Forum / Poems Do Matter
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Marcus SpehApr 09, 06:25pmNot too many Germans here...so the task seems to fall to me: in case you didn't hear about Grass' poem (or pamphlet), here is a recent very balanced view from the BBC that I enjoyed:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17657993
and another interesting voice from Israel:
http://972mag.com/gunter-grass-persona-non-grata-in-israel/40526/
and if you can't find the text itself, here's a translation (Washington Post, unauthorised):
I don't think I can add much to the discussion — any number of articles out there and I'm neither poet nor expert — but I still thought it interesting as an example of modern literature/writers stirring things up. You don't get too much of this...in fact Grass has been criticized for that, too (along the lines of "poets should keep their political mouths shut"). I thought it interesting that the political content (most specifically: nuclear armament controls for the entire region) all but disappears in most of the debate.
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Joani ReeseApr 09, 08:37pmJust read this article in The Dallas Morning News and thought the same thing--Sometimes, poems make a difference. Funny that Israel should be troubled by a poem. I know it's much more complicated than that, with Grass' past looming like an unshapely shadow against the wall, but it's still a curiosity that words in a poem unleashed so much negative energy all around. Good. I'm glad they did.
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Marcus SpehApr 09, 08:46pm
It's not an exaggeration to say that the cultural air in Germany is burning regarding this poem and its fall-out. I can't recall a debate like this caused by literature in a long time...probably not since before I was born when Hochhuth (who now fiercely attacks Grass) wrote The Deputy (on the role of the Vatican during the Holocaust)...and that was in 1963.
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Susan TepperApr 09, 11:43pmExcerpted from the Grass poem:
"Practiced in war games, at the end of which we as survivors
Are at best footnotes."
These few lines = the crux of the matter. It's a wheel. Grass knows and tells it when the poem begins. The rest, is, well, just a poem and a personal point of view that can be argued indefinitely.
Historically, We The People are: enemies / allies / enemies / allies
It's almost laughable if it weren't so tragic "in the moment."
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Matthew A. HamiltonApr 14, 06:27pmPolitics aside, "What Must Be Said," (if the English translations is a good one) is a poorly written poem. The language is expected and lacks emotional appeal.
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Jim VApr 15, 12:35amSorry, Marcus, but what seems to matter here isn't poetry. It's instead our culture's obsessions with celebrity and scandal and race.
If I had written this poem (I wouldn't have), it would have gone almost entirely unnoticed. If Grass has written a poem about, well, grass, it would have been largely ignored.
It only got attention because the author is famous and the subject matter is controversial. It could have been written as an essay and it would have gotten as much, if not more, attention. The form seems beside the point.
The last time a poem got this much play was when Amiri Baraka decided to blame 9/11 on the Jews. Remember that?
So here's the recipe for making poetry matter:
1. Be famous.
2. Say something anti-Semitic or anti-Israel.
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Susan TepperApr 15, 02:43pm
Billy Collins, for a while, made poetry matter. He wrote neither rascist nor anti-semitic nor anti-Israel poetry, but words that the common man or woman could relate to, and transform into something personal that meant something to their lives.
No matter what one thinks of Grass in terms of his politics, his past, his present, he is a genius. To my mind this poem isn't especially memorable in a 'poetic sense' but there ARE points he has made that cannot be refuted.
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Susan TepperApr 15, 03:10pm
Additionally, I would like to add a few more thoughts to Marcus' posting here.
Poetry doesn't really "need" to matter, it never has. It is ART and it will matter to those who do need it. ART has never been a "calling to the masses." The baser forms of entertainment (like throwing oranges at stage actors during the middle ages) had more impact on the society of that time than the great paintings and sculpture being created.
Today we have television and phones to keep most of society occupied. It has always been a small percentage of people who find and appreciate ART.
ART finds a way to reach out, as I said, to those who "need" it. Of course it would be wonderful if it reached out to more people. But historically it has not been a 'favorite of mass consumption' and why should that change now? Especially now?
