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The Hunger Angel: A Novel
A masterful new novel from the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize, hailed for depicting the "landscape of the dispossessed" with "the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose" (Nobel Prize Committee)
It was an icy morning in January 1945 when the patrol came for seventeen-year-old Leo Auberg to deport him to a camp in the Soviet Union. Leo would spend the next five years in a coke processing plant, shoveling coal, lugging bricks, mixing mortar, and battling the relentless calculus of hunger that governed the labor colony: one shovel load of coal is worth one gram of bread.
In her new novel, Nobel laureate Herta Müller calls upon her unique combination of poetic intensity and dispassionate precision to conjure the distorted world of the labor camp in all its physical and moral absurdity. She has given Leo the language to express the inexpressible, as hunger sharpens his senses into an acuity that is both hallucinatory and profound. In scene after disorienting scene, the most ordinary objects accrue tender poignancy as they acquire new purpose—a gramophone box serves as a suitcase, a handkerchief becomes a talisman, an enormous piece of casing pipe functions as a lovers' trysting place. The heart is reduced to a pump, the breath mechanized to the rhythm of a swinging shovel, and coal, sand, and snow have a will of their own. Hunger becomes an insatiable angel who haunts the camp, but also a bare-knuckled sparring partner, delivering blows that keep Leo feeling the rawest connection to life.
Müller has distilled Leo's struggle into words of breathtaking intensity that take us on a journey far beyond the Gulag and into the depths of one man's soul.
304 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 17, 2009
451 people are currently reading
11971 people want to read
About the author
Herta Müller
107 books1,228 followersHerta Müller was born in Niţchidorf, Timiş County, Romania, the daughter of Swabian farmers. Her family was part of Romania's German minority and her mother was deported to a labour camp in the Soviet Union after World War II.
She read German studies and Romanian literature at Timişoara University. In 1976, Müller began working as a translator for an engineering company, but in 1979 was dismissed for her refusal to cooperate with the Securitate, the Communist regime's secret police. Initially, she made a living by teaching kindergarten and giving private German lessons.
Her first book was published in Romania (in German) in 1982, and appeared only in a censored version, as with most publications of the time.
In 1987, Müller left for Germany with her husband, novelist Richard Wagner. Over the following years she received many lectureships at universities in Germany and abroad.
In 1995 Müller was awarded membership to the German Academy for Writing and Poetry, and other positions followed. In 1997 she withdrew from the PEN centre of Germany in protest of its merge with the former German Democratic Republic branch.
The Swedish Academy awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature to Müller, "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed".
She currently resides in Berlin, Germany.
She read German studies and Romanian literature at Timişoara University. In 1976, Müller began working as a translator for an engineering company, but in 1979 was dismissed for her refusal to cooperate with the Securitate, the Communist regime's secret police. Initially, she made a living by teaching kindergarten and giving private German lessons.
Her first book was published in Romania (in German) in 1982, and appeared only in a censored version, as with most publications of the time.
In 1987, Müller left for Germany with her husband, novelist Richard Wagner. Over the following years she received many lectureships at universities in Germany and abroad.
In 1995 Müller was awarded membership to the German Academy for Writing and Poetry, and other positions followed. In 1997 she withdrew from the PEN centre of Germany in protest of its merge with the former German Democratic Republic branch.
The Swedish Academy awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature to Müller, "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed".
She currently resides in Berlin, Germany.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 843 reviews
January 9, 2026
A book which must not be rushed through, that's how beautiful the language is. It's hard to believe it was translated from the German. A book about the will to live, among other things, and the richness of life even under horribly reduced circumstances. To read it merely as an account of life in the Gulag would be too limiting. It goes much deeper.
Late in life a gay man remembers what it was like to be transported from his family home in Romania to the Russian Gulag. It was 1945 and he was a 17-year old ethnic German and so must be made to pay for the crimes of Hitler. Romania had been a combatant allied with the Axis Powers.
Needless to say, this young man had nothing to do with the war. Moreover, what should have been for him a memorable period of sexual awakening, was in fact a time when homosexuality was a crime punishable by death, a time when Stalin—the murderer of 25 to 50 million of his own people—still ruled.
