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Literature
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| Bertolt Brecht
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| ….. and
my work is the demise of this millennium . |
| Bertolt Brecht,
born one hundred years ago, is celebrated all over Germany during this
year. Like no other writer Brecht has influenced style and language of
German literature of this century. His main concern was to bring about
change in the thinking and attitudes of the well-established
society. His work and productions became famous all over the world. |
| He was one of the
main writers of this century and was equally influential on theatre,
literature and political ideas. His works reflect the century in its
diversity: Marxism and socialism, dialectical thinking, fascism, war, the
responsibility of the sciences, the possibilities of artistic expression
and the perception of a modern age . |
| Brecht became a
staunch opponent of militarism and false nationalism after having
experienced the terrible effects of the First World War. Later in his life
he embraced the cause of Marxism without ever becoming a party member of
the Communists in the German Democratic Republic. |
| His first
success was the staging of the play Tree Penny Opera in 1928
in Berlin. After emigration in 1933, the year when the totalitarian Nazi
regime took over in Germany and his plays could not be performed, he
nonetheless wrote most of his major plays (i.e. Life of Galilei ,
Mother Courage and her Children , Puntila and his Man
Matti , The Good Person of Sezuan , The Caucasian
Chalk Circle ). In 1947, Brecht opted to return to East Berlin, where
he and his wife, the famous theatre actress Helene Weigel, formed the
Berlin Ensemble . Until his death in 1956 he wrote plays and
poems and was also the director of his plays. |
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| Brechts
transition from the boyhood world of Augsburg, where he grew up, to the
realities of the great metropolis Berlin is expressed in typical Brechtian
fashion in the famous poem Of Poor B.B. , in which the poet
already sees himself as a denizen of the 'asphalt jungle', of the
fascinating, rejecting, overwhelming and at the same time destroying big
city: |
| Vom armen B.B.
Ich, Bertolt Brecht, bin aus den
schwarzen Wäldern. Meine Mutter trug mich in die Städte hinein Als ich
in ihrem Leibe lag. Und die Kälte der Wälder Wird in mir bis zu meinem
Absterben sein. In der Asphaltstadt bin ich daheim. Von allem
Anfang Versehen mit jedem Sterbsakrament: Mit Zeitungen. Und Tabak. Und
Branntwein. Mißtrauisch und faul und zufrieden am End. ….. In meine
leeren Schaukelstühle vormittags Setze ich mir mitunter ein paar Frauen
Und ich betrachte sie sorglos und sage ihnen: In mir habt ihr einen, auf
den könnt ihr nicht bauen. …. Bei den Erdbeben, die kommen werden,
werde ich hoffentlich Meine Virginia nicht ausgehen lassen durch
Bitterkeit Ich, Bertolt Brecht, in die Asphaltstädte verschlagen Aus den
schwarzen Wäldern in meiner Mutter in früher Zeit.
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Of Poor B.B.
I, Bertolt Brecht, came out of the
black forests, My mother moved me into the cities as I lay Inside her
body. And the coldness of the forests Will be inside me till my dying day.
In the asphalt city I'm at home. From the very start Provided with
every last sacrament: With newspapers. And tobacco. And brandy To the end
mistrustful, lazy and content. ….. Before noon on my empty rocking
chairs I'll sit a woman or two, and with an untroubled eye Look at them
steadily and say to them: Here you have someone on whom you can't rely.
…. In the earthquakes to come, I very much hope I shall keep my cigar
alight, embittered or no I, Bertolt Brecht, carried off to the asphalt
cities From the black forests inside my mother. long ago.
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| Günter Grass |
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| "A writer is someone who writes books because he
must. It's an obsession to turn a private experience into a universal
experience." |
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Günter Grass |
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| By some regarded as the enfant terrible - the leftwing author - by others
as one of the few giants of the postwar German literary scene - for
decades tipped as a candidate for the prize and frequently referred to in
Germany as the permanent Nobel prize candidate: Günter Grass
finally joins the literary greats and got the world's highest literary
accolade.
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| It was long overdue. If only for his novel
Die Blechtrommel Grass has for a long time deserved the prize
- said the writer Martin Walser. And Salman Rushdie acknowledges his debt
enthusiastically: This is what Grass's great novel said to me in its
drumbeats. Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety
nets . . . Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be ruthless. Argue with the
world.
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Die
Blechtrommel
was the landmark novel that Nobel judges singled out for particular praise
during last week's announcement in Stockholm. The secretary of the Nobel
Academy - Horace Engdahl - said that in the epic tale of Oskar Matzerath -
the boy who refused to grow up in pre-second world war Danzig - Grass had
drawn the forgotten face of history in the form of a lively black
fable. The Tin Drum will remain one of the 20th century's lasting literary
works.
The novel - published in 1959 - shot Grass to fame - bringing him instant
international recognition as one of Germany's foremost postwar writers. It
has since sold more than 4m copies. |
| Günter Grass was born in Danzig (now Poland) in 1927. At the end of
World War II he was forced to leave his birthplace in 1945 before an
advancing Red Army. Grass is a refugee German - and still sees himself as
such. I have never struck roots anywhere - he said recently.