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Jim VApr 15, 05:25pm
Billy Collins never made poetry matter. He made it slightly more popular. That's all. And his personal success didn't translate over to the art in general, which remains in the literary ghetto, and that's why it was only "for a while".
I tend to agree that poetry doesn't need to matter, and in fact would be better off if people stopped trying to make it a political mouthpiece, but perhaps the fact that it doesn't have any kind of serious readership above and beyond those who write it should make those who write it a bit more reflective about what they write and how they write it-- and not needlessly alienate readers.
Not that it ever has or will. Easier to develope a bunker mentality and claim poetry is only for the elite who "need it."
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Joani ReeseApr 17, 11:33pm
After I commented on this thread about my happiness that sometimes, still, poetry matters, I began to wonder, what, indeed, was in this poem that so rattled countries? I found a translation at The Atlantic, and I will post it here. I hoped, after reading it, that the translation was hurried and that it lacks grace for that reason. I hope the original in German makes it a poem and not a personal essay or screed, as it appears to be in English. I lean toward Matthew's opinion that the English version is not a "good" poem at all, but only a personal observation--not necessarily wrong, but not poetic either.
What Must Be Said
Why do I stay silent, conceal for too long
What clearly is and has been
Practiced in war games, at the end of which we as survivors
Are at best footnotes.It is the alleged right to first strike
That could annihilate the Iranian people--
Enslaved by a loud-mouth
And guided to organized jubilation--
Because in their territory,
It is suspected, a bomb is being built.Yet why do I forbid myself
To name that other country
In which, for years, even if secretly,
There has been a growing nuclear potential at hand
But beyond control, because no inspection is available?The universal concealment of these facts,
To which my silence subordinated itself,
I sense as incriminating lies
And force--the punishment is promised
As soon as it is ignored;
The verdict of "anti-Semitism" is familiar.Now, though, because in my country
Which from time to time has sought and confronted
Its very own crime
That is without compare
In turn on a purely commercial basis, if also
With nimble lips calling it a reparation, declares
A further U-boat should be delivered to Israel,
Whose specialty consists of guiding all-destroying warheads to where the existence
Of a single atomic bomb is unproven,
But as a fear wishes to be conclusive,
I say what must be said.Why though have I stayed silent until now?
Because I thought my origin,
Afflicted by a stain never to be expunged
Kept the state of Israel, to which I am bound
And wish to stay bound,
From accepting this fact as pronounced truth.Why do I say only now,
Aged and with my last ink,
That the nuclear power of Israel endangers
The already fragile world peace?
Because it must be said
What even tomorrow may be too late to say;
Also because we--as Germans burdened enough--
Could be the suppliers to a crime
That is foreseeable, wherefore our complicity
Could not be redeemed through any of the usual excuses.And granted: I am silent no longer
Because I am tired of the hypocrisy
Of the West; in addition to which it is to be hoped
That this will free many from silence,
That they may prompt the perpetrator of the recognized danger
To renounce violence and
Likewise insist
That an unhindered and permanent control
Of the Israeli nuclear potential
And the Iranian nuclear sites
Be authorized through an international agency
By the governments of both countries.Only this way are all, the Israelis and Palestinians,
Even more, all people, that in this
Region occupied by mania
Live cheek by jowl among enemies,
And also us, to be helped. -
Jim VApr 18, 12:48am
My guess is that the translation is fine. Poems that make news get a good translation. There's nothing in the way of poetic device here, no metaphor, word play, or real wit, just ranting in chopped lines. It's very likely that Grass simply isn't a good poet, and that is pretty common for writers who are known for their prose. Ever read Hemingway's verse? It's embarrassing.
Anyway, "What Must Be Said" really didn't need to be said. Especially not by a guy who's a former Nazi. If something *had* to be said about hypocrisy, he might have taken a closer look at his own.
