In his column in DER SPIEGEL Jan Fleischhauer was talking today about the overestimation of moral contribution of writers to the political scenario. Although I recognize that Jan Fleischhauen is right regarding the role of Günter Grass in Germany, one is obliged to wake up the small Aristotle in us and to distinguish between different classes of texts given authors write. Let’s give the example of Bertold Brecht: when he left his inspiration run free and was writing with the only purpose of getting rid of his uncontrollable impulse to write, he was brilliant. This part of his work is really good and has universal value. The only problem were those moments when he decided to use his talents as a writer to fight for the cause of socialism. Every time Berthold Brecht decided to use his talent, the only thing he wrote was crap. Not only a bit of crap but hideous mountain of crap. Failing to distinguish between these two kinds of Brecht’s texts may compromise the whole evaluation of the meaning of his work for humanity. Yes, Brecht wrote some wonderful pages beside the many tons of socialist crap. The lesson we learn from Brecht is that arts and talent are not something artists may have control upon. When Brecht tried to use his talent in the way he wanted, it did not work. The same is true for Günter Grass. The harder he tries to be meaningful, the less he is. He would be much better served if he would just let his talent speak the way it is and not as Günter Grass - the person- would like it to be. These guys resemble to me those guys who want to control when they are going to have an erection. They worry too much about getting it and when the time arrives... it is not there. The same happens with their writings. Günter Grass wants to write about renewable energy or immigration just because the topics are being discussed a lot on tv. His literary penis, however, is not very keen to do it. The outcome is the usual disappointment. The take home message of Jan Fleischhauer was that writers should know better the size and the preferences of their literary penises. I think I agree. But what about those cinema stars and singers fighting for big causes all around the world such as George Clooney, Sean Penn and Bono Vox? They don’t have a literary penis. They fuck with borrowed ones.
As the Brazilian writer Alexandre Soares Silva said once: “The strongest evidence that we should not listen to the opinion of singers and movie stars is that most of the time not they but other people are in charge to decide what they are going say”. Since fucking with a borrowed penis is a tremendous act of perversion, just ignore the opinion of movie stars next time, ok?
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