The novel is based on the true story of the poet Oskar Pastior who lived just long enough to give Herta Müller the background for the novel. That's why it's so filled with authentic facts and vivid description. Every little trick of survival is recalled. How he starved is given particular depth and resonance. With regard to the small cooking fires inmates would make to prepare meals in the evening, the narrator says:
Dear friends, a moment of silence . . .
Late in life a gay man remembers what it was like to be transported from his family home in Romania to the Russian Gulag. It was 1945 and he was a 17-year old ethnic German and so must be made to pay for the crimes of Hitler. Romania had been a combatant allied with the Axis Powers.
Needless to say, this young man had nothing to do with the war. Moreover, what should have been for him a memorable period of sexual awakening, was in fact a time when homosexuality was a crime punishable by death, a time when Stalin—the murderer of 25 to 50 million of his own people—still ruled.
The novel is based on the true story of the poet Oskar Pastior who lived just long enough to give Herta Müller the background for the novel. That's why it's so filled with authentic facts and vivid description. Every little trick of survival is recalled. How he starved is given particular depth and resonance. With regard to the small cooking fires inmates would make to prepare meals in the evening, the narrator says:
When I had nothing to cook, the smoke snaked through my mouth. I drew in my tongue and chewed on nothing. I swallowed my spit with the evening smoke and thought about bratwurst. When I had nothing to cook, I walked close to the pots and pretended that I was on my way to brush my teeth at the well before going to bed. But by the time I put my toothbrush in my mouth I had already eaten twice. First I ate the yellow fire with the hunger of my eyes and then the smoke with the hunger of my mouth. As I ate, everything around me went still, all I could hear was the rumble of the coke ovens from the factory yard. The faster I tried to leave the well, the slower I went. I had to tear myself away from the little fires. In the rumble of the coke ovens I heard my stomach growling, the whole scene was filled with hunger. The skies sank back onto the earth, and I staggered back to the yellow light of the barrack.
Dear friends, a moment of silence . . .
September 1, 2023
Although I’ll say SPOILERS FOLLOW, this isn’t a book you read for its plot. We know the plot: horrendous times of hardship and near-starvation in a forced labor camp. While the characters may be fictional, the existence of these labor camps is a relatively unknown historical fact. After the end of WW II, the Stalin-led Soviet Union rounded up Eastern European resident Germans in countries that the Soviets occupied including East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Czechoslovakia. They enslaved people in labor camps in the USSR, such as the Romanian Germans in this story.
Through the story of one young man, this Nobel Prize winning author tells us the relatively unknown story of thousands of Romanians of German descent who, in retaliation for WW II, were forced into Russian work camps. These people were not prisoners of war; they were men and women rounded up from their homes.
Those in the camps lived for up to five years in borderline starvation eating only two meals of watery cabbage soup and a slice of bread every day. They were so hungry that they traded slices of bread with each other, often several times, because the other person’s slice always looked bigger. Occasionally they begged for food in a neighboring village or cooked edible weeds gathered from the roadside. Hunger became so all-pervasive in their lives that “it was an object” and the Hunger Angel was surely the devil. No medical care was available and those who died were buried out back.
In blister-inducing wooden shoes (only two sizes: small or large, so none fit) they shoveled coal into a power plant and worked cement to make concrete blocks. Muller’s descriptions of how you shovel coal or handle cement and its dust shows she had an informant who filled her in in great detail, or she tried it herself. (Perhaps her informant was her mother who had been imprisoned.)
During their last year in the camp they were suddenly paid some minimal wages and the hunger ended. Then they were freed. The young man feels forgotten and displaced at home by the birth of a baby brother. He feels lost in a strange world; clearly PTSD. A frightening book.
The USSR considered this forced labor part of Geman reparations after the war. Some people were enslaved as late as 1950, five years after the end of WW II. A study by the German Red Cross in 1964 estimated that 875,000 Germans had been imprisoned and the conditions were so harsh that 39% of them died in the camps. Soviet statistics admit to 275,000 people imprisoned with a death toll of 24%.
The author, Herta Muller (b. 1953), won the Nobel prize in 2009. Her family was of German ethnicity living in Romania and, before she was born, her mother had been sent to the camps. Hunger Angel is her best-known work. I’ve read two other books by her that I thought were quite good, The Land of Green Plums and The Appointment.
