Gunter Grass - The Flounder

no run-of-the-mill town painter, you know. And without Opitz it seems unlikely that German poetry would ever have achieved proper rhymes and a regular succession of accented and unaccented syllables. I therefore ask the High Court to take cognizance of the scholarly comments on Opitz, a reading of which I have requested, and to authorize an illustrated lecture by way of showing an uninformed public how promisingly painter Moller started out, how soon he began to allegorize, and how pitifully his not inconsiderable talent went to the dogs. Only then will you be in a position to judge whether I, the Flounder so sternly accused by womankind, acted criminally, mistakenly, or, permit me to suggest, rightly, in providing these two just about washed-up artists with a Muse."

Despite protests from the public—"Now he's trying to sell us Muses' kisses!" "This Flounder is nothing but a shitty Germanist!" — the Tribunal decided in favor of the accused, largely because Ms. von Carnow, the defense counsel, threatened with wild gestures and fluttering voice to withdraw from the case. (She even wept a bit — effectively.)

First photographs of Moller's best-known works, The Last Judgment and The Tribute Money, whole and in detail, were flashed on the screen of the movie-house-turned-courtroom. Then examples of his more popular work: ladies of the Danzig bourgeoisie against a background of sumptuous Hanseatic facades, fishwives on the Long Bridge, a buxom lass or two, maidens on their way to church, all in the costumes of the day. An art historian from Holland lectured informatively about the unknown provincial painter: how the son of a Konigsberg court barber had studied painting more in the Netherlands than in Italy; how his copies of Durers had unfortunately been lost; why, despite the many influences discernible in his work, he could not be written off as an epigone; how hard it was for youthful talents between the declining Renaissance and early Baroque; why, despite all its little allegorical games, Moller's Last Judgment could be reckoned among the outstanding productions of the time; how noteworthy a figure Moller had been before, roughly in 1610, his creative powers failed, and what high hope his talent had justified.

Next the affidavits of prominent literary critics were read. The court learned that on comparison with Gryphius and Hoffmannswaldau, Opitz was lacking in metaphoric power and formal refinement. Quotations were employed to show what skillful use Opitz had made of quotations from other authors. On the basis of his biography, the events of a varied, adventurous, but increasingly dubious existence, darkened by his activity as a double agent, were dated. Then came the regretful observation, "Little of this is concretized in his poems. Even in the love poems everything is coded, spiritualized, mythologized, or reduced to didactic epigrams. A pity that his opera libretto and Heinrich Schutz's undoubtedly far-superior music have been lost." A quotation or two was offered (". . freedom demands to be oppressed, enslaved, contested. .") by way of showing that a few of his lines had had staying power. "He was a man of compromise, who as a diplomat, sometimes in the Protestant, sometimes in the Catholic service, tried to mediate between the two warring religions: 'Force maketh no man pious. Force cannot make a Christian!' "

Another affidavit characterized the poet's political position as unchanged through all his seemingly opportunistic transformations. "In the very midst of the Thirty Years' War, Opitz was an irenicist. Eirene, which is Greek for peace, was his guiding star. Tolerance was his motto. And that is why we find no partisan passion in his writing, but, often to its detriment, a well-balanced artistry. The man was too intelligent, too committed to orderly reasoning, to turn out bold, exalted,' beautiful, and in the last analysis stupid metaphors. And this explains his painful encounter, soon after his arrival in Danzig, with young Gryphius, the liberator of the German language, who attacked the esteemed master for the political activity that had consumed his energies, for his service as a paid double agent, for the pusillanimity that deterred him from candidly baring his soul and openly proclaiming his sorrow. Nevertheless, his influence on our literature has been considerable. Not so long ago a deserving Germanic scholar was able to prove that the account of the Battle of Wittstock on the Dosse in Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimns was at least inpired by the battle scenes in Opitz's translation of Arcadia. Possibly young Grimmelshausen, while viewing the battle

scenes from the top of a tree, compared them with the printed metaphors and so recognized their authenticity, since they presented all the palpable horror that literature prescribes, so demonstrating once again that nothing happens but what has first been prefigured by the written word."

But all the affidavits agreed that Opitz's true achievement was to be found in his theoretical treatise Vber die Poeterey (On Poetics). For the common tongue created by Luther had been fit only for jingles, but Opitz had purified it and made it into a medium of art. One of the affidavits went so far as to say, "Thanks to Opitz, high-level writing was set free from its centuries-long Latin captivity; he was an emancipator."

The Tribunal took note of all this and would probably have arrived at a mild verdict if Sieglinde Huntscha, the prosecutor, had not provoked the Flounder with barbed questions. This woman, who rose to heroic stature even when seated, jumped up, turn red to the roots of her hair, fortified her voice with contempt, pointed a gaunt forefinger at the bulletproof cage where the Flounder, possibly cheered by the affidavits of the literary critics, had brought all his fins into play several handbreadths above the bed of sand. Then, suddenly assuming a Saxon accent, she directed-no, fired-ques-tion after question at the accused flatfish. The effect was immediate. The Flounder drooped as though shot, burrowed into the Baltic sand, threw sand over his pebbly, age-old skin, and muddied the water of his glass house, which may have been secure against bullets but offered no protection against well-aimed questions. He seemed to have vanished, escaped, to be gone forever.

And yet the prosecutor's questions were no intellectual fishhooks. The Flounder was not attacked as such. Simply and directly Sieglinde Huntscha asked: "If a woman can be a professional Muse, what about men? Are they, too, eligible? And if so, what men have functioned as Muses, what men, that is, have indirectly promoted art by helping to inspire well-known woman artists? Or does the defendant hold that the role of woman in art can only be one of passive, servile, manuring mediation? Are we only good for firing your burnt-out stoves? Is there to be an hourly wage for female Muse work? Maybe the Flounder will be kind enough to draw up

a wage scale, or even found a Muses' union. And tell me this, defendant Flounder: can a woman keep a male Muse if she pays him properly? Or was the verbiage those experts of yours dished up just a smoke screen to hide your true meaning? Because here's what you really mean: Yes, yes, some of the girls play the piano very nicely and some do well enough in applied art or interior decorating, for instance, and when they go in for loving or suffering or Ophelia-like schizophrenia, they sometimes manage to write touching, absorbing, melancholy verses in heart's blood, cunt juice, or black bile. But Handel's Messiah, the categorical imperative, the Strass-burg Cathedral, Goethe's Faust, Rodin's Thinker, and Picasso's Guernica— such summits of art are beyond their reach. Is that it, defendant Flounder?"

The stirred-up Baltic sand had settled in the meantime. The Flounder had stopped thrashing his tail and lay still. Only rising bubbles showed where his gills were drawing breath. And his crooked mouth came to life. "Ye-es," he said, "I'm sorry, but that's how it is."