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100119_05_096_116_r2ks.qxp:100119_05_096_116_r2ks 4/22/11 12:21 PM Page 96 1 N ICOLE T HESZ 2 3 4 5 6 Nature Romanticism and the Grimms’ 7 Tales 8 9 An Ecocritical Approach to Günter Grass’s The 10 Flounder and The Rat 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Ever since his debut with The Tin Drum in 1959, Günter Grass has referred to 19 fairy tales in his texts, using motifs such as the phrase “once upon a time” in 20 what one might call his magical realist prose.1 His mid-career novels The 21 Flounder (1977) and The Rat (1986) target issues that preoccupied Germans in 22 the postwar decades: the battle between the sexes, ecological devastation, and 23 nuclear armament. In particular, Grass draws on the Grimms’ tales that depict 24 human dealings with the natural world. Fairy tales and their characters come 25 to stand as representatives of nature in a struggle against the potential destruc- 26 tion of the earth. The Flounder and The Rat arrived on a “Märchenwelle” 27 (Castein 97) published in the 1970s and 1980s in West Germany. This wave of 28 modern tales took an irreverent look at the Grimms’ collection, opposing pre- 29 vious tendencies to search in fairy tales for “redemption from the past” after 30 1945 (Zipes, “Struggle” 170–74). Like the Grimms before him, Grass appro- 31 priates tradition and reinterprets it on his own terms. Although he draws at- 32 tention to the problematic ideological underpinnings of the romantics’ work 33 with folklore, he shares with them the common desire to use tales as reposito- 34 ries for dreams and better lives.2 35 The Flounder depicts the return to a maternal Eden that was lost when pa- 36 triarchal history began, while The Rat imagines the nuclear and ecological de- 37 struction of the world and its repopulation by rats. Various narrative strands 38 39 S 40 Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2011), pp. 96–116. Copyright © 2011 by R 41 Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI 48201. 96 2nd Pass Pages 100119_05_096_116_r2ks.qxp:100119_05_096_116_r2ks 4/22/11 12:21 PM Page 97 GRIMMS’ TALES AND GÜNTER GRASS feature feminist ecologists, genetically modified rat-humans called Watson- 1 Cricks, and scenes of a fairy-tale forest in which the Grimms’ characters be- 2 come endangered species of sorts. The Rat protests a one-sided, rationalist in- 3 terpretation of enlightenment philosophy: “Das ist für mich die Sackgasse der 4 europäischen Aufklärung. Die Verkürzung des Vernunftbegriffs auf das Tech- 5 nische.... Ein Fortschrittsbegriff, der nur noch auf Zuwachs hin orientiert 6 war, hat uns dazu gebracht, zum Beispiel unsere Träume nicht mehr ernst zu 7 nehmen” (“To me, this is the dead-end of the European enlightenment. By 8 reducing the concept of reason to technology, we have been led, for instance, 9 to stop taking our dreams seriously”; Grass, “Mir träumte” 348). As Max 10 Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno have argued, enlightenment rationalism be- 11 came implicated under Nazism. Grass critiques the alienation of individuals 12 under twentieth-century conditions and counters the lack of dreams by spin- 13 ning variants of the Grimms’ tales. 14 The Flounder and The Rat urgently express concerns about a world endan- 15 gered by pollution and modern warfare. By merging classic fairy tales with im- 16 ages of a destroyed environment, Grass reveals an inherent connection between 17 nature romanticism and the yearnings for unity and harmony visible in the 18 ecology and peace movements of the 1970s and 1980s. Images of modern 19 man’s problematic relations with nature arise from a rewriting of the Grimms’ 20 tales, notably “The Fisherman and His Wife,” “Hansel and Gretel,” “The Maiden 21 without Hands,” and “Brier Rose.” The following comparison between the 22 Kinder- und Hausmärchen (KHM) and Grass’s novels, however, reveals striking 23 differences in the approach to the natural world. In the Grimms’ tales, nature is 24 an ambivalent realm: the woods and fauna at times protect and at other times 25 persecute man. Grass’s twentieth-century fairy tales take an altogether more 26 reverent approach to the natural world, which reflects their environmentalist 27 context. His novels demonstrate a new awareness of the interdependence be- 28 tween humans, cultures, and their environments. Although The Flounder and 29 The Rat have been seen as part of a tendency for “catastrophism” and apoca- 30 lypse in postwar German literature (Goodbody 159), the intertextuality with 31 fairy tales has yet to be examined within the framework of romanticism, ecol- 32 ogy, and national identity. After a brief introduction to ecocriticism, this discus- 33 sion turns to maternal and moral images of nature in The Flounder, to fairy tales 34 and human-nature interactions in The Rat, and ends by examining the forest 35 motif in literature, environmentalism, and the politics of German identity. 