Hello Gentle Reader
“From here to there it’s all just the farty sputter of a lantern. And they call that having lived. It’s not worth the bother of putting on your shoes.”
Herta Müller had said in the Nobel Documentary “Writing against Terror,” that “writing is kind of a taming. Writing tames what you have lived.” Born August third in nineteen-fifty three the future Nobel Laureate in Literature of two thousand and nine, has witnessed the horrors of history; which has left its mark on her. Through the continual vicious cycle of words, Herta Müller is able to tame what she has lived and experienced. Herta Müller’s writing style is incredibly poetic, structured on short sentences that become episodic, that add up to a painted landscape of deprivation and misplaced people who happen to be born at the wrong place at the wrong time; or in some cases they had picked the wrong side in a grand war of horror and inhumane actions, and they themselves were left at the mercy of something just as horrific that lasted for so many years.
Herta Müller lived under the regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu. Her mother was sent to a Soviet Forced Labour camp also known as a gulag when she was younger. Her father was part of the waffen-ss. The linage of the author is much like that, of her novels – grey. There is no moral high ground. No pompous or pretentious state where the author says there is justice in the world – or that a utopia was created after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of the former Soviet Union. The perpetrators were not always punished and the victims at times were less innocent then they appear. The work itself is political. Yet the work is not political in a superficial sense, as that of a political thriller. The works themselves, bare witness to history; and in a poetic style, document the history and what had happened with an unflinching eye.
I think many will find Herta Müller’s work very difficult to read. The subject matter is difficult. It does not portray the west as some great land of utopia, or that the west had actively sought out to better the quality of life of those that suffered so needlessly. It’s presented as just the better option than the one that has been dealt with. While others suffer, we are too busy enjoy the luxuries of our comfort.
The work itself does not allow anyone to forget what had happened. Many suffered continuously after World War II, while others thrived, or were given atonement for the crimes that they themselves had to endure. The crimes that had befallen Herta Müller were never atoned for. There was no apology, there was nothing. The author herself was able to flee. Escape the situation that had been brought upon her, by Nicolae Ceaușescu and his feared secret police the Securitate, who to do this day refuse to admit that they harassed and assaulted the author. In fact in a recent article that I myself had found, from two thousand and nine, shows a former agent of the Securitate, has claimed that Herta Müller has psychosis. In many ways the former agent, and major, says that she was not interrogated as much as she has claimed. He’s pushed the heat off of himself, and placed it back on to Herta Müller in a mediocre style, by claiming that yes her house was bugged, but that was a one-time incident and entry into her home (in the Romanian city of Timisoara) and denied that Herta Müller was fired from her job, because she refused to cooperate with the police but rather because she smoked in the classroom. All of this is unconvincing to many who can put two and two together – at least when all ‘known,’ facts are placed together. For one the file that the Securitate had created for her, is nine hundred and fourteen pages long – one time incident and a few interrogations do not lead to the conclusion that the information collected amounts to that.
The criticism of Herta Müller usually comes from her native land of Romania, where the inhabitants of her once native land criticise her for trying to drag the country through the mud. A journalist of Romania, Cristian Tudor Popescu had said that, her reputation and books succeed only by criticizing the former regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu. Yet the same could be said for a fellow Nobel Laureate in Literature Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose reputation is in the fact that he was able to criticize the former Soviet Union.
Yet the criticisms themselves have come under attack from others, saying that they are nothing more than just attacks based around envy. Beatrice Ungar editor of the Hermannstadter Zeitung (a weekly Siblu newspaper) made it quite clear that no one but the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena Ceaușescu were the only ones to profit from the regime and the terror. Mircea Cărtărescu a fellow Romanian author has also been very pleased with the celebration of Herta Müller’s win.
“The Appointment,” itself is a common novel, by Herta Müller detailing through the vicious cycle of words, and poetic quick breath prose, which comprises her work; the novel deals with a tram ride, that takes forever (as it would when you have been summoned by the secret police) details the life of the main character. Her first marriage, which failed. To where she is in the present living with a man whose alcoholic who can only drink because that’s all there is left for him to do:
“He was always afraid we might grow used to happiness.”
Because even happiness could be taken away from a person. The novel is also full of absurd situations. When Albu the interrogator squeezes the main characters hand and kisses her hand, with a wet saliva filled kiss, before the start of interrogations; to the unprecedented discovery of a finger wrapped like a piece of hard candy found in the bag.
Yet there is also quick moments of dark humour. Like the main characters observation of the pencil stub on Albu’s desk:
“So maybe Albu’s own prick is like that and the pencil stub serves as a measure of the world.”
To the crude painted graffiti on the outhouse wall, when Paul and the main character are at the flea market:
“Life is really full of shit, There’s no choice but to piss on it.”
“The Appointment,” is not as great as the densely poetic “Land of Green Plums,” but nonetheless it was a great book. Harrowing and relentless in its depiction of Communist Romania, but shows the undying spirit of human dignity – and most importantly the individuals constant struggle to main freedom, and individuality against the state and dictatorships themselves.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
*And Remember: Downloading Books Illegally is Thievery and Wrong.*
M. Mary