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| Between 1948 and 1956 he studied sculpture and graphic art in Düsseldorf
and Berlin - joining the Gruppe 47 shortly before the
appearance of his first poems and plays. In 1956 he moved to Paris - where
he completed Die Blechtrommel in
1959. Sharing a single setting - but differing in length and narrative
technique - the other two titles of the so called Danzig trilogy are Katz und Maus (1961) -
regarded by many as his best work - and Hundejahre
(1963). The novel Örtlich betäubt
(1969) which begins in a dentist's chair deals with the challenges of the
student movement while in Aus dem
Tagebuch einer Schnecke (1972) - his version of docu-fiction - the
experience of a campaigner for the SPD are narrated. In his masterpiece Der
Butt (1977) nine female cooks between the stone age and the present
are made the vehicles of a pro-feminist view of history. With its games
with mythology - anthropology and Grimm fairytale parodies - Grass seems
to recover in Der Butt , the energies that drove the writing of Die
Blechtrommel.
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| In Das Treffen in Telgte (1979)
- one of his most genial works - he focusses on the limited power of the
artist-intellectual during a fictional poet's meet at the end of the
Thirty Year War. The writers of the German baroque meet in the same cause
of renewal - of language and imagination - that brought together Grass and
Heinrich Böll in the Gruppe 47 in the rubble of Hitler's Berlin.
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| Kopfgeburten
oder die Deutschen sterben aus (1980) as well as Zunge
Zeigen (1988) bring out the contrast between the West and the Third
World - the second being a more direct account of his stay in India
between August 1986 and January 1987. His novel Die
Rättin appeared in 1986. When it failed to gain good response from
the critic - Grass decided to leave Germany for a while and spent half a
year in Calcutta.
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Grass' early plays include Hochwasser
(1957) - Noch zehn Minuten bis
Buffalo (1959) and Die Plebejer
proben den Aufstand (1966) where he witnessed East Germany's crushing
of the East Berlin workers' uprising in 1953 and wrote a withering
critique of the communist system. The East German regime did not forgive
him until 1987.
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poetry collections Die Vorzüge der
Windhühner (1956) - Ausgefragt
(1967) and Gleisdreieck (1960)
are collected in Gesammelte Gedichte
(1971). Werkausgabe
in ten volumes (1987). A novellette - Unkenrufe
- appeared in 1992.
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After 1990 - the process of unification in Germany dominates both his
political speeches and the topic of this latest novel Ein weites Feld (1995). Grass regards the process of unification as
a Western colonisation that has largely failed in its objectives.
Capitalism has never been more barbaric - beastlike - than after the
victory over the communist system - he once said.
Ein
weites FeldIn an effort to forestall the critics - Grass said of
his new work - Mein Jahrhundert
- which comprises 100 short stories and the author's drawings: It is
not a novel of the century. That would be an expectation that cannot be
fulfilled. It is my attempt to settle accounts. |
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ZUNGE ZEIGEN (Auszug)
Schwarz ist die Göttin - Fledermäuse lösen sich schwarz aus Bäumen - die schwarz vorm Mond stehn.
Nicht mehr auch - weh und oh und: Jeder
Engel ist schrecklich. Kein Gedanke steht an - Poren zu schließen. Überfluß muß es sein - den anderes Klima
auf Eis gelegt hat. Hier - hieß es zu Haus - wo niemand sich einläßt auf was - extrem nichts sein darf
und einzig Ausgleich als Terror erlaubt ist - hier wird nicht geschwitzt!
Alle Schleusen gesprengt: Fließt - tropft aufs Blatt - macht sich mit Tinte gemein: Ich bin -
feuchte durch - lauf über und setze lachend schweißgetriebene Wörter - die eng stehn.
verschachtelt wie wir in den Pendelzügen nach Ballygunge.
Der die das. Im allgemeinen Geschiebe wird jeder Artikel gestrichen. Eigener leckt fremden Schweiß. Was griffig -
entzogen (nun auch der Teppich - das Erbstück unter den Füßen weg). Einander
abhanden gekommen - greifen wir über uns und ins Leere; es sei denn - einer der praktischen Griffe - notfalls
für jedermann - gäbe Halt. Stille - nur schmatzende Geckos -
bis von der Straße der Bus nach Calcutta - die Dauerhupe - der Gegenverkehr …
Und aus des Nachbarn Radio plärrt Liebe wie überall.
Das jede Nacht. Doch heute der Mond als Zugabe voll.
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SHOW YOUR TONGUE (Verse-extracts) Black - the goddess. Loosing themselves
black from trees - bats black before the moon. No more ah - alas - and every
angel is terrible. No thought stands in line to close the pores. It must be overabundance that another climate
has put on ice. Here - they sat at home - where no one gets involved - nothing should be
extreme and only as compensation is terror
permitted. No sweat here! All sluices open - it flows - drops onto the sheet - makes
common cause with ink: I am sopped through and set laughing by sweat-driven words in tight ranks
encapsulated like us in our commuter train to Ballygunge. The - a - an get cancelled.
The drift in general when one licks another's sweat. The old good grip gone - and the carpet too
the heirloom underfoot - gone. We have mislaid one another.
Silence - only the lip-smacking of geckos - until the bus to Calcutta -
the resounding horn - the oncoming traffic - and the neighbour's radio bawls love
like everywhere else. This every night. Yet today < the moon is full for an encore
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