830 Literaturen germanischer Sprachen; Deutsche Literatur
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Using the example of Herta Müller‘s novels written after her emigration into the Federal Republic of Germany, the article shows how digital tools can be used to classify the fragmented space that unfolds in the writings of the Nobel Prize winner into a clear model structure. Quantitative research methods are combined with a database-driven GIS analysis toolkit to illustrate the weighting of the fictionalized locations given their gravity centers and polarities. The series of maps show both the density and spread of the action places, as well as the meanings which are attached to the literary space.
The present article focuses on the typological similarities and differences at Herta Müller and Gheorghe Crăciun. As a basis serves the work of the renowned Slovak comparatist Dionýz Ďurišin, “Comparative Literature. Attempt of a methodical-theoretical framework”(1972). Unlike the genetic relationships that relate to the contact within a nation or even the world literature, the typological relationships are linked to the structure of the compared works and their internal dynamics. In this regard three kinds of typological relationships can be found between Herta Müller and Gheorghe Crãciun: social, literary and psychological-typological similarities and differences.
: The concept of the foreign view is a recurring theme throughout all of Herta Müller’s prose. This kind of view derives from her biography. Certainly an unique biography but it is also transferable to many other people. Expressions like „remaining in order to leave“ or „arrived, but long not here“ become guidelines of leaving and arrivals or non-arrivals. The individual acts in-between languages, worlds and in-between cultures. Identity has to change continuously, as it is always in a process.
In the novel "The Land of Green Plums" (1994) the author renders an apocalyptic image of Romania during the communist dictatorship, Timişoara representing the tragic background of the narrated events. From this perspective, language becomes for Herta Müller a way of distancing from the dictatorial system, the author managing to express, through specific processes of language, the circumstances hat generated those events. The aphorisms and the idioms used in the text express the wrong behavior and communication mechanisms of the protagonists, demonstrating the presence of the security forces and of the dictatorship. The author often appeals to repetitions to highlight the continuous threat and the repression force of the authorities. Thus, the language is for Herta Müller a form of resistance against the totalitarian regime and the only place of expressing freedom, even under the dictatorship.
Herta Müller’s leaning towards word for word transfer of Romanian set phrases in her texts can be explained by the environment in which she lived until her emigration to West Germany and this admittedly intensifies with the gradually increasing general interest in multi-lingualism. The fact that the authoress speaks of the German-Romanian transfer in her acceptance speech on the occasion of the Nobel Prize award proves the important role, which Hertha Müller ascribes to this procedure. Also at the centre of the latest books by Balthasar Waitz stands the multicultural region of the Banat. The author seems to be gripped by the plurilingualism of the immediate surroundings of his homeland. Different forms of Romanian, from slang to everyday speech, but occasionally also Hungarian, Slovak and Serbian phrases find their way into the texts of the Banat author. In this manner just as with Hertha Müller, language images come into being, new light. Thus literary multilingualism in both writers enables one to have a novel access to the relation between literature and reality.