Hello Gentle Reader
I never understood how reviewers and literary critics often applauded a authors use of language, as a thrilling and interesting. Obviously there are many languages in the world; however when reading a book either by a writer whose native tongue is English or whose work has been translated into English, there are rules of the language that apply, and are usually put in place. Simple sentence structures are always appropriate. Speech is often verified (though who is speaking can be vague and often deliberately obscure) comas, semicolons, explanation marks, dashes, questions marks, and periods are always used accordingly. Yet at times authors use an archaic language (like Jose Saramago did with his novel “Death with Interruptions,” when he used such words as ‘eventide,’ or ‘vespertine,’—though this often lead to more pretentious word association when more simpler and common place words would have done just fine) however upon reading many novels by Herta Müller, the concept of how language can be used in written works, outside of the simple confides of punctuation and grammar, can be seen. Peter Englund the current Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, remarked on Herta Müller’s use of language. The Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy noted her precision of words, her experience at witnessing the corruption and misusing, as well as abusing the language and words. The most noted fact about Herta Müller’s use of language is her sentences. There are no long winding sentences, just picturesque sentences. Short and episodic, weaving and creating a larger picture. In fact there isn’t really a long continuous narrative strand, but details and anecdotes. The author (Herta Müller) is not an epicist a writer. She doesn’t write large sprawling novels; there are no thousand page novels, of painstaking long winding sentences, or a loss of confusion of characters, and events. The works are small and brief, but are incredibly intense short pieces of work, that are relentless in their depiction of life under tyrannical regimes. However this is what makes “The Hunger Angel,” by Herta Müller so much more different then her previous novels. The original German title is “Atemschaukel,” which is a compound word or neologism, which means “breathe swing,” in German; and is about a Soviet (forced) Labour Camp, and the taboo and often not talked about subject of ethnic German, Romanian’s who were sent to the Gulags in the Ukraine, to repent and pay for the crimes of Hitler, during World War II.
The novels of Herta Müller are moral, but they are not moral in the sense that they pass judgement to the reader. They do not accuse the reader of being as guilty as the guards or the dictator that happily cause misery wherever they can. Rather the opposite, the novels themselves can appear mechanical and detached from the characters or the experiences that they face. Descriptions of interrogations and daily life all become a matter of fact descriptions. There is nothing that can be done about these incidents. Descriptions of streets, houses, and shops show the inadequacy of the surroundings. A piece of tin sheet metal becomes a moveable door, to an otherwise doorless toilet outside. The grey buildings become common place, and the aspect of rats underneath the floor boards, or a one shovel of coal equals one gram of bread. The world behind the iron curtain was absurd and rough.
The novel depicts the harsh realities of life in a Soviet gulag. The first chapter itself where the famous line “Everything I possess I carry with me,” (also the title of the UK edition of this novel) and in this first chapter, titled “On Packing,” there is almost a hopeful optimism in the way Leo, thinks about the camp as perhaps being a chance to travel. Such a naïve thought, is often what we tell ourselves when faced with an obstacle that is both incredibly elusive and unavoidable. What is left is the only defensive mechanism, of trying to hope that something good can come out of it. Yet the reality always proves otherwise. Rounded up like cattle or other livestock the people from the villages who were on the list and met the requirements set down by the Stalinist government. People between the ages of seventeen and forty-five were eligible to be set to the gulags, for rebuilding and to pay for the German crimes that had taken place. But against all better judgement or lack of any judgement and morals, the Soviet Officials themselves had created crimes just as harsh as those done by the Nazi regime.
The best known account of life in a Soviet Gulag camp came from a fellow Nobel Laureate in Literature Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who also spent time in a Soviet Labour camp for his criticism of Stalin and communism itself. Eventually the author himself found himself forced out of the former Soviet Union, and did not return until after the collapse of the red beast itself. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn himself later wrote a three volume book on the subject of the gulags between nineteen seventy three and nineteen seventy eight about the history and developments of the police state in the Soviet Union.
