in generations. Fascism in the public life of Germany is being replaced by the triumph of the new evil of a soulless consumer society. Oscar's lack of faith in the possibility of progressive progressive development of the individual and humanity as a whole leads him to refuge, BALTIC PHILOLOGICAL COURIER 273
8 which he managed to find for short moments, now in the closet, now under the table, now under the stands, now in the gateway, now under the skirts of Grandma Anna, but which he finally found only in a psychiatric hospital. Oscar's fear of the open space of existence, according to the correct remark of V. Schwartz, is generated by his deep connection with the world of evil 6. The misfortune of the hero, striving for isolation, isolation, loneliness, is caused by his lack of bright humanistic ideals, his violation of the divine principles of the world order, and his inability to love , excessive arrogance. The lifetime flight into death, into a shelter run by the Black Cook, who has become a product and an integral part of Oscar’s sick consciousness, is perceived as a logical outcome of the path of the protagonist of the novel by G. Grass “The Tin Drum”. The novelist resorts to symbolic images as an active means of artistic embodiment of the worldview concept. Based on the representation of the general, typical through the individual and individual, the figurative system of the work depicts the disastrous state of the world and the person in it, manifested in the loss of faith (allusions parodying biblical stories), in the illusory and absurdity of life (fairy-tale toy symbolism), in its depreciation ( the figure of the Black Cook and color variations), in the absence of prospects for cultural and historical development (circle symbol). The image of the protagonist, attracting disparate artistic components to himself, giving conceptual integrity to the picture of a disintegrating reality, collects its fragments only in order to show their tragic inconsistency, leading to the loss of the meaning of existence. The chaos reigning in Oscar's soul repeats, as in a mirror image, the decadent state of external reality. Thus, in the novel “The Tin Drum” a grandiose epic of universal apocalypse is created. 1 Grass G. Tin drum. St. Petersburg: Azbuka, C In the future, the work is cited from this edition with pages indicated in brackets. 2 See, for example: Blöcker G. Kritisches Lesebuch. Hamburg, S Schwarz W.J. Der Erzähler Günter Grass. Bern; München: Francke Verlag, S Tank K.L. Günter Grass. Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, Otto H. Hess, S. 72; Willson A.L. The Grotesque Everyman in Günter Grass s Die Blechtrommel // Monatshefte, LVIII, 2. P See, for example: Willson A.L. Op. cit. 6 Schwarz W.J. Op. cit. S BALTIC PHILOLOGICAL COURIER
In a psychiatric hospital in Danzig, the mentally ill Oskar Matzerath is kept, a man who has never been separated from his only friend - a tin drum. He trusts him with his thoughts and secrets. One day, a clinic orderly gives Oscar a piece of paper, and the man begins to describe the life of his family.
Oscar's grandmother was a Polish peasant by birth. My grandmother was married twice: her first husband, from the moment they met, hid from the police all his life and eventually died while running away from the gendarmes. Then my grandmother remarried. The second husband was a drunkard and the granny had to earn her own living. After a while, the second husband, having contracted the flu, died.
Having been widowed, the grandmother settled her nephew Jan in her house, with whom her daughter Agnes had a passionate affair. In the infirmary, Oscar's mother met Alfred Matzerath and married him. Agnes’s affair with Ian lasted her entire life. Oscar suspected that his real father was the beloved man of his mother, Jan.
The elder Matzerat dreamed that his son would continue his trading business in the future. But little Oscar did not accept this idea; from an early age his life was closely connected with his beloved drum.
At three years old, the boy fell into a hole that was not covered by his father, and since then he stopped growing, stopping at a height of no more than a meter. This was a kind of protest against the autocratic decisions of adults. Oscar grew up as an extraordinary child and at one point realized that he could break glass things with his voice.
Oscar's parents sent him to school. At the first lesson, the teacher asked the boy to put the drum in the locker, but Oscar could not stand being separated from his friend and screamed loudly. His scream broke the window panes, and the teacher's glasses broke right on her face. This was the end of school.
Oscar failed to make friends with the children; they mocked the boy’s oddities, and he began to spend a lot of time in the attic, playing with his tin friend.
Sometimes Mom took Oscar for a walk, they went to the toy store of the old Jew Marcus, where they bought a new tin drum to replace the damaged one.
One day the boy visited the circus, where he met a wise midget who advised Oscar to always stay with those people who have power.
Once he reached adolescence, Oscar began to entertain himself using the power of his voice. To the delight of passers-by, he smashed store windows, and then amused himself by watching them carry the goods they liked. It was under such circumstances that Jan received an expensive necklace, which he gave to Oscar's mother.
One day, having come to the local church, Oscar decided to hang a drum on the divine statue. It seemed to him that since God was omnipotent, he would be able to knock out the fraction. When nothing happened, the young man screamed in rage, hoping that the windows in the church would break, but this did not happen. Oscar left the cathedral, doubting the truth of the faith.
Oscar's only human friend was the port worker Herbert Truczynski. For him, the young man was a kind of talisman, and Oscar was very sympathetic to him. After leaving the port, Herbert found work in a museum. Oscar regularly visited his friend, but when Oscar was suddenly not allowed into the room, Herbert died of nervous shock.
At that time, the fascists came to power in the country and people’s lives changed. Many of the townspeople Oscar knew died in pogroms or were sent to prison. Oscar tried to fight against the regime with the help of his trusty drum.
Many children appeared on the streets, deprived of everything by the war. Oscar organized a group of them that began a war against the evil of their elders, their parents, regardless of their party affiliation. This story ended with an acquittal for Oscar, but the members of his group were executed.
