Günter Grass, the German novelist, poet, playwright, artist, and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature died yesterday at the age of 87. Last month, a story was posted about Gunter Grass and one of his most controversial poems: What Must Be Said, which is reprinted below:
Grass is best known for his novels including The Tin Drum (1959), Cat and Mouse (1963), Dog Years (1965), and his memoirs: Peeling the Onion (2007), The Box (2010), and Grimm’s Words: A Declaration of Love (2010) but he is also known as the author of the controversial poem What Must Be Said (2012) – which reveals the hypocrisy of the German military when they decided to sell and deliver a submarine that could be used to launch nuclear warheads against Iran.
Unfairly criticized and declared persona non grata in Israel, Grass has been a life long advocate of peace and a supporter of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. He has often criticized Germany and went on record opposing the unification of Germany, afraid the country would resume its role as a “belligerent” nation.
What Must Be Said are the words of a “hesitant” German to call out both the German and the Israeli government and the western powers for their policies and actions on nuclear warheads in the Middle East. The danger of selling Israel a submarine capable of launching nuclear warheads into Iran is portrayed in the poem with the question asked: Does Israel have the right to launch a nuclear warhead onto Iranian soil and wipe out the Iranian people because the country may be developing their own nuclear warheads? And, why isn’t Israel subject to the same supervision and inspections as Iran? The poem points out the hypocrisy of the world powers and how dangerous it is to allow nuclear warheads in an area fraught with tension, aggressive behavior, and fragility.
Günter Grass was born in 1927 in Poland and was drafted into the SS in 1944, when he was 17 years old. He was wounded several months later, captured, and sent to an American prisoner of war camp. After the war, he was unable to return to Poland because the Soviets annexed Danzig, his hometown and so he went to western Germany where he worked in a mine and studied stone masonry, sculpture, and graphic arts. Grass then went on to publish his first novel (The Tin Drum) in 1959 and subsequently moved to Berlin, where he has lived for the past 55 years.
It wasn’t until 2006 that Grass revealed he was drafted and served in the SS for two months before he was wounded. Critical of the Nazis throughout his life, Grass was criticized for following his draft orders to report for service at 17 years of age – legally, a child. He has spoken publicly of the shame associated with this youthful transgression which by all accounts is sincere. To be fair, none of us would want to be judged for the decisions we made or were forced to make at 17.
In remembrance of a great writer, let us also consider his words in What Must Be Said: the 69-line poem written in 9 stanzas.
What Must Be Said
Why have I kept silent, held back so long,
on something openly practised in
war games, at the end of which those of us
who survive will at best be footnotes?
It’s the alleged right to a first strike
that could destroy an Iranian people
subjugated by a loudmouth
and gathered in organized rallies,
because an atom bomb may be being
developed within his arc of power.
Yet why do I hesitate to name
that other land in which
for years – although kept secret –
a growing nuclear power has existed
beyond supervision or verification,
subject to no inspection of any kind?
This general silence on the facts,
before which my own silence has bowed,
seems to me a troubling, enforced lie,
leading to a likely punishment
the moment it’s broken:
the verdict “anti-Semitism” falls easily.
But now that my own country,
brought in time after time
for questioning about its own crimes,
profound and beyond compare,
has delivered yet another submarine to Israel;
(in what is purely a business transaction,
though glibly declared an act of reparation)
whose speciality consists in its ability
to direct nuclear warheads toward
an area in which not a single atom bomb
has yet been proved to exist, its feared
existence proof enough, I’ll say what must be said.
But why have I kept silent till now?
Because I thought my own origins,
tarnished by a stain that can never be removed,
meant I could not expect Israel, a land
to which I am, and always will be, attached,
to accept this open declaration of the truth.
Why only now, grown old,
and with what ink remains, do I say:
Israel’s atomic power endangers
an already fragile world peace?
Because what must be said
may be too late tomorrow;
and because – burdened enough as Germans –
we may be providing material for a crime
that is foreseeable, so that our complicity
will not be expunged by any
of the usual excuses.
And granted: I’ve broken my silence
because I’m sick of the West’s hypocrisy;
and I hope too that many may be freed
from their silence, may demand
that those responsible for the open danger
we face renounce the use of force,
may insist that the governments of
both Iran and Israel allow an international authority
free and open inspection of
the nuclear potential and capability of both.
No other course offers help
to Israelis and Palestinians alike,
to all those living side by side in enmity
in this region occupied by illusions,
and ultimately, to all of us.
Translated by Breon Mitchell.
