Herta Müller

[Bjorn]

Turns out we don't have a thread for her, and since she's being discussed... Maybe Mirabell or someone else who's read her can add something? Going by what's available over here, I'd love to hear if Der Fuchs war damals schon der J?ger or Herztier are any good?

Biography (shamelessly stolen from wikipedia)

Herta M?ller (born August 17, 1953) is a Romanian-born German novelist and essayist.

She was born in Niţchidorf (Nitzkydorf), Timiş County, the daughter of Swabian farmers. She took German studies and Romanian literature at the Timişoara University.

In 1976, M?ller began working as a translator for an engineering company, but was dismissed in 1979 for her refusal to cooperate with the Securitate, the Communist regime's secret police. Initially, she made a living by teaching kindergarten and giving private German lessons. Her first book was published in Romania (in German) in 1982, and appeared only as a censored version, as with most publications of this time.

In 1987, M?ller left for Germany with her husband. Over the following years, she received many lectureships at universities in Germany and abroad. She currently lives in Berlin. M?ller received membership at the German Academy for Writing and Poetry in 1995, and other positions followed. In 1997, she withdrew from the PEN centre of Germany in protest of its merge with its former German Democratic Republic branch.
Bibliography:


Niederungen ("Lowlands"), Bucharest 1982
Dr?ckender Tango ("Oppressive Tango"), Bucharest 1984
Der Mensch ist ein gro?er Fasan auf der Welt ("Man Is a Big Sucker in the World"), Berlin 1986
Barf??iger Februar ("Barefoot February"), Berlin 1987
Reisende auf einem Bein ("Traveller on One Leg"), Berlin 1989
The Passport, 1989
Wie Wahrnehmung sich erfindet ("How Perception Invents Itself"), Paderborn 1990
Der Teufel sitzt im Spiegel ("The Devil is Sitting in the Mirror"), Berlin 1991
Der Fuchs war damals schon der J?ger ("Even Back Then, the Fox Was the Hunter), Reinbek by Hamburg 1992
Eine warme Kartoffel ist ein warmes Bett ("A Warm Potato Is a Warm Bed), Hamburg 1992
Der W?chter nimmt seinen Kamm ("The Guard Takes His Comb"), Reinbek by Hamburg 1993
Angekommen wie nicht da ("Arrived As If Not There"), Lichtenfels 1994
Herztier ("Heart Animal"), Reinbek bei Hamburg 1994
Hunger und Seide ("Hunger and Silk"), Reinbek by Hamburg 1995
In der Falle ("In a Trap"), G?ttingen 1996
Heute w?r ich mir lieber nicht begegnet ("Today I Would Rather Not Have Met Myself"), Reinbek by Hamburg 1997
Der fremde Blick oder das Leben ist ein Furz in der Laterne ("The Foreign View, or Life Is a Fart in a Lantern"), G?ttingen 1999
The Land of Green Plums, 1999
Im Haarknoten wohnt eine Dame ("A Lady Lives in the Hair Knot"), Reinbek by Hamburg 2000
Heimat ist das, was gesprochen wird ("Home Is What Is Spoken There"), Blieskastel 2001
Der K?nig verneigt sich und t?tet ("The King Bows and Kills), Munich (and elsewhere) 2003
Die blassen Herren mit den Mokkatassen ("The Pale Gentlemen with their Espresso Cups"), Munich (and elsewhere) 2005

Links:


Wikipedia (English) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herta_M%C3%BCller)
Wikipedia (Deutsch) (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herta_M%C3%BCller)

[Eric]

I'm glad you started this thread, Bj?rn. I haven't read a word by her, but given her brushes with the Securitate, she does strike me as someone who has experienced a repressive r?gime at first hand, and is sincere:

Herta M?ller: Securitate in all but name - signandsight (http://www.signandsight.com/features/1910.html)

There is no harm in stealing from the Wikipedia, if this furthers our knowledge of an author. The Wikipedia has open access.

[Galatea92]

That's impressively horrifying. The falsification workshop is particularly scary. I'm not sure I would have been as courageous as she seems to have been.

[Stewart]

Herta M?ller has today been confirmed as the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature.

[Heteronym]

The Nobel keeps betting on obscurity.

There is a reason why names like Philip Roth, Milan Kundera, Amos Oz keep coming up every year. Perhaps it's because they really deserve it.

I was watching the commentaries by a Portuguese writer on the choice of Herta M?ller, and she made some interesting points:

1) in the history of the Nobel Literature Prize, only a handful of women have won the award, and the Academy has been awarding women like crazy this decade to fill quotas and avoid being called mysoginist;

2) the writer didn't have a fine impression of M?ller's writing and argued that when men are awarded, it tends to be to writers with real talent; when it comes to women, it seems any woman will do; this risks giving the impression women's writing isn't as good as men's;

3) the Academy's criteria - "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed" - is so ridiculously vague it could describe any writer.

This was a pretty violent criticism.

For my part I can only say Mrs. M?ller does not interest me in the least. I was waiting to know the winner before going book shopping today, but I'll be buying Coetzee and Naipaul instead. And maybe some Angela Carter.

[Eric]

I am perfectly satisfied that Herta M?ller has won the prize. I was amused at the pomp, circumstance, and suppressed hysteria at the announcement at the white circus door of the Swedish Academy...

Nobels litteraturpris 2009 Herta M?ller | SvD (http://www.svd.se/kulturnoje/nyheter/artikel_3622093.svd)

...but I'm happy that someone like M?ller ("the muller woman") has won it.

I just do not recognise the description of "obscure". I had not read anything by her before yesterday afternoon, but I thought I might like her. I like what she writes about. Even now, I've only three pages yesterday - nothing today. But after giving it to an flakey Austrian Communist a few years ago, the committee has now given it to someone who shows the horrible ways that the Ceausescu system treated people.

Obscurity is often a way of saying: if I've never heard of her, she's OBSCURE. Would that more obscure writers won major prizes! One Portuguese commentary cannot disguise the fact that M?ller may even be a good writer. For my part, I can only say that some opinions do not interest me in the least, to paraphrase Heteronym. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. I started reading one of her books quite at random yesterday (it was the only thing of hers they had in the library), and will comment in due course whether she is good stylistically, as opposed to politically. No one is paying me to say she's brilliant, but nor do I want to write her off, quite wilfully, as "obscure". No reader of serious literature in Germany, a country of some 80 million inhabitants, would have regarded this immigrant writer as "obscure", even before the prize.

[Mirabell]

About Herta M?ller (Part 1) shigekuni. (http://shigekuni.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/about-herta-muller-part-1/)

[promtbr]

Thanks for the excellent intro Marcel!

Sounds as if M?llers pool is deep and inviting, enough for multiple dives. I am so going to meet the delivery truck driver at the door who will hand me the amazon box this afternoon with The Land of Green Plums inside.

[Liam]

...the Ceausescu system...
Actually, it's Ceauşescu.

[Eric]

You're correction is perfectly correct, Liam. However, while I can write a whole host of diacritic marks using the Alt + system, I can't get the Romanian sh-sound without first going to a Romanian text online, then copying the letter, then pasting it in the word. I hope you did notice the more common and more grievous fault: people writing Ceaucescu, which someone did here - and you didn't berate him for his typo / bout of laziness. If you know an Alt + code for the ş, ţ (as in Niţchidorf [pron. Nitsky Dorf]) do tell me. I've managed to reproduce them here now, but had to find texts such as the following to nick the letters from:

Nobel pentru Romania Casa in care a locuit Herta Muller in Banat nationalizata de statul roman (http://www.antena3.ro/stiri/cultura/herta-muller-declarata-cetatean-de-onoare-in-localitatea-natala_82162.html)

The beginning of the title, as far as I know, means: "The Nobel for Romania". But the rest of it is too difficult for me. Suffice it to say that Romania is now claiming part-credit for M?ller's win. And I guess that the second half of the title means something like: "The house in which Herta M?ller lived in Banat has been nationalised by the Romanian state". One interesting feature of the Romanian language is that it has a definite article tacked onto the end of the noun, as in the Scandinavian languages.

[Clarissa]

The Nobel prize committee should get out more | Books | guardian.co.uk (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/oct/08/nobel-prize-literature-herta-muller)

Guardian article re. Eurocentric

[miercuri]

Your translation of the title is very accurate.
The rest of the article goes on about how the house Mueller lived in was nationalised in '87 when she fled the country. I really can't see the point of this article, but yes, it seems that Romania is claiming part-credit for the win. Romanian literary circles are very much frustrated with the fact that we have no Nobel laureate of our own and this must come as a partial consolation. They will have to make-do with it for a while, until one day when hopefully, our pride and joy Mircea Cărtărescu wins it.
However, I can't consider Herta Mueller of Romanian writer. She is bilingual but writes solely in German and she has never translated her works herself, the way Nabokov of others did it. She is a German-language author for me.
Several of her novels were translated to Romanian by Nora Iuga, probably the best German-to-Romanian translator and if I am not mistaking, a close friend of Herta Mueller's. I will check with my library to see what they have.

edit: it seems that there is a book of poems by her, written in Romanian, published in 2005.

[Heteronym]

No bookshop has Herta M?ller's books available. Usually bookshops use the Nobel win to increase sales on a writer, but this year it's like nobody won. My always reliable Book Depository also come out empty handed.

Does Herta M?ller exist or is she just a spook?

[Daniel del Real]

Maybe it is another heteronym by Mirabell. He's the only one that has read her ;)

Very interesting article Clarissa, and I totally agree with its content. I know the most advanced region regarding Literature is Europe, so it's ok they get most of the Nobel winners. But 19 years now without looking towards Spanish language, that is just sad for me, and for all the native speakers from the third most spoken language in the whole world with 329 million.

[Damian Kelleher]

Reading blog posts from American magazines and regular people is a wonderful exercise in the Le Who? business of last year. Happily, it seems the comments are more accepting than the articles, but its really quite disturbing how inward-looking these American publications are.

Is an international prize suddenly bad or wrong if a person from my country doesn't win it? I don't mind so much that an Australian author didn't win (I also think we don't have any valid contenders...), but my reaction isn't, then, to declare the prize out of touch.

This Pop Vox : Why the Nobel Prize in Literature Doesn't Really Matter (http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/popvox/archive/2009/10/08/why-the-nobel-prize-in-literature-doesn-t-really-matter.aspx) [/URL]is fairly interesting because, really, Le Clezio was huge in France before the award, and is now bigger. "It may, but, then again, you may wind up like last year's winner, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, who enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame and then fell off the radar." Whose radar? Newsweeks? And why does that radar matter in an international sense?

And then this isn't much better: [URL]http://shelf-life.ew.com/2009/10/08/herta-muller-nobel-literature/ (http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/popvox/archive/2009/10/07/who-will-win-the-2009-nobel-prize-for-literature.aspx) "I am, admittedly, a myopic American who?s poorly read in non-English-language literature (and only spottily read in English-language classics for that matter). But does the Nobel imprimatur really compel me to pore through the works of M?ller ? or last year?s comparably unfamiliar laureate, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Cl?zio? I think not. The Nobel ranks (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/) are cluttered with writers who?ve sunk into obscurity and irrelevance, sometimes deservedly so. Do Swedes still read the work of 1916 laureate Verner von Heidenstam? Does anyone think 1938 winner Pearl Buck was one of the top 100 writers of the 20th century?" Happily, one of the comments (from a list of generally good comments) points out that Heidenstam is read by every Swedish schoolchild, something that a good bout of research would surely have revealed.

But it seems that American exceptionalism is braying for blood, so off with her head before anyone has bothered to read her work.

I look forward to the book depository selling M?ller's work.

