Chapter 2 Preface in Chinese translation

Hu Qiding Today it can be said that Günter Grass' novels embody the achievements of the early literary creation of the Federal Republic of Germany, and have indisputably entered the list of world literary masterpieces in the 20th century. Günter Grass was born in Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland) in 1927. His parents were German and Polish.He was drafted into the army at seventeen.When he was released from an American POW camp in 1946, he was already a homeless refugee.He worked as an agricultural worker, a potash miner, an apprentice stonemason, and studied sculpture and printmaking at the art academies in Düsseldorf and West Berlin.In 1955, his "Sleeping Lily" won the first prize in the Stuttgart Radio Poetry Contest.The following year, his first collection of poems, The Merits of the Weatherbanner, was published.He moved his family to Paris, relying on the monthly allowance of only 300 marks from the Luchtehand publishing house to maintain a minimum life and create radio dramas.

There is no wind in my room, piety, a cigarette, So mysterious, who would dare Raise the rent Or ask about my wife. A difficult time.In October 1958, the "47th" Society met at the Adler Hotel.Günter Grass, thirty-one years old.He came, recited, and succeeded.He recited the first chapter of the novel "Fat Skirt".His works are very imaginative, vivid, touching and fresh, and the participating writers unanimously agreed to award him the "Siqi Society" award, 3,000 marks.In the autumn of 1959, the International Book Fair in Frankfurt am Main opened, and Grasse made an appearance at the book fair.He gives the impression of being witty and witty, but also serious.As for the comments on the novel, there are applause and applause on the one hand, and on the other hand, they are beaten to death with a stick.An awards committee in Bremen awarded the Grass Prize for Literature, but the city government of Bremen decided against it, for the same reason that the Federal Parliament presided over by Metternich banned the works of young German writers such as Heine in 1835.However, the novel remained a bestseller, with more than three million copies printed in twenty-five years, and translations into eleven languages ​​had been published before 1963.In 1980, the movie that was adapted to the screen won the Oscar for foreign films at the Hollywood Film Festival in the United States, and the English translation of the film and novel became popular in the United States.From the end of the 1980s, it experienced a revival in Eastern Europe and Russia.This all shows the vitality of this novel.

In 1961 and 1963, Glass published novellas and novels.When Luchtehand Press reprinted these two works together, they added the subtitle "Danzig Trilogy" with the author's consent.These three novels are independent, and the stories and characters have no continuity, so they are not a trilogy in the usual sense, but as Glass said, they have four things in common: one is to focus on the faults of Germans during the Nazi period written; the second is that the location (Danzig) and time (1920-1955) are consistent; the third is the alternation of truth and fiction; the fourth is the author's personal reasons: "Trying to keep for myself a piece of the eventually lost Rural land, a piece of rural land lost due to political and historical reasons.”Now, the Chinese translation of this set of "Danzig Trilogy" will be launched by Lijiang Publishing House to meet readers.

