Johanna Faust, a mixed race Jew, prefers to publish pseudonymously. She is committed: first, to preventing war, ecological disaster, and nuclear apocalypse; last to not only fighting for personal privacy & the freedom of information, but, by representing herself as a soldier in that fight, to exhorting others to do the same. She is a poet, always. All these efforts find representation here: "ah, Mephistophelis" is so named after the last line of Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, whose heretical success flouted the censor for a time.

Grass is right to say the West's attitude to Israel's nuclear arsenal involves an awful lot of hypocrisy



Guest post: An excellent editorial by Christina Patterson, for your perusal.  Printed by permission.


If even a Nobel laureate isn't allowed to speak out, then who is? 
Grass is right to say the West's attitude 
to Israel's nuclear arsenal involves an 
awful lot of hypocrisy 
by Christina Patterson 
Wednesday, 11 April 2012

"It is difficult," said the American poet William Carlos Williams, "to get the news from poems." In a normal week, 
he'd be right. In a normal week, you'd be quite lucky, at least in the Western world, to find a poem that talked 
about what was happening in the news, and you'd be quite lucky to find anyone, outside a classroom, or a poetry 
group, talking about it if it did. But this week, a poem was the news. And it didn't go down all that well. 
Günter Grass's poem, "What Must Be Said", which was published in a German newspaper last week, hasn't gone 
down well with critics, or journalists, or politicians. It hasn't gone down well with German politicians, who have 
called it "abominable", and "over the top", and "irritating". And it hasn't gone down well with Israeli politicians, 
who have decided not to pretend they're literary critics, but focus, instead on the content. Which, it's clear, they 
didn't like. 
"His declarations," said Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, "are ignorant and shameful, and every 
honest person in the world must condemn them." It was, said the Israeli embassy in Berlin, "a European tradition 
to accuse the Jews before the Passover festival of ritual murder". It was, said Israel's foreign minister, Avigdor 
Lieberman, an example of the "egoism of so-called Western intellectuals who are willing to sacrifice the Jewish 
people on the altar of crazy anti-Semites for a second time, just to sell a few more books or gain recognition." 
It's possible, of course, that Günter Grass, who is Germany's most famous living writer, and who was awarded 
the Nobel Prize for literature in 1999, feels he isn't famous enough. It's possible that he wrote his poem, about the 
balance of nuclear power in the Middle East, because he felt he hadn't sold quite enough books, and might not 
have all that many more years left to sell more. It's possible that he thought that the best way to celebrate 
Easter, in his 85th year, was to wreck the reputation he'd spent a lifetime building up, and get himself branded an 
anti-Semite. But it's also possible that he didn't. 
It is, for example, possible that when he asked, in the poem, why he had "stayed silent" for so long about the 
"hypocrisy of the West" in relation to the Middle East, and why he had "forbidden" himself to name the country 
whose nuclear weapons he regarded as a threat to world peace, he was actually asking himself why he had 
stayed silent. It's possible that when he said he hadn't spoken out before because he came from a country with "a 
stain" on its history that was "never to be expunged", and knew that if he did speak out he would be called an 
anti-Semite, what he meant was that he didn't particularly want to be called an anti-Semite. And not that he did. 
And it's possible that when he said that he had decided to speak out anyway, because he was old and might not 
have many more opportunities, and because he thought that Germans, already "burdened" with a terrible past, 
might be "complicit" in future horrors if they didn't, that is exactly what he meant. 
Is it a good poem? Well, that, for those of us who don't speak German, is hard to tell. "Poetry," said the 
American poet Robert Frost, "is what gets lost in translation", and it certainly gets lost in the kind of translations 
that are done to meet a newspaper deadline. A good poem can take weeks, or months, to write. A good 
translation takes exactly the same. The translations I've read of this poem aren't likely to win anyone a Nobel 
Prize. But they also don't make it sound like a mad rant. They make it sound, in fact, like an agonised, if rather 
heavy-handed, meditation. 
And is it, as the critics have implied, simplistic and naive? Does it, as so many angry people have said, imply that 
Israel and Iran are "morally equivalent"? Well, actually, no. Iran, says Grass in the poem, is a country "enslaved by a loudmouth... and guided to organised jubilation", which aren't really the words of a fan. Grass doesn't talk 
about Israel's leader, or its illegal "settlements". But he does say that Israel has been allowed to stockpile nuclear 
weapons without any inspections from anyone, and that Iran, which wants to, hasn't. Which, even angry Israelis 
would have to admit, is true. 
Günter Grass may or may not be right to say, in his poem, that Israel's nuclear weapons are a threat to world 
peace. But he's certainly right to say that the West's attitude to Israel, and its nuclear arsenal, involves an awful 
lot of hypocrisy. He's right to say that Germans don't dare speak out about this, and he's right to suggest that if 
Israel decides to take some pre-emptive action against Iran, innocent civilians will be killed. And it's hard to see 
why he's wrong to hope that speaking out will "free many from silence", and prompt Israel to "renounce 
violence". 
If a Nobel prizewinner can't express a political opinion, it's hard to see who can. Grass, it's true, has a "stain" of 
his own. He was, he revealed in a memoir six years ago, conscripted as a 17-year-old into the SS. But 
conscription, as many young Israelis will tell you, isn't the same as choice. It also means that you may well learn 
more than you'll ever want about the terrible realities of war. 
In Syria, people who don't like their government are being gunned down on the streets. In Bahrain, they're being 
tortured, and locked up. In Germany, because it lost the war that wanted to turn the whole world into a fascist 
state, you're free to say what you like. You're free to criticise your government, and the governments of other 
countries, even if it's breaking a taboo. And even if it seems to make everyone around you go mad. 
In Israel, you're meant to be free to say what you like, but if you're not Jewish, and you criticise the policies of 
the Israeli government, you're likely to be called an anti-Semite. And you are, it seems, because this is what the 
Israeli government has just done to Günter Grass, quite likely to be banned from the country. 
It would have been better all round if Grass's poem had been better. Unfortunately, great writers can't produce 
great art all the time. But Günter Grass has produced at least one great work of art. It's called The Tin Drum. It's 
about, in as far as you can sum up what any novel is about, the power of art to defeat war. 
It may be a bit naive to think art can defeat war, or that a poem can make a government change its mind. But a 
poem, like a novel, or a play, can make people think. If enough people change their views, then maybe 
governments – even the ones who say they believe in freedom of speech, but make it clear from their actions that 
they don't – will change theirs too. 

