The Fox Was Ever the Hunter

Hello Gentle Reader

In Nobel Laureate Herta Müller’s lexicon of linguistics, there is one prevalent rule: “Every word knows something of a vicious circle.” This prevalent rule is both symbol and philosophy for the Nobel Laureate; as it mirrors both her life, and experiences, during the Communist reign, which shaped the developing and early adult years of her life. Language in Communist Romania was a powerful weapon and tool, used in instrumenting control over the populace, but also influencing the citizens into a complacent manner, in which they accepted the meager existence which was rationally dished out for them. Herta Müller is unique individual when seen as a testament of the individual, contrasted against the backdrop of history. It is well documented, that Müller’s father fought with the Waffen-SS during World War II; Müller’s mother was sent to a forced labour camp (Soviet gulag) when she was seventeen, this experience along with the story and testament of Herta Müller’s friend the late Oskar Pastior, would be the inspiration for her most recent novel “The Hunger Angel,” (or in German: “Atemschaukel,”). Herta Müller herself was born in 1953, the same year Joseph Stalin died. She grew up in a small ethnic German village named Nitzkydorf in the Banat region of Romania. This agronomic community was isolated, and cut off from the city; but it was not cut off from the state or its ideology. Müller often found herself, isolated and alone in the village; where in the summer she would tend to the cows in the pasture. Out there Herta Müller talked to flowers, and clouds. Müller herself had commented, in these lonely days and afternoons, she would pair the plants up, in a form of marriage, and eat every weed to somehow become closer to it; she would also give the plants new names. For example she changed the name of milkweed, to “Thornrib,” or “Needleneck.” Again though, explained Müller, this was yet another attempt to get closer to them, and to try and understand how to live, as they naturally and obviously knew how to do. Yet for Herta Müller, becoming a writer was the furthest idea from her mind. The careers in which Müller had considered where more ordinary and fit with the expansive and isolated world, in which she found herself; such as a seamstress like her aunt, or perhaps even a hairdresser. But a writer? Nothing could have been further from her mind, living in linguistic isolation; and there was, no books in the home. Yet upon entering school in the city of Timișoara, Herta Müller devoured every book or text that entered her hands, and soon she was hooked. The problem with words, and writing is once it has slipped inside, and nestled under the skin, branched out into the lungs, and stabbed the heart, and infected the brain, there is no hope to escape it, and no way to release it but to write. Thankfully though Herta Müller did get bitten by the bug, and did write; and continues to write.

However, being a writer in a communist state; or any authoritarian state; a writer can never be truly on the side of the dictatorship. Writers – like all precarious creatures, with creative ambitions and endeavors; are often faced with a decision, when it comes to their role in a society; specifically speaking totalitarian regimes, be it: fascist or communist, military dictatorship, et cetera; do they become a tool of state? A propaganda producing machine, where they herald the triumph of ideological standards, and its miraculous ability to contain, control, and also organize a chaotic and anarchic natural world, along with the human variable; at such simple costs: freedom and individuality. Or does the writer become a tool for the human desire for freedom? Proclaim that freedoms are an inherent born animal rights, made all that more apparent by our sentient and cognitive functions. Yet for any individual, citizen, or comrade who dissents against the prevailing ideology of the society of the time, the repercussions and retaliation from those who have the authority and power over the social structure, will seek to exercise it, and snuff out such dissidence, before it infects others with the virus of “counter-revolutionary,” ideas. Herta Müller in her childhood understood the existential fear of the looming idea of The State; when she herded and watched over the cows to ensure they did not break into state owned fields, where they would surely end up producing a considerable amount of damage. Yet, for Müller the responsibility placed upon her childhood self was perhaps a greater root of fear, and existential uncertainty, rather then the threat of the State, in which she would come into direct conflict with later in life. Herta Müller has also pointed out the village in which she grew up, was the first dictatorship she would come to know and learn; where neighbours, school teachers, the local policeman, and the priest, would all know the business and transactions of the surrounding households. The village itself, operated on a sense of its own unwritten requirement to conform to the village’s practices, culture, or risk being ostracized and gossiped about.

Years later, when Müller escaped her village and moved to the city, she would soon see the States Shadow was everywhere and engulfed everything, as it corrupted and corroded every life, building, and plant, in which it cast its self over. Despite the oppressive atmosphere of Timișoara, Müller would begin to understand the importance of the written word, as well as the power of language, as a form of resistance. After graduating from university, Herta Müller would go on to be employed in a tractor factory, as a translator for the manuals. It was then, that Müller found herself in direct contact with the State, and was on the wrong side. When the Romanian secret police (Securitate), had demanded the writer to become an informant, she declined, and soon her world was continually shaken up, by disruptive interrogations, as well as interloping and intrusive entry in her apartment. Herta Müller, had stated the secret police, didn’t want to bother themselves with killing ‘you,’ but rather save the bullet and the trouble, and push you to the brink of madness, with the intent, ‘you,’ would do the deed at your own volition. One of Müller’s testimonies from this time period, was the vandalism of her fox fur rug. Herta Müller noted, the secret police made its powers known with regards to entering her apartment, by simple gas lighting psychological terror techniques; they would leave cigarette butts in the toilet, take pictures off the wall, or turn chairs upside down. Yet the most threatening gesture would be the vandalism of the fox fur. As Herta Müller stated, the fox fur was cut up piece by piece, first the tail, then the legs, and finally the head. This situation would later become the basis of her novel: “The Fox Was Ever the Hunter.”