[beelzebubbles]

Thanks for the informative posts, Eric.

Heteronym, Amazon in the USA has two of Muller's novels, The Land of Green Plums and The Appointment available in English translation. There are even a few used ones available.

[Stiffelio]

Bjorn, you may want to edit your posting of M?ller's bibliography. Some of the titles are duplicated, probably due to some bizarre translations:

Der Mensch ist ein gro?er Fasan auf der Welt ("Man Is a Big Sucker in the World"), Berlin 1986

is the same book as

The Passport, 1989;

and

Herztier ("Heart Animal"), Reinbek bei Hamburg 1994

is the same as

The Land of Green Plums, 1999



On a more frivolous note: I just saw a brief presentation of Herta M?ller on a TV show. She's got rather beautiful eyes but she's reed skinny, verging on the anorexic :o

[Eric]

Thank-you Miercuri. We language-interested people do try to make some inspired guesses from languages in the same group, Romance languages in this case. I agree that the article is pretty pointless if that's all it says. But journalists like to be with it, even if they have nothing to say. I wonder what size of shoes Herta M?ller wears...

From what I've read, M?ller's ethno-cultural background is squarely the German-speaking Swabian minority from the Banat region of Romania. It's hard sometimes to pin down a writer who has such a complicated background. Analogously, Finland-Swedish writers who move to Sweden itself tend still to be regarded as "Finnish" writers, however erroneous that label is.

I presume that Heteronym is referring to bookshops in English-speaking countries. You have to be glad that the British online press actually has anything at all about her, as she didn't write in English. Clarissa has already found the Guardian article, while I have found a couple more:

Novelist Herta M?ller wins 2009 Nobel literature prize - Times Online (http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article6867025.ece)

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Arts & Culture | Mueller wins Nobel literary prize (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/arts_and_culture/8296720.stm)

Profile: Herta Muller, winner 2009 Nobel prize for literature - Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/6273383/Profile-Herta-Muller-winner-2009-Nobel-prize-for-literature.html)

German writer wins Nobel literature prize - News, Books - The Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/german-writer-wins-nobel-literature-prize-1799952.html)

So there are at least four British journos on her case. I suppose they have built up a dossier on her by now, like the Securitate used to do.

And the Germans themselves:

Nobelpreistr?gerin: Herta M?ller und der Makel des SS-Vaters - Nachrichten Kultur - WELT ONLINE (http://www.welt.de/kultur/article4779754/Herta-Mueller-und-der-Makel-des-SS-Vaters.html)

Literatur-Nobelpreis 2009 - Der Hunger - nur er frisst immer weiter - Kultur - sueddeutsche.de (http://www.sueddeutsche.de/,tt5m1/kultur/988/490366/text/)

Literaturnobelpreis f?r Herta M?ller: Mit der Tinte die Schatten vertreiben - Hintergr?nde - Feuilleton - FAZ.NET (http://www.faz.net/s/Rub642140C3F55544DE8A27F0BD6A3C808C/Doc~E336C466761F24A91BE38E89035423073~ATpl~Ecommon ~Sspezial.html)

09.10.2009: Herztier (Tageszeitung Neues Deutschland) (http://www.neues-deutschland.de/artikel/157056.herztier.html)

Stiffy: have you got beautiful eyes and are verging on the anorectic? Or are you a dumpy-saggy-wrinkled person like some writers also are? Or gorgeous, young, with rippling tits? Appearances are so important.

[Eric]

Interesting to see that Die Welt brings up the fact that M?ller's dad was in the SS while the Communist (beg pardon, you're supposed to say socialist) newspaper Neues Deutschland is quite positive about her win. If the Swedish Academy appears to be sucking up to the Germans, the Norwegians are obviously running out of oil as they're now sucking up to the Yanks by giving some obscure American the Peace Prize.

If you look at the Die Welt website regarding the Peace Prize, 0% agree with the fact that this particular American has won it, 50% don't know, and 50% say it was the wrong thing to do. I don't think similar voting on M?ller would be quite so polarised.

A longish and interesting article (in English) about Herta M?ller and the Securitate at:

http://print.signandsight.com/features/1910.html

And the Washington Post; not in the same league of informative sophistication:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/08/AR2009100800965.html

[Heteronym]

Heteronym, Amazon in the USA has two of Muller's novels, The Land of Green Plums and The Appointment available in English translation. There are even a few used ones available.

No, it's Book Depository or nothing!

Hopefully in a few weeks Portuguese translations will start showing up in bookstores.

[Heteronym]

That Vox Pop article is just rubbish:

1) Le Cl?zio's latest novel, Ritournelle de la Faim, has just been translated into Portuguese. It's not yet out in English. Are the Portuguese still sucking up to Le Cl?zio, blindly? Or are the Americans just poor at reading foreign authors?

2) "Nobel winners Pearl Buck and John Steinbeck are no longer in the front ranks of American writers, and even Sinclair Lewis isn't read much anymore." Is the Nobel to blame for that? Or is it the American educational system, for not keeping these writers alive for future generations?

[Eric]

I saw one very interesting comment of Herta M?ller's about language and identity in the Swedish daily Upsala Nya Tidning today:

- Jag ?r en tysk f?rfattare p? s? s?tt att jag skriver p? tyska. Min rum?nska ?r bra, men f?r att skriva kr?vs det en intimitet i spr?ket som jag saknar. Jag ?r inget av dem, eller allt p? en g?ng.
i.e.


- I am a German author insofar as I write in German. My Romanian is good, but in order to write, an intimacy of language is required which I lack. I'm neither of them and both, at one and the same time.

This is a very important idea, one that is grasped so much more easily by people who live in bilingual countries. Spanish people writing in Catalan, Finnish ones in Swedish, Belgian ones in Dutch, will understand her immediately. As well as Hungarians from Transylvania / Erd?ly, Afrikaners from South Africa, Belarusian authors, Polish speakers from Lithuania, and so on. But if your country speaks one monolithic language, you may not empathise with her at all.

[Mirabell]

About Herta M?ller (Part 1) shigekuni. (http://shigekuni.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/about-herta-muller-part-1/)

Instead of writing part two, I added stuff to the original post and rewrote it partially. The new post can now be found here

Herta M?ller, Nobel Prize Winner shigekuni. (http://shigekuni.wordpress.com/2009/10/09/herta-muller-nobel-prize-winner/)

[hdw]

Herta M?ller is today's page 3 girl in the "Guardian", with a big article and a photo. The photo-caption quotes her saying, re getting the Nobel Prize: "It's not arrived in my head yet".

That's my candidate for bad translation of the week. Whatever the original German was, I would have rendered it as "It hasn't sunk in yet".

Harry

[Daniel del Real]

I'm a little confused.


For my part I can only say Mrs. M?ller does not interest me in the least. I was waiting to know the winner before going book shopping today, but I'll be buying Coetzee and Naipaul instead. And maybe some Angela Carter.



No bookshop has Herta M?ller's books available. Usually bookshops use the Nobel win to increase sales on a writer, but this year it's like nobody won. My always reliable Book Depository also come out empty handed.


are you interested or not? :confused:

[hdw]

It's Saturday morning, and I've just been listening to BBC Radio Four's flagship news programme "Today". Just before 9 o'clock James Naughtie squeezed in a quick interview with the publisher Christopher Maclehose and bookseller Tim Waterstone about Herta M?ller in particular and the reluctance of British publishers to publish translated literature in general. He said to Maclehose, 'tell us in a few words why people should read Herta M?ller', and Maclehose just managed to get out 'people should read Herta M?ller and other foreign writers ..." when he was cut off with 'we'll have to leave it there ..'

Whatever people think about M?ller's gong for literature, she has been somewhat put in the shade by Obama's surprise choice for the Peace Prize.

Harry

[Heteronym]

Dan, that was just me blowing off steam after Milan Kundera lost again :D

Actually, I'm interested in reading The Appointment as soon as possible.

[Eric]

I think that Herta M?ller has got a damned sight better reception regarding her prize than Obama has. There are quite a few who have immediately gone into carping mode, not least the Swedes themselves in their press.

Is that the Naughtie boy who pronounces his name Nokhty? Is that the regular pronunciation?

I read a bit more of M?ller last night. It's low-key, but grows on you. Not finished Shigebell's article about her yet, but it is informative.

[hdw]

Is that the Naughtie boy who pronounces his name Nokhty? Is that the regular pronunciation?


Yes. In the same way, there's a Dumfriesshire surname written Waugh and pronounced Wau-CH (as in 'loch'), though I doubt if Evelyn pronounced it that way down in Zummerzet. Did he have Scottish ancestors? He had a brother called Alec, which is Scottish enough.

Harry

[Eric]

I've now read Shigekuni-Mirabell's introduction to Herta M?ller on the Shigekuni website. It is a good introduction to M?ller, as one Lizzy Siddall says on that website.

I note that the novel I started reading was the one that Mirabell describes as "her least great novel so far" and that it has appeared in English. I shall try to obtain other ones.

As I have said earlier, I think the cheese-paring as to whether she's a German or Romanian writer obscures the simple fact that she writes well and about complex and universal things. Her exact ethnic identity doesn't matter as much.

Her poetic style, from the little of the novel that I've read, reminds me a bit of the Estonian author Viivi Luik, whose "The Beauty of History" is available in English (Norvik Press, 2007).

Mirabell could explain to the rest of us what it is that differs between Kempowski's style and hers. Celan and Bachmann are maybe more read in English than Kempowski.

I hope that Mirabell writes more on M?ller, as he seems to have hit the right note in his description of her work.

[saliotthomas]

Three title in French unburried in the last couple of days.
La convocation
Le renard ?tait dej? le chasseur
L'Homme est un grand faisan sur terre

[hdw]

Please find below a letter (dated 9 October) to the editor of the New York
Times by Esther Allen (Center for Literary Translation, Columbia
University).

- Brian Nelson, President, AALITRA


There is a problem with the coverage of Herta Muller's Nobel in today's
Times.

The Times articles consistently mention the fact that Muller writes in
German, and even bemoan the problem of the paucity of literary translation
published in English. But never once is any of Muller's translators named or
alluded to, not even when those translators' words are excerpted
extensively.

In last year's coverage of Le Clezio's Nobel, translators were credited;
their omission this year becomes all the more inexplicable.

Herta Muller is not really so obscure -- she's one of the lucky ones, with
at least four books published in English. That has happened because a number
of literary translators have championed her work and brought it to an
English-speaking public. Their names are Michael Hofmann, Martin Chalmers,
Philip Boehm, Michael Hulse, Valetina Glajar and Andr? Lefevere.

These are not clerks or copyists -- these are dedicated, skilled performers
whose insight and erudition make it possible for literature to move from one
cultural medium into another. They should not be condemned to operate in
total obscurity, especially not at a moment like this one.

Muller herself, like Imre Kertesz and a number of Nobel winners in previous
years, has been a translator -- her writing involves movements between
cultures and languages. Translation is integral to this story, not an
incidental inconvenience or annoyance to be suppressed or overlooked.

As a daily reader and supporter of the New York Times, I would hope that in
the Times's ongoing coverage, translation and the work of translators can be
given their rightful place in this story.


--
AALITRA
The Australian Association for Literary Translation
Australian Association for Literary Translation (AALITRA) (http://home.vicnet.net.au/~aalitra/)

Harry

[Bjorn]

Mircea Cartarescu's Ode To Herta M?ller:

Ode to Herta M?ller - signandsight (http://www.signandsight.com/features/1946.html)

[Stiffelio]

For those who are able to read in German and who haven't yet got a copy of Atemschaukel, this should be good news. Apparently, you can download it from here:

Libreka! - Home (http://www.libreka.de/)


The window is open for only 24 hours tomorrow.