follow the author:




Although my opinion differs upon a few details – I do not think Iran wants to build a bomb, for instance – I must say, well said, well said, and bravo for saying what sorely needed to be said.  


(I would like to add, sometimes I think Israelis have lost their minds, but perhaps I will keep that t myself.)




Be seeing you.

2 comments:

  1. Gut, Wave Review and Nerve
    (a poem in response to Letter-poem to Grass: If We Go, Everyone Goes by Israeli poet Itamar Yaoz-Kest)

    He witness.
    How are yah?
    I’m hurting,
    Claiming responsibility world said.
    Veronica
    Can’t get out.
    Probably
    Superior
    That’s her state-run TV.
    To think captain
    Come back to it
    In a world filled with war.
    All this mischief,
    All this dustbin,
    All this problem,
    The fault of the neighbors.
    We’re gonna annihilate the world
    In an open letter to Samson.
    There stand atonement?
    I don’t understand.
    Waitin’
    Israel
    A little more flavor from you
    Of brother
    And school.
    Now,
    You didn’t
    Give a crossing for him.
    Is he White?
    He isn’t Jewish.
    (An open parallel.)
    What about that up here Nancy?
    A White one
    Grow by the principles
    Grown from the elements
    A Jewish state.
    Her individual dawn
    If I am a common thinker.

    Now what do we do with Adam?
    Exterminate further?
    No that dead show.
    Gimmie my flashlight.
    (Illuminates the room.)
    I’m not comin’ back.
    Oh you’re not comin’ back?
    You’re defenseless
    (He was a real loud photographer.
    Here I might be able to help him.)
    In hold humanity,
    The change I’m not really supposed to tell.
    Then tell.
    No matter who’s walking
    They’ll have a right of crossing.
    Change now ahead.
    Consider it done.
    There’s victory in there somewhere.

    What are you talking about?
    On the other hand,
    Why don’t you shut your mouth?
    Good idea,
    Now I’m uncle on the floor
    In a blue outfit.
    Even spiritual
    You’re gonna wanna beat me up.
    I’m lensing
    Right here:
    The parentheses around Spirit will be taken off –
    Spiritual victory.
    We’ll all be in a different world.
    Slowly
    Abigail,
    We’re all livin’ in this one.
    I just wanted you to see it
    Through the lens
    Of poetry’s nodule.
    Not secular,
    No religion.
    Is he dead or alive?
    No, this is not heaven.

    At the rift.
    Picket no longer.
    Are you gonna tell me about this neighborhood?
    Somebody last screamed it.
    I ain’t exercisin’ no new restraints.
    This is the only kind one of a people,
    Superman’s brother,
    A tough customer,
    Earth activated.
    Just think,
    You’re part of it
    Whole thing,
    A full nelson,
    And we got our full moon.
    A camera
    Analogy with pain
    Put the broad on our feet,
    The teacup
    While our hairs are going down.
    The world is so very small.
    Put in our face
    Everybody
    As you.
    Touch it
    To see where I’m going.
    What do you take me for?
    I’m not blaming you.
    In that camera
    Is our hopscotch item,
    Toll we count.
    Better than a machine gun.
    Coming events
    We take a peer at
    In a nodule.
    I’m fixin’ your plate,
    Mine too by the looks of it.
    Will you look at that?
    Out of danger.
    Before I forget,
    God makes this perfect.
    You take it home.
    Good idea.

    A poet in India

    ReplyDelete
  2. oh my! thank you, poet, most belatedly!

    ReplyDelete