“It is barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz,” the German philosopher and critic Theodor W. Adorno wrote in 1949. Adorno wanted to point out that Auschwitz presented a dilemma to writers: on the one hand, they were called upon to articulate and represent an event that could not be passed over in silence. Silence itself seemed to border on the criminal. On the other hand, to articulate the horror of an event like the Holocaust possibly exceeded what could legitimately be expressed in language. Moreover, Adorno believed that the German language had forever been tainted by the Nazi regime’s use of it to articulate atrocious visions of race hierarchies and factories of death. To write poetry, to create aesthetic pleasure through a language which a few years ago had been used to envision the death of millions of people ― all that seemed inescapably to involve a degree of barbarism.

Recently, the acclaimed German writer Gunter Grass wrote a political poem which was published simultaneously in several European newspapers. The poem immediately prompted a host of commentators from around the globe to condemn it as ― barbaric. Entitled “What must be said” (“Was gesagt werden muss” in the original German) ― what was so controversial about this poem? Gunter Grass begins the poem by saying that for a long time he has refrained from criticizing the state of Israel, for obvious historical reasons. The present situation, however, compels Grass to speak out against Israel’s alleged plans to destroy and erase Iran because of the latter’s assumed nuclear weapons development. Subsequently, the poem outlines a scenario in which Israel poses a serious threat to the world peace, and Grass makes an explicit reference to alleged German submarines recently sold to Israel ― the implication being that Germany may thus become complicit in Israel’s potential war crimes. Further implied here is that this would make it the second time the German people becomes complicit in a war crime, albeit this time not against the Jews but against the Iranians. Grass goes on to attack what he sees as the West’s hypocrisy, the tendency to overlook and refrain from criticizing Israel’s actions because of the Holocaust. Near the end of the poem, Grass proposes that an international authority must take the lead in matters related to Israel’s and Iran’s nuclear facilities.

It is rare to see a poem provoke such international furor as “What must be said” did. German politicians were quick to utter their disapproval of the poem, while the Israeli government declared the author a persona non grata in Israel. Many writers and intellectuals likewise found much to condemn, including the German Nobel-prize winner Hertha Muller, who claimed that there was nothing literary about the poem. The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, in a typical shrill voice, labeled Grass a neo-anti-Semite who apparently “had nothing better to do than to publish a poem in which he explains that there is only one serious threat hanging over our heads … the State of Israel.” One obvious explanation why the poem created such hostile responses is that Gunter Grass ― Nobel-prize winner and one of our generation’s most esteemed writers ― in 2006 confessed that he had been member of a Waffen-SS unit during the last year of the Second World War. Ever since, Grass’ reputation as Europe’s post-war conscience has never quite been the same. Grass’ precarious Nazi past aside, it still seems remarkable that a poem consisting of nine verses has incited politicians and intellectuals across the world to speak out in an attempt to dismiss ― and effectively silence ― the poem’s message.

Amidst the massive condemnation of Grass’ poem, one aspect stood out: an almost unanimous consent that the text was bad poetry. The majority of commentators agreed that the text was really a political opinion piece, badly disguised as a poem. One may conjecture that Grass’ use of the poetic form was a further incentive to many people’s wrath ― as if people were annoyed by a writer using an antiquated form to formulate viewpoints which could have been said in more straightforward prose. In one sense, this indicates our acute lack of faith in poets’ ability to put adequate words on political conflicts. Gone are those days, it would seem, when we sought the wisdom of the poets to understand the contemporary world. It is as if we have come to the conclusion that poetry nowadays has nothing more to say, nothing truly relevant ― and when it does, we no longer call it poetry, but bad poetry, politics in disguise. In the case of Grass’ “What must be said,” we even fail or refuse to read it as poetry. One wonders if the world community would have reacted differently if Grass had written a linguistically exuberant poem. But that’s perhaps beside the point ― it’s beside the point because no matter how fantastic Grass’ poetic language would have been, the world’s response would hardly have been any milder; if anything, it would have been harsher.

Reading Grass’ poem, one comes away with the impression that its literary qualities are no better or worse than many of Bertolt Brecht or Pablo Neruda’s political poems ― poems, that is, which were celebrated in their own time. As for the viewpoints expressed in Grass’ poem, it is certainly possible to argue that it hardly contains more extreme views than what can be found in many contemporary left-oriented or even moderate newspapers. One suspects that the reason why the poem has created so much outrage is simply because it is a poem ― a poem in an age that does not want poems to speak about weighty topics like the Israel-Iran situation. In that sense, the reaction to Grass’ poem bears witness to our staunch adherence to Adorno’s notorious dictum ― that writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. If so, it is also a reflection of a profound misunderstanding. Adorno wasn’t arguing that writers ought to stop writing poetry, or that we should stop listening to the poets after an event like the Holocaust. What he had in mind was in fact something rather different; that in the post-Auschwitz era, culture must acknowledge its complicity in the crimes of the Nazi regime. That such a regime could emerge, Adorno writes, “in the midst of the philosophical traditions, the arts and the enlightening sciences says more than just that these failed to take hold of and change the people.” What this says is essentially that culture itself is part of what allows us forget the potential barbarism at the heart of our civilized world. Thus, it is not a matter of writing better poems, for as the critic George Steiner observes ― “a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening … he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day’s work at Auschwitz in the morning.” Reading beautiful poetry in the evening allows the man who works at Auschwitz to continue believing that he is still part of the civilized world. Elsewhere, Adorno reformulates his dictum: “all culture after Auschwitz, including its urgent critique, is rubbish.” Gunter Grass writes poetry after Auschwitz; some call it barbaric, some call it rubbish. But poetry he writes ― both in spite and because of the impossibility of speaking out poetically in the post-Auschwitz world; whatever must be said. And whatever may be said about Grass’ poem, it compels us to ponder whether we are still part of the civilized world. 

By Eli Park Sorensen

Eli Park Sorensen is an assistant professor at the College of Liberal Studies at Seoul National University. He specializes in comparative literature, postcolonial thought and cultural studies. ― Ed.