[Juenger-list] Further to Grass/Juenger

[Charlie Ernst]

Since you like that analogy, perhaps it could be legitimately

extended...;-)

 

Juenger admittedly made youthful mistakes early on in the race, which
remained on his record and disqualified him 70 years in advance of the
finish line.

 

Grass made his own youthful mistakes, but since nobody noticed, he played
dumb and said nothing (except of course to distract attention by accusing
others of their moral deficiencies), waiting until after the race was over
before he came out with his own confession. In the final analysis this may
be a big mistake, since it may leave a final bitter after-taste on otherwise
valid and important literature.

 

Coming from a land of where official hypocrisy is blatant but publicly
acceptable, I get particularly irked by moralists who turn out to be not
quite as different or superior as they pretended. Whatever the truth about
Grass's actual involvement and his interior motivations for it, the simple
fact is he kept quiet about it for a very long time, one might say, as long
as safely possible (life expectancy in

Europe: about 80 years). Why?! Simple question - he  might say, for the good
of the public, not to have prejudiced them about his objectively important
work and so deter their reading it? Hmmm - or simply because he was a
coward.

 

His moral judgements on others may have been quite valid, and it is likely
that they partly evolved from his own personal experience and retrospective
guilt about being a "bad guy" himself once. But it is one thing to moralize
about others, even correctly, and quite another to also publicly express
your own guilt and weakness. The latter takes courage. Good at least that he
finally found it.

 

John suggested that Grass was a better writer of fiction - perhaps so, he
certainly 'lived a fiction' much more successfully than Juenger.

 

Walter, I imagine on the contrary that Juenger would have been glad to
receive the Noble prize, if only for the fact that it would have publicized
his works and led to a greater readership and recognition of them. One of
his main topics of discussion when I met him in Wilflingen in 1995 was the
lack of recognition of certain of his works which he thought were
particularly important. (Just for interest, in this respect he cited "An der
Zeitmauer" and "Eumeswil".) His works have so much to contribute to
contemporary man's understanding of his existential situation and he would
have welcomed anything that led to people reading and benefiting from them
more - sometimes the anarch cannot avoid the limelight.

 

Cheers!

 

Simon

 

-----Original Message-----

From: juenger-list-bounces at juenger.org

[mailto:juenger-list-bounces at juenger.org] On Behalf Of Wahe at aol.com

Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 12:53 AM

To: juenger-list at juenger.org

Subject: [Juenger-list] Jünger and Grass

 

JÜNGER and GRASS

 

One difference between the two is that Jünger contributed to political
topics only for a short period of his life, Grass does so ongoing. Another,
Grass marketed and markets his books much more successfully.

 

I liked the analogy with the tour de france disqualifying in Simon's post
;-), although a literary prize should evaluate one's writing, not one's
biography. It is another significant difference between the two, that Grass
aimed at the Noble-prize while Jünger was probably pleased not to have been
gifted with it.

 

Greetings

 

Walter Hedderich

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