Gunter Grass: the tin drum and the tin ear

This morning’s editorial in Israel’s left-wing Haaretz newspaper noted a double standard that was also a bad joke. Israel’s Interior Minister’s had declared, ‘If Gunter Grass wants to continue to distribute his false and distorted works, I suggest he do so from Iran, where he’ll find an appreciative audience.’ The minister could not detect the irony in his words, the paper said. It is precisely his decision not to let Grass enter Israel because of a poem he wrote that ‘is characteristic of dark regimes like those in Iran or North Korea’.

You can read Grass’s poem here. I find it a false and vainglorious work because of its strong element of self-pity. Grass calls it ‘What Must Be Said,’ as if he is making a courageous stand. He adds to the impression that he is a dissident from a revolutionary underground speaking truth to power when he talks of his past silence, the better to emphasise his present bravery.