What Must Be Said (by Gunther Grass)
 

German writer Gunther Grass (1999 Literature Nobel Laureate) has published a controversial poem denouncing Israel's nuclear weapons.


What Must Be Said
(Translated By Heather Horn)

Why do I stay silent, conceal for too long
what clearly is and has been
practiced in war games, at the end of which we as survivors
are at best footnotes.

It is the alleged right to first strike
that could annihilate the Iranian people--
enslaved by a loud-mouth
and guided to organized jubilation--
because in their territory,
it is suspected, a bomb is being built.

Yet why do I forbid myself
to name that other country
in which, for years, even if secretly,
there has been a growing nuclear potential at hand
but beyond control, because no inspection is available?

The universal concealment of these facts,
to which my silence subordinated itself,
I sense as incriminating lies
and force--the punishment is promised
as soon as it is ignored;
the verdict of "anti-Semitism" is familiar.

Now, though, because in my country
which from time to time has sought and confronted
its very own crime
that is without compare
in turn on a purely commercial basis, if also
with nimble lips calling it a reparation, declares
a further U-boat should be delivered to Israel,
whose specialty consists of guiding
all-destroying warheads to where the existence
of a single atomic bomb is unproven,
but through fear of what may be conclusive,
I say what must be said.

Why though have I stayed silent until now?
Because I thought my origin,
afflicted by a stain never to be expunged
kept the state of Israel, to which I am bound
and wish to stay bound,
from accepting this fact as pronounced truth.

Why do I say only now,
aged and with my last ink,
that the nuclear power of Israel endangers
the already fragile world peace?
Because it must be said
what even tomorrow may be too late to say;
also because we--as Germans burdened enough--
could be the suppliers to a crime
that is foreseeable, wherefore our complicity
could not be redeemed through any of the usual excuses.

And granted: I am silent no longer
because I am tired of the hypocrisy
of the West; in addition to which it is to be hoped
that this will free many from silence,
That they may prompt the perpetrator
of the recognized danger
to renounce violence and
likewise insist
that an unhindered and permanent control
of the Israeli nuclear potential
and the Iranian nuclear sites
be authorized through an international agency
by the governments of both countries.

Only this way are all, the Israelis and Palestinians,
even more, all people, that in this
region occupied by mania
live cheek by jowl among enemies,
and also us, to be helped.

NYT; Apr 6 2012, 1:43 PM ET 180


http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...slated/255549/

I hope no one sees the need to discuss the content of the poem here. There are doubtless more than one point of view. But as a poem, at least in this translation, I would venture to say that it is a failure. It does not offer, near as I can tell, any of the sorts of experience one reads poetry for. I don't see that it employs poetic techniques in any significant way. It merely calls itself a poem and then proceeds to spell out a prose editorial, and because it is written by a Nobel Prize winner in Literature, we are supposed to accept it as a poem and allow him to add to the authority of his views by perceiving them to be embodied in his art.

I suppose it IS a translation but it seems pretty bad to me. The only reason you can't call it doggerel is that it's in free verse (isn't it?).

But then I could never finish The Tin Drum. Thomas Mann he ain't.