The novel consists of three parts and forty-six chapters.In the first part, the story took place in Danzig, from 1899 to 1939, mainly based on the rise of Nazi forces in Danzig after Hitler, the leader of the Nazi party, became Chancellor of Germany in 1933.The second part, the place is still Danzig, from 1939 to 1946, the background is the main military operations of the Second World War, the euthanasia plan of the Nazi party (the mentally ill, demented children and other patients as "life not worth living"), the massacre of Jews in the gas chambers of concentration camps, the "July 20" incident in which Hitler was assassinated by military officers in 1944, the resistance movement, and the former German territory that was assigned to other countries after the war. Germans were deported.The third chapter is set in Dusseldorf. The background is the period of scarcity of materials in the occupied areas of the United States, Britain and France after the war, that is, West Germany, the black market transactions of ordinary people, the devaluation of the Reichsmark and the use of U.S. military cigarettes as the unit of value for commodity exchange. Currency reform in West Germany, passage of the Basic Law and economic recovery following the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany, from 1946 to 1954.These are the past events that all Germans over thirty years old have personally experienced when the novel was published, and they want to forget and never forget. The author just wants to arouse people's understanding of these past events, especially the role played by individuals in this past history. memories.Taking Danzig as the place where the story took place involved a sensitive political issue at that time.The novel intersperses the troubled history of Danzig.When Russia, Austria, and Prussia partitioned Poland for the third time, this seaport city was assigned to Prussia.After World War I, Danzig became a free city, administered by the League of Nations.Hitler used the Danzig Corridor issue as an excuse to invade Poland, igniting the flames of World War II.After the war Danzig was assigned to Poland.The novel tells a story about Niobe.Niobe is a wooden sculpture of a ship's prow with a nude witch as a model.Its magical history shows that disaster will strike anyone who lays his hands on it.The author obviously used this woodcarving as a metaphor for Danzig, and offered a warning.The Federal Government of Germany at the time insisted on negotiating a peace treaty based on the restoration of the German borders of 1937, which Grass called in the novel an attempt to "carve up Poland for the fifth time".It is not surprising that this novel has been criticized by the authorities for such a bold attack on the policies of the authorities.Therefore, to understand the satirical significance of this novel, one needs to have a sufficient understanding of the relevant history.

The novel's political slant is hidden in many absurd stories, which are narrated by the protagonist Oskar Matzerath.Oskar Matzerath was forced into a nursing and nursing home to be observed for mental illness in connection with the murder of nurse Sister Dorothea.He asked Bruno, the male nurse, to buy "clean" paper, and then he played drums on the hospital bed with white lacquer railings to recall, record the past, and write down his self-confession.Therefore, this is an autobiographical or first-person novel.Oscar was born in the shadow of two sixty-watt lamps and a moth that swarmed at the bulbs.He had a premonition of darkness in the world (the Nazi era was coming), and wanted to return to his mother's womb, but the umbilical cord had been cut.On his third birthday, his mother gave him a tin drum for children to play with.He didn't want to join the world of adults and self-mutilated (war-weary soldier's method), fell into a fruitless dwarf, ninety-four centimeters tall, no longer tall, but with three times the intelligence of adults, and Accidentally acquired the ability to sing broken glass.His shattering glass voice also has long-range effects (a parody of the V-1 and V-2 missiles, the "miracle weapons" that Nazi Germany supposedly brought "ultimate victory").This is Marchen, generally translated as "fairy tale", which is a genre of oral literature creation of the ancient Germanic people. The stories told are magical, impossible to happen in real life, and not subject to the time, space and causality of the real world. restricted by other categories.Falling down the cellar steps, how could it sound like breaking glass? !However, intertwined with fictional magical stories such as these are true descriptions of real life in different specific circumstances.Oskar lived in the world of the petty bourgeois on Rabes Road in the Longfur district of Danzig where the Germans lived.He found that, between his mother, Agnes, the daughter of a Polish worker and a Kashube peasant woman, and his father, Alfred Matzerath, a German Rhinelander and colonial merchandise store owner, and his cousin There is a triangular relationship between my uncle-Jan Bronski, who is a Polish citizen because he works in the Polish post office.These two men are his possible or supposed fathers, but since he shares Jan's blue eyes, he thinks Jan is more likely to be his biological father.He witnessed the small citizens in the neighborhood successively attached to the Nazi forces.Matzerath was a man who yelled, laughed, and clapped, and he also yelled, laughed, and clapped. He joined the Nazi Party in 1934, but he was still watching the wind.First he put on a party hat, then a brown shirt after a while, then party trousers, and finally leather boots, in full party uniform for a Nazi rally.Oscar was under the Nazi podium, playing his own drum as the drummer (Hitler was also called the drummer by the party members before the beer hall putsch).In 1935, Nazi Germany passed legislation that put the Jews in a position without legal protection. Some people hoped that the Catholic Church would intervene.On Easter in 1936, Oscar saw the statue of the baby Jesus on the lap of the Virgin Mary in the Church of the Sacred Heart, so he hung a drum on Jesus, hoping that he would beat the drum to gather the crowd, but the miracle did not happen.His mother had a tryst with Yang once a week, and afterwards went to church to confess to the priest, and after confessing, she went to the tryst with new passion.She accidentally became pregnant with Matzerath's child, did not want to give birth to the child, and died of overeating.In the "Crystal Night" in November 1938, the Nazis smashed, looted and burned Jewish houses, shops and synagogues. The Jew Markus committed suicide after seeing his toy store destroyed. Facing the atrocities of the Nazis, Catholics Singing "Where there is faith, there is hope, there is love".

