Marcel Reich-Ranicki – the writer and the critic - on the occasion of him receiving honorary doctorate degree from the Free University of Berlin, 9.1.2006

By: Hatto Fischer, Athens

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"Who writes, provokes."

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In any picture (or is it image) of literature there is not only present the writer and the publisher, but also the critic. Marcel Reich-Ranicki has certainly made a name for himself by putting himself into the picture very much as Michel Foucault would remark as being significant when a painter making the portrait of the King and Queen at court puts himself into the picture and by contrast the royal couple into the background. A shift of power?

Marcel Reich-Ranicki has been called the ‘pope of German literature’, even though he does not wish to be understood as German. That is due to his background linked to Poland, more specifically to the Warszawa Ghetto which he survived and then as ‘spy’ for the Polish Communist government after the war in England. He came only after that ordeal (or was it a training ground in how not to feel alone, something to be understood in terms of how ideology can have a grip of people’s minds reminding of Dostoevsky’s saying worse than the death penalty as form of punishment is expulsion from society) to Germany and there do not care about who would be financing whom as long it was an open secret. The point of departure would be his matter of dealing with not the past but by having a simple position, he could be convincing in what he wrote about the others who write. Meant by simple is his credo as not being interested in politics while at the same time anything directed against the Soviet Union was good. This has to be understood in terms of moving forward in the Cold War.

Yes, he mixed with the writers of Group 47, fore mostly thanks to Hans Werner Richter who made sure he was not ousted even though Guenter Grass was already so furious that he tried to silence the critic by expelling him from the group. Why is that so? Most likely Marcel Reich-Ranicki has that amazing brilliance of combining provoking vulgarity with deep clarity about the standard of literature. He could condemn as much as he could praise. It seems that he knows where the best part of literature can be found, and where something like a childlike utopia is erected by literature becoming simply poetry. In his praise of Oscar Wilde he shows that gentle, kind and loving side for what is then called his honesty as bridge maker between Europe and America.

Given his most recent award at the Free University of Berlin, Marcel Reich-Ranicki understands this as a kind of redemption. For it was at this place that he was denied in the pre Second World War years the possibility to study due to his Jewish origin.

Note should be taken in terms of his criticism that he does not condemn outright, but he differentiates, for example, between good and part parts in novel ‘Thin Drum’ by Guenter Grass. Clearly that is the plight of any critic for the reader expects a final judgment and not something differentiated equally inconclusive. Marcel Reich-Ranicki made his name by being never hesitant to let everyone know where he stands. He had the fortunate position to be linked to the FAZ in order to publish his criticisms of literature within that flagship of Conservatism in Germany.

He was interviewed by many people, including Daniel Cohn Bendit, as he plays the role of someone having lived through the Holocaust but survived it on terms he cannot explain himself.

In one of his interviews he mentioned how his wife and he broke ranks from the prisoners about to be taken to the death camp and fled into the woods. Later he heard from a woman who had fled after them that a soldier had tried to shot at them but the gun did not work and then the soldier threw it away.

To date, says Marcel Reich-Ranicki, he does not know if the soldier wanted to shoot them or not. Coincidence? Indeed, he attributes his lucky fate to coincidence as if he would affirm Adorno’s saying that a society without coincidence would be dictatorship.

Remains the rebuttal by Guenter Grass who believes he was a much better critic as long as he was in the Group ’47 since other critics responded to him and he had to take those viewpoints into consideration.

It is quite something else when alone, every writer at his mercy, as if he is the ‘Pope of literature’. To this strange dedication should be said something more in the direction of his denial of the Political. It was Solshenizyn who said every writer has to be like the second government of his country, that is responsible for everything that goes on in that country. The political sense of literature is this moral responsibility and so the orbit of criticism on literature is a way to mould the ‘conscience’ of not merely the lone figure in society, which is a writer like Heinrich Boell, but what are the moral borders beyond which there lies either utopia or the broken mirror after discussions in society did not succeed in coming to terms with reality. Thomas Mann called it in Buddenbrooks ‘das Preisgeben der Laecherlichkeit’: the giving up due to being ridiculous. Indeed, the fear of every writer is to be exposed to the such laughter as can be performed by Marcel Reich-Ranicki, even though Thomas Mann would say this fear is an ingredient in the lack of freedom vis a vis those who consider themselves to be a part of the powerful ones of the country.

Certainly Marcel Reich-Ranicki has played very successfully that role never to question his contract givers for his fear is to get an order – eine Anweisung – for not having challenged a writer who would be capable of questioning that power. As such Marcel Reich-Ranicki must now be careful with his newly acquired honorary doctorate not to get lost in the empty corridors of power. The footsteps echo on the walls and the laughter that Herrmann Broch described in ‘Death of Virgil’ when the poet was dying and below, in the court yard, three drunkards strolled in obviously unaware who was above them, one floor up.

There is just one thought about Marcel Reich-Ranicki’s biography carrying the title: “My life”. The question is what can said and written once life becomes a personal property? Can it still be described in of literary terms, conveyed by honesty quality? As a way out he has proven himself as walker along many frontiers by knowing how to arrange himself with power, and consequently a life touching upon many writers. All the more it is a pity that he would then so late say in his usual provoking way, and in a very over generalized manner, that Germans would write more novels than anybody else as if the silence of the intellectuals was not a problem, a problem due to criticism having been at times not merely painful, but devastating to the point of no return.