Volume 03 Issue 10-2023
117
American Journal Of Social Sciences And Humanity Research
(ISSN
–
2771-2141)
VOLUME
03
ISSUE
10
P
AGES
:
117-123
SJIF
I
MPACT
FACTOR
(2021:
5.
993
)
(2022:
6.
015
)
(2023:
7.
164
)
OCLC
–
1121105677
Publisher:
Oscar Publishing Services
Servi
ABSTRACT
In this scientific article, a scientific analysis of the work of Herta Muller will be carried out. The Niederungen piece was
written by Herta Muller. In this work, rural life is written on the basis of short stories. The writing of this work
prompted Herta Muller to write even more famous works. The description of rural life caused a great scientific dispute
on the part of scientists.
KEYWORDS
Village life, symbol, image of mother, image of daughter, image of village families.
INTRODUCTION
In a radio interview in 1989, Herta Muller underlined
the subjective starting point of her literature: "It was a
letter [...] against this Banat-Swabian village, against
this
speechless
childhood,
which
suppressed
everything
.“[1,1] The village becomes a consistently
existing theme in Muller's works. True, some literary
critics complain about "the thematic repetitions of
Muller, in which they see a material thinning,
accompanied by linguistic signs of wear, in which they
believe to recognize 'an artistic stagnation'"[2,7]; but
conversely, the "thematic stability and the unbroken
linguistic power of your literature" are praised by many
reviewers. These assessments, which range from
enthusiastic approval to harsh rejection, show an
interest directed at the village design in Muller's works.
METHODS
Research Article
ARTISTIC IMAGES OF RURAL LIFE IN THE WORKS OF GERMAN WRITER
HERTA MULLER
Submission Date:
October 14, 2023,
Accepted Date:
October 19, 2023,
Published Date:
October 24, 2023
Crossref doi:
https://doi.org/10.37547/ajsshr/Volume03Issue10-17
Mamatov Ravshanbek Rustamovich
Doctoral Student (Phd) Of Namangan State University, Namangan, Uzbekistan
Journal
Website:
https://theusajournals.
com/index.php/ajsshr
Copyright:
Original
content from this work
may be used under the
terms of the creative
commons
attributes
4.0 licence.
Volume 03 Issue 10-2023
118
American Journal Of Social Sciences And Humanity Research
(ISSN
–
2771-2141)
VOLUME
03
ISSUE
10
P
AGES
:
117-123
SJIF
I
MPACT
FACTOR
(2021:
5.
993
)
(2022:
6.
015
)
(2023:
7.
164
)
OCLC
–
1121105677
Publisher:
Oscar Publishing Services
Servi
This article does not aim to glorify the "appeal of the
exotic in the description of a foreign world of the
German-speaking minority of Romania that has
disappeared
from
the
(literary)
horizon
of
perception"[3,117], but rather illuminates the critical
reconstruction of the image of the village in Muller's
debut volume Niederungen against the background of
the actual interest in the village as a socio-historical,
cultural and aesthetic objective6. In order to
emphasize Muller's village image in tradition and
upheaval, an overview of the design of the village motif
in German literature is first given. Subsequently, the
projection surfaces of the village - the family, the
village rituals and the villagers' confrontation with the
fascist past - will be examined using the relevant
approaches of ritual research and memory theory.
Finally, the literary staging of the village is analyzed at
the levels of performance technique and language.
The anthology das Dorf in Mythen, Märchen und
Erzählungen edited by Timur Schlender gives us an
insight into the concept of the village in the texts by
Theodor Storm, Ludwig Anzengruber, Gottfried Keller,
Adalbert Stifter, Karl May, Clemens von Brentano and
many others. The village is described on the basis of the
following aspects: the village in the course of the year,
couples in the village, All kinds of people in the village,
mischief and injustice in the village, bad weather and
misfortune in the village, eerie and supernatural things
in the village. Encounter with death.[4,1]
These topics are also at the heart of the village's
history. The village story is a popular genre in the
narrative prose of realism between 1840 and 1890.
With his Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten (Black Forest
Village Stories) (1843), Berthold Auerbach gave the
narrative genre the name of the village history and
described "an entire village from the first to the last
house." With its programmatic folklore, depiction of
reality and humorous transfiguration, the village story
not only emits the model of a "realistic" literature
between romanticism, Naturalism, but also the
fictional setting, on which the third or fourth stand
should receive their right in literature.[5,390-392]
According to Jürgen Hein, the village history "turns the
poetic topos into reality only seemingly"[6,32],
because reality dissolves in myth, in the "eternal
peasantry and absolute historelessness". Even if
Auerbach derives his extraordinary success "from the
strangeness in the external appearance of his
figures"[7,50], his figures have not yet renounced their
attempt at adaptation. However, Friedrich Hebbel,
who is described by Jürgen Hein as the founder of the
"anti-village history", does not go beyond the
thematized contrast of the "dream picture of the
country and the horror picture of the city".
