THE ART OF FICTION NO.

124

GÜNTER GRASS

Günter Grass has achieved a very rare thing in contem-

porary arts and letters, earning both critical respect and
commercial success in every genre and artistic medium
he has taken up. A novelist, poet, essayist, dramatist,
sculptor, and graphic artist, Grass appeared on the
international literary scene with the publication of his
first novel, the 1958 best-seller The Tin Drum. It and
his subsequent works—the novella Cat and Mouse
(1961) and the novel Dog Years (1963)—are popularly
known as the Danzig trilogy. His many other books
include From the Diary of a Snail (1972), The Flounder
(1977), The Meeting at Telgte (1979), Headbirths, or
The Germans are Dying Out (1980), The Rat (1986),
and Show Your Tongue (1989). Grass always designs
his own book jackets, and his books often contain illus-
trations by the author. He has been the recipient of
numerous literary prizes and medals, including the
1965 Georg Büchner Prize and the Carl von Ossietzky
Medal (1977), and is a foreign honorary member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Grass was born in 1927 on the Baltic coast, in a
suburb of the Free City of Danzig, now Gdansk,
Poland. His parents were grocers. During World War II
he served in the German Army as a tank gunner, and
was wounded and captured by American forces in
1945. After his release, he worked in a chalk mine and
then studied art in Düsseldorf and Berlin. He married
his first wife, the Swiss ballet dancer Anna Schwarz, in
1954. From 1955 to 1967, he participated in the meet-
ings of Group 47, an informal but influential associa-
tion of German writers and critics, so called because it
first met in September of 1947. Its members, including
Heinrich Böll, Uwe Johnson, Ilse Aichinger, and Grass,
were organized around their common mission to devel-
op and use a literary language that stood in radical
opposition to the complex and ornate prose style char-
acteristic of Nazi-era propaganda. They last met in 1967.
Living on a small stipend from the publishing house
Luchterhand, Grass and his family spent the years 1956
to 1959 in Paris, where he wrote The Tin Drum. In
1958 he won the annual prize of Group 47 for his read-
ings from the work in progress. The novel shocked and
astounded German critics and readers, confronting
them for the first time with a harsh depiction of the
German bourgeoisie during the Second World War.
Grass’s 1979 volume, The Meeting at Telgte, is a ficti-
tious account of a meeting of German poets in 1647 at
the close of the Thirty Years’ War. The purpose of the
fictional gathering, as well as the book’s cast of charac-
ters, parallels that of the post–World War II Group 47.
In Germany, Grass has long been as well known for
his controversial politics as he is for his celebrated nov-
els. He was Willy Brandt’s chief speechwriter for ten
years and is a longtime supporter of the Social Democ-

2 GÜNTER GRASS
ratic Party. Lately, he has been one of the few German
intellectuals to protest publicly the swift course German
reunification has taken. In 1990 alone, Grass published
two volumes of lectures, speeches, and debates on the
subject.
When he is not traveling, he divides his time
between his estate in Schleswig-Holstein where he lives
with his second wife Ute Grunert and the house in the
Schöneberg section of Berlin where his four children
were raised and where his assistant Eva Hönisch now
manages his affairs. This interview was conducted in
two sessions, one before an audience at the 92nd Street
YMWHA in Manhattan and one last fall at the yellow
house on Niedstraße, when Grass had found a few
hours’ time during a brief stopover. He spoke in small
gable-windowed study with white walls and wooden
floors. The far corner was piled high with boxes of
books and manuscripts. Grass was dressed comfort-
ably, in a tweed jacket and button-down shirt. He had
originally agreed to do an interview in English, thereby
circumventing the complications of subsequent transla-
tion, but when reminded of this squinted his eyes and
smiled, announcing, “I am much too tired! We will
speak German.” Despite his professed travel-weariness,
he spoke with energy and enthusiasm about his work,
often laughing quietly. The interview ended when his
twin sons Raoul and Franz arrived to pick their father
up for a dinner to celebrate their birthday.
—Elizabeth Gaffney, John Simon, 1991

THE PARIS REVIEW 3

INTERVIEWER
How did you become a writer?

GÜNTER GRASS
I think it had something to do with the social situa-
tion in which I grew up. Ours was a lower-middle-class
family; we had a small, two-room apartment. My sister
and I did not have our own rooms, or even a place to
ourselves. In the living room, beyond the two windows,
was a little corner where my books were kept, and
other things—my watercolors and so on. Often I had to
imagine the things I needed. I learned very early to read
amidst noise. And so I started writing and drawing at
an early age. Another result is that I now collect rooms.
I have a study in four different places. I’m afraid to
return again to the situation of my youth, with only a
corner in one small room.

