Herta on Goethe

Dear Everyone,

Here's an excellent article on Herta Muller found on the Goethe Institute site. For fifteen years Ceausescu’s henchmen and their successors “made me the object of a manhunt”, Müller wrote in 2003 in her volume of essays entitled Der König verneigt sich und tötet (i.e., The King Bows and Kills): an experience that has never let her go. This may be pointed out to anyone repeatedly calling that she acknowledges her new homeland with a novel about the German present.

And even if she did acknowledge her 'new' homeland, how polite would she be? They haven't been terribly kind to her lately...burning her books and then mixing up the charred pages in a bucket with minced meat and pigs blood on prime time chat-shows. Very nice.

We are quite becoming Herta specialists here in Hamden CT. 'Nadirs', 'The Land of Green Plums' (excellent) and now 'The Appointment'. One must identify with the period of persecution and terror in which she lived. Reading these cold are an impossibility. They are not easy to digest. They take time and patience and a good deal of tea. They make your blood run cold and they give a glimpse of what fear can do. I am lucky never to have lived such fear. The critics asking that she writes about todays Germany never knew fear either. That much is blatently obvious or they would never utter such stupidity.