Herta Muller in Bucharest

From Nine O'Clock

Herta Muller: I do not collect medals…

28.09.10 | by: Ana-Maria Iancu | in: culture

A writer that is so obviously reluctant to sharing too much with the press and in the meantime a pretty direct and sharp observer, lending the world around her a critical eye, Herta Muller is undoubtedly more at home in the inner space of words. She admits however that, ever since she was awarded the highest literary distinction, the Nobel, her exterior life has changed and “being in a press meeting is part of that change. Otherwise, I am still the same person.”

In yesterday’s meeting with local and foreign media, Herta Muller was asked what would make her return to Romania for good. The writer, who fled the communist regime in the 80s, at the age of 32, said she doesn’t feel “someone should make me feel at home here. But it would be a good idea if some millions of Romanians could feel at home in their country.”

Speaking about how certain political aspects, for instance the horrors of the Communist regime always make room in her prose; Muller said she believes that coming from a certain geographic area had its say in her formation as a writer. “Landscape or environment is necessary and I have no other landscape other than the one I know, the one I came from. Thus, my characters reflect what happens to the human being in a totalitarian regime and this is not a topic I chose, but rather one that my life has chosen for me. I am bound to write about what concerns me and about the things that won’t leave me in peace.”

Born in a German family in Nitchidorf Village, Romania, Herta Muller has worked as translator in a Timisoara plant, at the end of the 1970’s, whereof she was fired for refusing to collaborate with the Securitate. Between 1982, since her first volume in Romanian (Lower Counties) was published and 1987, the writer was submitted to continuous pressure from the communist secret police. She fled the country in 1987; one year after her first book in German was published in Berlin. Two years ago, while coming back to Romania to visit, the writer said she had again, been the subject of “some secret police surveillance.”

Asked if she still fears repression from such secret police, Muller says she does not, but adds she is rather afraid for Romania, “a country where all sorts of aspects having to do with dictatorship have not been yet cleared and where people who used to collaborate in those times can be found even today in power.” Just before her arrival, last Sunday, a spokesperson for the December 21 1989 Revolu­tionaries’ Association said a proposition had been sent to President Basescu to offer Herta Muller the Romanian Star, highest national honour.

“I am not going to say I need or that I would accept that, “Muller says with modesty. “I do not collect medals, I would have no use of that,” she adds.

The author is somewhat reluctant to talk about the things she still remembers with love about the country she was born in, as, she says “superlatives are not my thing,” but added she still has a lot of friends in Romania, and “if at least half of the people in this country were as reliable as them, this would be a hell of a country.”

Asked if she was working on new novels or other literary projects, the Nobel laureate admitted she has been busy with all the things “triggered by the award” and has only had time for “collages and autobiographical work that puts the novels in a clearer perspective.” “I tend to write a book once every three years or so, I enjoy the non- writing intervals a lot,” Muller concluded.

Yesterday evening the writer was invited to participate in an Athenaeum debate with writer Gabriel Liiceanu, while today, at Humanitas Cretulescu, she will be present at the launch of the author series comprising of “Travelling On One Leg” and “Everything I Possess I Carry With Me.” The author will meet with the public and hold an autograph session.

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