Good luck!

[Daniel del Real]

Damn! I should've never abandoned my German classes :(
schei?en!

[Eric]

Dreadful business, what? This muller woman writing in Krautspeak. Shouldn't have won the bally prize writing in the same language as Adolf Braunaul.

I see that Boyd Tonkin has commented on the translation issue in The Independent (16 October 2009):


[QUOTE]P.S.Herta M?ller - aka Herta Who? in much of the perenially baffled US media - has in fact had more of her work translated and published in the Anglosphere than several other winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature. As with every author from outside the English language who catches the Swedish limelight, a dedicated offstage team merits applause. In her case, that includes the eagle-eyed Pete Ayrton of Serpent's Tail (which published M?ller's The Passport, and re-issues it this month), Margaret Halton ? now an agent ? who acquired the IMPAC Prize-winning novel The Land of Green Plums for Granta, and of course M?ller's translators. On this side of the Atlantic they include Martin Chalmers and Michael Hofmann, two of the most gifted and versatile carriers of modern German writing into English. Gl?ckw?nsche all round.
Isn't it high time that people didn't have to write special, slightly sarky, articles about translators, and naming and praising them and the publisher, too boot? Why is the 'Herta who?' factor still worth writing about? I hope Tonkin (the Umlaut-dropper) and others in Blighty have discovered that it is fairly normal for translators to be mention on the Continent. It is no longer anything special over there, beyond the fog in the Channel. How long before Blighty catches up with the rest of Europe on this score?

[waalkwriter]

Reading blog posts from American magazines and regular people is a wonderful exercise in the Le Who? business of last year. Happily, it seems the comments are more accepting than the articles, but its really quite disturbing how inward-looking these American publications are.

Is an international prize suddenly bad or wrong if a person from my country doesn't win it? I don't mind so much that an Australian author didn't win (I also think we don't have any valid contenders...), but my reaction isn't, then, to declare the prize out of touch.

This Pop Vox : Why the Nobel Prize in Literature Doesn't Really Matter (http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/popvox/archive/2009/10/08/why-the-nobel-prize-in-literature-doesn-t-really-matter.aspx) is fairly interesting because, really, Le Clezio was huge in France before the award, and is now bigger. "It may, but, then again, you may wind up like last year's winner, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, who enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame and then fell off the radar." Whose radar? Newsweeks? And why does that radar matter in an international sense?

And then this isn't much better: Another obscure Nobel Prize literature winner! Sigh | EW.com (http://shelf-life.ew.com/2009/10/08/herta-muller-nobel-literature/) "I am, admittedly, a myopic American who?s poorly read in non-English-language literature (and only spottily read in English-language classics for that matter). But does the Nobel imprimatur really compel me to pore through the works of M?ller ? or last year?s comparably unfamiliar laureate, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Cl?zio? I think not. The Nobel ranks (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/) are cluttered with writers who?ve sunk into obscurity and irrelevance, sometimes deservedly so. Do Swedes still read the work of 1916 laureate Verner von Heidenstam? Does anyone think 1938 winner Pearl Buck was one of the top 100 writers of the 20th century?" Happily, one of the comments (from a list of generally good comments) points out that Heidenstam is read by every Swedish schoolchild, something that a good bout of research would surely have revealed.

But it seems that American exceptionalism is braying for blood, so off with her head before anyone has bothered to read her work.

I look forward to the book depository selling M?ller's work.

I have more than one problem with that article, I am wondering if people even bother to do their basic fact checks. He makes the statement that the 1949 Nobel Prize (announced in 1950) resurrected Faulkner's career and that most of his books were out of print in America at that time. It is bullcrap, I wonder how people don't know anything? The critical resurgence of Faulkner's popularity starts with Malcolm Crowley's The Portable Faulkner, published in 1946 four years before the Nobel, and indeed the Nobel can mainly be seen as the pinnacle of his increasingly popularity, coming after the release of several books, and various American literary awards.

Not to get too far off subject, (I will return on base), but there was a highly ironic reverse situation of what we are seeing now in many places; Faulkner during the early 1940s was virtually unheralded in America, but in France he was the pinnacle of literature, Sartre remarked, (I feel derogatorily), that the young generation of French readers and writers thought Faulkner was God, (indeed Claude Simon's is a prime indicator).

As far as Muller, sorry, I have made my final judgment; undeserving. I do feel that the Nobel very much should go to public intellectuals which is something she is very much not, she is quiet and not often outspoken or involved in the public issues of today. I can't help feel this is highly Euro-Centric, rather than make a very powerful statement on pressing issues in the Palestine with giving the Award to Amos Oz they decided to memorialize the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall by giving it to an East European writer.

Or if they wanted to go another direction they could award it to a real genius, an intellectual like Eco, or they could have given a deserving life time achievement award to an aging giant like Carlos Fuentes.

As far as her writing style goes I have not been reading good reviews from English-speaking reviewers. I don't even know if I am going to invest in her books at the moment, maybe in the future when my German is more fluent I will skip the translation and read her in the native language and see how that works out.

[miercuri]

Moments ago I wanted to order Herztier, the only Herta Mueller novel which was already available in Romanian translation, only to find out that everyone jumped on the bandwagon and now it's out of stock. Boo.

[Omo]

I read somewhere that only three of her works had been translated to Romanian. Is there a general lack of interest in minority writers? Can you read Oskar Pastior's works?

Yesterday I bought The King bows and kills, after I haven't been too impressed by Everything I possess I carry with me I want to know whether I like her essays better. It will be probably my last take on her since I read already some poetry and translations. But I guess German contemporary literature just isn't my thing generally. :o

And re this whole Herta Who?-thingy: I really don't understand the irritation on American side. Last time I checked there were more anglophone Nobel winners than French and German combined! We should rather discuss a strong tendency towards anglophilia.

[waalkwriter]

A huge deal of talent in English writing, and a great diversity as well. I say that frankly, it is simply that there is a very strong literary interest and movement with in Anglophone areas, and to be fair there are many more than there are French and German speakers, which accounts for basically English writers such as Naipul, Walcott, and Coetzee to name a few. Combine that with a more favorable environment, and a stronger publishing industry and you have the answer to why their is such a diversity of talent and figures, that and the fact that English is the major international language of the world and so English speaking authors are more directly and naturally at the forefront of movements, in the media, and in political situations because they have this natural advantage. There is no angophilia, if anything they have been more than fair linguistically to the major and accessible western writers.

Americans are pissed because they've only gotten two awards in the past 38 years, discluding awards given to immigrants of other countries who wrote in other languages. Of course with post modernism and minalamism being the only major things coming to the scene during that time period its hard to blame the Nobel for avoiding them.

[Igu Soni]

I have more than one problem with that article, I am wondering if people even bother to do their basic fact checks. He makes the statement that the 1949 Nobel Prize (announced in 1950) resurrected Faulkner's career and that most of his books were out of print in America at that time. It is bullcrap, I wonder how people don't know anything? The critical resurgence of Faulkner's popularity starts with Malcolm Crowley's The Portable Faulkner, published in 1946 four years before the Nobel, and indeed the Nobel can mainly be seen as the pinnacle of his increasingly popularity, coming after the release of several books, and various American literary awards.

Not to worry, man. Common mistake. Looks like fact to anyone who doesn't know the truth in the specific case. The most visible early sign of rise inevitably looks like the first.


Americans are pissed because they've only gotten two awards in the past 38 years, discluding awards given to immigrants of other countries who wrote in other languages. Of course with post modernism and minalamism being the only major things coming to the scene during that time period its hard to blame the Nobel for avoiding them.
"America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair."-Arnold Toynbee
;)

[promtbr]

minalamism


Is this a Faulkner country school of fiction?




As far as Muller, sorry, I have made my final judgment; undeserving



Well maybe Bjorn and/or our new moderator should move this to start a new thread "Rating Unread Authors"




I have not been reading good reviews from English-speaking reviewers


Well, here's this from a reviewer that's somewhat respected here.:D

Shigekuni (http://shigekuni.wordpress.com/2009/10/09/herta-muller-nobel-prize-winner/)


---

[Diotima]

Interview
"Die Sprache hat andere Augen."
Telephone interview with Herta M?ller immediately following the announcement of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature, 8 October 2009. The interview was recorded minutes after the announcement and conducted in M?ller's native German. The interviewer is freelance journalist Marika Griehsel.
[Herta M?ller] Hallo ...

[Marika Griehsel] Frau M?ller, Herzliche Gl?ckw?nsche. Mein Name ist Marika Griehsel und ich rufe aus Schweden an und das ist die Nobelstiftung website. Wir wollen ganz gerne herzliche Gl?ckw?nsche sagen ...

[HM] Ich danke Ihnen.

[MG] Sie schreiben ja in Deutsch, und Sie haben gesagt, daβ Schreiben f?r Sie sehr wichtig ist, f?r das Leben ...

[HM] Na ja, es war das Einzige wo ich noch Ich selber sein konnte, weil das war w?hrend der Diktatur ... und na ja, es gab mir Halt ... aber so wichtig war das garnicht, weil ich habe auch dann gearbeitet - wenn ich eine Stelle hatte - ich bin ja immer ?berall rausgeschmissen worden. Und dann hatte ich st?ndig diese Schickanen gehabt, die Verh?rungen und Verfolgungen. Manchmal kam einem das Schreiben auch vor, als w?re man nicht mehr ganz bei Trost ... weil das Land so arm war und man hat so viel Ungl?ck gesehen und manchmal hat man sich gedacht, na ja, irgendwie ist das doch..es hat in dieser Welt garnichts zu suchen.

[MG] Aber es war irgendwie immer was Sie gemacht haben um die andere Seite auch zu sehen, oder?

[HM]Damit ich doch eine Gewissheit habe daβ ich es noch selber bin, daβ ich existiere.

[MG] Es war 1987 als Sie nach Deutschland gegangen sind?

[HM] Ja.

[MG] Aber trotzdem schreiben Sie immer noch sehr viel ?ber das alte Land ... warum ist das so, meinen Sie?

[HM] Na ja, weil ich glaube daβ das schwere Gewicht ... daβ die Literatur geht dorthin, wo das Gewicht ist. Und ich habe in dieser Diktatur ?ber 30 Jahre gelebt und da sind die Besch?digungen und das Thema ... ich habe das Thema nicht gew?hlt, das Thema sucht immer mich. Ich werde das Thema nicht ... ich bin es immer noch nicht los. Und man muβ ?ber das schreiben, was einem st?ndig besch?ftigt. Und Diktatur ist ja auch wichtig ... denn leider war die Diktatur nicht die Allerletzte. Es gibt leider immer noch so viele auf der Welt.

[MG] Als Sie angefangen haben zu schreiben, f?r wen schrieben Sie und f?r wen schreiben Sie jetzt?

[HM] Also, Ich habe immer eigentlich nur f?r mich geschrieben. Um die Dinge, um Dinge mit mir zu kl?ren, um zu begreifen auf eine innere Art was eigentlich passiert. Oder: was ist aus mir geworden? Ich komme aus einem ganz kleinem Dorf, und dann kam ich in die Stadt, und es waren immer Br?che und dann war ich Minderheit, Deutsche ... und man geh?rte sowieso nicht dazu. Dann hatte ich mit den Landsleuten, mit der deutschen Minderheit diesen groβen Konflikt gehabt: die haben mich ja ex-kommuniziert, schon als das erste Buch geschrieben habe, als sogenannte Nestbeschmutzerin, weil ich ja ?ber die Situation mit der Verstrickung mit dem Nationalsozialistismus geschrieben habe, oder ?ber dieses archaische starre Dorfleben, ?ber diesen Etnozentrismus. Und das haben sie mir nicht nachgesehen.

