NA: Surely there must be a purpose or motive to your writing. I recall George Orwell once listed four main reasons he believed drove writers to write, namely, sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and political purpose. Which of these, if at all, comes closest to your strongest motive when you pick up a pen?

RG: I don't think Orwell is right to set up such types. For most authors all these points are playing a part and probably many other reasons as well. Serious art is always also a form of self-discovery. Such a division into four points is too simplistic - someone, whose writing is politically motivated, would also write because he is personally involved, for example because he lived in Germany during World War 2 or the post-war years. Thus he is automatically also writing for egoistical reasons.

One cannot write about something that is alien to oneself. I could not write about somebody in a third world country because that would be arrogant and not credible. Everybody writes about himself and that is good too as everyone can only speak for himself.

But your question about the purpose to my writing asks for an explanation: how is the writer's motive relevant for literature? I do not know my reasons and I think that it is wrong that we have been trying to psychologise everything recently. The psychologist Alfred Adler once said that the more ambitious one is in a certain field the larger his inferiority complex will be in that same area. This statement may be correct, but what use is it? When everything that we do is motivated by deficiency and we know this then our self-perception will soon be that of inferiority. Man is reduced to nothing and can only define himself in his actions and achievements. And we are getting better and better at this: we have great careers, fast cars and build huge cities and funfairs. Man himself is becoming less important - if it continues like this, he will soon have disappeared. But to return to your question about these four types: the answer lies in literature. The reader of literary works does not need to ask why it has been written.

NA: That is your view, of course. Let's move on. You work with words. Have there been times you failed to find a word either in German (the language in which you write) or any other language to precisely convey an idea or describe a feeling in a poem? If so how have you managed an approximation, and does this make it hard to look that poem in the eye? 

RG: I have never asked myself this question because I do not express feelings with words but with situations. Of course it happens sometimes that I do not know how the story should continue or that I lack a metaphor or a line of a poem. This problem can only be solved by giving the text some time. I sleep it over, go for a walk ... and suddenly I find the answer.