Jan, whom the young man considered his father, and Alfred Matzerath died one after another. Their deaths made Oscar think that his whole life had been irresponsible. And on the threshold of his thirtieth birthday, the young man decides to move on with his life, without being afraid to take responsibility for other people.
Picture or drawing of Grass - Tin drum
Other retellings for the reader's diary
- Summary of Saltykov-Shchedrin Bogatyr
A hero was born in a certain country. Baba Yaga gave birth to him and raised him. He grew tall and menacing. His mother went on vacation, and he received unprecedented freedom.
- Summary of Rob Roy Scott
Walter Scott's historical novel Rob Roy is based on the relationship between the peoples of England and Scotland. Events take place at the beginning of the 18th century.
- Summary of Diary of Fox Mickey Sasha Black
- Summary of Mozart's Opera Don Giovanni
Don Juan is a rich seducer and deceiver of women. He has a servant, Leporello, who does not approve of his master's adventures. The action of the work takes place in Spain.
- Summary of Saltykov-Shchedrin's idealist crucian carp
There was a dispute between the crucian carp and the ruff. Yorsh argued that you cannot live your whole life without cheating. Crucian carp is the idealistic protagonist of the story. Lives in a quiet place and conducts discussions about the fact that fish cannot eat each other.
The Tin Drum finally appeared in print in 1959 and became a worldwide success. The history of the novel's origins is outlined by Grass in his article “A Retrospective Look at “The Tin Drum” - or the Author as a Questionable Witness. Evidence in one’s own file.”
In the book, Grass unfolds the history of Germany from the beginning of the 20th century to its middle, in essence, until the time of writing the novel. The most important moments of this story are reflected in a special way in the biographies of four generations of a bourgeois family, its relatives, acquaintances, neighbors, that is, the circle of people who accompany everyone in his life. Who is he, the one who sets the tone for the story, mixes the colors, owns the curved mirror? His name is Oskar Matzerath, and his name has long become a household name for literature lovers. Probably this literary hero is Grasse's greatest artistic discovery. Oscar, along with Gregor Samsa from F. Kafka's "Transformation", is the most notable, especially impressive figure in all the literature of Europe of the 20th century.
He's a dwarf. At his own request, he stopped growing at the age of three. He arranged it cleverly and cunningly: he fell into the hatch, which his father forgot to close, and rolled down the steps into the basement. This painful operation stopped his further growth, and he remains three years old in appearance. His childlike appearance (not to forget his blond curls and innocent blue eyes) make him a particularly dangerous observer of adult life. No one takes the fake child seriously, no one hides all sorts of unattractive details of his existence from him. For the little observer Oscar with his false naivety, nothing is sacred, no moral taboos. At the age of three, he received a tin drum as a gift, which became his favorite toy and accompanies him in life. On the drum, he beats out with sticks everything that he has to say or tell (of course, he has had many such drums since childhood). It is clear that the drum in the novel is intended as a symbol, an allegory, a metaphor. It acts as a symbol of art, in which an unusual chronicler tells the story of his family, his own and his homeland.
Prepared and conducted by I.A. Dedyukhova and Galina Shchetnikova.
The webinar highlighted the unique talent of the writer, behind whom he has the novel “The Tin Drum”, which brought him world fame, the autobiographical novel “Onion of Memory”, the novel “Dog Years”, which together with the story “Cat and Mouse” made up the Danzig trilogy, stories , stories, poems.
The information I heard at the webinar intrigued me so much that I rushed to read his most famous works and was not mistaken; Grass’s work amazed me not only with the liveliness of the images he created, but also with the deep meanings embedded in these images.
The most sensational fact of the writer’s biography was his service in the SS troops; this fact became known from the writer’s autobiographical novel “The Onion of Memory.”
Grass did not hide this fact of his biography, undoubtedly guessing what a storm this confession would cause in public opinion, nevertheless he could not do otherwise, although, I think, it was a difficult decision for him.
Grass, he says, in his youth was not at all ashamed of his membership in the SS, but, he adds, “later this feeling of shame began to weigh on me. For me, the SS troops were not something terrible, they were just an elite unit that was thrown into the area where it was especially hot, and which - so they said - suffered the heaviest losses."
“What happened to me was what happened to many others at my age,” the writer continued. “We were doing our labor service, and one day, a year later, a summons fell on the table. It was only when I ended up in Dresden that I learned that it was the SS.” from biography
Like many others, he became a hostage to the situation. He was young and did not understand what he was participating in, just as our youth are unable to understand what the “powers of this world” are asking them to participate in when they incite hostility between Russia and Ukraine. At the same time, they easily shift all responsibility onto those for whom they create hopeless situations.
As in the case of the somewhat “unsuccessful” conclusion of the next “gas contract” between Russia and Ukraine, the obvious benefits, geshefts and tsimes shared behind our backs between the “elite” of both sides, the absolutely illegal approach to coups d’etat in the form of Maidan manegi - we For responsibility, effigies of some kind of “revived fascism”, “vatnik-dill”, etc. are put forward. For some reason, the main participants and “responsible persons” remain on the sidelines.
So it is in the case of Grasse. It’s funny when a seventeen-year-old young man who dug trenches, never fired a shot, had no opportunity to evade, once a summons came in wartime, suddenly begins to be assigned special responsibility “for everything at once,” as is customary in any campaign of local rabid defamation.
They were especially hysterical about Grass’s recognition in Israel, immediately pathetically declaring that the writer there was “persona non grata.” I just wanted to remind these “natural anti-fascists” themselves that they themselves did not fight fascism, but insulted and betrayed the victors of fascism and the liberators of Auschwitz by not coming to the 70th anniversary of the Victory.
