The Anti-Faustian Ethos of Die Blechtrommel

I wish to thank Thomas K. Seung and Sidney Bolkosky for their help on earlier drafts of this essay.

Oswald Spengler , Der Untergang des Abendlandes: Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte (1923; reprint, Munich, 1969), 288.

See Hans Schwerte , Faust und das Faustische: Ein Kapital deutscher Ideologie ( Stuttgart, 1962), p. 15 and elsewhere. See also E. M. Butler's several volumes in this area of inquiry, especially her concluding The Fortunes of Faust ( Cambridge, 1952) in which she discusses the various types of literary Fausts. Grass's Oskar Matzerath, of course, should not be added to Butler's list here since he is an anti-Faust.

John T. Marcus , Heaven, Hell and History: A Survey of Man's Faith in History from Antiquity to the Present (New York, 1967), 121 -2.

The question of whether or not Oskar really is insane is one that would require another essay to answer. In my opinion, he both is and is not. He is because of his behaviour throughout his life, and he is not because in an "insane" society like that of Nazi Germany, the insane asylum may be the last refuge of the sane. Dürrenmatt makes a similar point in Die Physiker. Theodore Ziolkowski discusses madness in literature in Dimensions of the Modern Novel (Princeton, 1969), 332-6 1.

Gunter Grass, Die Blechtrommel (Neuwied, 1959), 9. Hereafter, all page references to this novel are placed in parentheses following the reference to, or citation from, the work.

See Grass's comments in Kurt Lothar Tank, Günter Grass (Berlin, 1963), 59-60.

Grass has commented on his lack of ideology and his unease with dogmatic thinking: "ich habe keine Ideologie, keine Weltanschauung, die letzte brach mir zusammen, als ich siebzehn war" (Der Spiegel, xxiii, 11 August, 1960). "Weiter lernte ich dort im Kalibergwerk, ohne Ideologie zu leben. Noch hatte ich die Morgenfeiern der Hitlerjujend im Ohr, diese allsonntäglichen Vereidigungen auf die Fahne ..." Über das Selbstverständliche (Munich, 1969), 59. And in Grass's essay, "Der Inhalt als Widerstand", the modern realistic artist sways the traditional Romantic one to his point of view.

It is not enough to define the obviously picaresque elements in Die Blechtrommel, label it a Schelmenroman, and relax with the result. See Rainer Diederichs, Strukturen des Schelmischen im modernen deutschen Roman (Diisseldorf, 1971). The real question is, why? The picaresque in Grass is part of a larger intent.

i o. See Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949; reprint, Princeton, 1968), throughout, but especially his concise description of the mythic cycle, pp. 245-6. See also Butler's Myth of the Magus.

"Doktor Faustus ist eines Bauern Sohn gewest, zu Rod bei Weinmar bürtig ..." (Historia von Doktor Johann Fausten in Deutsche Volksbücher in drei Bänden (Berlin, 1975), iii, 15).

See C.G. Jung and C. Kerényi , Essays on a Science of Mythologv: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis (1949 ; reprint, Princeton, 1963).

This is of course the essence of the bet between Goethe's Faust and Mephistopheles. If Faust should once say "stop" to the moment ("Verweile doch, du bist so schön"), Mephistopheles wins.

Irène Leonard, Günter Grass (New York, 1974), 84. Ms Leonard does not consider Die Blechtrommel in terms of the Faustian. To my knowledge, only one scholar has spoken of the novel as Anti-Faustian. In light of the general silence surrounding this subject, it is startling to come upon such a statement, brief as it may be: "Der Triumph des geistigen Menschen, des durchdringenden Verstandes, durch den sich Faust immer weitere Bereiche des Alls erschloß wird durch Oskar in sein groteskes Gegenteil pervertiert. Oskar ist der Anti-Faust, der sich mit seinem ebenso hoch entwickelten Verstand in ein Schneckenhaus zurückzieht. Die Zerstörung aller Illusion muß mitnichten aufsolch einen Schluß hinauslaufen ..." (Wilhelm Johannes Schwarz, Der Erzähler Günter Grass (Bern, 1969), 42).

Der Hitler-Prozeß-vor dem Volksgericht in München (Munich, 1924), part II, p. 89.

Anne L. Mason, in The Skeptical Muse: A Study of Günter Grass's Conception of the Artist (Bern, 1974), speaks of Die Blechtrommel from this point of view.

Hermann Burte , Sieben Reden von Burte ( Strassburg, 1943), 27-29.

Joseph Goebbels , Michael: Ein deutsches Schicksal in Tagebuchblättern (1929; reprint, Munich, 1937), 113.

A.J.P. Taylor , The Origins of the Second World War, 2nd ed. (Greenwich, Conn., 1961), 289-90.

See Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, Die nordische Seele: Eine Einführung in die Rassenseelenkunde (1932 ; reprint, Munich, 1940), 19-32.

Lewis Mumford , The Myth of the Machine: The Pentagon of Power (New York, 1970), 13-14.

Some critics have argued that, because Oskar himself takes no moral stand and is decidedly amoral, Grass is not a moralist. They are wrong.