The Chinese version of "My Century" (Mein Jahrhundert,
Having been ruled by colonialists for protracted periods, the Taiwanese people have not awakened yet and not learned our lessons from our past miserable experiences. Writers like Grass seem so distant from us, not only geographically but also intellectually.
After World War II, martial law castrated the conscience and courage of many writers in Taiwan, many of whom became toadies, fawning to the ruling powers. Inspect the rolls of honor of the winners of the literary and arts awards conferred by the KMT, the government, the military, or intelligence agencies, and you will see before you a roll call of notorious accomplices to political crimes.
Indeed, if we list the winners of literary and arts awards, whether conferred officially or semi-officially, we can clearly see who wears the medals of shame. The truth however, is usually blurred and easily forgotten by history, while writers with medals of shame often receive different, new medals as history moves on.
Why does the Republic of China want to carry out quasi-colonialism in Taiwan? Why does the People's Republic of China want to annex Taiwan? And why is Taiwan so servile that it tries to pander to both of them? Our inability to examine ourselves has brought us medals of shame, not medals of glory.
Grass, once a member of Germany's Social Democrat Party
Compared to Taiwan's poets and novelists who gained undeserved reputations under martial law, Grass -- the winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature -- can truly be considered a mirror in which the whole of Taiwan's intelligentsia should look, and examine itself deeply.
Lee Ming-yung is a poet.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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