INTERVIEWER
What made you turn to reading and writing in this
situation, rather than, say, to sports or some other dis-
traction?

GRASS
As a child I was a great liar. Fortunately my moth-
er liked my lies. I promised her marvelous things.
When I was ten years old she called me Peer Gynt.
Peer Gynt, she said, here you are telling me marvelous
stories about journeys we will make to Naples and so
on . . . I started to write down my lies very early. And
I continue to do so! I started a novel when I was
twelve years old. It was about the Kashubians, who
turned up many years later in The Tin Drum, where
Oskar’s grandmother, Anna, (like my own) is Kashu-
bian. But I made a mistake in writing my first novel:

4 GÜNTER GRASS
all the characters I had introduced were dead at the
end of the first chapter. I couldn’t go on! This was my
first lesson in writing: be careful with your characters.

INTERVIEWER
What lies have given you the greatest pleasure?

GRASS
Lies that do not hurt, which are different from lies
that protect oneself or hurt another person. That is not
my business. But the truth is mostly very boring, and
you can help it along with lies. There is no harm in that.
I have learned that all my terrible lies really have no
effect on what is out there. If, several years ago, I had
written something that predicted the recent political
developments in Germany, people would have said,
What a liar!

INTERVIEWER
What was your next effort after the failed novel?

GRASS
My first book was a book of poetry and drawings.
Invariably the first drafts of my poems combine draw-
ings and verse, sometimes taking off from an image,
sometimes from words. Then, when I was twenty-five
years old and could afford to buy a typewriter, I pre-
ferred to type with my two-finger system. The first
version of The Tin Drum was done just with the
typewriter. Now I’m getting older and though I hear
that many of my colleagues are writing with computers,
I’ve gone back to writing the first draft by hand! The
first version of The Rat is in a large book of unlined
paper, which I got from my printer. When one of my
books is about to be published I always ask for one

THE PARIS REVIEW 5

blind copy with blank pages to use for the next manu-
script. So, these days the first version is written by hand
with drawings and then the second and the third are
done on a typewriter. I have never finished a book with-
out writing three versions. Usually there are four with
many corrections.

INTERVIEWER
Does each version begin at alpha and proceed to
omega?

GRASS
No. I write the first draft quickly. If there’s a hole,
there’s a hole. The second version is generally very long,
detailed, and complete. There are no more holes, but
it’s a bit dry. In the third draft I try to regain the spon-
taneity of the first, and to retain what is essential from
the second. This is very difficult.

INTERVIEWER
What is your daily schedule when you work?

GRASS
When I’m working on the first version, I write
between five and seven pages a day. For the third ver-
sion, three pages a day. It’s very slow.

INTERVIEWER
You do this in the morning or in the afternoon or at
night?

GRASS
Never, never at night. I don’t believe in writing at
night because it comes too easily. When I read it in
the morning it’s not good. I need daylight to begin.

6 GÜNTER GRASS
Between nine and ten o’clock I have a long breakfast
with reading and music. After breakfast I work, and
then take a break for coffee in the afternoon. I start
again and finish at seven o’clock in the evening.

INTERVIEWER
How do you know when a book is finished?

GRASS
When I am working on an epic-length book, the
writing process is fairly long. It takes from four to five
years to get through all the drafts. The book is done
when I am exhausted.

INTERVIEWER
Brecht was compelled to rewrite his works all the
time. Even after they were published, he never consid-
ered them finished.

GRASS
I don’t think I could do that. I can only write a book
like The Tin Drum or From the Diary of a Snail at a
special period of my life. The books came about
because of how I felt and thought at the time. I’m sure
that if I were to sit down and rewrite The Tin Drum or
Dog Years or From the Diary of a Snail I would destroy
it.

INTERVIEWER
How do you distinguish your nonfiction from your
fiction?

GRASS
This “fiction versus nonfiction” business is non-
sense. It may be useful to booksellers to classify books

THE PARIS REVIEW 7

by genre, but I don’t like having my books categorized
that way. I’ve always imagined some committee of
booksellers holding meetings to decide which books
should be called fiction and which nonfiction. I say
what the booksellers are doing is fiction!

INTERVIEWER
Well, when you write essays or speeches is the
method, the technique different from what you use
when you tell stories and make things up?