Die wollten Heimatliteratur und ich habe das nicht geliefert und die f?hlten sich von mir, ja, daβ ich sie kompromitiere. Das ist eine sehr konservative Minderheit und insofern war ich von denen ausgeschlossen, und in der rum?nischen Gesellschaft aus politischen Grunden ausgeschlossen ist. Also irgendwie war es ganz normal daβ man nicht dazugeh?rt, daβ man nirgends dazugeh?rt. Und dann kam ich nach Deutschland, und hier in Deutschland war ich immer die Rum?nin, und in Rum?nien war ich immer die Deutsche. Also, irgendwie ist man immer das andere ...

[MG] Ja ja. Ist das wichtig, meinen Sie daβ man sich auβerhalb gef?hlt hat?

[HM] Ich weiβ es nicht ob es wichtig ist. Also, w?nschen kann man sich das ja nicht. Und es tut ja auch manchmal weh. Der Mensch will ja in manchen Dingen auch dazugeh?ren, aber so war es und ich hab mich daran gew?hnt und irgendwann ist es nur noch eine Tatsache gewesen. Und so ist es. Und ja, man kann sich ja nicht jemandem aufdr?ngen und das was man denkt, verraten? Wenn ich durch das was ich meine und denke nicht mehr dazugeh?re, dann ist es so. Was soll man dann machen? Man kann sich ja nicht verbiegen oder sich verleugnen als Person um dazu zugeh?ren. Anderseits funktioniert das ja garnicht. Wenn man einmal nicht mehr dazugeh?rt, dann ist es vorbei.
[MG] Ist f?r Ihnen die Literatur ... das Schreiben ... man muss sehr ehrlich sein?

[HM] Ja, man muss mit sich selbst auch ehrlich sein. Man erf?hrt auch durch das Schreiben etwas anderes als durch die f?nf Sinne die man hat, weil die Sprache ist ja ein anderes Metier. Und im Schreiben sucht man ja auch, und das ist es auch was einem am Schreiben h?lt, daβ man die Dinge aus einem ganz anderen Blickwinkel sieht und erf?hrt, selbst erf?hrt w?hrend des Schreibens. Das Schreiben weiβ ja garnicht wie es aussieht wenn man es tut, erst wenn es fertig ist. Und solange wenn man schreibt bin ich aufgehoben, dann weiβ ich ein biβchen wie das Leben gehen k?nnte, und wenn ich zu Ende bin mit dem Text, weiβ ich es schon wieder nicht.

[MG] Das h?rt sich sch?n an. Atemschaukel ? meinen Sie es ist schwierig ? Sie haben eine Gruppe Leute, also die Deutschen, die im Gef?ngnis waren, sie waren nicht besonders beliebt oder? Man hat nicht an sie nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg gedacht ... was wollten Sie damit sagen?

[HM] Ja, also ... die Deportation nach 1945 hat nat?rlich mit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg zu tun.

Ach hier wird geleutet. Es ist wirklich ein Irsinn hier im Haus..die sind schon hier an der T?r vorne ...

Und na ja, die wurden dann deportiert im Namen det Kollektivschuld, die Deutsche Minderheit war ja verstrickt, sie war ja in der SS oder der Wehrmacht. Rum?nien war mit Antonescu ein faschistischer Staat ...

[HM] Mach leiser, ich kann sonst nicht reden ... das ist ein Freund von mir ... ach..ich verstehe Sie auch nicht mehr ...

[MG] Ok, es ist der Anfang von einem groβen Fest glaube ich. Ganz kurz, Sie haben gesagt es war ein Kollektivschuld, ganz kurz.

[HM] Ja, und ich meine, Kollektivschuld ist ja immer ungerecht, weil die Leute die deportiert wurden, die waren ja damals nicht im Krieg. Die Deportationen war schon im Januar 1945, und der Krieg war ja erst im Maj zuende. Mein Vater war in der SS, der war noch garnicht aus dem Krieg zur?ck. Und dann hat man Zivilisten genommen, also ganz junge Leute genommen, 17-j?hrige, so wie Oskar Pastior, die ja pers?nlich nicht schuldig geworden waren, und Rum?nien war ja auch ein faschistischer Staat mit Antonescu an der Seite von Hitler und hat dann ja nur ganz zuletzt die Seite gewechselt, oder wechseln m?ssen weil die Sowjets Rum?nien dann gezwungen haben, die Seite zu wechseln. Und das hat nat?rlich die Minderheit auch stur gemacht, ?ber die Verstrickung mit dem Nationalsozialismus nachzudenken, weil die Rum?nen waren auch alle in Stalingrad mit Antonescu, und danach, nach 1945 hat man halt nur die Minderheiten verantwortlich gemacht. Die Ungarische Minderheit mit Horthy, als die Horthisten und die Deutschen als die Gefolgsleuten von Hitler, aber daβ die ganze Rum?nische Bev?lkerung in dieser Zeit auch an der Seite von Nazi Deutschland war, das wurde danach, 1945, wurde die Geschichte gef?lscht.

Ja ... Ich meine, meine Mutter war ja auch deportiert, 5 Jahre lang. Und ich habe versucht diese Dinge aber in Zusammenhang zu sehen. Also ohne die Verbrechen von Nazi Deutschland w?re die Deportation nicht passiert. Das muss man nat?rlich immer mitdenken. Das kam nicht aus heiterem Himmel. Sondern das war eine Folge der Verbrechen an denen die Minderheit nat?rlich auch beteiligt war.

[MG] Was meinen Sie, Ihre B?cher werden auch ins Rum?nische ?bersetzt. Wie werden Sie dort empfangen?

[HM] Na ja, unterschiedlich. Die B?cher werden gew?hnlich gut aufgenommen. Aber, das ist das eine. Aber, wahrscheinlich wer sucht sich aus, wer ein Buch rezensiert er hat auch vielleicht f?r das Buch etwas ?brig. Aber in der Rum?nischen Gesellschaft werde ich nicht besonders gemocht. Ich werde selten eingeladen. Weil ich bis heute ?ber die Zust?nde in Rum?nien zuviel negatives sage, weil es halt so ist. Weil die ganze Nomenklatura, die fr?here, und der fr?here Geheimdienst - die haben sich die Positionen im ganzen Land aufgeteilt. Und das ist ein ganzes Netz. Die bedienen sich gegenseitig. Und das ist auch eine Erkl?rung f?r diese allgegenw?rtige Korruption in Rum?nien. Und von Demokratie ist Rum?nien leider noch ziemlich weit entfernt.

Das h?rt man nicht gerne in Rum?nien. Das ist das ewige Problem. Die im Exil sollen das Maul halten und dann sagt man auch, ich verstehe nichts mehr davon.

[MG] Ihre Sprache ist Deutsch, aber Sie haben auch Rum?nische Einfl?sse ... wie sieht man das?

[HM] Na ja, die Sprache, das ist ja meine Muttersprache, Deutsch. Aber ich habe sehr sp?t mit 15 erst Rum?nish gelernt in der Stadt, und ich wollte das auch lernen. Und ich mag diese Sprache. Rum?nisch ist eine sehr sch?ne, sinnliche, poetische Sprache. Und von dem Moment an - das war auch vielleicht gut, daβ ich es so sp?t gelernt habe weil ? dann habe ich schon einen Blick daf?r gehabt ? ich habe gemerkt wieviele Sprachbilder es im Rum?nischen gibt, wie groβartig die Metaphorik ist, die gew?hnlichen Sprachbilder, die die Leute im Alltag benutzen, im Aberglauben oder ... in Redewendungen, viele Dinge sind auch gegens?tzlich, oder wie die Pflanzen heissen, daβ sie ganz anders heissen als im Deutschen. Das ist ja dann auch ein anderes Blick auf das selbe.. ich habe immer gesehen daβ es zwei Stationen gibt, das eine ist die Station auf meiner Sprache f?r etwas, und das andere ist diese andere Station. Es ist nicht nur ein anderes Wort, das ist ein anderer Blick. Die Sprache hat andere Augen. Bei mir schreibt das Rum?nische immer mit, auch wenn ich nicht auf Rum?nisch schreibe, weil ich habe es im Kopf.
Und ich habe zwei Blicke aus der anderen Sprache, die sind immer mit dabei. Ich weiβ oft garnicht welche das ist aus dem heraus ich dann schreibe.

[MG] Was empfehlen Sie uns jetzt zuerst von Ihnen zu lesen?

[HM] Was soll ich sagen? Also auf Deutsch w?rde ich nat?rlich das letzte Buch empfehlen. Das letzte Buch steht einem immer noch am n?chsten."Die Atemschaukel".

[MG] "Die Atemschaukel". Also die Publizit?t wird jetzt ganz groβ und was halten Sie davon?

[HM] Ja, was kann ich dazu sagen?

[MG] (lacht)

[HM] Man ist ja kein anderer Mensch. Das hat ja eigentlich mit dem Schreiben selbst nichts zu tun. Ich bin jetzt gl?cklich, aber ich bleibe auch auf dem Boden. Also, ich ordne das jetzt sch?n ein. Und in zwei drei Tagen kommt das sogar an. Ich weiβ es ja jetzt, aber ich glaube es noch garnicht. Ich kann das nicht realisieren. Das muss auch so sein. Ich weiβ auch garnicht wieso ich soviel Gl?ck verdiene. Ich denke manchmal, das Gl?ck hat sich geirrt. Vielleicht verdiene ich das auch garnicht. Wieso steht mir das Gl?ck zu?

[MG] Frau M?ller, vielen vielen Dank, und viele Gl?ckw?nsche ...

[HM] Ja, ich danke Ihnen. Alles Gute.

[MG] Alles Gute. Vielen Dank, tsch?s.

The Nobel's (http://www.nobel.org)

[Diotima]

Interview

"Language has different eyes."


Telephone interview with Herta M?ller immediately following the announcement of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature, 8 October 2009. The interview was recorded minutes after the announcement and conducted in M?ller's native German. The interviewer is freelance journalist Marika Griehsel.
[Herta M?ller] Hello ...

[Marika Griehsel] Ms. M?ller, congratulations. My name is Marika Griehsel and I am calling from the Nobel Foundation's website offices. Again, our warmest congratulations...

[HM] Thank you.

[MG] You write in German, and you once said that writing is very important to you, existential ...

[HM] Well, writing was the only thing where I could be myself, because under the dictatorship ... and, well, it gave me something to hold on to ... but actually it was not that important when I did work ? when I had a job ? for I was always getting fired, from everywhere. And then I was subjected to all this chicanery, continually; the interrogations and the persecution. Sometimes the writing also appeared as though one were a bit crazy ... because the country was so poor and one had witnessed such unhappiness and sometimes one thought to oneself, well, in a way it really is ... these things have no place in this world.

[MG] But it was somehow always what you did in order to see the other side, wasn't it?

[HM] So that I can nevertheless be certain that I am still myself, that I exist.

[MG] You went to live in Germany in 1987?

[HM] Yes.

[MG] But you continue to write a lot about the old country ... why is that, do you think?

[HM] Well, I think that the heavy weight ... that literature goes to where the weight is. And I lived under this dictatorship for over thirty years and that is where the injuries and the theme are ... I did not choose this theme, the theme always seeks me out. This theme I shall not ... I am still not rid of this theme. And one has to write about the things that occupy one incessantly. And it's important, dictatorship ... for unfortunately that dictatorship was not the very last. Regrettably, there are still so many in the world.

[MG] When you started to write, for whom did you write, and whom do you write for now?