Sixty seven thousand, three hundred and thirty two Romanian ethnic German’s were sent as forced labour in the Gulags – that is the second highest number, besides the former Eastern territories of Germany and Poland which totals to one hundred fifty five thousand, two hundred and sixty two. When I showed a video of this novel (when the video was made of the shortlisted novels of the two thousand and nine novels for the prestigious German Book Prize) the first remark was “it looks like these people were being shipped off to a concentration camp,” – in the end that is what it was. Hundred upon thousands of people had died in the camps.
Based on the experiences of both her mother and a friend Oskar Pastior (who passed away in two thousand and six), who were both sent to labour camps while they were still relatively young, Herta Müller has depicted the snowy landscape and the harsh conditions of the disposed. The late Oskar Pastior and Herta Müller wished to write the novel together, but Herta Müller was forced to write it, herself, when her friend had died. Which then lead to a startling revelation, for Herta Müller, Oskar Pastior was an informant for the secret police. But Müller was reluctant and unable to criticise the late poet. He had already suffered in the gulags at the age of seventeen, he was a homosexual who could have been killed for it, and at such a stage in his life he just wanted to live, and was unfortunately open to the price, that it would cost him, to do just that. However she has been less lenient towards fellow Nobel Laureate in Literature, for his controversial poem about Israel and Iran. Herta Müller has said that Gunter Grass has lost all his moral credibility when he hid his affiliation with the Nazi SS (Grass was part of the Waffen SS at the end of World War II) while Herta Müller herself has always been honest about the amoral past that of her own people. Her father was part of the Waffen SS and supported many of the views of Nazi’s political standings until his death – he never officially distanced himself from it. Yet Müller herself had been rather critical of all ideologies, including Fascism which had claimed her father’s life and Communism which had claimed both her mother’s life and her own, and countless friends. Which is why Herta Müller’s novels are the way they are – both political but distanced itself from all ideologies, because all ideologies are full of lies.
With “The Hunger Angel,” Herta Müller shines light on the subject and the fate of the forced labour of ethnic Germans, from nineteen-forty five onwards (our main character Leo stayed in the camp for five years) all of which paid for the crimes of people who may or may not have supported Hitler:
“None of us were part any war, but because were Germans, the Russians considered us guilty of Hitler’s crimes.” – with an almost ironic revelation that David Lommer a character in the camp was Jewish.
Throughout the novel, the concept of hunger is examined continuously. A spectre that represents the hunger that starves all the camp prisoners equally is called the Hunger Angel, which is described as a protean spectre that appears as a white hare in the wasted-away cheeks of anyone on the verge of starving to death. Which further shows the poetic imagery that Herta Müller uses in this novel, as well as the Kafkaesque metaphors that the camp comes to produce.
The suffering of the characters and the people in this novel are at the forefront. When Leo finds 10 rubles in a puddle of mud, when someone throws his gaiters, at the market, he quickly goes on a spending spree, and eventually buys so much food and eats it all he quickly ends up vomiting it up once again. This greedy gluttonous action is all that he can do when given so a chance to devour food after being starved for so long.
Memories serve as both a savour, and a painful reminder of what has been lost, and the horrible situation that has become the life of the residents of the camp itself:
“Deep in the fruit garden, at our summerhouse in the Wench, stood a wooden bench without a back. We called it Uncle Hermann. We called it that because we didn’t know anybody by that name.” – even the past becomes as surreal as the present.
In the end it’s a great book, in my opinion. Poetic and disturbing, but not for everyone’s liking. The brief vignettes make up the chapters and the constant discussion of hunger, can often put people off or annoy them, but hunger is all that is left in the camp and its forced residents. It is in the end what reminds them that they are human. It was critically acclaimed by Peter Englund of the Swedish Academy, and the German Book Prize, was supposed to predict the wining of this book as it was the critics favourites, however it lost to Kathrin Schmidt and her novel “Du stirbst nicht,” or “You’re not going to die,” – which by the way I am still waiting to see a English translation. However in the end it was a great book, one that did not sugar coat the facts of the reality but it did use beautiful language to create a harrowing picture of deprivation, hunger, inhumane treatment, and the lack of human dignity as well as injustice, in order to leave a lasting impression the reader.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
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M. Mary