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David AckleyApr 18, 02:30amIn another thread I posted a poem by Liu Xiabo, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, who is presently doing eleven years in a Chinese prison for his writings. Mandelstam said, "Where else but in (Stalinist) Russia is there such respect for poetry that you can be killed ( as he was, in effect) for writing a poem?" It is a curious paradox that poetry "matters" most in places and under political conditions where one is likely to be punished for writing it. But just because we happen to live in places where one is ostensibly free to say what one likes is no reason for poetry or any other form of writing to abdicate a critical function with the weak excuse of public indifference, not with all those fat balloons just begging to be punctured.
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Marcus SpehApr 18, 08:27am
@James Valvis ...It's simplistic to call Grass "a former Nazi". He was conscripted into a tank division of the Waffen-SS as a 17-year old alongside thousands of other minors. "Nazi" is really a term that has been, and should be, reserved for members of the Nazi party. The term carries ideological content that doesn't really apply here.
In the words of another writer with fair experience regarding persecution for his writing, Salman Rushdie: “if you were a teenager and a Nazi came to conscript you, and a refusal meant death, would you choose to die? ... To be a conscript is not be a Nazi. To be the author of The Tin Drum is to merit a great honour.” (Rushdie tweet as quoted in The Telegraph: http://tgr.ph/HPKRG6)
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Jim VApr 18, 10:39am
He admitted that he was a member of the Hitler Youth as a boy and believed at the time in the group’s aims, but long claimed that he was drafted into an antiaircraft unit, never mentioning the Waffen-SS until he was 78.
In the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Anshel Pfeffer, a weekly columnist, devoted his Friday essay to Mr. Grass under the headline “The Moral Blindness of Günter Grass.”
“Logic and reason are useless when a highly intelligent man, a Nobel laureate no less, does not understand that his membership in an organization that planned and carried out the wholesale genocide of millions of Jews disqualified him from criticizing the descendants of those Jews for developing a weapon of last resort that is the insurance policy against someone finishing the job his organization began,”...
_____
That comes from the New York Times. So here's a man who admits he was in the Nazi Youth and believed in its goals, and then was conscripted into the SS and served there without any problem. And what's most troubling of all is he hid his involvement in that organization until he was 78, long enough to receive the Nobel Prize and give himself the platform he enjoys today.
I'm not a Jew, but if I were a Jew this might bother me, especially if in his later years, with anti-Semitism rising in Europe he began to spout off sophomoric rants against a democratic Jewish state that is threatened on all sides by nations committed to its destruction, headed by a theocratic, despotic state that joyfully supports terrorism, denies the Holocaust, and is openly plotting to gain access to doomsday weapons nobody with an ounce of common sense thinks they will show restraint in using to "drive them into the sea".
What Salman Rushdie thinks about Grass's literary talents is really a moot point. Lots of people have been much-admired writers and terrible people. Think Ezra Pound, Machiavelli, Ayn Rand.
Anyway, to answer Rushdie's question, I don't know if I would refuse to join the Nazis on pain of death. I'd like to think I would be that brave, but I've never had to live under such an evil regime. However, I do think if I were cowardly and stupid enough to march under a banner whose racist evil was there for all to see, I wouldn't expect anyone to take what I ever said about Jews thereafter seriously-- or even for my writing talent to salvage my personal reputation enough to deserve "great honour" when so many braver souls resisted that horror show and died young because of it.
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DolemiteApr 18, 07:35pmI think the ability of any boy* in any country, at any time, to resist, on reasoned moral/intellectual grounds the allure/pull/power of THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN, played by everyone he knows/respects/admires for as long as he can remember, in addition to being privy only to the parades/pomp/GLAMOR/POWWER/rock-and-roll-sex-frenzy of the crowds (esp. zee wimmens) and not the behind-the-scenes monstrosities of which only the minority were aware...well, I think this ability would be rather rare.
*("infantry")
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Marcus SpehApr 18, 08:16pm
I merely thought it interesting that a literary statement (whatever its merit as a poem, I'm not an expert here either) can stir up such controversy and I wanted to bring it to the attention of this literary community.