[HM] Well, actually, I have always written only for myself. To clarify things, to clarify things with myself, to understand in an inner way what is actually happening. Or: What has become of me? I come from a very small village, and then came the city, and there were always discontinuities and then I was a minority, German ... and one didn't belong anyway. Then I had this major conflict with my compatriots, with the German minority: they excommunicated me, already when I wrote my first book, as someone who fouls their own nest, so to speak, because I wrote about the situation with the involvement with National Socialism, and about the archaic fossilized way of life in the village, about its ethnocentrism. And they did not forgive me for that.

They wanted literature about their homeland, "Heimatliteratur", and they felt that I, well that I compromised them. It is a very conservative minority and thus I was excluded, and I was excluded from Romanian society for political reasons. And then I came to Germany and here in Germany I was always the Romanian, and in Romania I was always the German. So somehow one is always the other ...

[MG] Yes, indeed. Is that important, do you think, that you felt you were on the outside?

[HM] I don't know whether it's important. It's certainly something one can do without. And sometimes it hurts. People want to belong in certain respects, but it was as it was and I got used to it and at some point it was just a matter of fact. And that's what it is. And, one can't force oneself upon people and betray the way one thinks? If I don't belong because of what I think and because of my opinions, then so be it. What can one do about it? One can't bend over backwards or pretend to be someone else just to belong. And in any case it doesn't work. Once you no longer belong, it's over.

[MG] Is literature for you ... writing ... does one have to be very honest?

[HM] Yes, one has to be honest with oneself. Through writing one experiences something different to what one experiences with the five senses one has because language is a different m?tier. And in writing one searches, and that is what keeps one writing, that one sees and experiences things from another angle entirely, one experiences oneself during the process of writing. Writing itself does not know what it looks like while one is doing it, only when it's finished. And as long as I am writing I am in safekeeping, then I have some idea of how life could go on, and when I get to the end of a text I don't know it anymore.

[MG] That sounds good. "Atemschaukel" [literally: breath swing/see-saw] ? do you think it is difficult ? You have a group of people, Germans, who were in prison; they were not very well-liked, were they? Nobody thought about them after World War II was over ... what did you mean by that?

[HM] Yes, well, ... deportation after 1945 naturally had to do with the Second World War ...

Oh, there's the door bell. It's utter madness here in the house ... they are already at the front door ...

Well, they were deported in the name of collective guilt, the German minority was involved; they were in the SS or the German army. Romania under Antonescu was a fascist state ...

[HM] Be a bit quiet, otherwise I can't talk on the phone ... it's a friend of mine ... oh, I can't understand you ...

[MG] O.K. I think the big party is about to start ? just quickly: you said it was collective guilt, just quickly.

[HM] Yes, and in my opinion collective guilt is always unjust because the people who were deported were not in the war back then. The deportations took place already in January 1945, but the war didn't end until May. My father was in the SS, he had not even returned from the front. And so they took civilians, took really young people, 17-year-olds like Oskar Pastior, who were personally not guilty, and Romania was also a fascist state with Antonescu on Hitler's side and it only changed sides at the last minute, or was made to change sides, because the Soviets made Romania change sides. And that also made the German minority stubborn about reflecting on their involvement with National Socialism, because the Romanians were also all at Stalingrad with Antonescu, and afterwards, after 1945, only the minorities were held responsible. The Hungarian minority with Horthy, Horthy's followers and the Germans as the supporters of Hitler, but that the entire population of Romania at that time was on the side of Nazi Germany, afterwards, after 1945, history was falsified.

Yes, my mother was also deported, for five years. But I tried to see these things in context. If Nazi Germany had not committed such crimes, there would have been no deportation. One must always keep this in mind. It didn't just come out of nowhere. But it was a consequence of the crimes in which the minority was involved of course.

[MG] What do you think, your books will also be translated into Romanian. How will your reception be there?

[HM] Well, it will vary. In general the books are well received. But that's just one side. Probably if someone selects a book to review, they perhaps quite like it. But in Romanian society I am not particularly well-liked. I don't often receive invitations. Because still today I have too many negative things to say about the conditions in Romania, because that is what it's like. Because the entire old nomenklatura and the secret service have divided up all the positions in the country between them. And that is an entire network. They help themselves and help each other. And that is also an explanation of why corruption is all-pervasive in Romania. Regrettably, Romania is still quite a long way away from democracy.

They don't like to hear that in Romania. That is an everlasting problem. Those in exile should hold their tongues, and then they also say that I don't know anything about it anymore.

[MG] Your language is German but you also have Romanian influences ... how does this make itself apparent?

[HM] Well, that is my native tongue, German. I learned Romanian very late, when I was fifteen, in town, and I wanted to learn it. I like the language very much. Romanian is a very beautiful, sensual, poetic language. And from that moment onward ? it was perhaps good that I learned it so late because ? then I had an eye for it ? I realised just how rich Romanian is in imagery, what marvellous metaphors there are, the common metaphors that people use every day, in superstitions or ... in expressions, many things are contradictory, or the names of plants, that they are called something completely different than in German. That is then a different look at the same thing ... I have always seen that there are two stations, the one is the station on my language for something, and the other is this other station. It is not only a different word, it is a different view. Language has different eyes. In my case Romanian always writes with me, also when I am not writing in Romanian, because I have it in my head.

And I have two views from the other language, they are always there. I frequently don't know which one it is from which I am writing.

[MG] Which works of yours do you recommend we read first?

[HM] I don't know. Well, in German I would of course recommend my last book. One is always closest to the last work. "Die Atemschaukel".

[MG] "Die Atemschaukel". Well, the publicity now will be tremendous; how do you feel about that?

[HM] Well, I don't know what to say.

[MG] (laughs)

[HM] One is not a different person. All this has actually nothing to do with the writing itself. I am happy now, but I shall remain down to earth. So I shall file this away for the time being. And in two or three days it will hit home. I know it in this moment, but I still don't believe it. I can't realise it. It has to be that way. I don't know why I deserve such happiness. I sometimes think that happiness has erred. Perhaps I don't deserve it at all. Why am I entitled to so much happiness?

[MG] Ms. M?ller, many, many, thanks, and congratulations ...

[HM] I thank you. All the best.

[MG] All the best to you. Thank you very much, bye.



Translated from the German by Gloria Custance


The Nobel's (http://www.nobel.org)

[Stiffelio]

Thank you for posting the English translation of the interview.:)

[Diotima]

Herta Muller

http://i34.tinypic.com/2mmips2.jpg

[Diotima]

Herta Muller

http://i35.tinypic.com/2lm9zzs.jpg

[Diotima]

Stiffelio!

It's my pleasure!:cool:

[Beth]

Thank you very much, Diotima.

[Mirabell]

Preisverleihung in Frankfurt: Herta M?ller rechnet mit evangelischer Kirche ab - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Nachrichten - Kultur (http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,658612,00.html)

[Liam]

Stiffy: have you got beautiful eyes and are verging on the anorectic? Or are you a dumpy-saggy-wrinkled person like some writers also are? Or gorgeous, young, with rippling tits?
Eric: I have strong reasons to believe that any one of these could be your self-portrait in a nutshell.

[Eric]

Liam: as British comedian Dick Emery used to say in the 1960s while dressed as an oldish woman, just having slapped his/her conversation partner in the chest:



Ooh you are awful - but I like you.

Here's the man in question:

http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/object3/1394/108/n7900598549_6687.jpg

Note: I personally do not have rippling tits. Nor does La Cicciolina, for that matter, though I do not resemble her one jot. Nor does Dick Emery - or even Herta M?ller.

[Scott89119]

"I don't know why I deserve such happiness. I sometimes think that happiness has erred. Perhaps I don't deserve it at all. Why am I entitled to so much happiness?"

I love that.

[Diotima]

"Her aspiration to purity, moral included, is like an inner sword, it's as if she had a a sword instead of a spine, as in one of Kafka's dreams. (...) The writings of Herta M?ller are indeed the product of an intense obsession, a unique, paranoid terror of being followed, held in suspicion, persecuted, of having to fight a pervasive and incomprehensible enemy, which is bent on defacing and and misrepresenting her. Her writing is Kafkaesque. " - Mircea Cărtărescu, Frankfurter Rundschau (12/10/2009)

[Diotima]

Excerpts from The Passport


Around the war memorial are roses. They form a thicket. So overgrown that they suffocate the grass. Their blooms are white, rolled tight like paper. They rustle. Dawn is breaking. Soon it will be day.
Every morning, as he cycles alone along the road to the mill, Windisch counts the day. In front of the war memorial he counts the years. By the first poplar tree beyond it, where he always hits the same pot hole, he counts the days. And in the evening, when Windisch locks up the mill, he counts the years and the days once again.
He can see the small white roses, the war memorial and the poplar tree from far away. And when it is foggy, the white of the roses and the white of the stone is close in front of him as he rides. Windisch rides on. Windisch's face is damp, and he rides till he's there. Twice the thorns on the rose thicket were bare and the weeds underneath were rusty. Twice the poplar was so bare that its wood almost split. Twice there was snow on the paths.
Windisch counts two years by the war memorial and two hundred and twenty-one days in the pot hole by the poplar.
Every day when Windisch is jolted by the pot hole, he thinks, "The end is here." Since Windisch made the decision to emigrate, he sees the end everywhere in the village. And time standing still for those who want to stay. And Windisch sees that the night watchman will stay beyond the end.
And after Windisch has counted two hundred and twenty-one days and the pot hole has jolted him, he gets off for the first time. He leans the bicycle against the poplar tree. His steps are loud. Wild pigeons flutter out of the churchyard. They are as grey as the light. Only the noise makes them different.
Windisch crosses himself. The door latch is wet. It sticks to Windisch's hand. The church door is locked. Saint Anthony is on the other side of the wall. He is carrying a white lily and a brown book. He is locked in.
Windisch shivers. He looks down the street. Where it ends, the grass beats into the village. A man is walking at the end of the street. The man is a black thread walking into the field. The waves of grass lift him above the ground.



The Passport, 2009, translated by Martin Chalmers, London

[Scott89119]

Good news: Everything I Own I Carry With Me is set to be published in English.

Bad news: Not until September 2010 in the UK, and September 2011 in the U.S.

Two novels by Nobel Prize-winner M?ller set for English publication - News, Books - The Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/two-novels-by-nobel-prizewinner-mller-set-for-english-publication-1827278.html)

[Bjorn]

It's a pity that translating into American takes so much longer than translating into British...

[Scott89119]

Recent article with more details of her treatment by the Securitate prior to emigrating to Germany:

Herta M?ller 'has a psychosis', claims Romanian agent who spied on her | Books | guardian.co.uk (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/nov/26/herta-muller-psychosis-romanian-agent-spied)

[ferns_dad]

All done with her and onto Robbe-Grillet?

