Writers and War

Günter Grass gave the keynote address at the International PEN Conference in Berlin, and his attacks on the hypocrisy of George Bush and Tony Blair received much attention.  By now, such attacks by Grass are to be expected and are not noteworthy.  But his entire speech is worth reading, for he takes us on a tour of Baroque German literature, quoting  Andreas Gryphius, Martin Opitz,  Johan Jacob Christophel von Grimmelshausen, and then ending his address with these lines from Matthias Claudius Kreigslied (Song of War):

»s’ ist Krieg / s’ ist Krieg!
O Gottes Engel wehre
Und rede Du darein!
s’ leider Krieg – und ich begehre
Nicht schuld daran zu sein!«.

Great stuff – for this alone Grass deserves our gratitude. But the message of his speech is still rather somber: wars have always plagued mankind and writers can do little to stop them.  Nevertheless, the writer is compelled to document and speak out about war – and here he comes to the defense of his much-maligned fellow Nobel Prize laureate Harold Pinter.  The duty of the writer is to work against and refute always the old adage  »Wenn die Waffen sprechen, schweigen die Musen« (When the guns speak, the muses fall silent). The pundits will heap scorn on Grass for his reflexive anti-Americanism, but his work will be read long after the Iraq War and the wars that will come after.

Iraq War Irak-Krieg Literatur