Epilogue: Taking Leave in Vonne Endlichkait

Summary

In Vonne Endlichkait (Of All that Ends), which was published posthumously in August 2015, Grass adopts a new tone for relating his musings on mortality. The volume combines poems and images with the autobiographical genre, as was the case in Fundsachen für Nichtleser (Found Objects for Non-Readers, 1997). The poems and vignettes in Vonne Endlichkait are internal conversations in which Grass uses natural objects to convey his unsentimental and wryly humorous attitude toward old age. His attention is directed at capturing the simple essence of being and communicating an awareness—sharpened by imminent end of life—of the immateriality of thoughts and ideas. Whereas Grimms Wörter had focused on the satisfaction found in work, Vonne Endlichkait contemplates existence at its most basic level, as seen, for example, in mushrooms, skeletons of animals, birds, and feathers. One fundamental difference between human beings and the world around them can be found in the awareness of the finality of death. Grass implies both a leave-taking and an everyday enjoyment of simple objects such as the snail's shell as distractions from ailments. Yet he does not avoid the topic of decline, seen in allusions to the loss of teeth and repeated images of dead leaves. In particular, floating feathers (which appear prominently on the cover) contrast with the weight of nails, which may be associated with coffins and death (VE, 115).

Grass's dialogue with these objects involves an erasure of the dichotomies between human beings and nature, as is seen in the short poem “Damit sie ins Gespräch kommen” (138; So They Can Converse, 132). Ostensibly, it was Grass's pencil that recommended placing an elk's skull next to the writer's false teeth. In a drawing of this surrealist still life, shown on the opposite page, the skull is turned to “gaze” at the bottom left-hand corner, its eye socket large and eerily staring, while the false teeth appear primly closed, facing the viewer in full-frontal mode (139). Grass contrasts his own mortality, conveyed by the false teeth, with the elk's death, a comparison that evokes parity between animals and humans. No longer is the man's (impending) death more tragic, but it is simply more reflected. This can be seen in the portrayal of the false teeth without their owner, which Grass uses to “try out” a world without him.