Since you like that analogy, perhaps it could be legitimately extended...;-)
Juenger admittedly made youthful mistakes early on in the race, which remained on his record and disqualified him 70 years in advance of the finish line. Grass made his own youthful mistakes, but since nobody noticed, he played dumb and said nothing (except of course to distract attention by accusing others of their moral deficiencies), waiting until after the race was over before he came out with his own confession. In the final analysis this may be a big mistake, since it may leave a final bitter after-taste on otherwise valid and important literature. Coming from a land of where official hypocrisy is blatant but publicly acceptable, I get particularly irked by moralists who turn out to be not quite as different or superior as they pretended. Whatever the truth about Grass's actual involvement and his interior motivations for it, the simple fact is he kept quiet about it for a very long time, one might say, as long as safely possible (life expectancy in Europe: about 80 years). Why?! Simple question - he might say, for the good of the public, not to have prejudiced them about his objectively important work and so deter their reading it? Hmmm - or simply because he was a coward. His moral judgements on others may have been quite valid, and it is likely that they partly evolved from his own personal experience and retrospective guilt about being a "bad guy" himself once. But it is one thing to moralize about others, even correctly, and quite another to also publicly express your own guilt and weakness. The latter takes courage. Good at least that he finally found it. John suggested that Grass was a better writer of fiction - perhaps so, he certainly 'lived a fiction' much more successfully than Juenger. Walter, I imagine on the contrary that Juenger would have been glad to receive the Noble prize, if only for the fact that it would have publicized his works and led to a greater readership and recognition of them. One of his main topics of discussion when I met him in Wilflingen in 1995 was the lack of recognition of certain of his works which he thought were particularly important. (Just for interest, in this respect he cited "An der Zeitmauer" and "Eumeswil".) His works have so much to contribute to contemporary man's understanding of his existential situation and he would have welcomed anything that led to people reading and benefiting from them more - sometimes the anarch cannot avoid the limelight. Cheers! Simon -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 12:53 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [Juenger-list] Jünger and Grass JÜNGER and GRASS One difference between the two is that Jünger contributed to political topics only for a short period of his life, Grass does so ongoing. Another, Grass marketed and markets his books much more successfully. I liked the analogy with the tour de france disqualifying in Simon's post ;-), although a literary prize should evaluate one's writing, not one's biography. It is another significant difference between the two, that Grass aimed at the Noble-prize while Jünger was probably pleased not to have been gifted with it. Greetings Walter Hedderich _______________________________________________ Juenger-list mailing list [email protected] http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/juenger-list _______________________________________________ Juenger-list mailing list [email protected] http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/juenger-list