But due to attributing to themselves the merits of others, including in morality, all these modern “Holocaust victims” have completely lost their moral guidelines, confusing up and down. For some reason, they did not defame the authors of the film “Schindler’s List,” which tells how the members of this list survived by producing deadly weapons for murder on the Eastern Front.
If they are able to justify this, not realizing that all the characters in the film participated in a war crime, then they must understand that this feigned “anti-fascism” looks inappropriate, offensive and cynical.
He looked exactly the same when he defamed Grasse for joining the SS troops at the age of 17. But now you can see something else in this fact, which has become so overgrown with some wild speculation that in a report about the writer’s death in April of this year, Channel One generally declared him “an SS tankman.”
Here you can already see the role of Providence in ensuring that Grasse visited the front and went through the crucible of war. Writing became for him a responsibility accepted for the whole world. But large-scale persecution, defamation, wars and bloody massacres, repressions are carried out by people who are unable to answer even for themselves, who believe that 17-year-olds called up by a subpoena should be responsible for everything.
In general, the novel “The Tin Drum” was written about all this; it contains the writer’s pain for his nation, and for himself and for all people, of course.
“During the Second World War, at the age of 15, together with his classmates, he was drafted into the service of an anti-aircraft battery, then served his military service and in November 1944, at the age of 17, was enlisted in the 10th SS Panzer Division, in which he participated in battle for Berlin in April 1945 and was wounded. After the war he remained in American captivity until 1946.
From 1947 to 1948, Grass trained as a stonemason in Düsseldorf, and later studied sculpture and painting at the Academy of Arts in Düsseldorf. From 1953 to 1956 he continued to study painting at the Higher School of Fine Arts.” (Wikipedia)
At first, Grasse did not connect his life with literature; the desire to write came to him later.
“In 1956-1957, Günther Grass began to exhibit his sculptural and graphic works and at the same time began to study literature. At that time, Grasse wrote stories, poems and plays, which he himself attributed to the theater of the absurd.
Grass’s debut novel “The Tin Drum” (German: Die Blechtrommel), published in 1959, was also written in figurative language.
For this novel he received the Group 47 Prize, to which he himself belonged since 1957. In the novel, real historical events confront Grasse's surreal and grotesque figurative language. The style in which the novel “The Tin Drum” was written became the style of Günther Grass.
After the release of The Tin Drum, Günther Grass gained worldwide fame. For the first time since World War II, a German writer received international recognition.
In 1960, the jury of the Bremen Literary Prize wanted to award its prize to the novel “The Tin Drum,” but the Bremen Senate opposed this.
In 1979, the novel was filmed by West German director Volker Schlöndorff. The film "The Tin Drum" received the main prize of the Cannes Film Festival - the Palme d'Or - in 1979 (the prize was shared with the film Apocalypse Now, as well as the Oscar for best foreign film. (Wikipedia)
I agree that the novel really leaves a very strong impression. He was much criticized, but the criticism of his compatriots was mainly aimed at the "depravity" of the novel.
“Oscar, with his purely negative attitude towards the world of adults (after all, they lie, debauch, start wars, kill their own kind) responds to the evil they do with “mania for destruction.”
He responds to the cruelty of an absurd world with absurd cruelty, to the immorality of those around him - by denying any taboos, overthrowing any authorities. His “total infantilism” is a mask covering the face of an offended and, essentially, unhappy person.”
Yes, the world of adults, both then and today, is incomprehensible to the world of open children’s hearts. What we are faced with today is no different from the world of the 30s of the last century, the same narrow group of people, for the sake of their selfish interests, starts wars, still sets nations against each other in an attempt to destroy them with their own hands . Germany-USSR yesterday, Russia-Ukraine today.
I will take the liberty of briefly describing the storyline and my impressions of the novel.
Grass draws complex images in which he conveys time itself, and depicts the fates of his heroes, and tries to understand the complex interweaving of feelings, emotions, passions and moral torments of his heroes. So, we find ourselves in the late 20s, in fact, in Germany, in the center of the novel is a little boy Oscar, the narration in the novel is told from his point of view:
Just as independently, at the stage of embryonic development, I listened only to myself and, reflected in the amniotic fluid, experienced self-esteem, I just as critically listened to the first spontaneous remarks of my parents under the light of the mentioned two light bulbs. My ear exhibited rare hearing acuity. Even though it was small, flattened, stuck together and in any case deserved the name “lovely”, it retained each of those phrases that were so important to me - as first impressions.
From the very moment of his birth, Oscar recognized himself as an extraordinary person, or as he called himself a “hero” of his time. As a protest, he decides not to enter the world of adults, but to remain a 3-year-old for the rest of his life.
It was clear to me from the first minute: adults will not understand you if you do not grow in such a way that they can see it, they will attribute to you a developmental delay and will begin to drag you and their money from one doctor to another in search of, if not your recovery, then at least an explanation for your illness. Therefore, in order to reduce consultations to a tolerable minimum, I was required, before the doctor gave any explanation, to find a valid reason for the growth retardation. Not suicide. God forbid! That would be too easy.