When Grass rather hysterically addressed the issue of Israel's nuke threats, he was probably acting under the spell that philosopher Karl Jaspers named in his post-war diary: "Those who survived it [i.e. Nazi Germany] have their task for the rest of their life cut out." (literally "those who live through it has a task which he must devour for the rest of his life").
Those who are really interested in the extremely complex issues still surrounding Germany in the light of WWII, the Holocaust and Nazi Germany, and who are also interested in excellent writing, might like to take a look at the books of W G Sebald (see http://bit.ly/ImjGVa, and especially his long essay "On the natural history of desctruction" which deals with the German processing, or rather not-processing, of WWII).
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Susan TepperApr 18, 08:41pm
Marcus, thanks for pointing this out to begin with, and thanks also for these interesting links.
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Joani ReeseApr 18, 09:33pm
I echo Susan's comment, Marcus. Thank you for bringing an interesting topic here for discussion.
I agree with Matt about Grass' choices and I won't castigate him for what he chose to do as a young man. I'm sure he feels that burden of negative notoriety always.
I recently read a great book by Jason Burke called "On the Road to Kandahar." He has been a journalist covering that part of the world for The Observer for years. Most of the men he met who were once Taliban were illiterate and jobless. The Taliban kept news from reaching the people, and even if it had, they wouldn't have been able to read it. Many people, particularly the Hazara, who were persecuted under the previous regime, believed in the Taliban's strict ideology and for some, the way of life under what we would be horrified to call our daily existence, was considered better than that which they suffered previously. Many in outlying areas Burke spoke to had never even heard of the USA.
I can see how in a tightly controlled theocracy or dictatorship people would join the organization at the helm of power. What else do they know, and how else do they survive? It's not a question of cowardice, but of culture, available choices, and the pressure to conform.
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Jim VApr 18, 10:25pm
I'm not buying it. It's not like Hitler's speeches were made in private. It's not like Mein Kampf was not in every German household. (In fact, it was a mandatory wedding present for all German couples under the Nazis. It was required reading in the schools.)
Germany was one of the most advanced nations in the world at the time of WWII. It was no backwater of ignorant opium farmers like modern day Afghanistan. The parallel is without merit.
Some make it sound like we can't hold anyone accountable for the Holocaust except Hitler and a few of his of henchmen. But I dismiss this idea.
Somebody voted in Hitler and the Nazis. Somebody ratted out where the Jews lived. Somebody loaded the Jews up in cattle cars. Somebody ran their paperwork. Somebody marched them into concentration camps. Somebody murdered them to the tune of 6 million. Many millions more if you count Polish Catholics and gypsies and homosexuals and anyone else the Nazis didn't like.
One day there's a Jewish family three houses down and the next day there's not. The whole family is gone. All their stuff is gone. Their little shop is shut down and boarded up and "JUDEN" spray painted on it. And the SS is at your door searching for the little boy they did not get their hands on yet.
Didn't know? No chance in hell.
Grass knew exactly what and who the Nazis were when he put on that SS uniform. He was no Afghan dirt farmer. He was educated enough to eventually become one of the world's most celebrated writers.
There was, of course, pressure to conform, but there is always pressure to conform to evil.
I prefer my advice and poetry to come from those who resist that pressure, rather than than those who conform and succumb to it. Many such people did exist and many died resisting.
Where did they get their "available choices"?
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Susan TepperApr 19, 12:14am
Germany had been suffering the long-term effects of the INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION when Hitler began his rise to power. Remember the Industrial Revolution? Basic History 101. It was easy for a lunatic to step into a FAILING AGRARIAN SOCIETY and promise 'change' to a populace that was ill-equipped to deal with the demands of industrialization. Basic History Lesson 102. That War is and always has been based on economic principles is Basic History 103. So if you are going to rant and rave, at least get your facts lined up.
