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‘SCHNAPS AUS DEN DUNKELSTEN PFLAUMEN’: THE CORRUPTION OF NATURE AND THE CENTRALITY OF THE HOLOCAUST IN THE WORK OF HERTA MÜLLER
Author(s) -
Watson Jenny
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
german life and letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 1468-0483
pISSN - 0016-8777
DOI - 10.1111/glal.12251
Subject(s) - humanity , the holocaust , centrality , trope (literature) , the imaginary , natural (archaeology) , psychoanalysis , literature , language change , philosophy , sociology , aesthetics , history , art , psychology , theology , mathematics , archaeology , combinatorics
Herta Müller's work is permeated with images of death and violence associated with the natural world. Plants, processes of growth and decay, and even the earth itself are represented as sentient and threatening, as collaborators with the Ceauşescu regime and enemies of humanity. This trope, part of a wider denaturalisation of food, eating, and the natural cycle I term ‘obscene consumption’, is particularly evident in the novel Herztier , first published in 1994, but can be traced back through earlier works to the author's first and most enduring artistic preoccupation: the Holocaust. Building on theories of the concentrationary imaginary and Lazarean art, this article explores the role of cultural memory in the creation of Müller's imagery and argues for a re‐evaluation of her writing as a significant contribution to the literature of post‐fascism both within and beyond Germany.