RESULTS
Since 1900, two opposing literary currents have
emerged: the so-called modernism (progressive
tension of art and science, language and form
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VOLUME
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ISSUE
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P
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SJIF
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(2021:
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(2022:
6.
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(2023:
7.
164
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OCLC
–
1121105677
Publisher:
Oscar Publishing Services
Servi
experiment) and, as a countermovement, the
Heimatkunst, which was admitted from 1933 through
blood-and-soil literature until 1945 as the only publicly
tolerated literature.[8,113] After 1945, the peasant epic,
which was an important part of German-language
literature for more than a hundred years and can be
considered the centerpiece of native poetry due to its
wide distribution, has been forgotten.
With her literary village design, Herta Muller revisits the
village epic that has been marginalized in
contemporary literature. With her writing, Muller sets
in motion a process of remembrance that refers to one
of the driving forces for Muller's writing. "From the
long series of thematically related memory books"[9,
35]. Sibylle Cramer sees Muller's narrative as a renewal
of the village's history "after its fascist fall from grace".
[10, 1] In the "exactness of the visual and linguistic
world", the staid realism of the village's history is
overcome. Problems and sensitivities (such as threats,
denunciation, flight), which can be better understood
from the minority situation in Romania, are also
reflected in Muller's description of the village. This
distinguishes her from other contemporary writers of
critical heimatliteratura such as Thomas Bernhard and
Franz Innerhofer.
In her debut book Niederungen (1984), which consists
of 16 short stories and prose sketches, Herta Muller
creates a depressing chronicle of village life in Banat.
The myth of the village as a place of refuge, as a place
of peace and tranquility is deconstructed in lowlands,
and the rural space with beautiful scenery and
untouched nature is unmasked as a complete illusion.
Herta Muller's debut volume Niederungen was so
praised, even enthusiastically received by literary
critics and the public interested in literature both in
Romania and in Germany after its publication, that
countrymen-organized Banat Swabians in Germany
reacted so violently and angrily, as did many members
of the German minority in the Banat. Muller's lowlands
were perceived by critics as an imposition and she
herself was described as a nest polluter. However,
Delius welcomed Niederungen as a "rousing literary
masterpiece"[11,119], which "at the same time reveals
a white-gray spot on the map": "Herta Muller writes as
if she is awakening
–
in a realm of cruelty. Because the
German village, it is, in a word, hell on earth“
.
Being the smallest social structure, the family is an
important component of village life. In contrast to
traditional local literature, which praises the village and
the family as a haven of security and safety, the family
is constructed in Muller's lowlands as a space of
coldness and strangeness. Family relations are based
on a sense of alienation, which illustrates the child's
dismissive attitude of protest towards the sphere of
parents. The legend of carefree childhood years in a
harmonious family in the countryside turns out to be a
time of humiliation and depression. "With the
Volume 03 Issue 10-2023
120
American Journal Of Social Sciences And Humanity Research
(ISSN
–
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VOLUME
03
ISSUE
10
P
AGES
:
117-123
SJIF
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MPACT
FACTOR
(2021:
5.
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)
(2022:
6.
015
)
(2023:
7.
164
)
OCLC
–
1121105677
Publisher:
Oscar Publishing Services
Servi
sharpness of an X-ray machine" Muller tears the veil of
a happy family from the rural idyll:
We are a happy family, damn it, happiness evaporates
in the beet pot, damn it, the steam bites off our heads
from time to time, happiness bites off our heads from
time to time, damn it, happiness eats our life. [12,6]
Discussion. The mother's refusal to marry this man
seems impossible:
"I wanted to say at that time that I don't want to get
married, but I saw the slaughtered beef, and
grandfather would have killed me.“ The highest
commandment of marriage is that the property be
maintained or increased. Feelings that the spouses
should connect, most often there are not. They live
together in a strange and super cooled way.
The daughter's attempt to seek tenderness from her
parents fails. The daughter wants to get closer to her
father by combing his hair. But when she accidentally
reaches into his face, the father roars and pushes her
away with his elbow. The alcoholic father, whose
hallmarks are authority, aggression and violence,
seems strange, unapproachable and emotionally
inaccessible to his daughter. With the mother, the
daughter also does not get warmth, because the only
joy of the mother is counting money. The mother's
hands are described like this: "Only when counting
money are they smooth and articulated, like spiders,
when weaving a thread." [13, 98] In view of the poor
conditions of the family, the counting of money by the
stingy and greedy mother becomes the epitome of the
struggle for survival.