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Susan TepperApr 19, 12:34am
Additionally: I am not an advocate of the Nazi's or the neo-Nazis. I've simply stated a crucial fact that contributed to Hilter's popularity, and that Valvis left out of his diatribe when he said (and I quote Valvis):
"Germany was one of the most advanced nations in the world at the time of WWII. It was no backwater of ignorant opium farmers like modern day Afghanistan."Germany was indeed primarily a 'farming nation' with many starving people and high unemployment as a result of the Industrial Revolution, as I stated above.
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Jim VApr 19, 12:13pm
The Industrial Revolution is dated between 1750 to 1850 and Hitler came to power in 1933 and WWII happened between 1939 and 1945? That means Hitler wasn't even born yet when most historians say the Industrial Revolution ended. Are you saying after 80-90 years Germany still hadn't recovered from the Industrial Revolution? Why didn't fascism take root in other countries that had an industrial revolution, like America and England? This is like saying the reason Obama was elected was only because of the invention of air travel. There might be some small connection, but nobody thinks it's the primary connection.
What about the Great Depression? What about WWI? What about the Treaty of Versailles? What about the rise of Communism in Russia? All these things and more happened between the end of the Industrial Revolution and Hitler's rise to power-- and all have a greater claim on being responsible for Hitler's rise than the Industrial Revolution. No historian I know blames Hitler's rise or WWII on a failing German agrarian society or the Industrial Revolution or on an uneducated German populace. It seems to me you're not even talking about Germany in 1933, but confusing it perhaps with Russia in 1917.
Line up your facts indeed.
Anyway, who was talking about what caused the war or claiming that economic factors had no part in the reason? Not me. I was just saying that Germany was no backwater like present-day Afghanistan. Germany had some of the finest scientists and other intellects of the era, which is one rason why it was such a tough enemy. It was an advanced European country that had given rise to any number of great, if often misguided, intellects over the preceding half century. They include, but are not nearly limited to, Nietzsche in philosophy, Wagner in music, and even Einstein in science. They had a robust university system, a thriving artistic heritage, a first world economy in which they outproduced countries like France, and one of the most feared militaries of its time, none of which is true of modern day Afghanistan. Where are the Afghanistan universities? Where are the Afghanistan Einsteins? Where are the Afghanistan Ring cycles? When will we see an Afghanistan Olympics like we saw in Nazi Germany?
Be that as it may, Hitler's rise (which wasn't so "easy", since it took him well over a decade to sieze power) mainly happened because of the Treaty of Versailles and its reprarations that caused the Germans to become incredibly bitter and was the main reason for their terrible economy (not industry). Social Darwinism ideas and Eugenics didn't help either.
Basic This 101. Basic That 102. Whatever. Saying things that are flat out wrong do not impress educated people merely by claiming they are elementary.
Now, if you don't mind, please stop following me around. You repeatedly tell me not to talk to you and then repeatedly attack me. Your obsessive hatred of me is becoming truly annoying. I get sick of seeing your name after everything I write. I can't even post a favorite poem without you posting a poem right under mine. If you are going to talk to me, please at least try to steer clear from topics you know nothing about. Which, I'm starting to think, is pretty much everything.
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Susan TepperApr 19, 03:53pm
Re your final paragraph: when do I 'ever' communicate with you? NEVER. I NEVER WRITE TO YOU OR ENGAGE YOU IN ANY WAY. I never think about you. Your paranoia is reaching catastrophic levels here. As for favorite poems, I post because I'm a poet who loves poetry. I don't look to see "who" has preceded me in posting. BTW, did you start that posting? No, Joani Reese did.
But one thing you've done has totally impressed me: You spent most of the night researching the Industrial Revolution, but your analysis comes up short, as I suspect some of your physical attributes might be.
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Susan TepperApr 19, 04:01pm
And: If you scan this posting from the top, you will see it was "I" who posted then "you" who "followed me."
You seem to be a bit confused on the order of things. Have a pleasant day. -
Jim VApr 20, 01:25am
Susan, when your obsession with me extends to you wondering about my physical attributes, it might be time to step away from the computer for.. well, forever.
Goodbye, Susan. Get help.
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