{"id":56617,"date":"2015-04-20T12:00:37","date_gmt":"2015-04-20T11:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=56617"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:25:50","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:25:50","slug":"gunter-grass-16-oct-1927-13-apr-2015-what-must-be-said","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/04\/gunter-grass-16-oct-1927-13-apr-2015-what-must-be-said\/","title":{"rendered":"G\u00fcnter Grass (16 Oct 1927\u201313 Apr 2015): ‘What Must Be Said’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Poem published in the <\/em>S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung created a heated debate in both Germany and Israel.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0What Must Be Said<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why have I kept silent, held back so long,
\non something openly practised in
\nwar games, at the end of which those of us
\nwho survive will at best be footnotes?<\/p>\n

It’s the alleged right to a first strike
\nthat could destroy an Iranian people
\nsubjugated by a loudmouth
\nand gathered in organized rallies,
\nbecause an atom bomb may be being
\ndeveloped within his arc of power.<\/p>\n

Yet why do I hesitate to name
\nthat other land in which
\nfor years \u2013 although kept secret \u2013
\na growing nuclear power has existed
\nbeyond supervision or verification,
\nsubject to no inspection of any kind?<\/p>\n

This general silence on the facts,
\nbefore which my own silence has bowed,
\nseems to me a troubling, enforced lie,
\nleading to a likely punishment
\nthe moment it’s broken:
\nthe verdict “Anti-semitism” falls easily.<\/p>\n

But now that my own country,
\nbrought in time after time
\nfor questioning about its own crimes,
\nprofound and beyond compare,
\nhas delivered yet another submarine to Israel<\/a>,
\n(in what is purely a business transaction,
\nthough glibly declared an act of reparation)
\nwhose speciality consists in its ability
\nto direct nuclear warheads toward
\nan area in which not a single atom bomb
\nhas yet been proved to exist, its feared
\nexistence proof enough, I’ll say what must be said.<\/p>\n

But why have I kept silent till now?
\nBecause I thought my own origins,
\ntarnished by a stain that can never be removed,
\nmeant I could not expect Israel, a land
\nto which I am, and always will be, attached,
\nto accept this open declaration of the truth.<\/p>\n

Why only now, grown old,
\nand with what ink remains, do I say:
\nIsrael’s atomic power endangers
\nan already fragile world peace?
\nBecause what must be said
\nmay be too late tomorrow;
\nand because \u2013 burdened enough as Germans \u2013
\nwe may be providing material for a crime
\nthat is foreseeable, so that our complicity
\nwill not be expunged by any
\nof the usual excuses.<\/p>\n

And granted: I’ve broken my silence
\nbecause I’m sick of the West’s hypocrisy;
\nand I hope too that many may be freed
\nfrom their silence, may demand
\nthat those responsible for the open danger
\nwe face renounce the use of force,
\nmay insist that the governments of
\nboth Iran and Israel allow an international authority
\nfree and open inspection of
\nthe nuclear potential and capability of both.<\/p>\n

No other course offers help
\nto Israelis and Palestinians alike,
\nto all those living side by side in enmity
\nin this region occupied by illusions,
\nand ultimately, to all of us.
\n_______________________________<\/p>\n

G\u00fcnter Grass<\/em> (16 October 1927\u00a0\u2013 13 April 2015) was a German novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature<\/a>. Grass, who identified as Kashubian<\/a>, was born in the Free City of Danzig (now Gda\u0144sk, Poland). He served as a teen-aged drafted soldier in the Waffen SS starting in 1944, and was taken prisoner by U.S. forces in May 1945. He was released in April 1946. Trained as a stonemason and sculptor, he began writing in the 1950s. In his fiction, he frequently returned to the Danzig of his childhood (Wikipedia).<\/em><\/p>\n

Translated by Breon Mitchell. You can read the poem in the original German here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poem published in the S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung created a heated debate in both Germany and Israel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nobel-laureates","category-poetry-format"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}