On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. The Nazis in Danzig attacked the Polish post office. Jan Bronski was captured and killed. Oscar, who was at the scene, pretended to be a German child abducted by Poles , betrayed his imaginary father.Matzerath asked the neighbor Mrs. Truczynski's youngest daughter, Maria, to look after Oscar and manage the shop.Sixteen-year-old Oscar impregnates seventeen-year-old Maria.The shrewd Maria had an affair with Matzerath and married the leader of the Nazi Party, and gave birth to Oscar's son Kurt.The decadent Oscar becomes the lover of the scruffy woman Lena Greve.The dwarf Bebra, who was originally a circus clown who claimed to be "inner exile" and did not cooperate with the Nazis, became the captain and head of the front-line troupe under the Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels.Oscar went to the western front with the troupe to serve as a soldier, and fell in love with the sleepwalking girl Roseweta; Bebra contacted the officer who conspired against Hitler.They went to the "West Wall" to visit the cement bunker, and witnessed the "cranky guy" (Hitler's nickname when he was a soldier in World War I), Lieutenant Herzog ordered Yuan to be a painter (Hitler also used painters as painters in Vienna in his early years) Sergeant Lanx of the industry) shot the nuns who went to the beach to pick crabs with machine guns.Oscar lamented the "mystery, barbarism, and boredom" of the twentieth century.The Allies landed in Normandy, Roswitha was killed.Oscar returned home, and claimed to be "Jesus" and became the leader of the "Scatterers" group, opposing the Nazi youth organization.The Soviet army bombarded Danzig, and Matzerath swallowed the swastika and died.When burying Matzerath, Oskar was hit on the back of the head with a stone by Kurt and fell in the grave, his nose was bleeding, and he began to grow.Feingold, a concentration camp survivor who took over the Matzerath family’s house and shop, used disinfectant (a metaphor for “denazification”) to treat Oscar to no avail.Maria took Oscar and Kurt to Dusseldorf to join her sister Gust.

Oscar recovered from his illness and was discharged from the hospital. He grew up to be 1.23 meters tall with chicken breasts and a hunchback. This is in stark contrast to Nietzsche's so-called blond superman who dominates the world, and also a metaphor for Germany after the defeat.Maria and Kurt run a black market business.Oscar first worked as a stonemason to help carve tombstones, and later as a model.In 1949, West Germany passed the Basic Law, and Adenauer of the Christian Democratic Union became chancellor.Ula, a female model with a height of 1.78 meters, acts as a nude Madonna, and sits on her lap is a nude Oscar, who is 1.23 meters tall and humpbacked with chicken breasts, as the Holy Infant Jesus. She instills inspiration into trendy painters and creates a painting of "Our Lady of 1949" ".It is this kind of political satire that made Grass labeled as a "brained anarchist" as "blasphemous and immoral".After Oscar's marriage proposal to Maria was rejected, he became naughty again. He had an unrequited love for the nurse Dorothea, who had never met, and his sexual repression drove him to do absurd things.He organized a three-piece jazz band, and witnessed the post-war depressed group in the onion cellar. In this tearless century, he cut onions to make round teardrops and got emotional venting. The "Western" performance company promoted him as a drummer star, and the owner of the company turned out to be Bebra, a dwarf who is good at playing tricks on politics.Bebra left him a large fortune after his death.Oscar is rich but empty in his heart.He took the dog for a walk and picked up a ring finger wearing a ring, and dipped it in a large bottle of alcohol to worship and repent.It turned out that it was the ring finger of Sister Dorothea who was murdered by her love rival.Oscar asked the showy Vitra to report to the police.When he was arrested, he called himself "Jesus", and his intention was to get a piece of pure land - a hospital bed with white painted railings in nursing and sanitariums, so that he could recall and think about the past.Oscar passed his thirtieth birthday, and the truth about the nurse's murder came to light, but the nursery rhyme from his childhood still lingered in his ears: "Black Cook, are you there? Yes, yes!" Shadows of fear and dread loomed large with him.Where will you go after you leave the hospital?

