not being a german speaker, b, i got to take mark twain’s word for it…

“Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with a verb in his mouth.
– A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

thanks for keeping track of the way all this is being handled… the poem is turning into something, a symptom of something… maybe even something good and decent.
is that still possible?

Posted by: retreatingbladestall | Apr 6 2012 19:10 utc | 4

it’s kinda fun to keep track of who’s watching… for instance, there’s a “nsf.gov Arlington, Virginia” on as of this posting…
“nsf” no doubt being the initials for “non sufficient funds” … “dot gov” being the US govt… and the neighborhood, arlington virginia, has a bad reputation.
ah, well

Posted by: retreatingbladestall | Apr 6 2012 19:28 utc | 6

copeland, Süddeutsche first published it
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/gedicht-zum-konflikt-zwischen-israel-und-iran-was-gesagt-werden-muss-1.1325809

Posted by: somebody | Apr 6 2012 20:12 utc | 8

NSF = National Science Foundation
What makes you say Arlington doesn’t have a good reputation?
The lurker from NSF.gov is just some MoA reader who works at the National Science Foundation; nothing sinister about that.

Posted by: Maxcrat | Apr 6 2012 20:17 utc | 10

Maxcrat @10…

“Bathed in this common source, you gape incurious
At what your active hours have willed –
Sleep-walking on that silver wall, the furious
Sick shapes and pregnant fancies of your world.
newsreel, cecil day lewis, 1938

NSF stands for “non-sufficient funds”… “.gov” is the US govt… arlington and the rest of the dc suburbs are infested with spooks.
let an old man have his fun, you killjoy

Posted by: retreatingbladestall | Apr 6 2012 20:41 utc | 12

retreatingbladestall, the hysterical reaction in Germany to Günter Grass “poem” is caused by the fact that the average German “man in the street” feels no obligation towards Israel.
http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,3945217,00.html
“Germany is split over its feelings towards Israel, according to a new survey. Of those questioned, 60 per cent thought the country no longer had a special duty towards the Jewish state.”
That invention of “pride in feeling guilty” by a SPD politician is a correction of the right wing “guilt cult”
Günter Grass got the Nobel Prize for being a great and, for the time he wrote the tin drum, provocative writer, his stuff gets taught in every German school. On top of that he has been campaigning for the Social Democrats as recently as 2009 (he started doing that in 1965, when that also was provocative), he is a political animal.
With his criticism of Israel (and with the stuff he wrote before) he has moved very much to the center and even to the nationalist right of the German “man in the street”, coming from the tin drum era antinationalist left. At the same time Süddeutsche printed the poem, Gerhard Schröder gave an interview in “Handelsblatt” talking mainly economics, but ending with a call for negotiations with Iran.

Posted by: somebody | Apr 6 2012 21:40 utc | 14

My German is not-so-good, so I won’t comment on the language. Shameful for someone who was once a Humboldt-stipendiat in Germany, but there you are.
What I wanted to say is how much I’ve been struck by the international reaction to this simple poem. Everywhere the hasbara reaction has gone hyper. I was listening to the BBC World Service this evening, and we had half an hour of explaining how Grass was a Nazi, without of course mentioning how he was only conscripted in the dying days of the war, under pain of death.
So, I’ve been asking myself how this propaganda offensive will play. Will the hasbara line that he is a Nazi succeed in defusing the accusation? Or would it have been better to say nothing, and let the wonderings of an old man pass?
Well, the high-temperature reaction has been chosen. A high-risk solution. To some degree, the accusation of Nazi will succeed, as no-one is allowed to contradict it.
However everyone is tired of Israeli self-justifications. They would prefer that Israel would just go away.
I don’t know why the hasbarists bother, it’s only a game. The real aim is inside the palace, much like in olden times a minister got rid of one king in order to replace him with another. Politics is to be played within the small world of the court.
Evidently, there’s always a danger of wider rebellion, and it’s this danger that the present propaganda is designed to avoid.