[Diotima]

Nobel Lecture

Herta M?ller
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2009 December 7, 2009


Every word knows something of a vicious circle


DO YOU HAVE A HANDKERCHIEF was the question my mother asked me every morning, standing by the gate to our house, before I went out onto the street. I didn't have a handkerchief. And because I didn't, I would go back inside and get one. I never had a handkerchief because I would always wait for her question. The handkerchief was proof that my mother was looking after me in the morning. For the rest of the day I was on my own. The question DO YOU HAVE A HANDKERCHIEF was an indirect display of affection. Anything more direct would have been embarrassing and not something the farmers practiced. Love disguised itself as a question. That was the only way it could be spoken: matter-of-factly, in the tone of a command, or the deft maneuvers used for work. The brusqueness of the voice even emphasized the tenderness. Every morning I went to the gate once without a handkerchief and a second time with a handkerchief. Only then would I go out onto the street, as if having the handkerchief meant having my mother there, too.
Twenty years later I had been on my own in the city a long time and was working as a translator in a manufacturing plant. I would get up at five a.m.; work began at six-thirty. Every morning the loudspeaker blared the national anthem into the factory yard; at lunch it was the workers' choruses. But the workers simply sat over their meals with empty tinplate eyes and hands smeared with oil. Their food was wrapped in newspaper. Before they ate their bit of fatback, they first scraped the newsprint off the rind. Two years went by in the same routine, each day like the next.
In the third year the routine came to an end. Three times in one week a visitor showed up at my office early in the morning: an enormous, thick-boned man with sparkling blue eyes?a colossus from the Securitate.
The first time he stood there, cursed me, and left.
The second time he took off his windbreaker, hung it on the key to the cabinet, and sat down. That morning I had brought some tulips from home and arranged them in a vase. The man looked at me and praised me for being such a keen judge of character. His voice was slippery. I felt uneasy. I contested his praise and assured him that I understood tulips, but not people. Then he said maliciously that he knew me better than I knew tulips. After that he draped his windbreaker over his arm and left.
The third time he sat down but I stayed standing, because he had set his briefcase on my chair. I didn't dare move it to the floor. He called me stupid, said I was a shirker and a slut, as corrupted as a stray bitch. He shoved the tulips close to the edge of the desk, then put an empty sheet of paper and a pen in the middle of the desktop. He yelled at me: Write. Without sitting down, I wrote what he dictated?my name, date of birth and address. Next, that I would tell no one, no matter how close a friend or relative, that I? and then came the terrible word: colaborez?I am collaborating. At that point I stopped writing. I put down the pen and went to the window and looked out onto the dusty street, unpaved and full of potholes, and at all the humpbacked houses. On top of everything else this street was called Strada Gloriei?Glory Street. On Glory Street a cat was sitting in a bare mulberry tree. It was the factory cat with the torn ear. And above the cat the early morning sun was shining like a yellow drum. I said: N-am caracterul?I don't have the character for this. I said it to the street outside. The word CHARACTER made the Securitate man hysterical. He tore up the sheet of paper and threw the pieces on the floor. Then he probably realized he would have to show his boss that he had tried to recruit me, because he bent over, picked up the scraps and tossed them into his briefcase. After that he gave a deep sigh and, defeated, hurled the vase with the tulips against the wall. As it shattered it made a grinding sound, as though the air had teeth. With his briefcase under his arm he said quietly: You'll be sorry, we'll drown you in the river. I said as if to myself: If I sign that, I won't be able to live with myself anymore, and I'll have to do it on my own. So it's better if you do it. By then the office door was already open and he was gone. And outside on the Strada Gloriei the factory cat had jumped from the tree onto the roof of the building. One branch was bouncing like a trampoline.
The next day the tug of war began. They wanted me out of the factory. Every morning at 6:30 I had to report to the director. The head of the official labor union and the party secretary were also in his office. Just like my mother once asked: DO YOU HAVE A HANDKERCHIEF, the director now asked every morning: Have you found another job? Every morning I gave the same answer: I'm not looking for one, I like it here in the factory, I'd like to stay here until I retire.
One morning I came to work and found my thick dictionaries lying on the floor of the hall outside my office. I opened the door; an engineer was sitting at my desk. He said: People are supposed to knock before they enter a room. This is my place, you have no business here. I couldn't go home; any unexcused absence would have given them a pretext to fire me. I no longer had an office, so now I really had to make sure I came to work; under no circumstances could I fail to be there.
My friend, whom I told everything as we walked home down the pitiful Strada Gloriei, cleared a corner of her desk for me, at first. But one morning she stood outside her office and said: I can't let you in. Everyone is saying you're an informer. The harassment was passed down; the rumor was set into circulation among my colleagues. That was the worst. You can defend yourself against an attack, but there's nothing you can do against libel. Every day I prepared myself for anything, including death. But I couldn't cope with this perfidy. No preparation made it bearable. Libel stuffs you with filth; you suffocate because you can't defend yourself. In the eyes of my colleagues I was exactly what I had refused to become. If I had spied on them they would have trusted me without the slightest hesitation. In essence they were punishing me because I had spared them.
Since now I really had to make sure I came to work, but no longer had an office, and since my friend could no longer let me into hers, I stood in the stairwell, unable to decide what to do. I climbed up and down the stairs a few times and suddenly I was again my mother's child, because I HAD A HANDKERCHIEF. I placed it on one of the stairs between the second and third floors, carefully smoothed it out and sat down. I rested my thick dictionaries on my knee and translated the descriptions of hydraulic machines. I was a staircase wit and my office was a handkerchief. My friend joined me on the stairs at lunchtime. We ate together as we had in her office, and before that in mine. From the loudspeaker in the yard the workers' choruses sang about the happiness of the people, as always. My friend ate her lunch and cried over me. I didn't cry. I had to stay tough. For a long time. A few never-ending weeks, until I was dismissed.
During the time that I was a staircase wit, I looked up the word STAIR in the dictionary: the first step is the STARTING STEP or CURTAIL STEP that can also be a BULLNOSE. HAND is the direction a stair takes at the first riser. The edge of a tread that projects past the face of the riser is called the NOSING. I already knew a number of beautiful words having to do with lubricated hydraulic machine parts: DOVETAIL, GOOSENECK, ACORN NUTS and EYEBOLTS. Now I was equally amazed at the poetic names of the stair parts, the beauty of the technical language. NOSING and HAND?so the stair has a body. Whether working with wood or stone, cement or iron: why do humans insist on imposing their face on even the most unwieldy things in the world, why do they name dead matter after their own flesh, personifying it as parts of the body? Is this hidden tenderness necessary to make the harsh work bearable for the technicians? Does every job in every field follow the same principle as my mother's question about the handkerchief?
When I was little we had a handkerchief drawer at home, which was always partitioned into two rows, with three stacks apiece:
On the left the men's handkerchiefs for my father and grandfather.
On the right the women's handkerchiefs for my mother and grandmother.
In the middle the children's handkerchiefs for me.
The drawer was a family portrait in handkerchief format. The men's handkerchiefs were the biggest, with dark stripes along the edges in brown, gray or Bordeaux. The women's handkerchiefs were smaller, and their edges were light blue, red, or green. The children's handkerchiefs were the smallest: borderless white squares painted with flowers or animals. All three handkerchief types were divided into those for everyday use, in the front row, and those reserved for Sunday, in the back. On Sundays your handkerchief had to match the color of your clothes, even if it wasn't visible.
No other object in the house, including ourselves, was ever as important to us as the handkerchief. Its uses were universal: sniffles; nosebleeds; hurt hand, elbow or knee; crying, or biting into it to suppress the crying. A cold wet handkerchief on the forehead for headaches. Tied at the four corners it protected your head against sunburn or rain. If you had to remember something you made a knot to prompt your memory. For carrying heavy bags you wrapped it around your hand. When the train pulled out of the station you waved it to say good-bye. And because the word for tear in our Banat dialect sounds like the Romanian word for train, the squeaking of the railcars on the tracks always sounded to me like crying. In the village if someone died at home they immediately tied a handkerchief around his chin so that his mouth stayed closed when the rigor mortis set in. In the city if a person collapsed on the side of the road, some passerby would always take a handkerchief and cover his face, so that the handkerchief became the dead man's first place of peace.
On hot summer days the parents would send their children to the cemetery late in the evening to water the flowers. We stayed together in groups of two or three, quickly watering one grave and then the next. Afterwards we would huddle together on the steps of the chapel and watch wisps of white mist rise from some of the graves. They would fly up a little ways and disappear in the darkness. For us they were the souls of the dead: animal figures, glasses, little bottles and cups, gloves and stockings. And here and there a white handkerchief bordered by the black night.
Later, when I was meeting with Oskar Pastior so I could write about his deportation to the Soviet labor camp, he told me that an elderly Russian mother had given him a handkerchief made of white batiste. Maybe you will both be lucky, said the Russian woman, and you will come home soon and so will my son. Her son was the same age as Oskar Pastior and as far away from home as he was, but in the opposite direction, she said, in a penal battalion. Oskar Pastior had knocked on her door, a half-starved beggar wanting to trade a lump of coal for a little bit of food. She let him in and gave him some hot soup. And when she saw his nose dripping into the bowl, she gave him the white batiste handkerchief that no one had ever used before. With its a-jour border, and stems and rosettes precisely stitched with silk thread, the handkerchief was a thing of beauty that embraced as well as wounded the beggar. It was a combination: consolation made of batiste, and a silk-stemmed measure of his decrepitude. For the woman, Oskar Pastior was also a combination: an unworldly beggar in her house and a lost child in the world. Both of these personae were delighted and overwhelmed by the gesture of a woman who was two persons for him as well: an unknown Russian woman and the worried mother with the question: DO YOU HAVE A HANDKERCHIEF.
Ever since I heard this story I have had a question of my own: is DO YOU HAVE A HANDKERCHIEF valid everywhere? Does it stretch halfway across the world in the snowy sheen between freezing and thawing? Does it pass between mountains and steppes to cross every border; can it reach all the way into a gigantic empire strewn with penal and labor camps? Is the question DO YOU HAVE A HANDKERCHIEF impossible to get rid of, even with a hammer and sickle, even with all the camps of Stalinist re-education?
Although I have spoken Romanian for decades, it was only while talking with Oskar Pastior that I realized that the Romanian word for handkerchief is batistă. Another example of how sensual the Romanian language is, relentlessly driving its words straight to the heart of things. The material makes no detour, but presents itself ready-made as a handkerchief, as a BATISTĂ. As if all handkerchiefs, whenever and wherever, were made of batiste.
Oskar Pastior kept that handkerchief in his trunk as a reliquary of a double mother with a double son. And after five years of life in the camps he brought it home. Because his white batiste handkerchief was hope and fear. Once you let go of hope and fear, you die.
After our conversation about the white handkerchief I spent half the night pasting up a word collage for Oskar Pastior on a white card:
Dots are dancing here says Bea
you're coming into a long-stemmed glass of milk
linens in white gray-green zinc tub
nearly all materials
correspond upon delivery
look here
I am the trainride and
the cherry in the soapdish
never talk to strange men
or speak over the switchboard
When I went to see him later in the week to give him the collage, he said: you have to paste on FOR OSKAR as well. I said: Whatever I give to you is yours. He said: You have to paste it on, because the card may not know that. I took it back home and pasted on: For Oskar. And then I gave it to him the following week, as if I had left the gate first without a handkerchief and now was back the second time with a handkerchief.
Another story also ends with a handkerchief:
My grandparents had a son named Matz. In the 1930s he was sent to study business in Timişoara, so that he could take over the family grain trade and grocery store. The school had teachers from the German Reich, real Nazis. Matz may have been trained as a merchant on the side, but mainly he was taught to be a Nazi?brainwashed according to plan. After he finished, Matz was a passionate Nazi, a changed person. He barked out anti-Semitic slogans, and was as unreachable as an imbecile. My grandfather rebuked him several times: he owed his entire fortune to the credit advanced by Jewish business friends. And when that didn't help, he boxed Matz on the ears several times. But the young man's faculty of reason had been erased. He played the village ideologue, bullying his peers who were dodging the front. Matz had a desk job with the Romanian army. Nevertheless he felt an urge to move from theory to practice, so he volunteered for the SS and asked to be sent to the front. A few months later he came home to marry. Wiser for having seen the crimes at the front, he used a then-current magical formula to escape the war for a few days. The magical formula was called: wedding leave.
My grandmother kept two photos of her son Matz far back in a drawer: a wedding photo and a death photo. The wedding picture shows a bride in white, taller than he by a hand, thin and earnest?a plaster Madonna. On her head was a wreath made of wax that looked like snow-flocked leaves. Next to her was Matz in his Nazi uniform, a soldier instead of a husband, a brideguard instead of a bridegroom. No sooner had he returned to the front, the death photo came. It shows a poor soldier torn to shreds by a mine. The death photo is hand-sized: in the middle of a black field a little gray heap of human remains can be seen resting on a white cloth. Against the black, field the white cloth looks as small as a children's handkerchief, a white square with a strange design painted in the middle. For my grandmother this photo was a combination, too: on the white handkerchief was a dead Nazi, in her memory was a living son. My grandmother kept this double picture inside her prayer book for all her years. She prayed every day, and her prayers almost certainly had double meanings as well. Acknowledging the break from beloved son to fanatic Nazi, they probably beseeched God to perform the balancing act of loving the son and forgiving the Nazi.
My grandfather had been a soldier in the First World War. He knew what he was talking about when he said, often and embittered, in reference to his son Matz: When the flags start to flutter, common sense slides right into the trumpet. This warning also applied to the following dictatorship, which I experienced. Every day you could see the common sense of the profiteers, both big and little, sliding right into the trumpet. The trumpet I decided not to blow.
As I child, however, I did have to learn to play the accordion?against my will. Because at home we had the red accordion that had belonged to the dead soldier Matz. The straps were much too long for me. To keep them from slipping off my shoulders, the accordion teacher tied them together on my back with a handkerchief.
Can we say that it is precisely the smallest objects?be they trumpets, accordions, or handkerchiefs?which connect the most disparate things in life? That the objects are in orbit and that their deviations reveal a pattern of repetition?a vicious circle, or what we call in German a devil's circle. We can believe this, but not say it. Still, what can't be said can be written. Because writing is a silent act, a labor from the head to the hand. The mouth is skipped over. I talked a great deal during the dictatorship, mostly because I decided not to blow the trumpet. Usually my talking led to excruciating consequences. But the writing began in silence, there on the stairs, where I had to come to terms with more than could be said. What was happening could no longer be expressed in speech. At most the external accompaniments, but not the totality of the events themselves. That I could only spell out in my head, voicelessly, within the vicious circle of the words during the act of writing. I reacted to the deathly fear with a thirst for life. A hunger for words. Nothing but the whirl of words could grasp my condition. It spelled out what the mouth could not pronounce. I chased after the events, caught up in the words and their devilish circling, until something emerged I had never known before. Parallel to the reality, the pantomime of words stepped into action, without respect for any real dimensions, shrinking what was most important and stretching the minor matters. As it rushes madly ahead, this vicious circle of words imposes a kind of cursed logic on what has been lived. Their pantomime is ruthless and restive, always craving more but instantly jaded. The subject of dictatorship is necessarily present, because nothing can ever again be a matter of course once we have been robbed of nearly all ability to take anything for granted. The subject is there implicitly, but the words are what take possession of me. They coax the subject anywhere they want. Nothing makes sense anymore and everything is true.
When I was a staircase wit, I was as lonely as I had been as a child tending the cows in the river valley. I ate leaves and flowers so I would belong to them, because they knew how to live life and I didn't. I spoke to them by name: milk thistle was supposed to mean the prickly plant with milk in its stalk. But the plant didn't listen to the name milk thistle. So I tried inventing names with neither milk nor thistle: THORNRIB, NEEDLENECK. These made-up names uncovered a gap between the plant and me, and the gap opened up into an abyss: the disgrace of talking to myself and not to the plant. But the disgrace was good for me. I looked after the cows and the sound of the words looked after me. I felt:
Every word in your face,
Knows something of the vicious circle
But doesn't say it
The sound of the words knows that it has no choice but to beguile, because objects deceive with their materials, and feelings mislead with their gestures. The sound of the words, along with the truth this sound invents, resides at the interface, where the deceit of the materials and that of the gestures come together. In writing, it is not a matter of trusting, but rather of the honesty of the deceit.
Back then in the factory, when I was a staircase wit and the handkerchief was my office, I also looked up the beautiful word TREPPENZINS or ASCENDING INTEREST RATE, when the interest rate for a loan ascends as if climbing a stair. (In German this is called ?Stair Interest.?) These ascending rates are costs for one person and income for another. In writing they become both, the deeper I delve into the text. The more that which is written takes from me, the more it shows what was missing from the experience that was lived. Only the words make this discovery, because they didn't know it earlier. And where they catch the lived experience by surprise is where they reflect it best. In the end they become so compelling that the lived experience must cling to them in order not to fall apart.
It seems to me that the objects don't know their material, the gestures don't know their feelings, and the words don't know the mouth that speaks them. But to be certain of our own existence, we need the objects, the gestures, and the words. After all, the more words we are allowed to take, the freer we become. If our mouth is banned, then we attempt to assert ourselves through gestures, even objects. They are more difficult to interpret, and take time before they arouse suspicion. They can help us turn humiliation into a type of dignity that takes time to arouse suspicion.
Early one morning, shortly before I emigrated from Romania, a village policeman came for my mother. She was already at the gate, when it occurred to her: DO YOU HAVE A HANDKERCHIEF. She didn't. Even though the policeman was impatient, she went back inside to get a handkerchief. At the station the policeman flew into a rage. My mother's Romanian was too limited to understand his screaming. So he left the office and bolted the door from the outside. My mother sat there locked up the whole day. The first hours she sat on his desk and cried. Then she paced up and down and began using the handkerchief that was wet with her tears to dust the furniture. After that she took the water bucket out of the corner and the towel off the hook on the wall and mopped the floor. I was horrified when she told me. How can you clean the office for him like that I asked. She said, without embarrassment: I was looking for some work to pass the time. And the office was so dirty. Good thing I took one of the large men's handkerchiefs with me.
Only then did I understand that through this additional, but voluntary humiliation, she had created some dignity for herself in her detention. I tried to find the words for it in a collage:
I thought about the sturdy rose in my heart
about the useless soul like a sieve
but the keeper asked:
who will gain the upper hand
I said: saving the skin
he shouted: the skin is
nothing but a scrap of insulted batiste
with no common sense
I wish I could utter a sentence for all those whom dictatorships deprive of dignity every day, up to and including the present?a sentence, perhaps, containing the word handkerchief. Or else the question: DO YOU HAVE A HANDKERCHIEF?
Can it be that the question about the handkerchief was never about the handkerchief at all, but rather about the acute solitude of a human being?