From the grandmother's stories, the daughter learns
about the reasons for the disturbed relationship of
family members. Looking back, the grandmother tells
about the cruel behavior of her parents to put the
smaller children to sleep with poppy seeds or crow
dung during the day, when the adults go out into the
field and to harvest. The generations of grandparents
and parents have to accept how the needs of the
individuals are subordinated to the economy of the
village community. Parents with their fixed values and
their patriarch ally oriented role pattern are to be
classified as "educators". Being an "educator", you are
not able to show your love to your only daughter and
empathize with her.
Each member of the family has to cope with himself
and, as far as possible, fit into the village community.
The young protagonist is trying to restrain her inner
agitation and feelings, to hide her despair and
skepticism in order to at least maintain the appearance
of obedience and adaptation. This is a life strategy
practiced in the hierarchically ordered village, to elude
constant exposure, constant attention, to immediately
close oneself up again after moments of self-
disclosure. Inwardly, however, the daughter resists the
ways of thinking and behaving imposed by the family
and the village environment. Her rebellious voice is
Volume 03 Issue 10-2023
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VOLUME
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ISSUE
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SJIF
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(2021:
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6.
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(2023:
7.
164
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OCLC
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1121105677
Publisher:
Oscar Publishing Services
Servi
unmistakable in an inner monologue: “And who will
she [the mother] beat when I have grown big and
strong, who will there be who cannot defend himself
from her hard hand”.
The exhausted, complaining, constantly crying mother,
who is impotently at the mercy of the father, often
beats her "wayward" daughter. The characters
depicted here appear as victims of their living
conditions, but also as perpetrators who forcibly
suffocate everything that goes against their rigid
norms. Peter Mozan calls the interchangeable
perpetrator-victim
relationship
"the
law
of
annihilation":
The mother harasses and terrorizes the daughter, the
men kick the dogs dead, the older children beat the
weaker and smaller ones, they torment the cats, the
cats devour birds and mice, the worm eats the sloes,
etc. Aggression and fear live side by side. [14,69]
However, the critics of the time overlooked the fact
that Herta Muller "only wanted to show her
compatriots a mirror with the exemplary description of
encrusted structures on the village, which was
promptly regarded by them as a distortion
mirror."[15,61] Looking into the "mirror" reveals the
exaggerated self-confidence and the better-being
conceit of the Banat Swabians.
Herta Muller makes no secret of her critical assessment
of the ethnocentrism of her compatriots. Cleaning,
which is justifiably considered a working virtue, is
performed per formatively in lowlands. According to
Janine Roberts, rituals are distinguished from customs
and mere habits by their use of symbols.[16, 22]
The cleaning ritual turns into cleaning addiction,
whereby the mother's div is standardized and she
mutates into a working machine. According to
Christoph Wulf, rituals can be understood as "symbolic
coded div processes that generate and interpret,
preserve and change social realities". People present
themselves in rituals and ritualization’s. How people
are and how they understand their relationship to
other people and to the world, they express in ritual
stagings and arrangements.[17,74] The cleaning ritual
becomes a part of village life and represents the
mental and spiritual emptiness of the village
environment. Work can be understood as a substitute
for life for those who, like the mother figure, are not
capable of a meaningful pastime.
In a review in Literaturzeitschrift Neuer Weg
(Bucharest), Emmerich Reichrat pointed out that the
"urban working ethos, falsified by the conceit of
efficiency, makes man a process, a slave to his
performance.[18,4] Herta Muller notes: "The cult of
work that they (the Banat Swabians) make out of the
imaginary values: order, diligence and cleanliness,
words that may be attributed to them and only to them
are nothing but a flimsy justification for their
intolerance.“[19,72]
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Publisher:
Oscar Publishing Services
Servi
In the village described as a "black island" [20, 50], the
work ethic also turns into ritualized drudgery,
destruction and self-destruction. Slaughter is an
important source of income for the villagers. From the
point of view of the young protagonist, the slaughter
is an expression of the brutality of the adults. Often,
scenes of slaughter are described, whether it is a pig,
poultry or a calf.
Instead of human emotions, "the mimesis of social
forms" determines the ritual events. "It is only through
the mimesis of collective cultural traditions that there
is a self-assurance of togetherness, community and
community.“ Through the repetition of ritual actions,
the village community tries to create meaning and to
give the appearance that its organizational forms and
structures are unchangeable.
The village rituals are understood in lowlands not only
as "performances of a psychological, social or religious
text", but also as "social institutions with a
performativity surplus". This surplus is manifested in
the dramaturgy, the scenic-mimetic expressivity and
the performance and staging character of social action.