Posted by: alexno | Apr 6 2012 22:06 utc | 16

“I don’t know why the hasbarists bother, it’s only a game…”
They get paid by the post, which helps explain why they post so often and why, so often, what they post is crass and discreditable.
The Guardian’s position is somewhat similar. The arrangement there seems to be new and the exact details are obscure but the aim is the same: to support Israel’s government and to discount the arguments of Palestinians.

Posted by: bevin | Apr 6 2012 23:34 utc | 18

What most people don’t know is that there is a missing stanza there. I found it on a site linked from the world security network, subsidized I think, by Alex Jones and distributed by Uncle$cam before he headed to the hills pursued by black unmarked hovercrafts & microscopic drones. I’ll provide a precise translation, from the originally beautifully mellifluous high German:

In my quest for particulars arranged as universals;
That is to say, every exception proves the rule,
necessary to support the recondite visions
in my theory in which the whole world, whereto,
Subjugates or yields the subjugation
Of the menacing tenders of the vile American conspiracy
That hooks is dark barbs into the tender cheek meat
Of the revolting arabs and starving black persons
Who get their just desserts for not, thereby, supplicating
in sufficient erosion of their knees, their Stern masters
Who refuse to deposit their Jew-American bribe chits
Into the Goldman Sachs vaults closing the door of the world’s
Spirit

Posted by: slothrop | Apr 7 2012 0:20 utc | 20

Jesus slothrop, you have to stop. You’re going to give me a caniption. That satire is sharper than any diamond. I have to walk away now and have some carrot cake in order to heal properly.

Posted by: Sultanist | Apr 7 2012 1:16 utc | 22

So far, b’s short list of Great Heroes, defended with gruesome certainty these past few months:
Stalin
Mao’s annihilation of Tibetan culture
anachronistic theocrats and assorted despotic mullahs
Omar fucking Qadaffi
Assad (“because the Syrian people are proud”)
Senile old nazis scribbling diatribes
I’m leaving out some others. Pol Pot? Henry Lee Lucas? Gary Glitter?

Posted by: slothrop | Apr 7 2012 3:03 utc | 24

The best comment on the Grass poem so far comes from Jakob Augstein, son of the founder of DER SPIEGEL which was, back then, a news-magazine standing up for truth. (Today it is mostly a much more vulgar rag.)
A View on Günter Grass – Why We Need an Open Debate on Israel

It is this one sentence that we will not be able to ignore in the future: “The nuclear power Israel is endangering a world peace that is already fragile.”
It is a sentence that has triggered an outcry. Because it is true. Because it is a German, an author, a Nobel laureate who said it. Because it is Günter Grass who said it. And therein lies the breach. And, for that, one should thank Grass. He has taken it upon himself to utter this sentence for all of us. A much-delayed dialogue has begun.
…

