Posted
April 12th, 2012
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On Tuesday I wrote an article on the Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ website, giving English PEN’s reaction to the Günter Grass controversy:
Hit Günter Grass with Poetry, Not a Travel Ban
On Sunday, the controversy surrounding Günter Grass’s poem Was Gesagt Werden Muss (What Must Be Said) escalated, with Israeli interior minister Eli Yishai confirming Grass was now considered a persona non grata in Israel, which amounts to a travel ban. This is a form of state censorship against an author, purely because of what he has written, which is wrong and an infringement on free speech. read more >>
The site has a busy comments section too. I have summarised some of the more interesting replies on my own blog.
The issue of cultural boycotts is difficult and complex. Last year, our president Gillian Slovo wrote her thoughts on the issue:
Calls for cultural boycotts such as this one pose a special challenge for me. I am, after all, the new president of English PEN, whose work is focused not only on the defence of persecuted writers but also on the expansion of cultural engagement. At the same time I am a product of my South African heritage and of an early political engagement framed by the boycotts that helped to bring down the apartheid regime. read more >>
What do you think? Let us know in the comments box below.
Grass addresses issues like the nuclear threat from Israel to its neighbours and the German government being involved by supplying (nuclear) submarines.
He asks himself why he as not spoken out against it and answers – because of Germany’s dreadful history and the burden these crimes mean to Germans, and the guilt he (as an old German) feels.
But he also sees that if he does not speak out now – history might repeat itself -i.e. a German keeping shtumm while (nuclear) crimes against humanity might be committed again – with German involvement.
And as he said in an interview – if you hit a nuclear power station with a rocket you create a nuclear disaster too. So this poem is is about (personal) responsibility. History might repeat itself – in a new disguise.
He also hopes for proper international controls of nuclear facilities and weapons in the region in the interest of all.
I really don’t understand the overreaction his poem created – His words are measured. He refers to the German past, and how this still affects political discourse today. He also addresses how the experience of having been a perpetrator (and really understanding what the atrocities committed meant and still mean for the victims) also comes with a clear responsibility for the future of humankind.
http://goaliesanxiety.blogspot.com/2012/04/gunter-grass-what-must-be-said.html contains daily updated links to the 100 of different positive and negative positions taken on the Grass anti-war poem controversy. I myself am doing a summary that may be done by the end of the week. However, it looks as though this might get to be a bigger story than just Grass and his poem. http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name