But the other thing was difficult, it was painful, it required sacrifice from me, and already that day, as then, every time another sacrifice was required of me, my forehead was covered with perspiration. The most important thing was that the drum should not be damaged, so first they had to carry it down the sixteen chipped steps and place it between the bags of flour, thereby explaining later why the drum remained unharmed. Then rise again to the eighth step, no, perhaps one lower, or no, the fifth will do. But, falling from this stage, it is difficult to combine reliability with the convincingness of injuries. Let's go higher, no, it's too high - the tenth step from the bottom, and finally I fell on the ninth, head first, onto the cement floor of our cellar, dragging with me a whole battery of bottles of raspberry syrup
Oscar really stopped growing, but he has a talent: to hear the living world and express his feelings through rhythms, he begins to drum on the drum given to him, expressing everything that he feels, of course, many (or rather, everyone) do not understand this image of Oscar’s self-expression, his constant the roll drives many people crazy, but the adults’ attempts to take the drum away from him end in defeat, because Oscar discovered another gift: he began to make sounds at such surprisingly high notes, which not only make his ears pop, but also breaks glass.
“And when I didn’t want to give her a hand, she hit my drum, hit my tin. She, some kind of Shpollenhauersha, hit my tin drum! What right did she have to hit? Okay, if she really wanted to hit, so be it, but what does my drum have to do with it? Does she miss the clean-washed blockheads behind me? Did she really need my tin? She, who knows absolutely nothing about drumming, did she really have to climb into my drum? And what is that sparkling in her eyes? What is the name of the animal that wants to hit? What zoo did he escape from, what kind of food is he hungry for, what is he looking for?
Something rose in Oscar, he was pushed by something that arose from unknown depths, through the soles, through the soles to the top, something that took possession of his vocal cords, and it prompted Oscar to emit a heart-rending cry, which would have been enough to leave a whole, magnificent glass without a single glass. , a beautifully windowed, light-absorbing, light-refracting Gothic cathedral"
Soon the year 34 comes, the National Socialist Party of Germany comes to power.
The gloomy Beethoven, a gift from Greff, was removed from the nail above the piano, and Hitler with an equally gloomy look was placed on the same nail for everyone to see... The gloomiest of all possible confrontations arose: Hitler and the genius were now hanging opposite each other, looking at each other and saw right through each other, but did not bring each other any joy
Oscar expresses his protest with the means available to him - drumsticks:
For a long time, for a very long time, or rather, until November 1938, standing with my drum under various stages, I, with more or less success, disrupted demonstrations, made speakers stutter, transformed marches, as well as chorales into waltzes and foxtrots.
Oscar lives with his parents: mother Agnes and father Alfred Maserat, they have a friend and at the same time a relative of his mother - Jan Bronski, whom Oscar rightfully considers his physical father, since he knows about his love affair with his mother. At first it seems that Grass introduced this “love triangle” emphasis to show the deceitfulness of the world of adults and the influence of these relationships on the world of a child, yes this aspect also exists, but this is not the most important thing that Grass is trying to say.
...as one overcomes the way of the cross: approaching annoyance, next to a handicapped child, a bad conscience, a passionate desire to repeat, with insatiability and satiety, with hostility and good-natured sympathy for Matzerath - this is how my mother was overcome along with me, with my new drum, with with a bag of almost free threads, the way along Labesweg to the shop.
In addition to the fact that Agnes is confused and wants to break out of the vicious circle of already created relationships, Grass shows another layer: a woman who has already decided to leave her husband is suddenly stopped by a certain Markus, who persuades her to stay with her German husband and abandon her Polish lover by force the emerging political situation, or invites her to leave with him, a Jew, to England.
A wonderful palette, isn’t it, Grass, with a description of one episode, tells us that for some reason life is best in England, that while the Germans are being played out, making them “ardent nationalists”, she almost wrote “Banderaites”, and the Jews, like usually, they try to dig into healthy genetics in order to continue their control through women trying to save their families, their children, and, as always, they come to us as “helpers” exclusively from “good intentions,” knowing that the arguments of the average person are always effective and always lead away from moral choice.
Agnes agrees with Marcus’s arguments (she doesn’t think about it herself) and remains with her husband, but she doesn’t want anything anymore, she can’t bear to endure moral torment, the sense of meaning in life is lost, she is “broken” morally and her “Way of the Cross” ends, she dies .
Once again you are faced with the fact that the lives of ordinary people are always ruined, they fall into set traps, cannot get out of them and respond with their lives. Someone always has to destroy someone else’s life in order to arrange their own, but in such a cunning way that you yourself suffer for a long time from your innate sense of responsibility for everything and finally accept yourself either as a “victim”, or, having accepted the imposed rules, become partly so just like these cunning people.
Observing the irresponsibility (insignificance?) of adults even towards their own lives, Oscar does not see anyone who could become his friend; his only mentor becomes the dwarf Bebra, a circus performer, whose words he remembered and began to bring them to life.
— Dear Oscar, take the word of your experienced colleague. Our brother has no right to be among the spectators. Our brother must be on stage, on the stage. Our brother must set the tone and determine the course of the action, otherwise the viewer himself will influence you and will willingly play dirty tricks on you. Almost getting into my ear, he whispered, making ancient eyes: “They will come!” They will sit in places of honor! They will organize torchlight processions! They will erect stands, they will fill the stands and proclaim our destruction!
Oscar's struggle may change little in people's lives and in the general state of affairs, but for Oscar himself this path is a path of knowledge, he acts and sees the results, independently assessing what is good for him.
In those days, people in front of and on the rows of stands could be controlled with a measly drum, and I’ll tell you honestly: I perfected my act, as well as cutting glass at a distance with my voice. I drummed not only against brown demonstrations.
ABOUT
Scar also sat under the stands of the Reds and the Blacks, the Scouts and young Catholics in lettuce shirts, the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Kyffhäuser Union, the vegetarians and the Young Poles of the ultranationalist movement. Whatever they were going to sing, trumpet, pray, proclaim to the world - my drum could do better than them.
