Monday, July 25, 2011



happy birthday to me! this song is so dark.

Friday, July 22, 2011

from The Tin Drum by Günter Grass

This excerpt describes when Oskar and his family first discover what he can do with his voice. In the German version, Grass inventively uses a verb 'zersingen' to describe the phenomena in which Oskar shatters glass with his voice. The translator, Breon Mitchell, creates a verb for the english version: 'singshatter'.


"...they planned to take that drum away from me and replace it. A stupid piece of chocolate was offered as bait. Mama held it out, pursing her lips. It was Matzerath who reached for my crippled drum with a show of severity. I clung to a wreck. He pulled. My strength, which was barely adequate for drumming, began to fail. One red flame after another slid slowly away, the rim of the frame was about to slip from my grasp, when, for the first time, Oskar, who till that day had been deemed a quiet, almost well-behaved child, produced his first destructively effective scream: the polished round crystal that protected the honey-yellow face of the grandfather clock from dust and dying flies shattered and fell, still splintering, to the reddish-brown floorboards - for the carpet didn't quite reach to the base of the clock. The interior of the precious clock, however, was undamaged: the pendulum continued serenely - if you can say this of a pendulum - on its way, and the same for the hands. Not even the chimes, which reacted sensitively, almost hysterically, to the slightest jolt, to beer wagons rolling by on the street, gave any sign of having been impressed by my scream; only the glass gave a start, but one that startled it to bits.

'The clock is broken!' cried Matzerath, and released the drum. With a brief glance I satisfied myself that my scream had done no real damage to the clock, that only the crystal was gone. But for Matzerath, and for Mama and Uncle Jan Bronski, who was paying his usual Sunday afternoon call, more than the glass covering the clock's face seemed to have fallen to pieces. They blanched, exchanged shifting, helpless glances, reached out for the tiled stove, seized hold of piano and buffet, were afraid to stir from the spot, and Jan Bronski's dry lips moved, as he cast his eyes upward in supplication, in what I still believe today was my uncle's attempt to utter a prayer for aid and mercy, something like O Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world - misere nobis. And his text three times and then one Lord I am not worthy that Thou shouldst enter under my roof, say but the word...

Of course the Lord said not a word. After all, the clock wasn't broken, just the glass. But the grown-ups have a strange and childish relationship to their clocks, childish in the sense in which I was never a child. Yet the clock may well be the grown-ups' greatest achievement. Be that as it may: to the extant that grown-ups can be creative, and with diligence, ambition, and a little luck actually are, they become creatures of their own epoch-making inventions the moment they create them.

But the clock remains nothing without the grown-up. He winds it, sets it forward or back, takes it to the clockmaker to be checked, cleaned, and if necessary repaired. Like the cry of the cuckoo that fades too soon, like overturned salt cellars, spiders in the morning, black cats from the left, the uncle's portrait that falls from the wall when the hook pulls from the plaster, just as with mirrors, grown-ups see more behind and in clocks than clocks can possibly signify.

Mama, who in spite of a few whimsical fancies was the most level-headed, even if she could be flighty at times, and always interpreted any apparent sign in her favour, found words to save the situation.

'Broken glass brings good luck!' she cried, snapping her fingers brought out dustpan and brush, and swept up the shards of good luck.

If I take my mama's words at face value, I brought my parents, my relatives, acquaintances, and even strangers plenty of good luck, for every time someone tried to take my drum, windowpanes, glasses of beer, empty beer bottles, perfume bottles redolent of spring, crystal bowls heaped with artificial fruit, in short, all glassware blown in glassworks by the glass blowers' art and sold on the market, from plain glass to art glass, were screamshattered, singshattered, shardshaterred.


(Translated by Breon Mitchell, Vintage Books, London, 2010, page 54 - 56)

Friday, July 1, 2011