TY - JOUR

T1 - Virtual memory in Günter Grass's im krebsgang

AU - Veel, Kristin

PY - 2004

Y1 - 2004

N2 - This essay is concerned with the significance of the references to the internet in Grass's recent novella Im Krebsgang. It examines recent public statements by Grass, including his Nobel Prize lecture of 1999, in order to expound the issues raised in Im Krebsgang. It distinguishes between the different types of commemoration exemplified by the main characters in the work (the narrator who was born on the night of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff in the Baltic in 1945, his mother Tulla Pokriefke who is a familiar figure from earlier narratives by Grass, and his son Konny who sets up a website commemorating the historical figure of Gustloff in a neo-Nazi spirit). It explains the disjointed (crab-like) character of the narrative as a means of maintaining openness in relation to both past and future, and it brings out the sense in which this mode of narration subverts the blurring of the real and the imaginary which Grass shows to be an inherent danger of cyberspace culture. The essay thus concludes that Grass is enacting a difference between the ethically neutral spatial freedom of the internet and the ethically coherent space of literary narrative.

AB - This essay is concerned with the significance of the references to the internet in Grass's recent novella Im Krebsgang. It examines recent public statements by Grass, including his Nobel Prize lecture of 1999, in order to expound the issues raised in Im Krebsgang. It distinguishes between the different types of commemoration exemplified by the main characters in the work (the narrator who was born on the night of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff in the Baltic in 1945, his mother Tulla Pokriefke who is a familiar figure from earlier narratives by Grass, and his son Konny who sets up a website commemorating the historical figure of Gustloff in a neo-Nazi spirit). It explains the disjointed (crab-like) character of the narrative as a means of maintaining openness in relation to both past and future, and it brings out the sense in which this mode of narration subverts the blurring of the real and the imaginary which Grass shows to be an inherent danger of cyberspace culture. The essay thus concludes that Grass is enacting a difference between the ethically neutral spatial freedom of the internet and the ethically coherent space of literary narrative.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=61249676511&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111/j.0016-8777.2004.0280.x

DO - 10.1111/j.0016-8777.2004.0280.x

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:61249676511

VL - 57

SP - 206

EP - 218

JO - German Life and Letters

JF - German Life and Letters

SN - 0016-8777

IS - 2

ER -