So, my work is the work of the destroyer. And what I could not overcome with a drum, I killed with my voice, which is why, along with events held in daylight and directed against tribune symmetry, I also began night activities: in the winter of thirty-six-thirty-seven, I played the tempter.
And my plan was the plan of a hunter. To carry it out required patience, composure, a free and sharp eye. Only with all these prerequisites was my voice allowed to shoot the game in a bloodless and painless way, to seduce the game - but for what?
To steal: for with my silent scream I am right at the level of the bottom row of goods, and if possible, then I cut a round hole right in front of the desired item, with the last rise of my voice I pushed the cut circle inside the display case, so that a muffled clinking could be heard... If you ask me , whether it was evil itself that commanded Oscar to increase the temptation that already emanated from the dazzlingly clean display case, with the help of a hole the size of a palm, I will be forced to answer: yes, evil itself.“Oscar, you didn’t just satisfy the small and medium-sized wishes of winter flâneurs in love with the object of their dreams, you also helped the people in front of the shop windows to know themselves. Not a single respectable and elegant lady, not a single respectable uncle, not a single elderly girl, but preserved freshness with the help of faith, would have ever recognized the inclinations of thieves in themselves, if your voice had not incited them to steal and, moreover, had not contributed to the re-education of the townspeople , who were previously ready to see in every small and unlucky thief a vile and dangerous scoundrel.
After I stalked him night after night and he refused to commit the theft three times before giving up and becoming a never-caught thief, Dr. Erwin Sholtis, prosecutor and feared prosecutor at the Supreme Court, reportedly became lenient , a meek and almost humane lawyer in his sentences, because he made a sacrifice to me, the little demigod of thieves, and stole a shaving brush made of natural badger bristles...
Oscar plays the tempter, like a “cat and mouse”, he plays with people, realizing his invulnerability and enjoying the effect of their surrender of moral positions, now even the prosecutor has become meek, like a lamb and can no longer fight the way he fought before (has become somewhat the same ). But Oscar suddenly stops “playing the tempter.”
One day he forced his father-uncle (Jan Bronski) to take a necklace with rubies out of a display case, Jan Bronski gave this necklace to his mother, and Oscar suddenly realized that a sincere feeling could lie behind the motives for a seemingly terrible act.
But Oscar's research doesn't end there. Let me remind you that Oscar’s mother was a Catholic, and she visited church every Saturday with her son, although she never received real help; perhaps this fact forces Oscar to study this issue.
….I immediately call Jesus by name and come to the conclusion: twin! Identical twin! He could very well be my brother. He has my height, my figure, my sprinkler, which at that time had no other use. Through my cobalt blue eyes - through the eyes of Jan Bronski - he looked at the world and demonstrated - what irritated me most - even my gestures. My double raised both hands and clenched them into a fist in such a manner that it was easy to stuff something into it, my drumsticks for example; If the sculptor had guessed to do this, if he had attached my red and white drum to the pink hips, Jesus would have turned out to be me, Oscar incarnate, who sits on the lap of the Virgin Mary and calls the flock with the beat of drums...
Well, yes, on the one hand, Grass shows that any developed person who understands a little more than others can take this image and lead him, on the other hand, he is irritated by the real possibility of manipulation with the help of this image and giving certain accents to this image.
Yes, any good undertaking can fall into the hands of “evil”; there are plenty of historical examples; it’s worth remembering religious wars or the medieval Inquisition, for example. And Grass, for example, believes that temptation is contained in religion itself (the image of Jan Bronski).
He also describes Oscar’s mother, a devout Catholic, who with all the strength of her soul tried to understand, first of all, herself, she repented and took communion, she asked to help her, but alas... Grass does not see that religion properly helps people understand and give understanding (only understanding gives internal support), it shows the ineffectiveness of religious cliches like: “you are a sinner, repent and do not commit adultery”, these cliches only plunge a person into a deep feeling of guilt, from which stems dislike for oneself, and therefore for Life... with everyone, as they say, following.
But Grass does not stop at one image; according to the plot, after Oscar’s mother passes away, Maria appears in his life, becoming Oscar’s first love. She is also a believer - a Protestant, but very quickly converts to Catholicism, without much ideological argumentation; rather, she is attracted to the rich forms of the Catholic Church.
Actually, even now I see how many “believers” only follow the form without delving into the essence, some like the splendor of the rituals, some pay tribute to fashion, the “smart” use religion for their own purposes. Look, Putin, for example, is sure to be filmed on all Orthodox holidays, where he fervently prays and gets baptized. I understand: “They robbed people and the country of yet another millions of dollars - you need to stand with a candle for appearance’s sake, like repent...”
I digress a little, let's get back to Grasse and his work.
Even though Oscar was not fit to be Christ’s successor, if only because it is extremely difficult for me to gather disciples around me, the call of Jesus at that time reached my ears in various roundabout ways and made me a successor, although I did not believe in my predecessor. But in accordance with the rule: those who doubt, believe, and those who do not believe, believe the longest - I was not able to bury under the burden of doubts the small miracle that was revealed to me personally in the Church of the Heart of Christ...
“Jesus,” I scraped together the remnants of my voice, “Jesus, we didn’t agree, give me my drum back immediately.” You have a cross and that's enough.
