The Exile Memoirs – between the Identity Discourse and the Critique of the Totalitarian Ideologies: Herta Müller's Case

Abstract

Believing that “the things one has experienced disappear in time and reappear in literature”, Herta Müller, the German writer of Romanian origin, writes her narrative – the fictional as well as the memoir one – by constantly relating it to the totalitarian ideological context. In his autobiographical essays from Der König verneigt sich und tötet (2003) and Immer derselbe Schnee und immer derselbe Onkel (2011), the anamnesis focusing the personal history as part of “the great history” – both being deeply influenced by the experience of terror displayed by the “cannibal” and mnemophobic ideology – is permanently backed up by the meditation on the totalitarian mechanisms (social, psychological, ideological). The main point of interest entailed by the identity discourse – generating an exemplary history – is different from “self-edification”, pointing to the revival of “another time when I have always wondered about what is mere happening and what framing up in my own life” [Müller, 2011: 42], to the construction of a critical “meta-history” focusing the theme of mentally and behaviourally re- shaping the intellectual portrayed as “totalitarian subject.” Being more than an existential testimony, Herta Müller's autobiographical essays play a radiographic role for the period, equally interpreting a history of terror - her approach is totally justified, as the author strongly believes that the socio-cultural context mirrors the Communist past from a political and ideological perspective.