GRASS
Yes, it’s different because I am confronted with facts
I cannot change. It’s not very often that I keep a diary,
but I did in preparation for From the Diary of a Snail.
I had the feeling that 1969 would be an important year,
that it would bring about real political change beyond
just ushering in a new government. So while I was on
the road campaigning from March to September of
1969—a long time—I kept a diary. The same happened
to me in Calcutta. The diary I kept then developed into
Show Your Tongue.

INTERVIEWER
How do you juggle your political activism with
your visual art and your writing?

GRASS
Writers are involved not only with their inner, intel-
lectual lives, but also with the process of daily life. For
me, writing, drawing, and political activism are three
separate pursuits; each has its own intensity. I happen
to be especially attuned to and engaged with the socie-
ty in which I live. Both my writing and my drawing are
invariably mixed up with politics, whether I want them

8 GÜNTER GRASS
A manuscript page from the second draft of Die Wolke als Faust überm Wald by
Günter Grass.
to be or not. I don’t actually set out with a plan to bring
politics into something I’m writing. It’s much more that
with the third or fourth time I scratch away at a sub-
ject, I discover things that have been neglected by his-
tory. While I would never write a story that was simply
and specifically about some political reality, I see no
reason to omit politics, which has such a great, deter-
mining power over our lives. It seeps into every aspect
of life in one way or another.

INTERVIEWER
You incorporate so many different genres into your
work—history, recipes, lyrics . . .

GRASS
. . . and drawings, poems, dialogue, quotations,
speeches, letters! You see, when dealing with epic con-
cepts I find it necessary to use every aspect of language
available and the most diverse forms of linguistic com-
munication. Remember though, that some of my books
are very pure in form—the novella Cat and Mouse and
The Meeting at Telgte.

INTERVIEWER
Your interlocking of words and drawing is unique.

GRASS
Drawing and writing are the primary compo-
nents of my work, but not the only ones; I also
sculpt when I have the time. For me, there is a very
clear give-and-take relationship between art and
writing. Sometimes this relationship is stronger,
other times weaker. In the last few years it has been
very strong. Show Your Tongue, which takes place
in Calcutta, is an example of this. I could never have

10 GÜNTER GRASS
brought that book into existence without drawing.
The incredible poverty in Calcutta constantly draws
the visitor into situations where language is stifled—
you cannot find words. Drawing helped me to find
words again while I was there.

INTERVIEWER
In that book, the text of the poems appears not only
in print, but also in handwriting superimposed on the
drawings. Are the words to be considered a graphic ele-
ment and a part of the drawings?

GRASS
Some elements of the poems were formulated or
suggested by the drawings. When words finally came to
me, I began to write on top of what I had drawn—text
and drawing superimposed on one another. If you can
make out the words in the drawings, that’s fine; they
are there to be read. But the drawings generally contain
early drafts, what I first wrote by hand before sitting
myself down at the typewriter. It was very difficult to
write this book, and I’m not sure why. Perhaps it was
the subject, Calcutta. I have been there twice. The first
time was eleven years before I began Show Your
Tongue. It was my first time in India. I spent only a few
days in Calcutta. I was shocked. There was, from the
beginning, the wish to come back, to stay longer, to see
more, to write things down. I went on other voyages—
in Asia, Africa—but whenever I saw the slums of Hong
Kong or Manila or Jakarta, I was reminded of the situ-
ation in Calcutta. There is no other place I know where
the problems of the first world are so openly mixed up
with those of the third, out in the in daylight.
So I went to Calcutta again, and I lost my ability to
use language. I couldn’t write a word. At this point the

THE PARIS REVIEW 11

drawing became important. It was another way of
trying to capture the reality of Calcutta. With the help
of the drawings I was finally able to write prose again—
that is the first section of the book, a kind of essay.
After that I began work on the third section, a long
poem of twelve parts. It is a city poem, about Calcutta.
If you look at the prose, drawings and poem together,
you see that they deal with Calcutta in related but sep-
arate ways. There is a dialogue among them, although
the textures of the three are very different.

INTERVIEWER
Is any one of these textures more important than the
others?

GRASS
I can answer, only for myself, that poetry is the most
important thing. The birth of a novel begins with a
poem. I will not say it is ultimately more important, but
I can’t do without it. I need it as a starting point.

INTERVIEWER
A more dignified art form, perhaps, than the others?

GRASS
No, no, no! Prose, poetry, and drawings stand side
by side in a very democratic way in my work.

INTERVIEWER
Is there something physical, sensual about the act of
drawing that is absent from the process of writing?