Without stopping abruptly mid-sound, he carried the game to the end, crossed the sticks over the tin with exaggerated caution and, without argument, handed me what Oscar had thoughtlessly loaned to him.I was just about to, without words of gratitude, hastily, as if a dozen devils were chasing me, run down the steps and away from Catholicism, but then a pleasant, albeit commanding voice touched my shoulder: “Oscar, do you love me?”
Without turning around, I said over my shoulder:
- Oscar, do you love me?
Me, with irritation:
“I’m sorry, but what’s not there is not there.”
For the third time he clung to me:
- Oscar, do you love me? And then Jesus could finally see my face.
“I can’t stand you, you and all your little things.”
My rude answer, oddly enough, helped his voice to prevail. He raised his index finger that your teacher is from the Public School, and gave me an order:
“You, Oscar, are a stone, and on this stone I will create my Church.” Follow me.
Just imagine the depth of my indignation. Anger made my skin crawl. I broke off the plaster toe on his foot, but he didn’t move anymore.
“Well, repeat that,” Oscar hissed, “and I’ll scrape all the paint off you.”
- I am Jesus.
What followed looked quite impressive, although it was not staged by me. Immediately after my second proclamation of myself as the successor of Christ, even before Störtebeker had time to snap his fingers and Coal Stealer had begun to clean up, an air raid alarm sounded.
Oskar said “Jesus”, sighed again, and the sirens confirmed my words one after another, first the one next door at the airfield, then the siren on the main building of the infantry barracks in Hochstries, the siren on the roof of the Horst Wessel Gymnasium, just before the Langfuhr Forest , the siren at the Sternfeld General Store and very far away, from the Hindenburgallee, the siren of the Technical High School. It took some time before all the sirens of the suburbs, drawn out and piercingly, like the trumpets of archangels, perceived the good news I brought, made the night swell and fall, dreams flicker and burst, crawled into the ears of the sleeping, and the moon, which absolutely could not be influenced in any way, gave an ominous meaning to a celestial body that could not be obscured.
Oscar becomes the founder of a new idea - the fight against a newly identified evil - with adults: “We have nothing to do with any parties at all, we are fighting against our parents and other adults, regardless of who these adults are for or against” (method creation of any religion: find contradictions, declare one evil and the other good).
He leads a gang of youngsters thrown out into the streets by the war and “leads” them under the banner of a new idea. Familiar...
For example, today they are also trying to lead Ukraine to “European values”. Yes, first we will destroy everything that is ours, and then we will show with our finger that life is better there, and you know, I might have bought into this if I had not visited Europe and “didn’t touch those values with my own hands.” Yes, there is order, there are no homeless people, there are no stray dogs and cats, people are friendly, you involuntarily remember the already forgotten mental comfort of the Soviet Union, when you could live without thinking about your daily bread and with confidence in the future, but bringing such order to the country is not so difficult, you just need to stop the outflow of capital from the country, as the Primakov-Maslyukov government has already done.
But only after some time in Europe do you begin to feel that you are missing something, everyone seems to be smiling, and nature is beautiful, and suddenly you feel that there is nothing to “breathe”... well, yes, you begin to feel exactly that, oh what Irina Anatolyevna says, “they are different”...
And personally, I was in a state of shock when I began to realize what the once Great Roman Empire had become. You can learn about the reasons for the destruction at the webinars held on this topic, how they were able to break into small pieces what once dictated culture and moral values , you involuntarily begin to compare with your country when you see that... they act on the same principle of “divide and conquer.” But still, here I will add my conclusion that Russians and Ukrainians who have not sold their conscience will never accept the “European” philistine wretched mentality.
When Oskar took over the leadership of a gang of thirty to forty people, I asked Störtebecker to first introduce me to the leader of the Neufarwasser group. Moorkene, a lame boy of about seventeen, the son of a major official in the Neufahrwasser pilots' union, due to a physical disability - his right leg was two centimeters shorter than the other - did not become either an auxiliary number on an anti-aircraft battery or a soldier. And although this same Moorkene consciously and proudly flaunted his lameness, he was a timid man and spoke in a quiet voice. This young man, smiling insidiously all the time, was considered the best student in the graduating class of the Konrad Gymnasium and had every chance - if, of course, the Russian army did not object - to pass the matriculation exams with honors.
Moorkene intended to study philosophy. Just as unconditionally as Störtebeker revered me, the lame man saw in me Jesus, leading the cleansers.
…All three began with an opening prayer. The gang on the benches and on the stone slabs knelt, made the sign of the cross, and Mister, to some extent familiar with the text and with the professional support of the ministers, sang a prayer. Already during the introduction, I barely moved my chopsticks. Kyrie I accompanied more actively. Gloria in excelsior Deo - I gave praise to God on my drum.
I called for prayer, but instead of an epistle from the daily liturgy, I made a small overture, the hallelujah was especially successful for me, during the Credo I noticed how the guys believed in me, I muffled my tone a little, during the Offertorium, giving Mister the opportunity to present the bread, mix wine and water, allowed incense to be applied to himself and the cup, watched how Mister behaved, washing his hands. Pray, brothers, I drummed in the light of the red lanterns, leading to reincarnation. This is my flesh. Oremus, Mister sang, prompted by the holy order of the service, the guys in the pews gave me two versions of the Lord's Prayer, but Mister managed to unite Catholics and Protestants at communion, and while they were communing, I drummed the Confiteor to them. The virgin pointed her finger at Oscar, at the drummer. I have become Christ's successor.
The service went like clockwork. Mister's voice rose and fell, and how beautifully he presented the blessing: pardon, forgiveness and absolution, and when he threw into the nave the words: Ite messa est, go, I release you, a truly spiritual absolution took place, after which a purely worldly taking under the watch could now only be accomplished for a gang strengthened in faith, strengthened in the name of Oscar and Jesus.