The dullness and fatigue of a mentally and
psychologically exhausted community are shown by
the village rituals.
From a diverse mosaic, an oppressive village image of
negative tradition bound ness, petty bourgeois and
oppressive narrowness emerges in the lowlands,
whereby apt social criticism masterfully combines with
high poetry. In the village, in which family and village
rituals form beautiful facades, in which the fascist past
is concealed, in which the collective takes over the
individual by eliminating individual behavior, every
remnant of idyllic wishful thinking is completely
destroyed. By exposing the gruesome image of the
village, Herta Muller wants to strengthen the right to
individuality, where the individual threatens to become
impersonal and "mechanized" in the sense of the
prevailing system due to strict norm constraints.
CONCLUSION
Herta Muller has beautifully depicted rural life in an
artistic manner. Herta Muller used the narrative
method. Reading this work, you can learn the social
environment of that time. Her later use of the narrative
method led to Herta Muller receiving the Nobel Prize in
Literature.
REFERENCES
1.
Radio talk SWF 2, Moderation: Reinhard Hübsch.
Forum im Zweites - Kultur, 10.10.1989.
2.
Paola Bozzi, The Strange Look. The work of Herta
Muller. Würzburg 2005, p. 7.
3.
Norbert Otto Ecke, Herta Muller's works in the
Mirror of Criticism, in: Norbert Otto Ecke (ed.), The
Invented Perception: An approach to Herta Muller.
Paderborn1991. p. 117.
Volume 03 Issue 10-2023
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American Journal Of Social Sciences And Humanity Research
(ISSN
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VOLUME
03
ISSUE
10
P
AGES
:
117-123
SJIF
I
MPACT
FACTOR
(2021:
5.
993
)
(2022:
6.
015
)
(2023:
7.
164
)
OCLC
–
1121105677
Publisher:
Oscar Publishing Services
Servi
4.
Timur Schlender (ed.), The village in myths, fairy
tales and tales. Munich, 1988.
5.
Uwe Baur, Village history. in: Harald Fricke / , Klaus
GrubMuller / Georg Braungart (Eds.): Reallexikon
der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft. Bd. 1. Berlin
1997, pp. 390-392.
6.
Jürgen Hein, Village history. Stuttgart 1976, p. 32.
7.
Julia Schmidt, The Principle of Realism, in: Andrea
Huyssen (ed.), The German Literature: Bourgeois
Realism. An outline in text and presentation. Bd. 11.
Ditzingen 1974, p. 50.
8.
Jürgen Hein, Village history. Stuttgart 1976, p. 113.
9.
Anonymously, From the children's perspective.
Herta Muller's prose volume Niederungen, in: Neue
Zürcher Zeitung. 09.07. 1984, p. 35.
10.
Sibylle Cramer, The Night Watches of the miller
Windisch. Herta Muller's Man is a Great Pheasant,
in: Frankfurter Rundschau, 31.05.1986.
11.
Friedrich Christian Delius, A new broom every
month, in: Der Spiegel, 30.07.1984, p.119.
12.
Herta Muller, Niederungen, Munich 2010, p. 6. The
following quotations from the work are given only
in page numbers.
13.
Dorothea Götz, Vom Ende einer heilen Welt. Herta
Muller's Niederungen, in: Anton Schwob (ed.),
Beiträge zur deutschen Literatur in Rumänien seit
1918. München 1985, p. 98.
14.
Peter Motzan, And where you touch something,
you get wounded. Zu Herta Muller: Niederungen,
in: Neue Literatur (Bucharest). 03.1983, p. 69.
15.
Carmen, Wagner, language and identity. Literary
and technical aspects of Herta Muller's prose.
Oldenburg 2002, p. 61.
16.
Janie, Roberts, Setting the Framework: Definition,
Function and Typology of Rituals, in: Evan Imber-
Black, Janine Roberts, Richard A. Whiting (eds.),
Rituals in families and family therapy (From the
English. Ob. by Sally and Bernd Hofmeister).
Heidelberg 1993, p.22.
17.
Christoph Wulf / Jörg Zirfas, Performativity, Ritual
and
Community.
Ein
Beitrag
aus
erziehungswissenschaftlicher Sicht, op.cit., p. 74.
18.
Emmerich, Reichrath, ... as if this were a life, in:
Neuer Weg, Jg. 34, No. 10, 29.05.1982, p. 4.
19.
Grazziella Predoiu, fascination and provocation
with Herta Muller. A thematic and motivic
discussion. Frankfurt am Main 2001. p. 72.
20.
Jan Assmann, The Cultural Memory. Writing,
memory and political identity in early advanced
cultures. 4th Edition. Munich 2002, p. 50.