Translated by Philip Boehm

[Mirabell]

shocking news today
Herta Mueller In Shock shigekuni. (http://shigekuni.wordpress.com/2010/09/17/herta-mueller-in-shock/)


Jesus.

[miercuri]

That's indeed very... awkward. To some extent it reminds me of Esterhazy's Celestial Harmonies and how learning the truth about his father affected his work.
I wish I could read the article in German you linked. Herta Mueller is coming to Romania for a lecture/public reading in ten days or so. I wonder how the Romanian press is going to handle this, it will certainly cause a stir of some sort. And Atemschaukel has just come out in Romanian.

[Mirabell]

The article doesn't really give more info than I did. It is a teaser. I'll read more in tomorrow's print issue and report back.

[Eric]

I don't think we should get too excited or moralistic about this. Betrayal comes in various forms. When you live in the West, unless you are plotting to blow up bridges or kill the Pope, you tend to be left alone by the secret services - which do, of course, exist.

It is the degree of betrayal that would be interesting to know. Anyone who had links with Ceausescu's Romania or the GDR should surely know the extent to which the social fabric of such countries was ruined by the fact that you could never trust anyone at all. It is a bit like these chat websites, where people adopt multiple identities to boost their egos and then stab you in the back by revealing details of what you thought was a private message.

Over in Spyland, people would be your friend one minute, then blabbing to the Securitate or Stasi half an hour later, to earn much-needed cash. You can't blame people, in a repressive society, from earning a bit on the side. But you can betray selectively.

The question is whether Pastior told the Securitate everything, or whether he was indeed selective in his betrayal. Not all people are 100% angels or bastards, except in James Bond novels.

[Eric]

Let's put the whole case into perspective. I read in the paper this morning (Svenska Dagbladet, not the Friends of the Securitate Gazette) a little more information about the Pastior affair. I read similar things in the FAZ.

A long time ago, Oskar Pastior had spent five years in a labour camp in the Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. The Soviets did it, presumably as he was a German-speaking Romanian, when he was 18, just after World War II. He evidently started his cooperation with the Securitate on 8th June 1961. In 1968, this cooperation ended when he was given the opportunity to flee to West Germany. So for some seven years, "Otto Stein" as his codename was, worked as what the Germans call an "informal collaborator". He will have been under pressure to cooperate. Pastior died in 2006.

I have no reason to disbelieve what is written in the newspapers, after the shock & horror reactions of journalists who quite unfeelingly like to make a sensation out of everything. This story is only being stirred up because Herta M?ller won the Nobel and she admired him. It's the same press hounds that pursued G?nter Grass when it emerged he had concealed the fact that he had as a very young man, been a member of the SS.

It is not very surprising that someone who had been in a labour camp - and knew what it was like - could be manoeuvred into a blackmail position where the message was "cooperate with us, or else...". And belonging to the German-speaking minority made him an easy target in Romania.

Now it's Mirabell's turn to report back to base. All reports he files will be stored - and used against him at some future date.

[Clarissa]

My replies to this, as well as my opinion, are on Mirabell's site. Also re. G?nther Grass.

[Mirabell]

I updated my article now Herta Mueller and Oskar Pastior shigekuni. (http://shigekuni.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/herta-mueller-and-oskar-pastior/)

Not sure if it makes any sense. If you can read German you might want to read the links in the post instead...?

[miercuri]

Thanks for shedding more light on this, M.
So far, I haven't spotted any mention of the matter in Romanian newspapers.

[Clarissa]

So far, I haven't spotted any mention of the matter in Romanian newspapers.I am not surprised - highly embarrassing for the Romanian authorities and media. I expect some of them are not completely innocent themselves. History has shown us, it takes a long time to replace politicians and journalists in high places.

However, these must be a journalist somewhere in Romania is working on an incendiary article at this very moment. At least, I hope so!

[miercuri]

I think it stands more as a testimony of their lack of synchronization and general backwardness, rather than of their guilt and shame. Normally, this is not the kind of topic they would skip. Anything Securitate-related is likely to unleash a flame war in the comments, and they thrive on that. They will eventually cover it, it's inevitable, since Herta Mueller is visiting next week.

[Eric]

Who is this S.K? Who is Michael Kr?ger? Tell us a bit more. We Brits don't know all the ins and outs of the German and Romanian press. Why should you believe them, Shigekuni / Mirabell, more or less than you believe anyone else? Whose initials are they? Should we take everything at face value?

Though I must say, Mirabell, that you article does show, whatever the source, the whole climate of fear that held sway in the Soviet Bloc and also in Romania, where Ceausescu had wriggled out from under Russia, only to start up a monstrous r?gime himself.

Did you, Mirabell and Miercuri, ever personally experience any of this horrible way of subjugating, tormenting, and humiliating people? Or members of your family, as with Esterh?zy? I hope not for your sakes. That's why I don't trust Erpenbeck and her fairy-tales, either. Her father and grandfather were top members of the nomenklatura. The system warped people.