“The Fox Was Ever the Hunter,” is an early novel, first published in 1992, but showcases the stark and frank poetic style of Müller; the highly developed metaphorical syntax structure and the duality of language. On a basic level the novel traces a group of friend’s live in Communist Romania, during the last few months of the communist regime, and the waning powers of the Ceaușescu’s, before their Christmas Day execution. The novel recounts the tragedies, the betrayals, the madness, and desperation of all the four characters, and their continual attempts at survival. Adina, the school teacher, is at the forefront of the novel, and the closest thing there is to a ‘main character.’ Adina’s questionable actions are noted early on in the novel, when her students are commissioned to assist in the harvest of tomatoes; she encourages her impoverished students to eat them, and soon she is brought before the director of the school, who quickly reprimands this behavior. Paul is a doctor and a dissident musician, who finds himself in ideological and social conformity issues, when his band performs an ‘offensive,’ song. His band mate Albi in his interrogation, would mirror the authors own experience, where he is ordered to collaborate with the secret police; and refuses. Clara works in a wire factory, and her resilience, and her attempts at survival will put her at odds with her friends, because of her naivety.

Much like the writer, Adina has a fox fur; and soon it is slowly mutilated. Adina informs us of the origin of the fox fur, her desire for one since she was a child, and how she came to acquire it, with her mother, and how long it has been with her. The fox becomes less and less a physical object which is slowly mutilated, but a symbol of the fragility of an individual’s mental state under such a regime. As each new piece is cut off, and quickly placed back into place, to be discovered by happenstance, Adina's reality begins to become more paranoid, and more fragile, as it begins to collapse in on itself. It soon becomes clear; the secret police were capable of infiltrating the group by the invitation of one. An invitation made clearly and early on, by the way a hand is grasped, reminiscent of Captain Pjele, who squeezes the fingers of the narrator of “The Land of Green Plums,” and slobbers a wet kiss upon it.

“The Fox Was Ever the Hunter,” takes time and patience to get engulfed in. It diverts and discusses a multitude of vignette’s and scenes, depicting and documenting the life of communist Romania. Such as “the Cat,” who lives in the wire factory, which gives birth to her litter, and then devours it. The eyes, of the cat however, show case the guilt of the workers; those who suffer the desire for copulation and warmth. How the children of factory works, who go search for their mothers, and its gates, will then be cursed and doomed to end up there themselves. How the children’s turkey necked fingers are populated with clusters of warts; or how even they understand the abstract idea of surveillance by stating that everywhere – from wall to tree; a drawer lurks inside, and inside of that drawer is an ear, that listens, which is why their mothers put the telephone into the refrigerator. The scene is set with the poplars and their leaves like knives, or fishermen fishing in corpse ridden rivers; or how out in the Danube, those who attempt to flee illegally are shot, and how the sound of a gunshot is different then how a branch breaks. After Herta Müller is finished setting the scene, and offering anecdotes of life under the oppressive grey stagnation of communism, beneath the dictators forelock and his black eyes looking out on to the country; the novel begins to form, as the realities and lives of Adina, Paul, and Clara, begin to threaten absolute dissolution and collapse, do the preceding scenes and vignette's begin to show their potency in how they affect the characters, and make their poetic achievement even more personal. 

Herta Müller’s life is more often than not reflected in her writing. Writing about her experience during her life under Communist Romania, the persecution as a political dissident, an ethnic minority, and being the perpetual outsider; have influenced her themes and her novels. “The Fox Was Ever the Hunter,” is of no exception. This being said do not be quick to deem the writing as strictly autobiographical. Rather, writing in this case is more of a personal exorcism; a taming what one has lived.  Even with that statement though, Herta Müller goes beyond this as well, and make her novels, short stories, and poems, both personal and politically aware. Rather than focusing on the grandiose events of history, including the graphics, along with the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the events; Müller gets under the skin, and canals straight to the root of the events, down to the most personal and myopic aspects of society, and show how the mundane, and the everyday are shaped, conformed, and corrupted by the state and by the reigning ideology. She states and she testifies: history is more than just events, more than just names, more than just an uprising;  history be it dark or utopian; existed on a minuscule everyday level, and she describes it with brutal and frank honesty. Her language is almost coded, subtle and discrete, as if still evading the scrutinity of the state and its secret police. Yet it does open up and blossom; and when it does Herta Müller becomes an admirable writer, of the highest order. 

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader

Take Care

And As Always

Stay Well Read

M. Mary