GRASS
Yes. Writing is a genuinely laborious and abstract
process. When it is fun, the pleasure is wholly different

12 GÜNTER GRASS
from the pleasure of drawing. With drawing, I am
acutely aware of creating something on a sheet of
paper. It is a sensual act, which you cannot say about
the act of writing. In fact, I often turn to drawing to
recover from the writing.

INTERVIEWER
Writing is so unpleasant and painful?

GRASS
It’s a bit like sculpting. With sculpture, you have
to work from every side. If you change something
here, you have to change something there. Suddenly
you change one plane . . . and the sculpture becomes
something! There is some music in it. The same can
happen with a piece of writing. I can work for days
on the first or second or third draft, or on a long
sentence, or just one period. I like periods, as you
know. I work and I work and it’s all right. Every-
thing’s in there, but there’s something heavy about
it. Then I make a few changes, which I don’t think
are very important, and it works! This is what I
understand happiness to be, something like happi-
ness. It lasts for two or three seconds. Then I look
ahead to the next period, and it’s gone.

INTERVIEWER
To return to poetry for a moment, do poems that
you write as parts of novels differ in some way from
autonomous ones?

GRASS
At one time I was very old fashioned about writing
poetry. I thought that when you have enough good
poems, you should go out and look for a publisher, do

THE PARIS REVIEW 13

some drawings and print a book. Then you’d have this
marvelous volume of poetry, quite isolated, only for
lovers of poetry. Then beginning with From the Diary
of a Snail, I began to put poetry and prose together on
the pages of my books. This poetry has a different tone.
I don’t see any reason to isolate poetry from prose,
especially when we have in the German literary tradi-
tion such a wonderful mixture of the two genres. I have
become increasingly interested in putting poetry
between the chapters and using it to define the texture
of the prose. Besides, there’s the chance that prose read-
ers who have the feeling that “poetry is too heavy for
me” will see how much simpler and easier poetry can
sometimes be than prose.

INTERVIEWER
How much do English-speaking readers lose by
reading your books in English?

GRASS
That’s very difficult for me answer—I am not an
English reader. But I do try to help out with the
translations. When I went over the manuscript of
The Flounder with my German publisher, I asked for
a new contract. It stipulates that once I have fin-
ished a manuscript and my translators have studied
it, my publisher organizes and pays for a meeting
for all of us. We did it first with The Flounder, then
with The Meeting at Telgte, and with The Rat too. I
think it is a great help. The translators know every-
thing about my books and ask marvelous questions.
They know the books even better than I do. This can
sometimes be unpleasant for me, because they also
find the flaws in the books and tell me about them.
The French, Italian, and Spanish translators com-

14 GÜNTER GRASS
pare notes at these meetings and have found that
their collaboration helps all of them bring the books
into their own languages. I certainly prefer translations
that I can read without being aware that I am reading a
translation. In the German language we are lucky to
have marvelous translations from Russian literature.
The Tolstoy and the Dostoyevsky translations are per-
fect—they’re really part of German literature. The
Shakespeare translations and those of the romantic
authors are full of mistakes, but they too are mar-
velous. Newer translations of those works have fewer
mistakes, perhaps none, but can’t be compared to the
Friedrich von Schlegel–Ludwig Tieck translations. A lit-
erary book, whether it is poetry or a novel, needs a
translator who is able to recreate the book within his
own language. I try to encourage my translators to do
this.

INTERVIEWER
Do you think your novel Die Rättin suffered some-
how in English because the title had to be The Rat and
therefore did not convey that it is a female rat? “The
She-Rat” would not have sounded right to American
ears and “Rattessa” is out of the question. The refer-
ence to a specifically female rat seems so fascinating,
whereas the genderless English word rat conjures up
everyday images of those ugly beasts that infest the sub-
ways.

GRASS
We did not have this word in the German language
either. I created it. I always try to encourage my trans-
lators to invent. I tell them, If this word doesn’t exist in
your language, create it. Actually, for me it has a nice
sound, she-rat.

THE PARIS REVIEW 15

INTERVIEWER
Why is the rat in the book a female rat? Is that for
erotic or feminist or political reasons?

GRASS
In The Flounder it’s a male. But as I get older I see
that I’ve really given myself over to women. I will not
change that. Whether it’s a human woman or a rat—a
she-rat—it doesn’t matter. I get ideas, you see? They
make me jump and dance, and then I find words and
stories, and I begin to lie. It’s very important to lie. It
makes no sense for me to lie to a man—to sit with a
man, together, telling lies—but with a woman!

