Gunter Grass in the New Yorker

Enough time has passed since it was revealed that Gunter Grass was not only a Nazi soldier, but a member of the elite Waffen SS that the punditry has died down enough. His article in the current New Yorker (June 4, 2007), "How I Spent the War" is less consumed with political posturing and focuses on his recollections, either sharp as barbedwire, or fractal as burnt film, than on remembering. Not that he has forgotten his detractors. "What I did cannot be put down to youthful folly. No pressure from above," he writes in the opening paragraph.

What follows is not an apology nor merely historical recounting, but a reflection steeped in literature and regret, which casts itself into the light by a searching for who he was, once upon a time. The picture of him for the article shows a cocky-looking youth, snaped to attention for an informal photograph, and Grass' narrative makes no attempt to paint his younger self in a more flattering pose.

I could not help but approach the essay skeptically. Such a disavowal of victimhood at the beginning of his essay seems to insist 'you must believe me!' even as he goes on to view himself as a man "in a Brother Grimm's story," a bit scared and unhappy with his place in the plot. Who, then, was writing his plot? Although Grass denies any "pressure from above," it is difficult not to read parts of his recollection that way; his story is framed by the psychological pressure of his misunderstood father and the demise of Hitler, two polar father figures which bookmark this essay. Perhaps in this contradiction there is the greatest truth of this memoir.

What Grass succeeds in doing is telling us a story which is beautiful, tragic, and probably true. While some of the events, the physically perfect Aryan soldier who refuses to touch a gun and is sent to a concentration camp, or the rabbit which hops over to him and his comrade, pitiful and routed, seem too much like artistic inventions to be true, but perhaps that is why Grass was enlisted to paint the mess hall in scenes of nature as a young man. Throughout the story he returns to the German landscape in brilliant prose, and paints his days in the war with angst, humor, pain, sex, feces and guilt; an attempt to give us what we reallly want to know; How did he get from cocky SS soldier, to writer of The Tin Drum? In this essay we see not only the young man, but also the superimposed outline of the older man cast over the story, lamenting the decisions being made. The story works for the dance of the two which I think is much like his recollection of meeting another lost soldier in a forest so dark they cannot see each other, only hear:

"Whistling is said to help dispel fear in the dark wood. I did not whistle. Something, perhaps the thought of my far-off mother, made me sing instead. I did not seek out a melody from among the marches we had been taught. No, it was a nursery rhyme relevant to my situation that came unbidden to my lips, and I sang the first line over and over-'Hans left home, on his own'-until I finally heard its mate: 'Went into the world alone.'
I can't say how long this antiphonal singing continued. Most likely until the message behind the words...was clear enough to allow both sides to deop cover, address each other...lower their weapons, and move within arms length, then even closer."