Posted by: b | Apr 7 2012 5:24 utc | 26

And back from the memory hole – to explain the politics of it
http://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/06/international/europe/06REAG.html?pagewanted=all
“President Reagan presided over a wreath-laying today at the base of a brick cemetery tower looming over the graves of nearly 2,000 German soldiers, including 49 SS troops.
Alluding to the controversy aroused by his visit to the cemetery, Mr. Reagan voiced regret in remarks at an American air base afterward that ”old wounds have been reopened.”
Bitburg controversy
The “Bitburg Controversy” of 1985 constituted one of the most acrimonious confrontations between any U.S. administration and the American Jewish community. At stake was the planned visit by U.S. President Ronald W. Reagan in the company of West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to the Bitburg Military Cemetery, which contained the graves of 49 members of the Waffen-ss
Ostensibly, Kohl invited Reagan to accompany him to a German military cemetery during the state visit to celebrate the normalization of relations between their two countries on the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II. In fact, however, ever since coming to power in 1982, the conservative Kohl had endeavored to rehabilitate as many Germans who had served the Third Reich as possible. In 1983, for example, his government had removed the veterans’ organizations of the Waffen-SS from a list of extremist right-wing groups on which the West German Ministry of Interior was required to make annual reports to Parliament, and Kohl had repeatedly blocked demands by the opposition Social Democrats to ban the highly controversial reunions of former Waffen-SS members. Kohl’s request to have Reagan go to Bitburg was thus part of a strategy to rewrite recent German history and curry favor with the most reactionary elements of the West German electorate.
Reagan’s planned trip to Germany first drew fire because it did not include a stop at the site of a Nazi concentration camp. At a press conference on March 21, 1985, Reagan explained that “since the German people have very few alive that remember even the war, and certainly none of them who were adults and participating in any way … they have a feeling and a guilt feeling that’s been imposed upon them.” Thus, he considered a visit to a concentration camp “unnecessary.” Reagan’s comments drew a sharp response from Menachem Z. Rosensaft, the founding chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. Writing in The New York Times on March 30, he pointed out that all Germans who were the same age as the president certainly remembered the war, and that two years earlier he had told a gathering of thousands of Holocaust survivors that the Holocaust must never be forgotten. Rosensaft noted that while it was “politically advantageous for [Reagan] to speak about the Holocaust to Jewish audiences in the United States, he does not want to risk offending anyone – even Nazis – in Germany.”
On April 11, the White House announced that the Bitburg cemetery was on Reagan’s itinerary, and that Reagan and Kohl would lay a wreath there “in a spirit of reconciliation, in a spirit of forty years of peace, in a spirit of economic and military compatibility.” Kenneth J. Bialkin, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, called Reagan’s decision to visit Bitburg but not Dachau “deeply offensive,” and noted author and Holocaust survivor Elie *Wiesel, then chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, told The New York Times that he could not believe that the president “would visit a German military cemetery and refuse to visit Dachau or any other concentration camp.”
At a press conference on April 18, Reagan made matters worse by appearing to equate dead German soldiers with the victims of the Holocaust. “They were victims,” he said of the soldiers buried at Bitburg, “just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps.” Reagan’s comments drew angry responses from American Jewish leaders. Rabbi Alexander Schindler, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, described Reagan’s remarks as a “distortion of history, a perversion of language, and a callous offense to the Jewish community.”
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0003_0_03029.html

Posted by: somebody | Apr 7 2012 6:03 utc | 28

venezuela!?!!

Posted by: retreatingbladestall | Apr 7 2012 6:52 utc | 30

funny how this stuff works. my wife (German) has been busy with family the last couple of days and has not really listened closely to the news and only caught snippets so far. when I asked her what she had heard about Grass she said he was afraid of WW III and that lots of people were mad at him because he was talking badly about Israel. Apparently the NPD has endorsed him which is pretty much a kiss of death.
so, I had her read it. she says, “that’s true”
therein lies the problem. what Grass says is obviously true and that is why there is such an outcry from the people whose job is it is to continue the guilt imposed upon all Germans, guilt which has been exploited very effectively by the leaders of the shitty little country. they can’t argue with the message so they can only discredit the messenger.
I also find it quite amusing that the hasbarists follow bevin’s post at 18 with a string of absurd verbal diarrhea, making it extraordinarily prescient

Posted by: dan of steele | Apr 7 2012 8:00 utc | 32

what do you spose the fallout will be in france?
will french people take heart from gras’s poem and the attention it’s getting, and get rid of sarkozy?
or are the french as hogtied as the rest of us?

