Testimony and Trauma in Herta Muller's Herztier

Abstract

This article attempts to distinguish between testimony (an account of one’s personal, limited knowledge of a crime or an atrocity) and trauma (a reconstructed life-story intended to overcome a troubling, recurring memory by locating that memory within its larger, historical context). It is the author’s contention that Herta Muller’s novel Herztier is a skilful blending of testimony and trauma narrative that illuminates the terrors of the Ceaus¸escu dictatorship and their lasting impact on its survivors. The testimonial aspects of the novel reveal one’s inability to achieve complete knowledge of another’s trauma, while the trauma narrative, through skilful incorporation of recurring, ‘transfinite’ images into the text, links the personal stories of the narrator and her friends by subsuming them and making them part of the history of a larger, national trauma. As Muller’s novel makes clear, neither testimony nor trauma narrative is able to heal or bring closure to the victims of the Romanian state terror.