Here I will only say that this story ended with Oscar’s acquittal and the execution of all members of the “new faith.”
I consider another key moment of the work to be the moment when Oscar decided to grow up again. This happens after the death of his father, Matzerath, before which the one whom he considered his father, Jan Bronski, also died. Oscar realizes his involvement in their death, understands that until then he was an irresponsible person, and decides to “grow up” which means taking full responsibility for yourself, your loved ones and not only... Here also emerges the image of the growing German nation, which began to realize its guilt for the ruined human lives during the Second World War...
The novel ends with a summing up of his thirtieth birthday and the determination to live on, already aware of his responsibility for everything that happens.
...I would consider myself happy, despite fear and childhood horror stories, if he had lifted up with me not completely strangers, but my living and dead friends and relatives: my poor mother between Matzerath and Jan Bronski, the gray-haired mouse mother Truczynski with her children Herbert, Thick, Fritz, Maria, and the greengrocer Greff, and his wasted Lina, and, of course, the mentor Bebra, and the graceful Rosvita - in a word, all those who framed my dubious existence, those who were destroyed by my existence - but above, there , where the escalator ran out of strength, I wished for myself, instead of the police, something completely opposite to the terrible Black Cook: that my grandmother Anna Koljaichek would tower there like a mountain and that after a successful ascent she would let me and my retinue under her skirts, back up the mountain.
Now I'm at a loss for words, but I still have to think about what Oscar is going to do when he inevitably gets released from the institution. Getting married? Will he remain single? Will he leave the country? Will he return to sitter? Buy a quarry? Will he gather students? Will he become the founder of a new sect? All the opportunities that are presented to a thirty-year-old these days should be seriously tested, and how should they be tested if not with my drum?
Only now, after reading the book “The Tin Drum,” am I beginning to understand why the struggle against G. Grasse was waged with such ferocity. After all, he was tried, they tried to ban the book, he was mocked by all sources of media, but he survived and did not stop fighting, although he said with bitterness that he felt like he was “speaking in the desert.”
In 2012, he wrote a poem that once again shocked the entire managerial “elite” of society, accustomed to their impunity.
WHAT NEEDS TO BE SAID
Gunther Grass
(translation from German by Mainat Abdulaeva)Why am I silent, why have I been silent for so long?
What is already obvious and has been rehearsed for a long time
in game plans, at the end of which
If we all survive, will we all turn into some kind of silent parentheses?
This is a self-assigned right to a pre-emptive strike,
which can wipe out the face of the earth
conquered by a certain hooligan and
forced into organized rejoicing
Iranian people just because
its authorities allegedly possess the atomic bomb.But why do I forbid myself
call that other country by name,
which for many years now, albeit secretly,
but still owns increasing day by day
nuclear potential,
not controlled by anyone, because
Doesn't she allow any control?
General suppression of facts
to whom my silence also submitted,
I perceive it as a heavy lie
and restrictions that threaten punishment,
as soon as this silence is broken,
because the verdict “anti-Semitism” is ready, wordyou.ru writes about it.But now that from my country,
who is overtaken day by day by her own crimes,
which cannot be compared with anything,
and because of which she always has to answer,
under the tense lips
mask of “atonement for guilt”,
but in fact solely because of profit,
Another submarine is being delivered to Israel,
whose task is to skillfully direct
all-destructive warheads there,
where even the existence of one and only
atomic bomb has not been proven
I say what needs to be said.But why have I been silent until now?
Because I thought that my origins
shackled by a flaw that can never be corrected,
forbids me to establish the country of Israel,
with whom I am connected and want to be connected,
before this fact.Why then am I now saying
aged, with the last ink:
“The nuclear state of Israel is subjecting
Is the already fragile world under threat?
Because what needs to be said is
that perhaps tomorrow will be too late;
also because we, like Germans who are already burdened enough,
we may turn out to be purveyors of crime,
which can be easily foreseen
why our complicity
no excuses will be able to atone.
And I also confess: I am no longer silent,
because I'm tired of the hypocrisy of the West,
and because there is still hope
for what maybe many others will want
break free from silence
and those who are the cause of obvious danger,
call for non-violence and
will be able to insist that
independent and constant control
international authorities
over Israeli nuclear potential
and over Iranian nuclear power plants
the governments of both countries will be allowed.This is the only way to help everyone
Israelis and Palestinians,
Moreover, all the people who are in this region,
occupied by madness
live in crowded conditions and hatred,
and in the end so do we all
This is the only way to help.
Hear, people, the call of a real German!!!
In Israel, top officials joined the controversy surrounding the poem. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said comparing Israel to Iran, which denies the Holocaust and threatens to destroy the Jewish state, says very little about Israel and a lot about Grasse. He did not fail to remind that the writer hid his service in the SS troops (Waffen-SS) for 60 years. In this context, he said, it is not surprising that Grasse sees the sole Jewish state as a threat to global stability. “It is Iran, not Israel, that threatens the destruction of other states, supports terrorist organizations that fire missiles at civilians, stones women, hangs homosexuals and brutally oppresses tens of millions of its citizens.” Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman criticized the work of Günter Grass, calling on European leaders condemn the writer’s statements that can strengthen anti-Semitic sentiments. “We have already seen in the past how the seeds of anti-Semitism can grow into a fire that threatens all of humanity,” the diplomat noted.