INTERVIEWER
So many of your books, like The Rat, The Flounder,
From the Diary of a Snail, or Dog Years, center on an
animal. Is there some special reason for that?

GRASS
Perhaps. I have always felt we speak too much about
human beings. This world is crowded with humans, but
also with animals, birds, fish, and insects. They were here
before we were and they will still be here should the day
come when there are no more human beings. There is
one difference between us: in our museums we have the
bones of the dinosaurs, enormous animals that lived for
many millions of years. And when they died, they died in
a very clean way. No poison at all. Their bones are very
clean. We can see them. This will not happen with
human beings. When we die there will be a terrible
breath of poison. We must learn that we are not alone on
the earth. The Bible teaches a bad lesson when it says
that man has dominion over the fish, the fowl, the cattle,

16 GÜNTER GRASS
and every creeping thing. We have tried to conquer the
earth, with poor results.

INTERVIEWER
Have you ever learned from criticism?

GRASS
Although I like to think I am a good pupil, critics are
not usually very good teachers. Yet there was one period,
which I sometimes miss, when I learned from critics. It
was the period of Group 47. We read aloud from manu-
scripts and discussed them. That’s where I learned to dis-
cuss a text and give reasons for my opinions, rather than
just saying, “I like that.” The critique came sponta-
neously. The authors would discuss craft, how to write a
book, that sort of thing. As for the critics, they had their
own expectations as to how an author should write. This
mixture of critics and authors was altogether a good
experience for me, and a lesson. In fact, that period was
important for postwar German literature in general.
There was so much confusion after the war, especially in
literary circles, because the generation that grew up dur-
ing the war—my generation—was either uneducated or
miseducated. The language was tainted. The significant
authors had emigrated. No one expected anything of
German literature. The annual meetings of Group 47
provided a context for us from which German literature
could re-emerge. Many German authors of my genera-
tion were marked by Group 47, although some don’t
admit it.

INTERVIEWER
What about criticism published, say, in magazines
or newspapers or books? Did that ever affect you?

THE PARIS REVIEW 17

GRASS
No. But I learned from other authors. Alfred Döblin
had such an effect on me that I wrote an essay on him
entitled “On My Teacher Döblin.” You can learn from
Döblin without the risk of imitating him. For me, he
was much more important than Thomas Mann.
Döblin’s novels are not as symmetrical, not as classical-
ly formed as Mann’s, and the risks he took were greater.
His books are rich, open, full of ideas. I’m sorry that in
both America and Germany he is known almost exclu-
sively for Berlin Alexanderplatz. But I am still learning,
and there are many others who have taught me.

INTERVIEWER
What about American authors?

GRASS
Melville has always been my favorite. And I’ve very
much enjoyed reading William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe,
and John Dos Passos. There is no one like Dos Passos—
with his marvelous depictions of the masses—writing in
America now. I miss the epic dimension that once existed
in American literature; it has become over-intellectualized.

INTERVIEWER
What do you think of the movie version of The Tin
Drum?

GRASS
Schlöndorff made a good film, even though he didn’t
follow the literary form of the book. Perhaps that was nec-
essary, because the point of view of Oskar—who tells
his story by constantly jumping from one time period to
another—would make a very complicated film. Schlön-
dorff did something very simple. He just tells the story

18 GÜNTER GRASS
on one line. There are, of course, whole sections that
Schlöndorff cut from the movie version. I miss some of
those. And there are aspects of the film I don’t like
much at all. The short scenes in the Catholic church
don’t quite work because Schlöndorff doesn’t under-
stand anything about Catholicism. He is really a
German Protestant, and the Catholic church in the
movie looks like a Protestant church that happens to
have a confessional in it. But this is one small detail.
Altogether, and with the help of the young boy who
played Oskar, I think it’s a good film.

INTERVIEWER
You have a special interest in the grotesque—I am
thinking especially of the famous scene with the eels
squirming out of the horse’s head in The Tin Drum.
Where does that come from?

GRASS
That comes from me. I have never understood why
this passage, which is six pages long, is so disturbing. It
is a piece of fantastical reality, which I wrote just the
same way I go about writing any other detail. But the
death and sexuality that are evoked by that image have
generated an enormous disgust in people.

INTERVIEWER
What impact has the reunification of Germany had
on German cultural life?

