7 - Das Treffen in Telgte: Debates in a Literary Forum

Summary

DAS TREFFEN IN TELGTE (1979) illustrates the dynamics of public communication by staging an imaginary gathering of some thirty Baroque poets, professors, and publishers in 1647. Modeled on the postwar literary circle Gruppe 47, the seventeenth-century poets deal with the effects of war, hoping to revive society with words: “Wo alles wüst lag, glänzten einzig die Wörter” (TT, 24; Everything had been laid to waste, words alone kept their luster, MT, 17). Yet both the fictional and historical meetings faced fundamental religious (1647) and political (1947) divisions. While the historical writers at the imagined Telgte gathering are remembered for their published works, Grass assigns them a different legacy: as partners in heated conversations concerning the power of literature and language. Whereas Der Butt focuses on combative exchanges, Das Treffen in Telgte emphasizes the writers’ search for communicative authority. Nevertheless, their manifesto calling for peace is not “what remains.” Rather, the result is what has taken place during the Telgte meeting—discussion, mutual understanding, resolution of conflict, and openness for new aesthetic and political ideas.

Taking the Stage: Words in Action

The importance of dialogue in Grass's second writing stage is still evident in the spoken language used in Das Treffen in Telgte, but also in deliberate silences. Moreover, the literati's discussions complicate the relationship between reality and literature. For them, the purpose of literature is not to mirror life, but to provide a basis for addressing the world's problems. In the descriptions of the poets’ debates, Grass conveys their obsession with language by inserting countless variations on “words.” This scenario of lives lived in language reflects Grass's profession and prefigures the lexical focus of his third autobiographical novel, Grimms Wörter (2010). In the 1979 novella, the German poets meet for “literarische Wechselworte” (TT, 9; literary exchange, MT, 5), but soon find themselves embroiled in an “eitlen Wörterfest” (155; vain feast of words, 117), succumbing to the temptation to spout off some of their “beredten Weisheit” (134; eloquent wisdom, 101). Grass implies a conflict between Schein and Sein as the aesthetic potential of language drives some members to use “Klingwörter” (123; sonorous words, 93) and create “Wortplunder” (161; verbal trumpery, 122).