peeling the onion off
one layer at a time
World Kigo Database (Günter Grass)
Note: The poem alludes to Gunter Grass’s 2006 memoir entitled Peeling the Onion. In the book, he shocked Germany and the readers around the word by confessing that “as a youth, late in World War II, he had served in the Nazi Waffen SS.”
The image of peeling the onion also makes a thematic allusion to Chapter 42, The Onion Cellar, of Grass’s most-read novel, The Tin Drum.