GRASS
Nobody listened to the German artists and writers
that spoke out against it. Unfortunately the majority of
intellectuals did not enter into the discussion, whether
for reasons of laziness or apathy I don’t know. Early on,

THE PARIS REVIEW 19

the former chancellor, Willy Brandt, pronounced that
the train to German unity had left the station and no
one could stop it. An unreflective mass enthusiasm took
over. That idiotic metaphor was taken as the truth; it
ensured that no one thought about how badly this
would damage East German culture, not to mention
their economy. No, I do not wish to ride a train that
cannot be steered and does not respond to warning sig-
nals. I have remained standing on the platform.

INTERVIEWER
How do you react to the sharp criticism you have
endured from the German press for your views on
reunification?

GRASS
Oh, I am used to that! It doesn’t affect my position.
Reunification has been carried out in a manner that
violates our basic law. A new constitution should have
been drafted when the divided German states came
together again—a constitution appropriate to the prob-
lems of a united Germany. We did not get a new con-
stitution. What happened instead was that all the East
German states were annexed to West Germany. This
was done using a sort of a loophole, an article of the
constitution that was intended to enable individual
German states to become part of West Germany. It also
grants the right of West German citizenship to ethnic
Germans, such as defectors from the East. It’s a real
problem because not everything about East Germany
was corrupt, just the government. And now everything
East German—including their schools, their art, their
culture—is going to be tossed out or suppressed. It has
been stigmatized; that entire part of German culture
will vanish.

20 GÜNTER GRASS
INTERVIEWER
German unification is the kind of historical event
that you frequently take up in your books. When you
write about such situations, do you attempt to give a
“true” historical narrative? How do fictional histories
like yours complement the history we read in textbooks
and newspapers?

GRASS
History is more than the news. I have concerned
myself particularly with the progression of historical
events in two books, The Meeting at Telgte and The
Flounder. In The Flounder, it’s the story of the histori-
cal development of human nourishment. There’s not a
great deal of material on that subject—we usually call
only those things history that have to do with war,
peace, political oppression, or party politics. The
process of nourishment and human nutrition is a central
question, especially important now, when starvation and
the population explosion go hand in hand in the third
world. Anyway, I had to invent the documentation for
this history, and decided upon using a fairy tale as the
guiding metaphor. Fairy tales generally speak the truth,
encapsulating the essence of our experiences, dreams,
wishes, and our sense of being lost in the world. In this
way they are truer than many facts.

INTERVIEWER
What about your characters?

GRASS
Literary characters, and especially the protagonist
who must carry a book, are combinations of many

THE PARIS REVIEW 21

different people, ideas, experiences, all bundled together.
As a writer of prose you have to create, invent charac-
ters—some you like and others you don’t. You can only
do it successfully if you can get inside these people. If I
don’t understand my own creations from the inside,
they will be paper figures, nothing more.

INTERVIEWER
They frequently make reappearences in several dif-
ferent books; I’m thinking again of Tulla, Ilsebill,
Oskar, and his grandmother Anna, for example. I get
the impression that these characters are all members of
a larger fictive world that you have only just begun to
document in your novels. Do you ever think of them as
having an independent existence?

GRASS
When I begin a book I develop sketches of several
different characters. As my work on the book progress-
es, these fictive characters often begin to live their own
lives. For example, in The Rat I had never planned to
reintroduce Mr. Matzerath as a sixty-year-old man. But
he presented himself to me, kept asking to be included,
saying, I am still here; this is also my story. He wanted
to get into the book. I have often found that over the
course of years, these invented people begin to make
demands, contradict me, or even refuse to allow them-
selves to be used. One is well advised to take heed of
these people now and then. Of course, one must also
listen to one’s self. It becomes a kind of dialogue, some-
times a very heated one. It is cooperation.

INTERVIEWER
Why is the character Tulla Pokriefke at the center of
so many of your books?

22 GÜNTER GRASS
GRASS
Her character is so difficult and full of contradic-
tions. I was very much touched when I wrote those
books. I can’t explain her. If I did, there would be an
explanation. I hate explanations! I invite you to make
your own picture. In Germany the high-school kids
come to school and what they want is to read a good
story or a book with a redhead in it! But that’s not
allowed. Instead they are instructed to interpret every
poem, every page, to discover what the poet is saying.
This has nothing to do with art. You can explain a tech-
nical thing and its function, but a picture or a poem or a
story or a novel has so many possibilities. Every reader
creates a poem over again. That’s the reason I hate inter-
pretations and explanations. Still, I’m very glad that
you’re still in touch with Tulla Pokriefke.

