Tim Lott: The good, the bad - and the artist

Günther Grass's SS past does not alter the value of his work, says Tim Lott. Art is independent of its creators' morality

Until last Tuesday, Günther Grass was a hero. Nobel prize winner, literary lion, conscience of a nation and political activist with a towering moral stature; he occupied a mythic place within his own country approaching that of Nelson Mandela in South Africa, or the status that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once enjoyed in Russia.

By Wednesday, Grass was a disgrace who was coming under pressure from some to return his Nobel prize. He was even requested to hand back a literary prize from the Polish branch of PEN, lest his soiled imprimatur besmirch the noble name of that august literary institution.

Why? Because last week he revealed that as a 17-year-old he had briefly been in the Waffen-SS. Thus was the hero fallen, and all the achievements of his 78 years of life transformed, according to some commentators, into ashes. One German newspaper suggested that he had committed "moral suicide". Another erstwhile saint, Lech Walesa, suggested he should hand back his honorary citizenship of Gdansk, where Grass was born.

Yet Günther Grass's fall from grace is part of a long-standing confusion about the role of personal morality in art and politics. Most of us have given up hoping for any kind of virtue, superhuman or otherwise, from our politicians. We have a vague hope that they will live moral lives, because, like preachers, they spout morality at us. However, we are only mildly surprised when the shining armour turns out to be tarnished. Bill Clinton's obvious and much trumpeted failings in the area of sexual morality made nary a dent in his poll ratings.

But our artists are a different matter, and it is as an artist, rather than as a political spokesman, that I think Grass is being judged. Our expectations of artists remain high, because in the absence of a convincing priesthood in our secular society, they are the closest we imagine we can come to a Brahmin caste, those in touch with the highest of spiritual and aesthetic realities.

The reason Grass has been called on to return his Nobel prize, I suspect, is not so much because as a 17-year-old he joined the Waffen-SS, but because he has betrayed his canonisation by a literary community who, having erected a hero figure in the first place, cannot forgive that figure for failing to support the burden of its fantasies. And the secret drive towards the manufacture and consumption of sainthood is, in my view, one of the most insidious elements of aesthetic and critical thought.

The central criticism of Grass is that he has been a hypocrite, since his moral and to some extent his artistic platform over the years has centred on getting the Germans to face up to their past. And on this count Grass is certainly guilty as charged. But if he were an even bigger hypocrite - say, he was a camp guard rather than a non-combatant - it would not make the truth of the German nation's need to face up to war guilt one iota less true. The fact that the messenger has tripped and soiled his face in the mud does not compromise the veracity of the message in the slightest degree.

What Grass may or may not have done in the past does matter, of course, as a question of personal morality. But it has no impact on his artistic achievement. And the more that supporters such as John Irving and Salman Rushdie assert him as a great writer, the more true this is.

The real hypocrisy lies in the refusal to recognise that we are all hypocrites - artists no more and no less than anybody else.

I do not say this out of cynicism, but out of a realistic view of human nature (which, I happen to believe, is fundamentally good). Artists and writers are not philosopher kings, however much they secretly like to see themselves (and be seen) in that light. They are involved in the everyday business of compromise, self-deception, denial and double standards, as we all are. The difference is that artists, and particularly writers, tend to work from a moral platform, however much they may deny it.

Implicitly more often than explicitly, they make their hunger for virtue public, partly as an advertisement for themselves. They see themselves as standard bearers for values, usually liberal values. Even supposedly shocking and superficially cynical writers such as Will Self and Irvine Welsh are disappointingly conventional in the inner spectrum of their moralities.

Cynicism is, in fact, like idealism, a form of moral vanity ("I am so good I can see how bad I am/we are"). Few writers now parade virtue in the straightforward Victorian style. It is now permeated by irony, and disgust of self and others - Martin Amis being the most obvious contemporary example. All the same, it remains a form of moral recreation in which both audience and artist collude.

European writers, and German ones especially because of their history, tend towards the nakedly political more than the ironic, and Grass has been a vociferous spokesman on behalf of the German left calling for Germany to face up to its Nazi past. Does that mean that he should have to return his Nobel prize, as the German Christian Democratic Party has insisted? Of course not. It was the Nobel Prize for Literature, not the Nobel Prize for Being a Good Person, or even a Consistent Person.

