Encarnando la memoria de los muertos silenciados en Herztier y Atemschaukel de Herta Müller

  1. Iztueta Goizueta, Garbiñe 1
  1. 1 Universidad del País Vasco
Journal:
Quaderns de filologia. Estudis literaris

ISSN: 1135-4178

Year of publication: 2019

Issue Title: ¿A quién pertenecen los muertos? Su memoria y descanso en la literatura

Issue: 24

Pages: 271-288

Type: Article

DOI: 10.7203/QDFED.24.16344 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openOpen access editor

More publications in: Quaderns de filologia. Estudis literaris

Abstract

This article focuses on the representation of the silenced dead in Herta Müller’s Herztier and Atemschaukel. The starting point is the hypothesis that the figure of the dead serves Müller to claim the importance, according to Thomas W. Laqueur’s assumptions, of “the work of the dead”, for the collective memory of the German-Romanian community of Banat and Romania as a whole. In both novels three key elements of the representation of the memory of the dead in dictatorial and post-dictatorial Romania are analyzed: the precise way of dying, the corporeality of the dead and their relationship with objects, and, finally, the ghostly presence of the dead among the living either through objects or in the form of a dream. The presence of the dead amongst the living in Müller’s universe is not comforting, but difficult, ghostly, and disturbing.

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Funding information

*This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of the Economy (research project “Contested Memories in Iberian and European Literatures” (FFI2017-84342-P).

Funders

    • FFI2017-84342-P

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