Posted by: retreatingbladestall | Apr 7 2012 8:05 utc | 34

there’s got to be a switch in israeli tactics sooner or later…
the “poor poor pitful us” bullshit is wearing pretty thin, but they’ve got use that as long as possible while they build up their military and consolidate their political grip on other countries… that situation becomes self-defeating as “poor poor pitiful us” becomes such obvious bullshit.
when the “poor poor pituful us” ploy no longer works, then they’ll have to switch over to “resistance is futile” mode, the gloves will come off, and we’ll find out what radical jewish philosophy is really about.
i’ve already seen hints of the “resistance is futile” mode… a poster at liberty forum had a little logo of that in his sigline… he was touting facebook when myspace was king and nobody had heard of facebook.
five years later, after an endorsement by shimon peres, facebook has wiped out myspace

Posted by: retreatingbladestall | Apr 7 2012 8:37 utc | 36

I don’t read German all that well, certainly not enough to untangle poetry. However, b is absolutely correct to say that “the submarine goes to Israel while the warheads go whereto (dorthin) the existence of of even one bomb is unproven which clearly implies not Israel but Iran.”
My only quibble is with the phrase “as a fear shall be conclusiveness,” which is unclear. I might suggest “as fear becomes conclusive,” or “fear becomes proof,” or “as fear proves convincing.”

Posted by: JohnH | Apr 7 2012 15:08 utc | 38

Just did some surfing through various German news and comment sites.
Most “serious people”, i.e. the journalists and politicians, condemn Grass while 90% of the commentators to the various sites defend him and agree with his writing. The gap between the media and their readership has never been so big.

Posted by: b | Apr 7 2012 15:22 utc | 40

Betwixt typing of this comment and posting it, the Assange article has disappeared. Perhaps it’s being edited. I found a new URL, same headline.
New LINK

Posted by: jawbone | Apr 7 2012 15:25 utc | 42

http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-13-13755-Russia-to-help-Pakistan-build-IP-gas-pipeline
ISLAMABAD: Amid severe sanctions on Iran by US and Western countries, Russia has come forward to bail out Pakistan to complete the much-touted Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline and has agreed to fully provide both technical and financial help.

Posted by: Marc lindesay | Apr 7 2012 15:58 utc | 44

it is getting completly psychotic now actually – which was to be expected in German discourse
http://www.welt.de/debatte/kommentare/article106162707/Der-Guenter-schenkt-den-Juden-ein-Gedicht.html
Now who is antisemitic – Grass who never used the term Jewish but Israel – or his critics who use Jewish equivalent to Israel ….
I guess none of them are, they are talking about something else really ….

Posted by: somebody | Apr 7 2012 16:56 utc | 46

The way these things work is simple:
Conflicts increase until the world economy collapses, and then there’s a massive war with loads of atrocities that run both ways.
Israel is guaranteeing that the next time that war happens, they’re going to be the very large, focused target of an awful lot of angry neighbors. What they’re counting on (like Taiwan, the Philippines, Mexico and Japan, i’d add) is that the US will protect ’em.
The US won’t be able to protect everybody.
In fact, the way things are looking these days, the US may well not be able to protect itself; not if the war starts in Central America, and then works its way up.
Turkey will come out strong; so will China, and probably Russia. Europe will hold on, at worst. North and Central Africa may well settle down, a bit.
About the only thing that can be said for sure is the US will fall apart. Its entire foundation depends on keeping all the economic blocs as close to 1990 as possible.
But humanity isn’t cooperating.
Israeli’s have no idea when or how to back down. Chutzpah will be its doom.

