preface
In 1999, when the last Nobel Prize in literature of the twentieth century went to the German writer Günter Glass, the award review wrote: "He has the difficult task of reviewing modern history,...... Evoke everything that people deny, what they forget. He traces the victims, the losers, and all sorts of lies that were once believed. ”
The Royal Swedish Academy handed over the last place of the twentieth century to Günter Grass has deep meaning, because Grass's works record the vicissitudes of human fate in this era of the twentieth century, and it is a memorandum of that black history, he brings the tragic history back to people, so that people cannot escape, so that the "Danzig trilogy" is also a reflection and apocalypse of human history.
"Tin Drum" - a cautionary drum
As the first work in the "Danzig Trilogy", "Tin Drum" has suffered mixed reviews since its inception, and Glass began his exploration of Germany and the German people during World War II, and it was also the first step for Grass to take readers back to that era and begin to reflect.
"Tin Drum" begins with the memories of a dwarf lying in a nursing home, takes the legendary experience of an eternal three-year-old dwarf Oscar in the first half of his life as a clue, and depicts the social life of 55 years from 1899 to 1955 in the Danzig region on the border of Germany and Poland. It also includes all the major historical events that took place in Germany during this period.
"Cat and Mouse" - A mouse who wants to be a cat
"Cat and Mouse" takes Danzig during World War II as the background, with the guilt of Pirenz recalling his middle school classmate Marc as a clue, vividly and realistically reproducing the growth history of Danzig teenagers in the Nazi era, vividly reproducing the social outlook, political atmosphere and people's way of thinking, value orientation and psychological state of that era, with strong social connotation and ideological content.
The novel, like the previous work, "Tin Drum", is told in the first person. But the difference is that the narrator is not the protagonist of the novel, but the first witness to the material related to the protagonist to be portrayed in the text. Through such an objective narrative, the author reproduces the poison of Nazi culture on the human psyche.
The relationship between cat and mouse is clearly the focus of this work, where the ruling class is cats, like Marc
The tragic character is obviously a rat, and Marc is a rat who is unwilling to be mediocre and bent on transforming into a "cat", he was born into death for the benefit of the Nazis, and he did not care about his own life and death, but the cat is always a cat, and it is impossible for the rat to go to the ruling class. So, after the rat of Marc completed his use value, he was abandoned by the cat. Mark's dream of turning from a rat to a cat was shattered, and he had no reason to live.
"Year of the Dog" - absurd years
If Glass's thinking about the causes of World War II is reflected in "Tin Drum" as a moral discussion, and "Cat and Mouse" as a psychological discussion, then the last work of the "Danzig Trilogy", "The Year of the Dog", expands the thinking on the causes of war to the discussion of ethnic relations.
"Year of the Dog" is divided into three parts. Through the narration of the three narrators from different angles, we are presented with several crazy "dog years" of Hitler's Third Republic. The Year of the Dog is unique in that it shows the complex contradictory relationship between the German nation and the Jewish and Gypsy peoples. And present the profundity of this contradiction to the reader, causing people to think.
At the same time, another outstanding feature of "Year of the Dog" is that it depicts the survival of people after the war in more detail, through Mattern's revenge and attempts to erase his crimes and other behaviors, we can see the distorted, alienated, fearful mood of the German people after the war, which is naturally not only the mood of Mattern, but also the mood of many German people.
Background for the birth of the "Danzig Trilogy"
The "Danzig Trilogy" is set in Danzig, not only because Danzig is the author's hometown, but also because Danzig has its own special features. Due to its geographical location and national history, it has long been contested by the German and Polish peoples, and Poles, Germans and Kashobe live here.
The multi-ethnic mix and the long shadow of war made Danzig the best window into social life during World War II. After World War I, under the Treaty of Versailles, Danzig was separated from Germany and became a free state under the jurisdiction of the National Union.
After the end of World War II, the Danzig region was annexed to Poland, which in a sense could be regarded as the loss of roots and his inherent homeland for a German with a strong German national consciousness.
All three works are set in the author's familiar hometown, writing about their own personal experiences and feelings, taking the individual as the main character of the novel, and directly viewing the social situation of a specific era and the various fates experienced by people in that era through the perspective of the individual.
In the author's own words, the "Danzig Trilogy" is "the first time I have tried to write for myself a corner of the homeland that has been lost forever for political and historical reasons." "There are naturally many shadows of the writer's life in the work.
The "Danzig Trilogy" transcends traditional educational fiction
The apolitical tradition of German educational fiction
As a model of the German traditional novel, the coming-of-age novel has melted into the German cultural tradition since its birth in the eighteenth century, and has its own unique significance.
Counting the German coming-of-age novel tradition, there have been hundreds of years of history, in this long process, coming-of-age fiction has been enduring, not to the passage of time, historical changes as a transfer, no matter what era, what kind of political environment, what kind of social background, educational fiction as a literary form representing the German cultural tradition is not absent, it has either changed form, or changed the name, but for hundreds of years, what has remained unchanged is the depoliticization of its theme and its focus on personal growth.
The multi-angle political concern of the "Danzig Trilogy"
Since the "Danzig Trilogy" describes the German social reality before and after World War II, the particularity of its writing theme determines the political nature of the trilogy, and from the three works, it is not difficult to see that the reflection on the just-concluded World War II is an important theme of the "Danzig Trilogy", and it is also the theme that the author wants readers to experience the most.
Political concern is therefore a prominent feature of Glass's work and where the true strength of the Danzig trilogy lies. However, the political concern mentioned here does not refer to politics in the narrow sense, but politics in a broad sense and integrated into the entire national cultural tradition, which includes many issues such as ethnic conflicts, the fall of religion, and the fall of ideas.
An in-depth exploration of national psychology
The rampant fascism in Germany is by no means the fault of one person or a group of people, and looking back at that period of history, while criticizing the evil demagoguery, we should also realize that the majority of the people are not unrelated to war. On the one hand, they are victims of war, on the other hand, they are also coerced to the situation, and in the face of war, they have made their own choices.
epilogue
Germany is a country with an excellent educational tradition, and the traditional educational novel, as the most important novel genre in the German literary circle, inherits this excellent educational tradition, and even, we can regard educational fiction as a German educational ideal expressed in literary form. Since the eighteenth century, the dedication of German educators to education has provided the soil for the rise and development of educational novels, and German educational novels have been flourishing as a genre of novels that reflect German cultural traditions.
Günter Grass is one of Germany's most important writers and a controversial writer. Glass's personal experience in World War II made him extremely sensitive to the survival of the German nation and political issues, and he never gave up his attention to politics, and even consciously immersed himself in "political life", which made Grasse and other writers have a clear attitude away from politics, Grasse has always paid attention to ideological changes, and made some political things reflected in his works, it can be said that political sensitivity has always run through Glass's works.
Grasse is undoubtedly a wonder in world literature, and his unique work has led to a new understanding of political fiction, but for Grass himself, he seems to value his identity as a German citizen more than a world-famous writer. He regards writing as a kind of record, he presents nearly half a century of German society in front of people through his works, pulls the people back to those black years, he wants to use his works to educate the people to understand history and know how to reflect, so "reflecting on history" is the main content of his works and the goal he wants to achieve.