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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Old-Age Societies—Old-Age Style
- 1 Old-Age Style and Self-Monumentalization in Günter Grass
- 2 Old-Age Style and Self-Healing in Ruth Klüger and Christa Wolf
- 3 Old-Age Style and Self-Transcendence in Martin Walser
- Conclusion: Old-Age Style as Late Style?
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Old-Age Style and Self-Monumentalization in Günter Grass
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Old-Age Societies—Old-Age Style
- 1 Old-Age Style and Self-Monumentalization in Günter Grass
- 2 Old-Age Style and Self-Healing in Ruth Klüger and Christa Wolf
- 3 Old-Age Style and Self-Transcendence in Martin Walser
- Conclusion: Old-Age Style as Late Style?
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Machte er später, während der Blüte- und Verfallszeit seiner Kunst, Gebrauch von seinen Fähigkeiten, ohne äußeren Zwang zu verspüren. Aus bloßem Spieltrieb, dem Manierismus einer Spätepoche verfallend, dem L'art pour l'art ergeben, sang Oskar sich dem Glas ins Gefüge und wurde älter dabei.
[Whereas later on, during the heyday and decadence of his art, he plied his talents under no external pressure at all. Succumbing to the mannerism of a late period, a devotee of l'art pour l'art, out of pure playfulness, Oskar sang glass back to its original structure, and grew older as he did so.]
—Günter Grass, Die Blechtrommel, 1959Günter Grass's debut novelDie Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum, 1959) is almost unanimously acknowledged as one of the outstanding works of postwar German writing, and indeed of modern world literature. And Grass, born in 1927, was only thirty-one when it appeared. The novel's unrestrained exuberance, unabated vigor over more than seven hundred pages, and insolent disregard for established moral and religious sensibilities, seem literally to embody its author's youth. According to reviewers at the time, the author of Die Blechtrommel was “bursting with energy,” “vital,” “scurrilous,” or simply “infantile.” Fellow literary neophyte Hans Magnus Enzensberger wrote approvingly of his peer as a “rogue elephant in the domesticated reservation of contemporary German letters.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Aging and Old-Age Style in Günter Grass, Ruth Klüger, Christa Wolf, and Martin WalserThe Mannerism of a Late Period, pp. 40 - 91Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013