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Having lustily enjoyed the ill-gotten geese, pigs and sheep, the poets must swallow an unpleasant truth: moral purity is hard to maintain in an immoral world. To their credit, the writers accept and understand this lesson. Feelings of superiority begin to evaporate. The conclave that opened in smugness draws to a close with increasing humility. The participants realize that art must somehow protect its integrity while mingling in the mud and muddle of life.
To underscore this point, Grass gives the best speech in the novel to the rascally Gelnhausen. The discredited young man takes his leave, boldly promising the group that some day he will write a book: "But let no one expect mincing pastorals, conventional obituaries, complicated figure poems, sensitive soul-blubber, or well-behaved rhymes for church congregations. No, he would let every foul smell out of the bag; a chronicler, he would bring back the long war as a word-butchery, let loose gruesome laughter, and give the language license to be what it is: crude and softspoken, whole and stricken . . . but always drawn from the casks of life."
This description jibes perfectly with Grass's own fictional methods, particularly in The Tin Drum, a sprawling, picaresque vision of a later war. The Meeting at Telgte is considerably shorter and less ambitious than its famous predecessor, much more an elegy than an encyclopedia. But for all its brevity, the novel fleshes out serious old questions about the place of literature in the lives of nations. Grass allows his imaginary meeting to end on a note of ineffectuality. The inn burns down, and with it a peace proposal that the poets composed: "And so, what would in any case not have been heard, remained unsaid." Yet the writers part with good feelings all around: "After this, none of them would feel quite so isolated." They set off for then" different destinations, still harboring the dream of all poets, that they will sur vive through their words and works, that they "will mingle with eternity." Grass exposes their vanities and weaknesses, but he also, lovingly, perpetuates their hope.
— By Paul Gray