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When television gave the new
that the Nobel award 1999 of literature has been given Günter Grass,
I was in my study in Milan. Smiling I turned at a wall and I said
mentally: congratulations dear Grass. Who did I address to? Hanging
on this wall, since October 1976, there's a picture of the great
German writer he gave me with an dedication, after an interview.
By these days, Grass was at Milan for the inauguration of an exhibition
devoted to a work of his:
“Going mushrooming with Sophie”, with nine poems and nineteen
lithographs . Grass was already a writer of world stature.
When in 1959 his novel “The tin drum” (“Die Blechtrommel”)
came out, Grass attracted a shower of unusual attributes: they
defined him as gypsy, eccentric, carnal, unrestrained, truculent,
torrential. But the destiny of Grass didn't stop within the literature
field.
He entered the SPD, the German social-democratic party. But let's
get to October 1976. Germany was still divided. The West Germans had
just gone to vote and for social-democratics results were quite
negative.
Then Grass could want to talk about his lithographs, but when I explained
him that the real purpose of the interview was another, over his bristly
face passed an expression of resigned surrender.
I started asking Grass: “Why the social democratic party has pulled
back?”
This was the answer: “For our opposing applied for demagogic formulas,
in the style of the nazis Goebbels, as the question: 'Do you want
freedom or socialism?'”
The electoral results seem to have punished the government, that more
than other in the west has fought successfully against the economic
crisis clutching Europe. Do you think it's paradoxical?
“The work of govern of Helmut Schmidt finds more acknowledgment
abroad than in Federal Germany. It can be explained with three
reason: mainly with the fact that the German press is sizeable right-wing;
second because the same social-democratics did not highlighted their
work at govern, third for the electoral campaign as I've already
said went on under the shield of the mad alternative launched
by Franz Joseph Strauss, that is or freedom or socialism”.
Is it true that you deem the German social-democracy as party mainly
bourgeois, with a petit bourgeois program?
“I've never asserted that. I deem that the German Democratic Party
represents workers' interests, on the other side in a industrial society
as the German one, and also like the Italian one, in the Sunday speeches
you can pronounce the world proletariat the times you want, but workers'
aspirations are petit bourgeois.”
Do you think a writer must be first citizen and then a writer?
“Writers are fist writers; second they are writers, third furthermore
writers. But since one engages politically, he's a citizen as others
for he is immersed in the reality of his country. When he expresses
about political matters he does it as a writer without any doubt”.
The interview was over. Grass wrote the dedication on the book (“Für
Giulio Nascimbeni”) on the lithograph he kindly decided to present
to me.
I gave a glance to my notes and I found I marked as a reminder a witticism
Grass wrote few years before. I reminded it to him. It said: “Progress
means a little quicker than a snail”.
The writer laughed at and commented on these words with another on-liner:
“Dear friend, today we could be happy if progress could keep
the pace of a snail”.
If I were at Stockholm on the day Grass will enjoy his deserved triumph
and will receive the Nobel award I would like to ask him: “Herr
Grass, do you still think that we could be happy if only we could
keep the pace of the snail?”
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