Gay or not gay, mother or no mother, it doesn't make any difference. Once a country has set up a system where everyone informs on everyone else, they can soon find something to accuse you of. And in case you convince the secret policeman or -woman who is spying on you that you are innocent, the system means that he or she will also be pressured into submission. It's a great system for those who are emotional cripples and whose inferiority complex drives them to feel superior to others - as they know something bad about them, which they can blab to teacher about. Because all this informer stuff is at the schoolchild level of emotional maturity.

But if you were trapped or caught, you would have to play the game or your secrets would be revealed. All they needed in the Soviet Bloc was a few photos showing you fucking a ladyboy - and liking it - and the secret police would have found you had become a most willing collaborator. Bribery is also a way of getting people to do things they otherwise wouldn't. A combination of bribery and blackmail works perfectly.

Machiavelli would have loved Eastern Europe under the Communist-nationalist r?gimes.

Anyway, we're all waiting for the double-page spreads from the Romanian press about Pastior, with all the prurient details, serialised for eight weeks in translation, with photos, in the Observer or New York Times.

*

Clarissa, have you ever had dealings with an Eastern Bloc country? Deviousness was not the exception there, you know.

[Clarissa]

Yes Eric, I did have

dealings with an Eastern Bloc country? Deviousness was not the exception there, you know.

I was in the DDR, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary in the '70s. I do happen to know what life there was like. The help I received both in the DDR and in Poland was exceptional, as was the fear in Czechoslovakia, as was 'the good life' in Hungary.

[Eric]

Well, Clarissa, in that case you should know a thing or two about the differences between the West and the East, which, because of decades of neglect, repression, and backlog, have still not entirely disappeared now from the former Paradise of Lies. (See my comments on the Communism thread.)

I never knowingly ever met a secret policeman (or a policeman, for that matter) during the whole of my year in Poland in 1975-76. But all the things I've read about both Romania and the GDR make me think that unless you were a card-carrying Western Communist, maybe the police would keep tabs on you. Even if you were a Communist, you might belong to the wrong faction. I bet you they didn't love you if, for instance, you had the trots.

I wonder how many of us Westerners that strayed into Soviet Bloc territory during the 1970s have got a file in someone's secret police archive. The subject fascinates me, though not enough to spend any time researching it, but enough to be alert to it. It intrigues me that while we Westerners can blunder in and out of the subject of the secret police, people from ex-Soviet-bloc countries go all quiet and cagey (that's where the expression "cagey bee" comes from) when you bring up the intelligence and informer aspects of reality in their countries. What do you say, comrade? Your reply will be added to your file.

I'm reading a novel now, set in the 1980s, where members of the Solidarity opposition feel they can trust no one. Even that chap in the posh suit could be an SB informer. But then again, this may be a double bluff. I haven't read enough yet to find out. But I'm sure that Herta M?ller would find the feel (like you mention about fear in Czechoslovakia) all too sadly familiar.

Nevertheless, I'm not going to start yelling "Pastior, what a bastard!", because too many people in those countries had and have piles of skeletons in their broom cupboards.

[Clarissa]

Eric,
There probably is/was a file on me in the Communist countries I went to. I should think my file in the ex-DDR probably even said whether I drink my coffee white or black, with or without sugar. However, I know that the same files exist in the West although parhaps less detailed. I am not condoning files anywhere nor making excuses for the Communist countries.

I was working there at the time and, I repeat, rarely have I been helped so much by strangers.

[Eric]

Yes, Clarissa, I am aware of the fact that the authorities in Britain have in the past spied on students, and maybe still do.

In the 1970s, during one of the periodic sit-ins at my university (UEA), students broke into one of the tutors' or lecturers' offices and found files detailing, if I remember rightly, the political affiliations of certain students, and even who was sleeping with whom, as someone told me afterwards. I wonder, I must say, how the sit-in students knew where to find this information. Maybe they too had informers.

UEA was, of course, a hotbed of middle-class pseudo-Communist dissent in those days, with the Trots vying with the Maoists, Anarchists, and Moscow Communists. And of course the British authorities weren't too wild about the idea of Britain becoming a People's Republic. So I do see a fundamental difference between keeping Britain out of the Communist fold, and collecting information on people in a repressive and corrupt society with a shoddy everyday life, so that they can be blackmailed or otherwise persuaded to spy on yet more of their fellow-citizens, for the good of the ?lite.

*

I had a great time in Poland. The first nine months or so living in a two-person room (a luxury by Polish standards at the time) with a rather creepy Quiet American type who spent each and every day swatting up his Polish. Then three months in the flat of my then girlfriend and her mother. Never any politics, and quite a lot of fun. But my grant was two and a half times that of the average student, which did make life easier. I have benefited from that year. Now that I am again looking at Polish literature and Polish, almost 35 years later, I realise that that year did form a basis I would otherwise never have had.

I must have stuck out like a sore thumb in Krak?w, anno 1976. I wore long hair down to my shoulders and a greyish-blue ankle-length ex-army greatcoat. Plus a black fur hat I bought in Leningrad on a trip there. My 2010 self blushes at the thought. I looked like a daft impersonation of a Russian soldier in Poland, a country which didn't really approve of such military types at the time. Or even worse, a long-haired German one.

But the very fact that no policeman ever asked me what such a weirdo was doing roaming the streets of Wojtylaville, as we realised, decades later, that Krak?w was then (he was the bishop, though I never saw him), did say quite a lot about the relative freedom of Poland vis-?-vis the Soviet Union. And the paintings in the art museums were superb, as were plays by Kantor, the Witkiewicz books you could occasionally buy in the bookshops, the music of Szymanowski and so on.

I diligently bought many books in Polish that I couldn't read then, and am only beginning to look at again now. I still have a few shelves of them, all lugged back to England in my rucksack back then in 1975-76 during the holidays.

So, yes, people were nice to me during my stay in Poland.

[Mirabell]

see how close you are to Socialist thought? I''ll reformulate it for you:




UEA was, of course, a hotbed of middle-class pseudo-Communist dissent in those days, with the Trots vying with the Maoists, Anarchists, and Moscow Communists. And of course the British authorities weren't too wild about the idea of Britain becoming a People's Republic.


The Bucharest university was, of course, a hotbed of middle class dissent in those days, with Capitalists vying with the Imperialists, Anarchists and Bourgeois traitors. And of course the Romanian authorities weren't too wild about the idea of Romania becoming a Capitalist and Imperialist state.

[Eric]

Mirabell, you may have some clever ideas, you may even have a sense of humour, but your problem is you daren't write a sentence of more than ten words in English. You hide behind the lack of capital letters and the strange habit of being so cryptic that your wit cannot be understood by the average mortal. Your Bucharest analogy is totally opaque and not very funny.

The GDR and Ceausescu's Romania were repressive states, where you could be sent to prison or blackmailed into working for the secret police. Do you actually know how these countries worked? Did you experience anything yourself? (You are probably too young.) I think that Bonn is a fairly safe place to live and express your opinions from. But you seem a little reluctant. There are no Gestapo there nowadays, nor Stasi, for that matter.

Try to join in with whole sentences and capital letters. The cloak of aloofness and superior intellect wears thin after a while.

[Clarissa]

So, yes, people were nice to me during my stay in Poland.

In Poland it was less dangerous than in the DDR. I found the same help and kindness in East Germany, even though the couple were taking risks in inviting me to their home etc. I have rarely been so impressed by the human spirit as I was by them. The husband,an outstanding brain but not allowed to go to university because his father, at the end of WWII, had become a vicar 'to make amends' for what his country had done during the war.

When I went to their home, they welcomed me with what they had. I was a special guest from France and for that special guest, they presented me with a special offering. A single orange, peeled, the segments in a round circle on a plate. In a country where people were queueing at 5:00 a.m. to buy a few apples.When I left Potsdam, he gave me a book of Brecht's poetry. When I asked him to put in a dedication 'as a souvenir', he was afraid to do so in case the police at the border should come across it.

A far cry from Poland, where I was able to see people freely and even sleep In the home of one family, poor peasants near Poznan, who gave up their bed for me. But without fear of repercussions.

The Communist r?gime brought out the worst in people - but also the best.

I would never dream of judging anyone - I do not know how I would have behaved and I hope I shall never be confronted with the choice Pastior/Stein had to make. Fear is a terrible taskmaster.

[miercuri]

These are the only articles I've come across in the Romanian press. There might be a few more, I suppose.

Herta Muller si dubla masura - Opinii - HotNews.ro (http://www.hotnews.ro/stiri-opinii-7861183-herta-muller-dubla-masura.htm) - Herta Mueller and the Double Measure
This one is rather horrible, goes on suggesting that Herta Mueller has double standards and the comments that ensued are even more ridiculous. I can't say I am exactly surprised.

?Literatura nu acuz?, c?nd scrii tenden?ios nu faci literatur?? - Eveniment - Observatorcultural.ro (http://www.observatorcultural.ro/Literatura-nu-acuza-cind-scrii-tendentios-nu-faci-literatura*articleID_24299-articles_details.html) - "Literature does not bring accusations, tendentious writing is not literature"
This is actually an interview taken in August, a very gracious one. The bit at the end is an excerpt from an interview in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung which was added to complete the picture.

Impecabila reac?ie a Hertei M?ller - Editorial - Observatorcultural.ro (http://www.observatorcultural.ro/16-comentarii*articleID_24294-articles_details.html) - Herta Mueller's Impeccable Reaction
And this one is commenting on the interview she gave for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and praising the manner in which she dealt with the news.

[miercuri]

I started reading Reisende auf einem Bein a bit earlier today, but the Romanian translation seems very awkward, I'm actually trying to figure out if it's a question of style or just the translation.
Also came across this article (http://www.evz.ro/detalii/stiri/senatul-evz-o-nedreptate-908350.html) written by Mircea Cărtărescu in response to some comments Herta Mueller has made about him during her visit to Romania two weeks ago. She accuses Romanian intellectuals, particularly writers, of not having stood up to the communist regime back in the day and for some reason she singled Cărtărescu out. He obviously felt offended. I don't know what to make of this, it was very uncalled for on her part.

[Liam]

Herta Müller's latest novel Atemschaukel, already hailed as her greatest achievement, will finally become available in English (http://www.amazon.com/Hunger-Angel-Novel-Herta-Müller/dp/080509301X/ref=sr_1_372?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321657774&sr=1-372), in a Philip Boehm translation, in May 2012. No details on the hardcover as yet, except the price and the page count (256). The German title of the book has been changed to The Hunger Angel:

It was an icy morning in January 1945 when the patrol came for seventeen-year-old Leo Auberg to deport him to a camp in the Soviet Union. Leo would spend the next five years in a coke processing plant, shoveling coal, lugging bricks, mixing mortar, and battling the relentless calculus of hunger that governed the labor colony: one shovel load of coal is worth one gram of bread.

In her new novel, Nobel laureate Herta Müller calls upon her unique combination of poetic intensity and dispassionate precision to conjure the distorted world of the labor camp in all its physical and moral absurdity. She has given Leo the language to express the inexpressible, as hunger sharpens his senses into an acuity that is both hallucinatory and profound. In scene after disorienting scene, the most ordinary objects accrue tender poignancy as they acquire new purpose—a gramophone box serves as a suitcase, a handkerchief becomes a talisman, an enormous piece of casing pipe functions as a lovers' trysting place.

The heart is reduced to a pump, the breath mechanized to the rhythm of a swinging shovel, and coal, sand, and snow have a will of their own. Hunger becomes an insatiable angel who haunts the camp, but also a bare-knuckled sparring partner, delivering blows that keep Leo feeling the rawest connection to life.

Müller has distilled Leo's struggle into words of breathtaking intensity that take us on a journey far beyond the Gulag and into the depths of one man's soul.

[Liam]

New piece (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/30/herta-muller-life-in-books) in The Guardian.