Life Narratives of the Past: Herta Müller on Communist Romania

ABSTRACT

Narratives of the past are created and, in some cases, recreated, through literary works by revealing fragments from past traumas, reinterpreting past events, or focusing on historical events held in the collective memory. In a text dedicated to excavation and memory, Walter Benjamin notes that when approaching one’s personal past, one must proceed like a person digging in the ground, and not be afraid of returning repeatedly to the same matter. This essay argues that Herta Müller uses this method to address the personal and collective Romanian past, creating through her novels a literary remembrance of the past that deeply resonates with the memories of those affected by totalitarian regimes. Never presenting a linear or whole narrative of the past but rather the pieces of a life-narrative puzzle, Müller’s literary world becomes a medium through which the victims of totalitarian regimes can regain control over the narratives of their past.

KEYWORDS:

• Herta Müller
• totalitarian regimes
• literary remembrance
• transgenerational guilt
• fear
• surveillance

Notes

1. For more on this, see Deletant’s Romania under Communist Rule; and Tismăneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons.

2. For further details, see Deletant, Ceausescu and the ‘Securitate’; and Oprea, Bastionul cruzimii.

3. Erll and Rigney, “Production of Cultural Memory,” 111−15.

4. See Mitroiu, “Recuperative Memory,” 751–71.

5. See also Beşliu, “Communist Nostalgia in Romania”; Dragomir, “In Romania Opinion Polls”; and Georgescu, “Ceauşescu Hasn’t Died,” 155–76. This literary approach favors the memory of the communist regime through the everyday accounts of common people living under the system. For example, Romanian writer Dan Lungu depicts the daily experiences that shaped life during this period. Several collections of memories of intellectuals under communist rule have appeared, including Lungu and Gheorghiţă, eds., Cărţi, filme, muzici; and Pârvulescu, ed., Și eu am trăit în comunism.

6. In “Presence of the Unresolved Recent Past,” Glajar claims that Müller’s “work makes a significant contribution to Romania’s cultural memory against what she [Müller] calls ‘collective amnesia’” (50).

7. Müller spoke openly about her wish to be accepted in the Federal Republic of Germany as a political refugee, not as an ethnic German, but her request delayed the process of establishing her status in Germany. It was easier to prove her German origin than her status of political refugee, as the Romanian secret police sought to undermine her attempt to emigrate (see also the editors’ introduction to Brandt and Glajar, eds., Herta Müller.

8. “Herta Müller—Facts,” Nobelprize.org. https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2009/muller-facts.html.

9. For more about the Securitate, see Deletant, Ceausescu and the ‘Securitate’; and Von Puttkamer, Sienarth, and Wien, eds, Die Securitate in Siebenbürgen.

10. In “Incorporations,” Orlich observes that “Müller’s inclusion of autobiographical elements blurs the distinctions between the implied author, the narrator, and the actual author” (219).

11. See, e.g., Tismăneanu, “Democracy and Memory,” 168. See also Doboş and Stan, eds., Politics of Memory, esp. Tismăneanu’s “Coming to Terms with a Traumatic Past.” The year 1989 marked the official end of the communist regime, even if the communist elite continued to exercise its influence during and after the transitional period. See, e.g., Stan’s works on transitional justice in Romania.

12. In “Incorporations,” Orlich, for example, argues that “[t]rauma is the pivotal concept deriving from the latent violence and corruption in the home and becoming symbolic for the conditions of the country” (217). In Body and Narrative, Marven writes that “[t]he structure underlying Herta Müller’s work is the notion of trauma, which unites the representation of the body with language and narrative strategies” (53). The same idea is reiterated by Haines and Marven in their introduction to Herta Müller.

13. See Glajar, “Presence of the Unresolved Recent Past.”

14. Marven, Body and Narrative, 55.

15. See Müller, esp. “Der Fremde Blick,” Der König, 158–83.

16. See also Petrescu, “When Dictatorship Fails,” 57–86.

17. In Everything in Its Path, Erikson defines individual trauma as “a blow to the psyche that breaks through one’s defenses so suddenly and with such brutal force that one cannot react to it effectively.” On the other hand the collective trauma is defined as “a blow to the basic tissues of social life that damages the bonds attaching people together and impairs the prevailing sense of communality. The collective trauma works its way slowly and even insidiously into the awareness of those who suffer from it, so it does not have the quality of suddenness normally associated with ‘trauma.’ But it is a form of shock all the same” (153–54).

18. Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 4.

19. See her interview with Liiceanu, Müller, “Herta Müller la Ateneul Român.”

20. Caruth, “Trauma and Experience,” 4–5. Original emphasis.

21. See Müller, Immer derselbe schnee, esp. 36.

22. Balaev, “Trends in Literary Trauma Theory,” 151.

23. Olick and Demetriou, “From Theodicy to Ressentiment, 85. In “‘Macht nichts, macht nichts’,” Eke speaks of “the paradoxical evidence of displacements in space and time” in Müller’s narratives as the “villages and towns remain nameless, and the period in which the action takes place can only be guessed” (116).

24. See Müller, esp. “Einmal anfassen,” Der König, 129–57.

25. See her essay “Einmal anfassen,” 129–30; my translation.

26. See esp. “Wenn wir schweigen,” Der König, 90–128; my translation.

27. Alexander, Trauma: A Social Theory, 6.

28. Bell, introduction to Memory, Trauma and World Politics, 8.

29. Müller, “Der König verneigt sich und tötet,” Der König, 62; my translation.

30. Edkins, “Remembering Relationality,” 109.

31. LaCapra, History and Memory after Auschwitz, 8–9.

32. See Schwab, “Replacement Children,” 17−33; Brockhaus, “Emotional Legacy,” 34−49; and Reulecke, “Generation/Generationality,” 119−26.

33. Müller, The Land of Green Plums, 14; hereafter page references are cited in the text.

34. Müller did not want to leave Romania, but she was forced to do so by years of harassment at the hands of the regime and being denied the possibility of making a living. In her interview with Liiceanu she talks about being in exile and the status of those forced to leave their countries with no possibility of returning, even after a regime change: “They kicked me out… I cannot return… it will be an illusion. … The continuity of life was lost. … Exile is a great loss for every country” (Müller, “Herta Müller la Ateneul Roman”).

35. See her interview with Barfoed, Müller, “How Could I Forgive.”

36. Müller, The Passport, 39.

37. See Polian, Against Their Will.

38. See Murádin, “Deportation of Germans,” 41–49. https://doi.org/10.1515/auseur-2015-0004.

39. See Müller, “Der Fremde Blick oder,” Der König, 158–83, and her essay collection Immer derselbe schnee.

40. On the practice of totalitarian regimes of treating normal people, mainly those considered enemies of the state, as mentally ill, see Savelli and Marks, eds., Psychiatry in Communist Europe; see also Van Voren, “Political Abuse of Psychiatry,” 33–35.

41. See, e.g., her interview with Liiceanu, Müller, “Herta Müller la Ateneul Român.”

42. Judt, Postwar, 102.

43. In “When Dictatorship Fails,” Petrescu presents Aktionsgrouppe Banat and the constant surveillance and oppression suffered during its short existence.

44. See her speech, in Brandt and Glajar, eds., Herta Müller.

45. See also Haines, “Die akute Einsamkeit des Mensken,” 87–108.

46. Eddy, “Testimony and Trauma,” 60.

47. See also Mitroiu, “Women’s Narratives.”

48. Eddy, “Testimony and Trauma,” 72.

49. Eddy, “A Mutilated Fox Fur,” 87.

50. Müller, “Wenn wir schweigen,” Der König, 120–22; my translation.

51. See also “Die Insel liegt inner,” Der König, 195–213. For attempts to escape from communist Romania via the River Danube, see http://www.ironcurtainstories.eu, and http://miscareaderezistenta.ro. See also director Anca Miruna Lăzărescu’s 2011 Apele tac (Silent River) about the struggle of two young people to escape from Romania by crossing the Danube.

52. As Haines and Marven observe in their introduction to Herta Müller, “Müller’s writing, both fictional and factual, draws substantially on her own biography” (14).

