For 75 years, the Nobel Prize for Literature inaugurated in Lübeck, the house dedicated to his work as a writer and artist; received in Göttingen, tributes the President and the German Chancellor; and hosted at Behlendorf, our special correspondent, Ruth Valentini. Reportage.
Lubeck, Thursday, October 17
Lübeck, Queen of the Hanseatic League, opened on the Baltic. The traveler enters the city of seven towers by Holsten, a medieval gate where it says “Concorde inside, peace outside.” The motto befits Günter Grass, the German writer most famous and most controversial, each book output triggers a political battle and literature.
This is where the Nobel Prize literature in 1999 took up residence, birthplace of Thomas Mann, another Nobel Prize winner, Willy Brandt, Nobel Peace Prize in 1971, and Erich Mühsam, former revolutionary of the Soviet Republic, poet, bohemian, advocate absolute freedom, murdered by the Nazis in 1934 at the Oranienburg camp.
Lübeck is not a substitute for Danzig, the hometown of Günter Grass, now Gdansk in Poland, where he grew up child , torn “between the Holy Spirit and the Führer” played with shrapnel bombs, and is at the center of his work. Certainly, his paradise is lost forever, but it’s “one of the tributes to pay for the crimes we have committed against humanity.”
Grass uprooted appreciate the architectural similarity of Lübeck with Danzig before the war. Each city has its St. Mary, Gothic church of red stone, old houses in beautiful glazed brick and sharp ridges. Their story is also closely related, if only by their “Hanseatic quarrels.”
And then there was the proximity to the sea, Mare balticum green that extends from east to north, the mild days that ocean water flat but raised in winter by strong wind gusts that overwhelm many ships. In a poem he dedicated to his “puddle” Grass sings the surf which “blubb pittf pschsch” algae pump air herring, jellyfish that reproduce indefinitely until the puddle forms only a single jellyfish.
Friday, October 18th, morning
Two days after his 75th birthday and before its official opening, the writer and artist presents to the press the “ Günter Grass -haus”. This house is located in the old city at No. 21 of the Glockengiesserstrasse the street bells smelters
In front of a pack of photographers and cameramen, the householder. – Tweed color costume Fall and royal blue shirt – down from his office located on the top floor, stops on the platform overhang and addresses the crowd. Without his usual glass of Medoc at hand nor his pipe. Evidence that the master is pressed. He must go to Göttingen where his publisher Steidl Gerhardt waits for “a family celebration.”
From the start he said that the Günter Grass house is not a museum or a mausoleum:
I am still alive, and I will stay again! But I feel good here in the middle of my work in this forum meetings, exchanges and research open to the public, especially the young. I will conduct myself high school and college students through my interactive world and my memory.
inexhaustible Merchandise for Günter Grass. Here, the boundary between the word and the image is cheerfully violated:
For me, literature and art, poetry and drawing, writing and sculpture have the same weight. They fertilize reciprocally, through continuous dialogue. . Without jealous
It is true that writing alone is not enough to Grass: it is also a sculptor, printmaker and painter! Once the “bag of words” empty, the multi-talented artist like change tool “without changing the ink.”
In the small garden, 2.20 meters high, weighing nearly a ton, a bronze sculpture depicts the hand of Günter Grass who grabs a turbot, reference to one of his novels. The expansion is a birthday gift from Frank-Thomas Gaulin, a gallery owner and benefactor. The former coach is converted into two levels of exhibition space; . 220 square meters in total
On the walls painted gray unfolds literary and political life of Grass: Danzig in Lübeck through Berlin, the “Drum” to “My Century” of exodus from East to unified Germany, it is the story of a superstar through his manuscripts, lithographs, etchings, sculptures and watercolors. His allegorical bestiary full complement greet visitors amazed. Snail, cat and mouse, rat, and a thousand fish, frog and crab which gives the title to his new book – “In crab”
Immersed in his work, Günter Grass suddenly seems vulnerable. Photographers mercilessly strafed. “Admire rather desks!” , then orders the grumpy writer, who has the habit of writing standing. They are blond beech, and a sublime conception. We discover in the drawers the various stages of the writing process, from manuscript page, crossed out and annotated, the one he hit on his old Olivetti and continually correcting.
A series of engravings is dedicated to “Ava and three nipples.” Projection of a male desire? Ironic metaphor for a third way, grassienne typical attitude in politics. Stop in front of a window where tiny figures lying on the stomach, back or curled, populate a sandy beach. Sleepers? ? Corpses
They simply reflect the reality that broadcast every day the newspapers and television, these images of massacres perpetuated, unfortunately, everywhere
And glare. On a base, pairs of dancers in the light.