The idea that the creative voices in our society must live exemplary lives that somehow measure up to either the moral standards prescribed by those voices themselves, or by wider societal standards, strikes me as not only irrelevant, but as reprehensible as hypocrisy itself.

The list of writers who have faced artistic invalidation because of the vagaries of their personal lives and personal and even artistic opinions is extensive. From Shakespeare's anti-Semitism (or Ezra Pound's, or Eliot's, or Wagner's), to Koestler's misogyny (or Larkin's, or Hughes', or Freud's, for that matter), all are considered to have in some way reduced the value of their creative endeavours by failing to live up to the moral standards imposed upon them by the consumers of their intellectual products.

This misapprehension has come about because of a central mistake within the critical mind - or rather a series of mistakes.

The first is the aforementioned craving for sainthood. This supposes that an honest writer must be an honest person, or that a profound truth must spring from a noble brow, or that an artistic vision is in any way, shape or form the same as a moral vision.

This is a peculiarly Victorian or, latterly, mainstream Hollywood view of the world - that not only is the purpose of art moral enlightenment, but that producers of that art should themselves exist on a higher moral plane.

This is absurd. Would anyone for a moment suggest that the Brit-pack of artists from Tracey Emin to Damien Hirst, despite their undoubted talents, are "better" people than, say, an artistically hopeless Macmillan nurse? Obviously not. They simply have a particular visual and conceptual talent, which in many ways is quite discrete from the rest of their personality.

The notion that visual artists are likely to be bad boys (and girls) is widely accepted, but somehow when it comes to literature, a different standard is brought to mind. Writers are deemed to be bien-pensants - literally, good thinkers. Hence the furore when DBC Pierre was awarded the Booker for Vernon God Little. It was repeatedly argued that the degree of reprehensible and dishonest behaviour in his private life should somehow disqualify him from the hallowed corridors of literary greatness.

Something similar, of course, has happened to many of the above-mentioned writers. Larkin's literary reputation took a horrendous dip after Andrew Motion's biography revealed a seedy and unpleasant man behind his poetic vision. Ted Hughes has come under fire not just as a person but as a writer from feminists who hold that he was responsible for the death of at least one of his wives. Henry Williamson's work, even something as innocent as Tarka the Otter, is now tainted by his support for Oswald Mosley. But is Darkness at Noon a less prescient work because Koestler was an abuser of women? Does Shakespeare have nothing to tell us because he is tainted by anti-Semitism?

Such views are misguided. Any artist knows, or should know, that art and personality are largely unconnected. Art is not something one does. It is a portal through which one allows something to manifest. It is a sort of blankness, an empty space, and it has nothing to do with - is beyond - matters of right and wrong. Art may give rise to moral consequences. But it is usually a mark of bad art that it has moral purposes.

One can add other caveats to this, which are to a greater or lesser extent relevant to Günther Grass. First, we are all in a state of flux from one moment to another, let alone from one year to another. So what Grass did when he was 17 is not necessarily relevant to what he did later.

Second, historical perceptions of morality change. When Grass joined the Waffen-SS, the letters SS didn't have the terrible historical charge that they have since acquired.

A third aspect is that lies can fuel truth. Who is to say that Grass's guilt about his skeleton in the closet was not a deep wellspring from which his commitment to art and politics were brought forth. And lastly, individual morality is not, and never has been, monolithic. Evil people can have good aspects, and vice versa.

But all these elements are, in a sense, irrelevancies. What is important is that a work of art, and even a political act, should be judged on its own merits. It may be aspects of literary theory that are responsible for this straightforward truth being forgotten (the idea that writing springs out of societal forces rather than the sovereign mind of the author), or it may be the age-old hope that people with special talents can somehow act, personally, as our saviours. It also arises from the fact that the intelligentsia are exhibiting profoundly sheep-like behaviour in their moral self-herding, and hence deviation is judged harshly. (I remember very clearly the embarrassed silent confusion when John Updike at the Hay Festival refused to condemn the war in Iraq. The sense of betrayal was manifest.)

Lao Tse once observed that "goody goodies are the enemies of virtue". Given the history of idealistic tyrannies over the past 100 years, this remains one of the most important philosophical statements in history. Moral fervour and moral judgement are almost the opposite of not only what good art and good writing are about, but what the good life is about.

And personal morality in the artist is not the opposite of anything at all. It is simply irrelevant, for the road to heaven may be paved with bad intentions, just as the road to hell is so tragically often constructed with its opposite.