53. In The Land of Green Plums, for example, in a conversation between Edgar and the female narrator on the first page we find out about a grave, a barber, nail clippers, and the dictator. Even if this list seems arbitrary, each element relates to deeper memories around which a narrative is constructed. From the fragment about the tomb we find out that “To this day, I can’t really picture a grave. Only a belt, a window, a nut, and a rope. To me, each death is like a sack” (5). Readers familiar with Müller’s life may know that she had a friend who was officially recorded as having committed suicide, but was most likely murdered by the police who then covered it up, and will read this as a direct reference to that event. Another one of Müller’s friends jumped to his death from a window, and Lola—one of the novel’s characters—commits suicide using the narrator’s dress belt. Finally, who is dictator if not the one who “makes graveyards just because he walks, eats, sleeps and loves” (2).

54. For an excellent analysis of the relation of autobiography and literature in Müller’s works, see Marven, “Life and Literature.”

55. The distinction is mainly discussed in her interviews; see, e.g., her interview with Barfoed, Müller, “How Could I Forgive.”

56. Bozzi, “Facts, Fiction, Autofiction, and Superfiction,” 109–29, esp. 111.

57. Müller, esp. “In jader Sprache,” Der König, 16–17; my translation.

58. See also Weidenhiller, “Das Unsagbare sagbar machen.”

59. Müller, esp. “Wenn wir schweigen,” Der König, 105; my translation.

60. Ibid., 104–6; my translation. Under communism she discovered more about the things that cannot be translated into words than those can be.

61. Marven, Body and Narrative, 2.

62. Niederungen (English translation, Nadirs, 1999), Müller’s first collection of short stories, published in 1982 under Romanian censorship, outlines the territory to which she returns repeatedly in her writings. The stories revolve around the daily life of the Swabian community, weaving together memories, places, things, colors, plants, people, and rituals specific to the family/community but also imposed by the shortage of goods. By focusing on the daily activities of family life, such as the dates circled on the calendar and the stories told to children by their parents or grandparents—what to eat and what will happen if you eat the wrong plant/flower or at the wrong time—Müller recreates the community’s collective memory. The oppression Müller experienced as a child in a traditional community and as an adult in a totalitarian society pervades the volume, even when she attempts to detach herself through her writing. While some critics may argue that the book is fictional and that the narrator cannot be confused with Müller herself, the line separating the two is very thin, as she says in her first interview in My Fatherland.

63. Haines and Marven, Herta Müller, 15.

64. Benjamin, “Excavation and Memory,” 576.

65. Marven, “Life and Literature,” 207.

66. Pollock, Remembering, 5.

67. See Mitroiu, “Women’s Narratives.”

68. See Müller, Immer derselbe schnee. In My Fatherland, she insists that literature is not a mechanism to remedy past traumas, as it cannot cure anything. What she proposes is not to inquire into the past, but to carry her past into the present. The only way to confront the past is thus to continue to examine it in different ways.

69. Müller notes that the more she progressed in writing the story of Pastior’s experience in the concentration camp, the more she herself entered the concentration camp. After Pastior’s death, left only with her text, she understood that this was the only possible way: all along, he needed to leave the camp, and she needed to enter it. See, e.g., Müller, “Gelber Mais und keine Zeit,” in Immer derselbe Schnee, 125–45; my translation.

70. Kohl, “Beyond Realism,” 16.

71. Marven, Body and Narrative, 95.

72. See “Der Fremde Blick,” Der König, 168; my translation.

73. Eddy, “Testimony and Trauma,” 67.

74. Ibid., 58.

75. Glajar and Brandt, “Interview with Ernest Wichner,” 49.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation, CNCS–UEFISCDI [grant number PN-II-RU-TE-2014-4-0010]. 

Notes on contributors

Simona Mitroiu

Simona Mitroiu, PhD, is Senior Researcher at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Romania. She is the editor of Life Writing and Politics of Memory in Eastern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) and Women’s Narratives and the Postmemory of Displacement in Central and Eastern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Her research focuses on identity narratives, memory and life writing in postcommunist societies.