Posted by: china_hand2 | Apr 7 2012 17:41 utc | 48

“Wahn” has a Wagner Götterdämmerung association.
“Fußnote der Geschichte” I am not so sure about that, if it really was intended by Grass, if he knew Knobloch’s speech, googling it, I find lots of people are using it in different contexts.
But, of course, everybody is entitled to their associations.
“auslöschen” I think “extinct” has the same connotation
the provocation, the taboo is the “silence, because otherwise I would be called antisemite”
it is becoming more and more provocation now because the fact is, he is being called antisemite (it is getting ridiculous)
The timing of the poem – Pessach, I do not think that was a consideration – however of course it is a legitimate association, Easter holidays in newsrooms, yes, Easter marches of the peace movement, yes.
The identity of the “me” in the poem is strange as a “survivor” “footnote of history” from a country which “owns crimes without comparison” (do I detect pride in there), the strange change to the “we”,”belastet” is a category from the denazification process
and so on …
What the Hasbarah absolutely hates (see Netanyahu’s reaction) is the moral equivalence between Israel and Iran i.e. no good versus bad, plus the insinuation that Israel might be committing crimes.
Talking about all this in one poem somehow also associates equivalence of Nazi crimes with Israel endangering world peace (or is it Iran that attacks Israel, whatever …)
The absolute provocation is that a former Nazi youth, reeducated Nobel prize writer can tell Israel in a poem they might be committing crimes (or are we a free country,no?)
So as they did not manage just to keep silent about it, the discussion in the following days will get more and more ridiculous.
By the way, no the US will not let Israel attack if the US does not want that to happen.

Posted by: somebody | Apr 7 2012 19:47 utc | 50

somebody, @51, asks about grass…

“so who asked him to write this poem?

you’re convinced, are you, that grass couldnt be telling the truth about his motivations?
you are apparently unwilling to discuss the political possibility of germany cancelling the israeli sub deal.
i guess we can assume, given the way germany is dominated by zionists, such a possibility doesnt exist and so is unworthy of comment…
this, despite the fact that most germans think aid to israel should be terminated, and germany is supposedly a democracy.
is this a demonstration of the hypocrisy grass was talking about?

Posted by: retreatingbladestall | Apr 7 2012 21:12 utc | 52

wrt Atlantic’s trans. Am I reading this right: The about-to-be annilihated Iranians are “enslaved” by a “loud-mouth” who whips them into “jubilation” because they’re suspected of building a bomb. Sounds like an opening for Israel to go ahead and topple the enslaver whilst enlightening the spellbound Iranians.

Posted by: yes_but | Apr 8 2012 0:04 utc | 54

and now we are coming to the conclusion of this teapot storm
http://www.freitag.de/community/blogs/dagmar-schatz/die-guenter-grass-debatte–eine-bitte-um-versachlichung
“Security against an Iranian attack needs Iran’s security against attacks. There is no military solution. A face saving exit for Teheran could be the participation in a wide peace conference for the Middle East …”
http://passouline.blog.lemonde.fr/2012/04/05/un-poeme-de-gunter-grass-fait-leffet-dune-bombe/
I wish Günter Grass many sales for existing and future books …

