{"id":78129,"date":"2014-10-16T17:12:02","date_gmt":"2014-10-16T21:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=78129"},"modified":"2015-04-13T08:18:05","modified_gmt":"2015-04-13T12:18:05","slug":"a-sensual-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/10\/16\/a-sensual-act\/","title":{"rendered":"A Sensual Act"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"grass6\"<\/a>

From Die Vorz\u00fcge der Windh\u00fchner <\/i>(The Advantages of Windfowl), 1956.<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

I started writing and drawing at an early age \u2026 My first book was a book of poetry and drawings. Invariably the first drafts of my poems combine drawings and verse, sometimes taking off from an image, sometimes from words \u2026 With drawing, I am acutely aware of creating something on a sheet of paper. It is a sensual act, which you cannot say about the act of writing. In fact, I often turn to drawing to recover from the writing.
\u2014G\u00fcnter Grass, the Art of Fiction No. 124<\/a>, 1991<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That \u201cfirst book\u201d\u00a0G\u00fcnter Grass refers to is Die Vorz\u00fcge der Windh\u00fchner <\/em>(The Advantages of Windfowl), from 1956; Princeton\u2019s Graphic Arts Collection has a few of the lithographs on their site. As Martin Esslin writes, \u201cIt is hard to tell whether the poems are there to illustrate the drawings, or the drawings to illustrate the poems\u201d\u2014which accords with Grass\u2019s fairly circular description of his process. Here\u2019s another:<\/p>\n

\"grass3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Not much of Grass\u2019s prolific visual work is available online, but Mill\u00ee Reas\u00fcrans, a Turkish gallery, has a few images of the disquieting engravings<\/a> Grass did for his 1977 novel, The Flounder<\/em>, among them this unrepentantly phallic episode:<\/p>\n

\"flounder\"<\/a>

An engraving from Der Butt <\/i>(The Flounder), 1977.<\/p><\/div>\n

There are also a few drawings from Totes Holz<\/em> (Death of Wood), which Grass discusses in his Art of Fiction interview:<\/p>\n

\n

I have seen and drawn dying, poisoned worlds. I published a book of drawings called Death of Wood<\/em> about one such world, on the border between the Federal Republic of Germany and what was then still the German Democratic Republic. There, well in advance of the political union, a reunification of Germany occurred in the form of dying forests. This is also true of the mountain range on the border of West Germany and Czechoslovakia. It looks as if a slaughter had taken place. I drew what I saw there.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"2765696242_9f39cf6822_o\"<\/a>

From Totes Holz (Death of Wood)<\/em>, 1990<\/p><\/div>\n

John Russell wrote more broadly about Grass\u2019s art in the New York Times <\/em>in 1983<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

His work relates to the ancient tradition in German art by which there is almost nothing of importance that cannot be made known to us with black ink on white paper. The marks in question may be made by cutting into blocks of wood, or with etching needle and copper plate, or with everyday pen and ink. Either way, black and white can tell us all that we need to know.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I started writing and drawing at an early age \u2026 My first book was a book of poetry and drawings. Invariably the first drafts of my poems combine drawings and verse, sometimes taking off from an image, sometimes from words \u2026 With drawing, I am acutely aware of creating something on a sheet of paper. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2384],"tags":[9158,1465,9761,15682,247,7058,1132,165,7782,15683,75],"class_list":["post-78129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-look","tag-birthdays","tag-drawing","tag-engravings","tag-forests","tag-germany","tag-gunter-grass","tag-interviews","tag-poetry","tag-the-art-of-fiction","tag-wood","tag-writing"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHappy Eighty Seventh to G\u00fcnter Grass<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A collection of the author's illustrations for his novels.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/10\/16\/a-sensual-act\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Sensual Act by Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"October 16, 2014 \u2013 I started writing and drawing at an early age \u2026 My first book was a book of poetry and drawings. 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