君特格拉斯去世成爲德國絕唱

Gunter Grass, the German novelist, social critic and Nobel Prize winner, died of undisclosed causes on April 13 in the German town of Lubeck. He was 87 years old. Grass wrote more than 30 plays, novels, books of poems, essays and memoirs. He was the author of “The Tin Drum”, an epic treatment of the Nazi era.

當地時間4月13日，諾貝爾文學獎得主、德國小說家、社會批評家君特•格拉斯在德國小鎮呂貝克去世，享年87歲。格拉斯一生創作的劇本、小說、詩集、散文、回憶錄逾30部。講述納粹時代的“史詩”《鐵皮鼓》也出自他的筆下。

A broad-shouldered man with a drooping mustache, Grass spurned the German tradition of keeping a cool intellectual distance, insisting that a writer’s duty was to be at the frontline of moral and political debate.

他肩膀寬闊，鬍子微垂；他對德國知識分子與世事疏離的傳統嗤之以鼻；相反，他堅持認爲，作家的責任就是站在道德與政治爭論的最前線。

For many, he was the voice of a German generation that came of age in World War II and bore the burden of their parents’ guilt for the atrocities of the Nazis.

他是德國二戰後一代人的代言人， 這一代人因爲其父母一代與納粹暴行的關聯而承受重負。

However, Grass’ concealment until 2006 of the fact that he had served in a Nazi Waffen-SS regiment as a teenager cost him some of his moral authority. The Waffen-SS was the combat unit of the Nazi’s elite military police force.

但是，2006年格拉斯卻說出了隱瞞已久的祕密：他十幾歲時曾加入過納粹武裝黨衛團。他的道德權威因此受到質疑。納粹武裝黨衛軍是納粹精英憲兵部隊的一支戰鬥部隊。

Not even 12 when war broke out, Grass, like many other children, joined the Hitler Youth Movement.

戰爭爆發時，還不到12歲的格拉斯和許多小孩一樣，加入了希特勒青年組織。

He was then drafted into a Waffen-SS tank division in 1944. He experienced the full horrors of war when more than half his company of mostly 17-year-olds were ripped to pieces in three minutes of shelling.

1944年，他應招加入武裝黨衛軍某坦克師。在此期間，格拉斯目睹了戰爭的恐怖。他曾親眼所在的連隊一大半人在三分鐘中的炮擊中化爲灰燼，而他們大都只有十七歲。

But the fact that he did not reveal this part of his history until 2006 brought accusations that he had been hypocritical when attacking others for failing properly to face up to Germany’s Nazi past.

格拉斯曾攻擊那些不肯正確面對德國納粹歷史的人，而自己卻直到2006年才公佈了自己與納粹相關的歷史。於是，指責之聲接踵而至，人們認爲他是個僞善之人。

Life after war

戰後生活

When Germany surrendered in 1945, Grass was briefly an American prisoner of war.

1945年德國投降，格拉斯短暫地成爲了美軍戰俘。

He then worked on a farm, in a mine and as an apprentice stonemason before studying sculpture in Duesseldorf and West Berlin. He began writing poems and plays in the early 1950s, worked as a journalist, played in a jazz band, and illustrated some of his own books.

他在農場工作過，也去過礦井，做過石匠學徒，隨後在杜塞爾多夫和西柏林學習雕塑。二十世紀五十年代早期，他開始創作詩歌與劇本，當過記者，參加過爵士樂隊，還爲自己的書畫過插畫。

Grass said he regretted the years in which he did not speak the full truth about himself. “I kept silent,” Grass wrote in his memoir.

格拉斯承認自己在沒有說出真相的那些年裏都生活在悔意之中。在自傳中，他寫到：“我曾保持沉默。”

Why was he attracted to the SS?

爲何黨衛軍吸引了他？

“It was the newsreels,” he concluded. “I was a pushover for the prettified black-and-white ‘truth’ they served up.”

他總結道：“（吸引我的）是一個新聞紀錄片，其中美化了的非黑即白的‘真理’打動了我。”

Trying to come to terms with the past is the basis for much of his writing, says Siegfried Mews, a Gunter Grass scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the US.

來自美國教堂山鎮北卡羅來納大學的齊格弗裏德•梅夫斯是一名研究君特•格拉斯的學者，他認爲，努力面對過去是格拉斯很多作品的基礎。

“He has produced works which were not necessarily eagerly welcomed,” Mews said in an interview with the US’ NPR. “That is true, for instance, of his first big novel, The Tin Drum, but you can’t just ignore it.”

在接受美國國家公共電臺（NPR）採訪時，梅夫斯說：“他的一些作品未必受到熱捧，這是事實，他的第一部大部頭小說《鐵皮鼓》就是如此，但這並不意味着他無足輕重。”

“The Tin Drum” tells the story of a boy, Oskar, who gets a tin drum for his third birthday, then decides to protest Nazi rule by never growing up. As an eternal child, Oskar witnesses an adult world that is chaotic and cruel, with Jews being persecuted and fierce fighting erupting between Germans and Poles. It was made into an Oscar-winning film by German director Volker Schlondorff.

《鐵皮鼓》講述了一個名叫奧斯卡小男孩的故事。他在三歲生日那天得到了一個鐵皮鼓，於是決定用“不長大”來反抗納粹的統治。永遠也長不大的奧斯卡目睹了成人世界的混亂與殘忍，他看到了猶太人被迫害，也目睹了德國人與波蘭人之間的慘烈鬥爭。這本書也被改編成同名電影，由德國導演沃爾克•施隆多夫指導，獲得了奧斯卡獎。