Posted by: somebody | Apr 8 2012 7:05 utc | 56

@somebody
“Wahn” has a Wagner Götterdämmerung association.” – I’m convinced, you are right. It’s my lack of education on Hitler’s favorite composer that I didn’t remark this association. So – “occupied by” however “Wahn” was translated in English regarding to Wagner, that would be a good translation. Of coursse, as my German knowledge abot Wagner is bad, I have no idea what would be the fine translation in English.
“Fußnote der Geschichte” – I confess, it wasn’t my idea. Frank Schirrmacher brought it up. But my take is: I would bet five to oe, that both Schirrmacher and Grass were in the audience as Knobloch read it. Both are that kind of elitist, that they might have been invited to that event. The event, of course, had a simililar funcion as AIPACs annual event in the USA – and Knobloch the boss of it in Germany. I wouldn’t even be surprised if it would turn out that Schirrmacher wrote the speech of Knobloch himself and that’s the reason why he remembers the “footnotes”.
“auslöschen” I think “extinct” has the same connotation – yes, probably, my English language skills are not good enough for that to determine
“the provocation, the taboo is the “silence, because otherwise I would be called antisemite”
There are many many more provocations in that poem that this one. Grass breaks the taboo of using Nazi connotated language to criticize Israel, for example, too. As far as I understand it the taboo breaking in this poem is multi-layered.
“it is becoming more and more provocation now because the fact is, he is being called antisemite (it is getting ridiculous)”
The charge of being anti-semitic because of the content is completely ridicolous. It’s all well known. The charge of using anti-semitic
framing – say language or linguistics – by copying the zionists language – would be more interesting. But to make that accusatioan
the lobby would need to address it – and within addressing it would confirm it’s own technics – what would render them ineffective in future.
“The timing of the poem – Pessach” – It’s a zionist distaction, here in Germany it’s Easter – and the Easter peace marchers here thanked Günter Grass.
” … (do I detect pride in there), the strange change to the “we”,”belastet” is a category from the denazification process …)
Yes, absolutely correct what you detected. Another example of usage of wilfull usage of contaminated lobby language with Nazi association.
“What the Hasbarah absolutely hates (see Netanyahu’s reaction) is the moral equivalence between Israel and Iran i.e. no good versus bad, plus the insinuation that Israel might be committing crimes.”
Read it again. It’s not true though Netanyahu tries to suggest otherwise. Grass accuses:
– the Iranian leader to be a loud-mouth
– the Israelian leader to be a danger for world peace
It’s not moral equivalent. The Israelian leader is displayed as being far worse here.
…
@51
“so who asked him to write this poem?”
Interesting question. Grass was quite close to CIA agent Melvin Lasky who ran the Congress of Cultural Freedom. So one might ask: has Obama caled the old CIA-collaborateur Grass to give his opponent Netanyahu a kick in the underbelly and by the way promote world peace? I don#t see it true, but who knows what we all will know in a couple of years when intelligence files are declssified.
More likely seems to be for me, that Grass is old and free and does what he wants. Old, but free – with last ink at least.

Posted by: Bandolero | Apr 8 2012 7:59 utc | 58

it’s a peculiar situation… there’s grass’s ambition… maybe he’s one of those people who are not only compelled to write, but compelled be a “writer”…
do jews have the same stranglehold on the german publishing business that they do in the US?
would an aspiring writer, compelled to “be” a writer, have to hide his waffen SS experience to get his books published by jewish publishers?
could grass’s compulsion to write have been formed while he was serving the the waffen SS? …was grass compelled to write because he saw, first hand, how haywire the nazi setup was?
anyhow, now we got an old man, writing with his “last ink”, trying to call attention to another haywireness… and he gets ripped limb from limb by zionists who dont have a moral leg to stand on, other than “might makes right”.
typical.

Posted by: retreatingbladestall | Apr 8 2012 8:56 utc | 60

Indeed, Grass anticipated the reaction he was going to get for criticising Israel. It’s the standard reaction.
When there’s no arguing his point, they attack his character.
Zionists always does that, when logic is used to attack zionism, and the Israeli zionism in particular, they always call antisemitism.
It should be noted, the inventor of zionism thaught more of establishing a jewish state in Argentine, not Palestine.
The link in post @ 53 about jewish moral, is quite remarkable, especially the first comment in that article, where the Subject and Object is replaced from Israel and Jews to Palestine and arabs. Genious.
About b’s translation, I think it’s good, and faithful to the original. It conserves the meaning, without any lame re-poeticizing as some would do. Neither German or English are my mother-tounge though. And he did spark a debate, and in that respect, his poem fulfilled his objective beautifully.

Posted by: Alexander | Apr 8 2012 10:07 utc | 62

I’ve noticed the mistake too and, before having found this site, I’ve sent a message to Guardian. Have you actually done the same?
Anyway, nice that somebody noticed it too, good job – both (or more?) of us 🙂

Posted by: kk | Apr 9 2012 19:14 utc | 64

Voltairenet seem to have become so dissatisfied with the current crop of English translations of Grass’ poem that they’ve published their own (unattributed) translation.
http://www.voltairenet.org/What-must-be-said

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Apr 9 2012 19:46 utc | 66

slops great hero:
jabotinsky
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/mideast/ironwall/05-haganah.htm

Posted by: brian | Apr 10 2012 13:04 utc | 68