The Onion Cellar, as imagined by Günter Grass, is a private club which has neither alcohol nor music.

Each guest is served with a chopping board, a paring knife, and an onion. At Mr Schmuh’s signal, the guests would start chopping the onion to pieces, so that the juice, the sulphenic acids, would induce tears.

So that they weep and mourn for all that had been forever lost.

Some believe that the magnitude of upheavals in our era has overwhelmed us, that we become numb to deaths and destructions, that we live in a tearless century.

Perhaps metaphors are always more convincing than grim reality to us. We understand the world through eels inside a horse’s head, grandma’s layers of skirt, and the fervent drumming of a midget.

— 2005. 11. 12