36 37 38 Romantic Ecology 39 Grass’s novels enable us to view ecology and environmentalism through the 40 S lens of cultural criticism, since the author inquires into strategies to survive 41 R 97 2nd Pass Pages 100119_05_096_116_r2ks.qxp:100119_05_096_116_r2ks 4/22/11 12:21 PM Page 98 NICOLE THESZ 1 civilization and its inventions. Studies in ecocriticism suggest that literature 2 plays a decisive role in conceptualizing our interactions with the environment. 3 William Cronon, for instance, stresses the need to engage in dialogue about 4 the diverse ways in which cultures and individuals imagine nature and ap- 5 proach environmental preservation (52). In Romantic Ecology Jonathan Bate 6 proposes that nature romanticism was a powerful means of expressing human 7 attitudes toward their surroundings, one that “must be reclaimed” for ecocriti- 8 cism (19). Indeed, environmentalist concerns intersect with the romantic de- 9 sire for unity, “the yearning to encompass the world in mighty grasps” (Walzel 10 23). The era around 1800 still lacked a formal division between the natural 11 sciences, philosophy, and aesthetics (Kurz 143–44). When twentieth-century 12 critics “assume that all societies alienate mankind from nature,” they apply 13 anachronistic views to the romantics, who “believed that humankind belonged 14 in, could and should be at home within, the world of natural processes” (Kroe- 15 ber 5). The transcendence of romantics was not one that lifted them above hu- 16 manity, but rather one that anchored them in the depths of biological exis- 17 tence: death, dream, and fantasy. 18 In The Comedy of Survival Joseph W. Meeker suggests that the tragic depic- 19 tion of humans in literature elevates them above nature, a position that is dan- 20 gerous for human survival (38). Our instincts are the stuff of comedy, which 21 recognizes the human connection to nature and ultimately helps to protect us 22 from our animalistic drives (Meeker 39–41). This model of human interac- 23 tions with nature bears resemblance to François Rabelais’s vision of mankind 24 as humanized through its base corporality. Grass revisits this tradition in The 25 Tin Drum, where “the grotesque body” of Oskar Matzerath is reminiscent of 26 not only Rabelais but also fairy tales (Arnds, Representation 40). At the same 27 time, Grass’s style aligns him with the romantics as he lets the protagonist’s hu- 28 manness shine through his strange exterior: “Die Blechtrommel reflects the 29 deeper humanity of German romanticism, which did not reject the grotesque” 30 (Arnds, “German Fairy Tale” 437). 31 Parallels between Grass’s work and romanticism are visible, furthermore, 32 in his imagery of nature, which is characterized by an idyllic prehistoric exis- 33 tence and the fairy-tale forest. Links can be drawn to the tradition of the ro- 34 mantic wanderer who gazes over misty forests in Caspar David Friedrich’s clas- 35 sic painting Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer (“Wanderer above the Sea of Fog” 36 [1818]). In The Flounder and The Rat, Grass imagines the yet undestroyed ecol- 37 ogy of Polish marshes and German forests, whose idyllic intactness mirror the 38 “vast landscapes” that Theodore Ziolkowski sees in Friedrich’s art (3). The ide- 39 alistic “extension of life” in death, as evoked by Novalis (Ziolkowski 3), or in S 40 the supernatural, which colors the Grimms’ tales, resurfaces in the equally R 41 98 2nd Pass Pages 100119_05_096_116_r2ks.qxp:100119_05_096_116_r2ks 4/22/11 12:21 PM Page 99 GRIMMS’ TALES AND GÜNTER GRASS compelling extension of experience in The Flounder, where the narrator moves 1 beyond his personal existence in imagined memories of prehistoric pasts. 2 References to German romanticism are traditionally associated with the 3 quest for the “blue flower”;3 images of the German forest; as well as the poetry, 4 songs, and tales collected by Clemens Brentano, Achim von Arnim, and the 5 Grimms. Such allusions to the folk derived from a longing for simplicity and 6 tradition in view of disparate principalities and the Napoleonic occupation. 7 However, the notion of cultural heritage, as Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm framed 8 their folkloristic pursuits, is problematic owing to its rather narrow white, 9 middle-class, and male perspective. During World War II, in particular, the 10 tales were used, virtually unchanged, “to give children a sense of their Nordic 11 heritage and race” and “to further the illusion that the Nazis were recreating a 12 folk community in keeping with the unfulfilled needs of the German people” 13 (Zipes, Subversion 143). In The Tin Drum Grass draws connections between 14 petit-bourgeois supporters of Nazism, the protagonist Oskar, and the dwarf 15 tale; the grotesque perspective of the eternal three-year-old serves as a counter- 16 culture to Nazi Germany and postwar rationalism (Arnds, Representation 6).