Reimagining Oskar: Hero of Danzig
‘Oskar’s goal is to return to the umbilical cord.’
Gunter Grass’ post war historical epic has been regarded by many as the groundbreaking novel of the 20th century, putting the author at the forefront of the global literary stage. I just finished reading the 2009 Mitchell translation of Tin Drum. While I am on a reading spree this year, it’s probably the most difficult and dense book I have read in recent years, putdownable in the beginning and unputdownable from the middle to the end. What makes your journey easier is the division of the book into small chapters which somehow helps you to sail across. Oskar, the unreliable narrator, both satanic and Christ-like, takes you on a roller coaster ride of boredom, dark humor, horror, grotesque tragedies, illicit affairs, demons, death, totalitarianism and war torn cities; shattering glasses with his characteristic shriek. The first word that came to me after I completed reading it was ‘Grand vision’.
Two books specifically came to my mind, One hundred years of Solitude and The Magic Mountain; for the sheer length of the book the author has gone on to narrate the story. While reading both the books and many others, I had to draw family trees on endpapers, but in this case I went on scribbling across several pages, owing to the irresistible urge to note down all the significant characters, every city, the entire family lineage and major events marking Oskar’s life. I see this habit of any reader as an act of preservation; a conscious act to not forget the story. My copy of the book is all marked, the sheer amount of life happening over different periods of time; back and forth in shifting landscapes of Germany is a tour de force.
Oskar narrates the entire novel sprawling over 550 pages sitting in a bed at a mental institution; it begins with the chapter Wide Skirt. At the very start of this mammoth endeavor, we’re introduced to the very interesting maternal Grandmother Anna Bronski Koljaiczek and Bruno, the keeper of the mental institution. Oskar is provided with 500 sheets of blank paper to write down everything that he has been witness to. It’s 1899. Kashubia, Bissau. Grandmother sits in her four skirts at the edge of a potato field, gathering potatoes and baking a few, and hides the fugitive Joseph Koljaiczek who’s being chased by the police. Anna marries Joseph who later takes the name and characteristics of a dead man. This doesn’t read as simple as it’s written here. The first two chapters are hard to decipher; scenes, action, characters, time overlap one another, language isn’t direct, the narrator is sifting through several things at the same time.
The arsonist while being looked up by the police again in some time jumps in the river, finds a chink between the logs under the rafts, floats under it and possibly escapes to Buffalo, USA, where he’s later known by the name Joe Colchic. All of it is the fisherman’s account. Grandmother gives birth to Agnes. Agnes marries Matzerath, the retired German soldier and falls in love with Bronski. Oskar is born. On his 3rd birthday, he decides to stop growing. He attributes the same to his deliberate fall from the cellar stairs. He is taken to Dr. Hollatz and Sister Ignes. Matzerath carries the guilt all along. Oskar has two fathers, the presumptive German Matzerath and the definitive Polish Jan Bronski, as the story unfolds the presumptive becomes the actual. Both are fond of the Skat game of cards. Oskar is gifted a red and white lacquered tin drum by his mother on his 3rd birthday. The other two important things that he holds on to his entire life are Goethe and Rasputin, both influence and shape his outlook towards life.
We are introduced to Oskar’s mystical talent for the first time when his mother takes him to the school. As the teacher tries to snatch away the drum from his hands, Oskar retaliates with the glass shattering shriek. This is his last day at the school. He helps many to steal stuff from the shops by breaking the glass, even assisting Jan Bronski to steal a dazzling necklace from a jewellery store window, who gifts the same to Agnes. During the war he continues to beat the drum from the grandstands witnessing the chaos unfolding around him. The most startling scene of the novel is Mother Agnes’ horrifying encounter with the severed black horse’s head having furiously wriggling green eels. Agnes labors some guilt inside; spews the entire breakfast. The grotesque spectacle of the horses’ head teeming with eels catapulted her to her own death as she obsessively consumes fish, eels and sardine oil in excessive quantities over the months. She’s found three months pregnant at the hospital. Oskar wished to drum at the funeral of his mother.
He is left alone, ricocheting here and there. He meets Master Bebra and Roswitha, joins as a drummer in their circus troupe and travels to different places across the country. Jan dies in the defense of the Polish post office during the German invasion of Poland when Oskar forces him to get his drum repaired from the janitor Kobyella. Jan is buried in Saspe cemetery. Oskar falls in love with Maria. Matzerath employs Maria in his store, later marries her. They give birth to Kurt. It’s Oskar’s son. War reaches home. Matzerath swallows his Nazi badge as the Russian soldiers surround them; he chokes with the same as Oskar had left the pin open, soldiers shoot him dead. Kurt throws a stone at Oskar, hitting him on his head. Oskar starts growing at the funeral of his presumptive father when he decides to put his tin-drum in the grave alongside Matzerath, sand grows on his drum, he too starts growing, announced by nosebleed. Crazy Leo witnesses the scene as he starts shouting, ‘he’s growing, he’s growing.’ All of this happens at the Saspe cemetery. Oskar carries the guilt of playing his part in the death of both his fathers. He has already stopped drumming.