As soon as I affixed the word end “in crab”, which addresses the painful exodus of the German people to the Red Army and the catastrophe of “Wilhelm Gustloff”, that torpedoed ship in the Baltic January 30, 1945 by a Soviet submarine and its 9,000 victims, mostly women and children of East Prussia, I felt like an absolute lightness. And since I am an avid dancer, I designed and carved into the material that is fast terracotta couples dance movement. A theme that haunts me still, “ says the artist before disappearing .
Göttingen, Friday, October 18, afternoon
Direction Göttingen. The university town immortalized by the song of Barbara is 330 kilometers. On the motorway Lübeck-Hamburg-Hanover, in the pouring rain, the speed is not limited. It should miss at any price entry to 18 hours at the Deutsches Theater. An illustrious audience, composed of Johannes Rau, President of the Republic, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, the mayor of the city and many other personalities from celebrating 75 years of the writer.
Günter Grass “the greatest writer of the nation” , is in the spotlight. However, nothing of a writer of . State Herr Steidl, his publisher welcomes all these people That velvet as golds Standing ovation for Günter Grass -.! “it small and stocky,” and Ute his wife “lean, tall and of a Gothic charm” (cf. “A long story,” pp. 547-548).
followed the speeches, including that of President of the Republic, which evokes Günter Grass, singular writer and promoter of the res publica. To President Rau also remember the myth of Sisyphus, a symbol that suits his “difficult but reliable friend” A Sisyphus in Camusian sense. as it is impossible to put an end to history, Günter Grass continues to roll the stone on the slope, aware that she will fall. Stone is his girlfriend
Grass chose the musical program of the evening. Polonaise from Tchaikovsky, Piazzolla Milonga del ángel and Original Charleston interpreted by the Symphony Orchestra Göttingen, followed gypsy guitars. And his beautiful baritone voice, Grass recites the “Complaint and Prayer Amanda Woyke, stove common”, taken from “Turbot”. Her cries and whispers are accompanied by drum beating Baby Sommer, frenzied percussionist. The public, hilarious, is thrilled.
After three hours of “show”, Herr Steidl invites an informal supper, called “the breakfast of the printer.” A strong buffet with smoked eel, varied sausages, black pudding, sweet-sour pickles, potato salad and other northern delights. The protocol remained in the locker room.
In private, the Chancellor celebrates Grass, the “patriotic citizen and prominent thinker with a keen sense of human rights and justice; spoilsport at times too, oh yes! “. This time it is Günter Grass, ” last Nobel Prize for Literature of the Century “, to be thrilled.
Lubeck, Saturday, October 19, afternoon
Back in Lübeck. Appointments Günter Grass in Behlendorf, a half-hour drive of the city. In a melancholy landscape with forests, hills and ponds, a white house under the trees. Chestnuts on a mat, you approach the entrance. There are two. According to the lesson learned, we choose the third, that of the background, which led to the artist’s studio.
The hoarse voice, the writer, very cold, admits that it is tiring to have 75 years. “Come here.” He shows his work in development, figurines carved in scorched earth, in continuation of the dance couples in erotic poses, with couples making love. On infinite tenderness. “The eroticism of the old man,” Fun creator. The theme of happiness.
With his latest book, “In crab”, where the author was swimming among the dead, Grass felt the need to return to life. Because in this story that mixes history and fiction he directed three generations, and shows that despite the suffering of Nazi crimes Germans should no longer be ignored. But also that the political blindness always leads to disaster.
A book full of horror but also humor. The reader, accustomed to dark purposes – eg “Ah, Turbot! Your fairy tale, it ends badly “- is this time being frightened after reading the last sentence: ” It never ends. . It will never end “
So what is the reason for the pessimism Günter Grass:
I feed reality. It is impossible to erase the twelve years of the Nazi regime, to escape our past. We always catch up.
is asked what he is most proud. Answer: “Having passed my pear tree!” Follows the story of his feat, an essential ritual each of his birthday: handstands
J! ‘was nervous. But I did a little crooked but without crutches. Not bad for 75 years, right?
Ruth Valentini
Günter Grass, the German writer who did not like
Germany
Crab , Günter Grass,
translated from German by Claude Porcell,
Seuil, 266 p., 19 euros.
Günter Grass-Haus, Glockengiesserstrasse 21
23552 Lübeck as: 00-49-451-122-42-24,
www.guenter-grass-haus.de
Bio Express
Günter Grass was born October 16, 1927 in Danzig, now Gdansk Poland. “In crab” was published in Germany in March 2002, has sold 370,000 copies and featured all year on bestseller lists. It has been translated into thirty languages. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999, died in Grass 87, Lübeck, April 13, 2015.
Report published in “Le Nouvel Observateur” on 21 November 2002 .
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