INTERVIEWER
Your books are often told from many points of
view. In The Tin Drum, Oskar speaks from the first per-
son and the third person. In Dog Years, the narrative
switches from second to third person. One could go on.
How does this technique help you to present your view
of the world?

GRASS
One must always seek out fresh perspectives. For
example, Oskar Matzerath. A dwarf—a child even in
adulthood—his size and his passivity make him a per-
fect vehicle for many different perspectives. He has
delusions of grandeur, and that is why he sometimes
speaks of himself in the third person, just as young chil-
dren sometimes do. It is part of his self-glorification. It

THE PARIS REVIEW 23

is like the royal we, and in the spirit of de Gaulle, say-
ing, “moi, de Gaulle . . .” These are all narrative
postures that provide distance. In Dog Years, there are
three perspectives, with the role of the dog different in
each. The dog is a point of refraction.

INTERVIEWER
How have your interests changed and your style
developed over the course of your career?

GRASS
My first three major books, The Tin Drum, Dog
Years, and the novella Cat and Mouse, represent one
period—the sixties. The German experience of World
War II is central to all three books, which together
make up the Danzig trilogy. At that time I felt especial-
ly compelled to deal with the Nazi era in my writing, to
work through its causes and ramifications. A few years
later, I wrote From the Diary of a Snail, which also
deals with the war, but was a real departure in terms of
my prose style and form. The action takes place in three
different epochs: the past (World War II), the present
(1969 in Germany, when I began work on the book),
and the future (represented by my children). In my head
and in the book all these time periods are jumbled
together. I discovered that the verb tenses taught in
grammar school—past, present, and future—are not so
simple in real life. Every time I think about the future,
my knowledge of the past and the present are there,
affecting what I call future. And sentences that were
said yesterday may not really be past and done with—
perhaps they will have a future. Mentally, we are not
restricted to chronology—we are aware of many differ-
ent times at once, as if they were one. As a writer, I have
to perceive this overlapping of times and tenses and be

24 GÜNTER GRASS
able to present it. These temporal themes have become
increasingly important in my work. Headbirths, or the
Germans are Dying Out is really narrated from a new,
invented time, which I call Vergegenkunft. It’s an amal-
gam of the words past, present, and future. In German,
you can run words together to form compounds. Ver
comes from Vergangenheit, which means “past”; gegen
from Gegenwart, which means “present”; and kunft
from Zukunft, the word for “future.” This new, mixed-
up time is also central to The Flounder. In that book the
narrator has been reincarnated over and over again
throughout time, and his many different biographies
provide new perspectives, each in its own present tense.
To write a book from the perspectives of so many dif-
ferent eras, looking back from the present and in touch
with things to come, I thought I would need a new
form. But the novel is such an open form, that I found
I could shift forms, from poetry to prose, within it.

INTERVIEWER
In From the Diary of a Snail, you combine contem-
porary politics with a fictionalized account of what befell
the Jewish community of Danzig during the Second
World War. Did you know that the speechwriting and
electioneering you did for Willy Brandt in 1969 would
become material for a book?

GRASS
I had no other choice but to go on that election cam-
paign, book or not. Born in 1927, in Germany, I was
twelve years old when the war started and seventeen
years old when it was over. I am overloaded with this
German past. I’m not the only one; there are other
authors who feel this. If I had been a Swedish or a Swiss
author I might have played around much more, told a

THE PARIS REVIEW 25

few jokes and all that. That hasn’t been possible; given
my background, I have had no other choice. In the
fifties and the sixties, the Adenauer period, politicians
didn’t like to speak about the past, or if they did speak
about it, they made it out to be a demonic period in our
history when devils had betrayed the pitiful, helpless
German people. They told bloody lies. It has been very
important to tell the younger generation how it really
happened, that it happened in daylight, and very slowly
and methodically. At that time, anyone could have
looked and seen what was going on. One of the best
things we have after forty years of the Federal Republic
is that we can talk about the Nazi period. And postwar
literature played an important part in bringing that
about.

INTERVIEWER
The Diary of a Snail begins, “Dear children.” This
is an appeal to the entire generation that grew up after
the war, but you are also addressing your own children.

