The problem of commitment in the works of Gunter Grass

Abstract

The critical reception of Grass has changed drastically over the last decade. Up to the mid-sixties, judgments like 'immoral' and 'obscene' were the norm in assessments of Grass's work. Reviews after 1965, however, emphasised the ethical content of Grass's literary output. This volte-face retrospectively also changed attitudes to Die Blechtrommel and Hunde-jahre. The impulse to reinterpret Grass in this new light came from the writer's extra-literary activities. This study attempts to demonstrate that Grass's political commitment is rooted in the work itself. It explores by textual analysis how this ethical awareness is condensed in Grass's imagery. A close investigation of the choice and use of imagery reveals that commitment in his works is by no means static.The theoretical framework of the study is Sartre's definition of littirature engagle, as far as it is applicable to the work of Grass. The first chapter concludes that it is necessary to distinguish between 'implicit' and 'explicit' commitment, between Engagement and Tendenz. The second chapter examines the relationship between politics and literature in Grass's extra-literary work, that is his political essays on the one hand and his essays on literature on the other,contrasting Grass's practice of commitment with Sartre's theory. Chapter three focuses on the role of the drum in Die Blechtrommel, establishing its moral premises with particular reference to its relationship to politics, religion, love and art.The themes of politics and religion are followed up in chapter four, from which it emerges that Grass has intensified his commitment by limiting it to more tangible aspects of society. In chapter five Hundejahre is discussed as the last novel of a trilogy, The metamorphosis of the scarecrow and dog images is scrutinised, together with their cultural extensions in the figures of Weininger and Heidegger, and it is argued that the novel exhibits the first traces of Tendenz in its functional use of imagery.Die Plebejer proben den Aufstand is considered in chapter six as the turning point in Grass's oeuvre.The interpretation tries to show that, although deeply ambiguous, in the final analysis the tragedy is a literary equivalent of Grass's political position.This ambiguity and depth is lacking in ortlich betaubt and chapter seven posits that the novel is not so much an equivalent but more a literary version of Grass's election speeches. The final chapter reviews the political imagery in the whole of Grass's work, and interprets the titles as guidelines to Grass's evolution from Engagement to Tendenz.