Oskar begins working as an apprentice to Korneff, the gravestone maker, practicing another art, drawing names on gravestones. Time passes. Oskar is approached by the students from the Art Academy who see his unusual appearance fitting as a model to be drawn. Oskar agrees as both art and cash lures him in. Professor Kuchen lifts him in his hands, looks at him and declares Oskar as the shattered image of humanity, an accusation, a challenge, a timeless expression of the madness of his time and ends by thundering across the easels, ‘Don’t draw this cripple- slaughter him, crucify him, nail him to the paper with black charcoal.’ Painter Raslkolnikov from the academy draws Faun and nymph, Beauty and the beast, the lady and the unicorn with Muse Ulla and Oskar. His surrealistic imagination concludes that something is amiss, speaking of a vacuum, giving different things for Oskar to hold but never getting the finality he wanted in his painting; finally asking Oskar to take the drum, I know who you are, Oskar who had stopped drumming trembles saying All that has ended. Raskolnikov whispers, Nothing ends, all returns, guilt, atonement, guilt again and finally draws a drumming Jesus on the bare left thigh of Madonna 49.
The most interesting event that marks Oskar’s life is his acquaintance with derelict bed-ridden Klepp who later on goes to become his friend. They both live at the same rented place in different rooms. Sister Dorothea also shares a room in the same apartment. Oskar has never seen her with the naked eye but he loves her. Klepp is stuck to his bed, one day he calls Oskar for a glass of water, offers him blood sausages to eat, provokes him for his sense of music. A shiver runs through Oskar, from head to hump, his old battered tin drums start celebrating inside, he runs past the rooms and gets the drum Raskolnikov had gifted him, seizes it with his hands, starts drumming, everything from his birth to this day, stunning Klepp who springs forth from his furrowed bed, washes himself clean, plays his flute alongside Oskar for several hours, both resurrecting themselves from the dead. Flautist Klepp, Guitarist Scholle and Percussionist Oskar form a band ‘The Rhine River Three’. They meet Schmuh who is shooting sparrows on the banks of the Rhine river. He invites them to play in his bar The Onion Cellar. It’s the same bar where people are given onions by the host, they cut the onions on the chopping board and cry; for in the cellar there’s nothing to eat, you only slice the onions. The young weep for love, others for mother-daughter-father tragedies, Monday guests are the most tragic weepers, students from Art Academy cry differently, medical students spend their stipends on slicing onions. Oskar also joins the band of dusters during the war, becoming their leader and calling himself Jesus.
Another incident that stayed with me was Oskar’s reaction when the greengrocer Greff commits suicide by hanging himself on a gallows of such formal perfection forcing him to consider suicide as one of the sublime forms of death. He was the same Grocer who was accused of fiddling with weights at his shop. We encounter several characters that shape the entire novel, difficult to mention all of them here; Crazy leo from the graveyard, Sigsmund Markus of the toy shop, Meyn the trumpeter with 4 cats who later on kills them all because they smell differently on a particular day, Mother Truczinski and his son Herbert Truczinski, daughter Maria, Laubschad the clockmaker, Greff the greengrocer, Lankes the painter, Kobyella the disabled janitor, Scheffler the baker, Master Bebra and Roswitha dwarfs from the circus, Uncle Vinzent.
Oskar of his own volition decides to stop growing. The author chooses this as a symbol, a metaphor for the times surrounding their lives. He has the Tin Drum as his lifelong companion, abandoning it at some point and then again taking it up as his passion and expression. Oskar lives consciously and conjures up his own devil, the black bogey woman, the Black cook which frightened him all this while, which he admits has followed him everywhere and that’s the reason he’s always running, she followed him everywhere, shouted boo when he fell from the cellar, when eels craved Mama, even in woodruff fizz powder, in every wardrobe, when he ate blood sausages and led the dusters up the diving tower.
Time passes. Oskar is spotted at the bar by a record company who hires him for recording music and sends him touring to different places. The company is owned by his friend and Master Bebra. Roswitha had died in the bombings. Oskar becomes rich. Bebra dies. The novel culminates with the ring finger trial; Vitlar accuses Oskar of Dorothea’s murder as he sees the rented dog Lux picking a finger with a ring in the field. Sister Beate loved Dr. Werner. Dr. Werner loved Sister Dorothea. Dorothea loved none, but in secret little Oskar. Dr. Werner fell ill. Dorothea nursed him because his bed was in her ward. Beate could not stand this. She lures Dorothea for a walk in the rye field and kills her. Oskar is later acquitted. He walks free a thirty year old man, 4 feet 1 inches tall.
It’s the first of the Danzig trilogy. Rushdie places Grass among the immortals of the literature. Orville Prescott in his 1963 review writes that the book crackles with life and seethes with vitality, its prose prances and cavorts. Often deemed surreal and painstakingly long, this deeply human novel exhausts the reader in the real sense. Everything has been meticulously drawn, shaped and chiseled on the broad canvas by the written word. Grass’ detailed description of the street names, geography, cities, dates, time of the day, characters, cemeteries, eels and ocean is an attempt to turn life into art and bring art to life. Oskar’s admission that banging his drum is an exercise in memory reaffirms the ever enduring power of art and storytelling. Onto the next. Saint Mishima. The Temple of the Golden Pavillion.
P.S. This marks my twelfth completed book of the year.
Author’s Bio: Sushant Dhar is a Jammu based writer. His work has appeared in various magazines including the Outlook, Open, Kitaab, The Punch, The Bombay Review, The Fountain Ink, New Asian Writing and others.