The world's leaders and economists, having put in their euro's worth on Greece and currency union – to no great discernible effect, so far – yesterday, one of the planet's most respected literary figures joined in. Germany's Nobel literature laureate Günter Grass criticised the treatment of Greece in the debt crisis, describing it in a new poem as a "country sentenced to poverty".
The 84-year-old's latest work, "Europe's Disgrace", was published in the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung. It comes less than two months after Grass triggered a storm of criticism with another intervention on a political issue – a prose poem sharply criticising Israel amid the dispute over Iran's nuclear programme. As Greece struggles with austerity and reform programmes demanded by creditors in exchange for rescue loans, and speculation grows that it may leave the 17-nation eurozone, Grass springs to its defence, and, by implication, criticises his own country's attitude to it.
The poem is a stinging rebuke for Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative-led government which has insisted that austerity is the only way that Greece can balance its books. The author accuses Europe of forcing Greece to drink from a poisoned chalice and describes it as a "country now hardly tolerated". In the poem, he says Greece has been "pilloried naked as a debtor". He writes: "You will waste away spiritlessly without the country whose spirit, Europe, conceived you." » | David Randall, Tony Patterson | Sunday, May 27, 2012