German writer Grimmelshausen's homeless novel "The Biography of Crazy Children" tells about a little character with a simple nature. Finally found a piece of pure land.Günter Grass continues that tradition with a modern hobo novel that comes to an end.Glass's irony of current events is sharp and tricky, and it reminds people of the poet Heine. Grass has many other works, so I won't list them all here.What must be mentioned is the long fairy tale novel "Plaice", which was published in 1977.In 1979, Grass came to China as a guest of the then Federal German Ambassador to China and visited Shanghai, Beijing, Guilin and other places.Before the recital of "Plaice" fragments held in Beijing, Mr. Zhang Yushu from Peking University introduced me to him because I had just agreed to translate.Later Glass said that he had encountered Chinese translators in several places, implying that he did not know which one was true.After I made the promise, I felt a little regretful. Due to my professional relationship, I didn’t have the whole time to study such a tome.It was not until early 1987 that I finished the translation and delivered the manuscript.After the book was published in April 1990, I sent a letter to Mr. Glass and attached a sample booklet.Soon, his reply came.He wrote: "I am very happy, Oskar Matzerath, as you said, can speak Chinese. I appreciate your translation work must have been a considerable effort." He added, "I am happy to Understand the acceptance of Chinese literary circles", "This novel was written in Paris when I was young. After it was published in Germany in 1959, there was a fierce debate: on the one hand, it was applauded, and on the other hand, it was beaten to death with a stick." ".He said that now his main occupation is to be a painter again, and what he cares about is the problem of environmental pollution.He gave me a picture album "Dead Wood" with aphorisms, which was published in August 1990.He was sixty-three years old at the time, but he was still sketching in the wild in the mountains. This kind of tireless creative spirit is admirable.As far as I can see, the domestic comments on it are recorded below, and interested readers can check them out.Ye Tingfang: "On the Danzig Trilogy" by Jun Glass ①.Qian Hongjia: "A Unique Social Novel--Introduction to the Contemporary German Novel "The Tin Drum"②.Yu Kuangfu: "The Federal Republic of Germany's First Novel with World Reputation--Introduction to Günter Grass's Tin Drum"③.And my own: "Modern Tramp Novel "The Tin Drum" ④, "Günter Grass and the "Tin Drum"" ⑤, and ⑥

-------- ① "World Literature", No. 6, 1987. ②Ta Kung Pao, Hong Kong, August 12, 1991. ③ "World Literature" 1993 No. 4. ④ "Foreign Literature Review", No. 4, 1988. ⑤ "Literary Learning" No. 6, 1988. ⑥ "The Essence of World Novel Classics", Lijiang Publishing House, 1992 edition. Among the three important writers in the Federal Republic of Germany, the Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Burr and Arno Schmidt, known as the James Joyce of Germany, have passed away, and only Günter Grass is still alive. He is alive and writing more than ever.This year is his seventieth birthday. The publication of the Chinese translation of the "Danzig Trilogy" will be the best birthday present for him.

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