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Comment by morsch | Hacker News Reader

The Günter-Grass-Haus published this poem from his work "Fundsachen für Nichtleser"

  Mit einem Sack Nüsse
  will ich begraben sein  
  und mit neuesten Zähnen.
  Wenn es dann kracht,
  wo ich liege,
  kann vermutet werden:
  Er ist das,
  immer noch er.

I don't think it's available in English, and I'll add my own translation here. I hope that's not too presumptuous. I've done some translation, but translating poetry is difficult.

  With a bag of nuts
  I'd like to be buried
  and with the freshest of teeth.
  When there is gnashing
  where I lie,
  one can surmise:
  He's at it,
  still he.

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I'd translate the last two lines slightly different:

  With a bag of nuts
  I'd like to be buried
  and with the freshest of teeth.
  When there is gnashing
  where I lie,
  one can surmise:
  It's him,
  still him.

That's what I had originally, but I felt that the pronoun being the first and the last word in the last sentence (and second-to-last/last line, respectively) was significant enough that I wanted to keep it in, even at the cost of being non-grammatical.

I love this community...:)

"er ist das" also sounds exactly like "he eats that".

Woah, completely missed that. Then, "he's at it" captures slightly more of that meaning as well. Still incredibly hard to translate while trying to stay succinct.

Can you provide some interpretations of the poem, especially the context or the environment which it was written in?

I'm hardly qualified to comment on any specifics. I'll only go as far as saying that Grass wasn't well-known for his love of snack food, and I interpret the poem as referring to his being argumentative, even beyond his lifetime. Maybe someone else can chime in.

There's a phrase in German language, "eine harte Nuss zu knacken haben", literally "to have a hard nut to crack".

Maybe that means that he'll be cracking nuts (problems) even after he's buried?

I think it's more aimed towards his tendency to go against the (left) mainstream of his day and start fights - he argued for a delayed or stopped reunification of West and East Germany, he often criticized people for not dealing with their Nazi past thoroughly enough (which bit him when he disclosed his own previously secret Nazi past just a few years ago), he always worked in politics (mostly supporting the SPD).

"Wenn es dann kracht,"

you can also translate as

"where there's a fight"

so there's a bit of a double-meaning here - "krachen" means that there's noise from his crushing nuts, but it can also mean that there's a conflict [1]

[1] http://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/krachen "(umgangssprachlich für streiten)"

I tried to convey this with gnashing, which is also something that literally happens when you chew nuts as well as idiomatically when you fight, when you gnash your teeth out of anger.

I would agree with that idea. The bag of nuts may represent the issues he has concerned himself with over the years or they may be future issues in need of a solution. Grass has always been very outspoken, very political and, more often than not, provocative. I believe he is writing about his legacy. He is convinced that his works will outlast him and that he will continue to have an impact through them even after this death. One could even go a step further and argue that he is saying his works are him (or at least his essence) and therefore he will continue to live on. The sounds coming from the grave may either represent the cracking of nuts, meaning solving the issue or they may represent the sound of fighting over said issues stimulated by Grass' ideas.

I didn't even think of that, that's a very different take on the poem, and possibly a more appropriate one, thanks!

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