Well, why not Oscar with his tin drum... Yes, a real writer cannot help but correspond to his own created images. And what can I say, heroic deeds always evoke respect and admiration. And all those who opposed G. Grass’s poem, by the way, without even understanding, also made their choice.
What is Grass talking about? The fact that everyone should be equal before the law of conscience, and Israel allows itself to lie, as always putting on the skin of a “sheep”, they have nothing to do with it, Iran is “aggressive”, recently at a September webinar we discussed Judea, the homeland of all Jews , which very clearly showed that if a state, starting from the origins of its creation, used the principle of theft, it will always be an “aggressor” in relation to other states, everything is the same as with people, only on the scale of the state, because at the core there is an absolutely terrible fear of being discovered and losing everything “acquired by back-breaking labor”...
“German writer and Nobel laureate Günther Grass decided to respond to criticism of his poem, in which he warns of the dangers of Israel’s anti-Iranian policy. In a new interview with DPA, Grass refused to change his mind, recalling that he considers the preemptive strikes with which Jerusalem threatens Tehran unacceptable, writes Tagesspiegel.
The only mistake that the author is willing to agree with is that he wrote about Israel as a whole, and not about the current Israeli government. He noted that he has deep sympathy for this country as a whole. In an interview with ARD, Grasse denied accusations of anti-Semitism. He emphasizes that this is the first time he has spoken out so fully on this issue and that he criticizes the policies of not only Israel, but also Germany, whose authorities are selling weapons to the Jewish state.
The most amazing thing about this novel is a completely new idea for the embodiment of the main character.
The unusual style of narration sometimes tears you apart, but draws you into the whirlpool of events in a fascinating way and with constant care. Which is not always inherent even to great literary geniuses.
The key figure is young Oskar Matzerath, who was born with a persistent aversion to the world around him. Even in infancy, he decides not to participate in the affairs of this world.
His parents: his mother, who secretly runs to her lover (who is also Oscar's uncle and even his supposed father) and his father, who in his life has learned to express feelings only through the preparation of various dishes - are engaged in the trade of colonial goods, and from the cradle they prophesy the future for their son in the same vein.
As a sign of protest against the unappetizing life of adults, Oscar deliberately stops growing at the age of three.
The only thing that brings him to life is a children's drum given to him by his mother. In the beating of drums, the young hero finds refuge. The true calling of his life is revealed to him. Already at the age of three, Oscar finds his own unique world that does not come into contact with adults.
Drumming furiously, he does not leave his toy for a moment. After all, for Oscar this is not fun at all, but a special way to express his worldview by tapping sticks on a percussion instrument. Everything that happens around him, what he hears and sees, feels and thinks, Oscar transfers to the drum roll.
He responds to the cruelty of an absurd world with absurd cruelty, to the immorality of those around him - by denying any taboos, overthrowing any authorities. “Total infantilism” is a mask covering the face of an offended and, in fact, unhappy person.
The drum solo, reflecting the history of Germany in the 20th century, and the hero observing the world from a unique distance, from below, “from under the stands”, contain unconditional originality and aesthetic novelty of the artistic idea.
I have never seen such a visual technique before, have you?
Grass himself is a unique personality: a stonemason, jazz player, graphic artist and sculptor, who studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, and then at the West Berlin Institute of Fine Arts.
In 1959, after several years in Paris, he published the novel “The Tin Drum” at the age of thirty-two.
The tin drum immediately became a target for bitter critics.
Along with recognition of his rare talent, the novel also brought him reproaches and abuse from readers and critics, who saw in him a “desecrator of sacred things,” an “atheist,” and “a writer of pornographic abominations that seduce German youth.”
The novel depicts Nazism and those who supported it in a parodic and grotesque manner. Among people who continue to sigh for the “good old days,” when life was so glorious under Adolf, he could only evoke hatred, which they tried to cover up with religious, aesthetic and pseudo-moral arguments.
An aura of immorality surrounded him from the very moment the Bremen senate refused to award him a literary prize because of the “immorality” of his novel.
And in 1962, the publicist Kurt Ziesel, who was active in those years, sued him for distributing “depraved works.” As a result, Grasse’s opponents, who called him a “monster of obscenity,”
Years later, Grass would say about this: “For me, the evil was embodied not in the court decision, but in the silence of the German intellectual community with which it greeted the court decision. Part of this reaction, as I understood it, meant: well, Grass, I got it.” teeth; and only a few, I think
they realized that by doing so they had also been hit in the teeth... I believe,” Grass continued, “that such an intolerant, sanctimonious position is widespread in the intellectual community as widely as in the philistine community.”
Grass vehemently condemned nationalist arrogance, delusional racial ideas and bloody war. The erotic passages in his works after a short time - against the backdrop of the sexual revolution and the youth movement in the West, as well as next to the works of many other European and American authors - turned out to be rather naively crafty and in no way related to pornography.
It was for The Tin Drum that Grass received the Nobel Prize. Let me quote his speech from the award ceremony:
“We observe in horror that capitalism, since its brother socialism was declared dead, is suffering from delusions of grandeur...
Just as the Nobel Prize, apart from any solemnity, rests on the discovery of dynamite, which, like other products of the human brain - be it the splitting of the atom or the prize-winning deciphering of genes - brought joy and sorrow to the world, so literature brings itself an explosive force, even if the explosions caused by it do not become an event immediately, but, so to speak, under the magnifying glass of time and change the world, perceived both as a benefit and as a reason for lamentation - and all in the name of the human race."
The film of the same name was also shot by German film director Volker Schlöndorff in 1979.
The text was written independently, using Wikipedia materials and data from Irina Mlechina’s article “Drum Solo”.