GRASS
I wanted to explain how the transgression of geno-
cide came about. Born after the war, my children had
a father who drove off to campaign and give speeches
on Monday morning and did not come back again
until the following Saturday. They asked, “Why do
you do this, why are you constantly away from us?” I
tried to make it clear to them, not only verbally, but in
what I wrote. The incumbent chancellor at that time,
Kurt Georg Kiesinger, had been a Nazi during the war.
So I was not only campaigning for a new German
chancellor, but also against the Nazi past. In my book
I didn’t want to stick merely to abstract numbers—“so
and so many Jews were murdered.” Six million is an

26 GÜNTER GRASS
incomprehensible number. I wanted it to have a more
physical impact. So I chose as the thread to my story
the history of the Danzig synagogue, which stood in
that city for many centuries until it was destroyed
during the war by the Nazis—Germans. I wanted to docu-
ment the truth of what happened there. In the final scene of
the book I relate this to the present; I write about my prepa-
rations for a lecture given in honor of Albrecht Dürer’s
three hundredth birthday. The chapter is a melancholy
reflection on Dürer’s engraving Melencholia I and the
effect melancholy has had on human history. I imagine
that a culture-wide state of melancholy would be the cor-
rect attitude for Germans to have toward the Holocaust.
Repentant and mournful, it would be informed by some
insight about the causes of the Holocaust, which would
carry over to our times as a lesson.

INTERVIEWER
This is typical of so many of your books, focusing
on some aspect of wretchedness in the current world
situation and the horrors that seem to lie ahead. Do you
mean to teach, to warn, or to incite your readers to
some kind of action?

GRASS
Simply, I do not want to deceive them. I want to
present the situation they are in, or one they may look
forward to. People are disconsolate, not because every-
thing is so awful but because we as human beings have
it in our hands to change things, but don’t. Our prob-
lems are caused by us, determined by us, and it
behooves us to solve them.

INTERVIEWER
Your activism extends to environmental as well as

THE PARIS REVIEW 27

political issues, and you have incorporated this into your
work.

GRASS
In the past few years I have traveled a great deal, in
Germany and other places. I have seen and drawn
dying, poisoned worlds. I published a book of drawings
called Death of Wood about one such world, on the
border between the Federal Republic of Germany and
what was then still the German Democratic Republic.
There, well in advance of the political union, a reunifi-
cation of Germany occurred in the form of dying
forests. This is also true of the mountain range on the
border of West Germany and Czechoslovakia. It looks
as if a slaughter had taken place. I drew what I saw
there. The pictures have brief, pregnant titles that are
intended more as commentary than description, and
there is an afterword. With this kind of subject matter,
drawing has an equal or greater weight than the writ-
ing.

INTERVIEWER
Do you believe that literature has sufficient power
to illuminate the political realities of an age? Did you
go into politics because as a citizen you felt you could
do more than what you could as a writer?

GRASS
I don’t think politics should be left to the parties; that
would be dangerous. There are so many seminars and
conferences on the subject “can literature change the
world”! I think literature has the power to effect change.
So does art. We’ve changed our habits of seeing as a
result of modern art, in ways of which we are barely
aware. Inventions like cubism have provided us with new

28 GÜNTER GRASS
powers of vision. James Joyce’s introduction of the inte-
rior monologue in Ulysses has affected the complexity of
our understanding of existence. It’s just that the
changes that literature can affect are not measurable.
The intercourse between a book and its reader is peace-
ful, anonymous.
To what extent have books changed people? We
don’t know much about this. I can only answer that
books have been decisive for me. When I was young,
after the war, one of the many books that were impor-
tant for me was that little volume by Camus, The Myth
of Sisyphus. The famous, mythological hero who is sen-
tenced to roll a stone up a mountain, which inevitably
rolls back down to the bottom—traditionally a genuinely
tragic figure—was newly interpreted for me by Camus as
being happy in his fate. The continuous, futile-seeming
repetition of rolling the stone up the mountain is actu-
ally the satisfying act of his existence. He would be
unhappy if someone took the stone away from him.
That had a great influence on me. I don’t believe in an
end goal; I don’t think the stone will ever remain at the
top of the mountain. We can take this myth to be a pos-
itive depiction of the human condition, even though it
stands in opposition to every form of idealism, includ-
ing German idealism, and to every ideology. Every
Western ideology promises some ultimate goal—a
happy, a just, or a peaceful society. I don’t believe in
that. We are things in flux. It may be that the stone
always slides away from us and must be rolled back up
again, but it’s something we must do; the stone belongs
to us.

INTERVIEWER
So how do you envision man’s future?

THE PARIS REVIEW 29

GRASS
As long as we are needed, there will be some sort of
future. I can’t tell you much about it in one word. I
don’t want to give an answer to this in one word. I have
written a book, The Rat—“The She-Rat,” “Rattessa.”
What else do you want? It is a long answer to your
question.

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