Top photo: German women and girls being released from a Soviet forced labor camp in 1947. Photo from Wikipedia
The author from romania-insider.com
{Revised, photos, shelves and historical info added 9/1/23]
Through the story of one young man, this Nobel Prize winning author tells us the relatively unknown story of thousands of Romanians of German descent who, in retaliation for WW II, were forced into Russian work camps. These people were not prisoners of war; they were men and women rounded up from their homes.
Those in the camps lived for up to five years in borderline starvation eating only two meals of watery cabbage soup and a slice of bread every day. They were so hungry that they traded slices of bread with each other, often several times, because the other person’s slice always looked bigger. Occasionally they begged for food in a neighboring village or cooked edible weeds gathered from the roadside. Hunger became so all-pervasive in their lives that “it was an object” and the Hunger Angel was surely the devil. No medical care was available and those who died were buried out back.
In blister-inducing wooden shoes (only two sizes: small or large, so none fit) they shoveled coal into a power plant and worked cement to make concrete blocks. Muller’s descriptions of how you shovel coal or handle cement and its dust shows she had an informant who filled her in in great detail, or she tried it herself. (Perhaps her informant was her mother who had been imprisoned.)
During their last year in the camp they were suddenly paid some minimal wages and the hunger ended. Then they were freed. The young man feels forgotten and displaced at home by the birth of a baby brother. He feels lost in a strange world; clearly PTSD. A frightening book.
The USSR considered this forced labor part of Geman reparations after the war. Some people were enslaved as late as 1950, five years after the end of WW II. A study by the German Red Cross in 1964 estimated that 875,000 Germans had been imprisoned and the conditions were so harsh that 39% of them died in the camps. Soviet statistics admit to 275,000 people imprisoned with a death toll of 24%.
The author, Herta Muller (b. 1953), won the Nobel prize in 2009. Her family was of German ethnicity living in Romania and, before she was born, her mother had been sent to the camps. Hunger Angel is her best-known work. I’ve read two other books by her that I thought were quite good, The Land of Green Plums and The Appointment.
Top photo: German women and girls being released from a Soviet forced labor camp in 1947. Photo from Wikipedia
The author from romania-insider.com
{Revised, photos, shelves and historical info added 9/1/23]
March 4, 2020
Take a deep breath.
Feel the panic swing freely in your body.
And slowly breathe on, like the main character in this masterpiece, living through the hell of a labour camp for five years, surviving under the vigil of an omnipotent hunger angel, only to trauma bond with the fear and terror to the extent that they become the main reference points for every single later experience and relationship.
You can leave the hunger behind, but the hunger angel remains your lifelong companion.
When homesickness actually becomes a mental sick note to self! Or, as the German word "Heimweh" implies: a pain.
Absolutely stunning language, one of her best novels, and so worthy of the Nobel Prize in Literature!
Feel the panic swing freely in your body.
And slowly breathe on, like the main character in this masterpiece, living through the hell of a labour camp for five years, surviving under the vigil of an omnipotent hunger angel, only to trauma bond with the fear and terror to the extent that they become the main reference points for every single later experience and relationship.
You can leave the hunger behind, but the hunger angel remains your lifelong companion.
When homesickness actually becomes a mental sick note to self! Or, as the German word "Heimweh" implies: a pain.
Absolutely stunning language, one of her best novels, and so worthy of the Nobel Prize in Literature!
December 29, 2023
Ich habe das Buch nun zweimal begonnen und immer bis zur Hälfte gelesen. Einerseits erkenne ich das literarisch Wertvolle, die Grausamkeit eines Lageraufenthalts in Russland in einer so poetischen Sprache darzustellen. Andererseits habe ich wohl nach 150 Seiten genug von Herzschaufeln, Hungerengel und Atemschaukeln. Zudem fehlt mir das Interesse an einer Geschichte, denn es gibt keine Entwicklung, es bleibt episodenhaft, kurze Einblicke in Situationen und Gefühle, wie in einem Gedichtband. Das muss man mögen.
August 17, 2025
In “Atemschaukel”, Herta Müller maps a Russian labor camp shortly after the Second World War. On her map, feelings become space and the space is broken down into its individual parts. There is the environment: the orache, the black poplars, the steppe, the barracks. Then there is the work, which in turn is broken down into cement, lime, coal, yellow sand, cinder blocks, slag and chemical substances. There are the camp inmates and there is the Angel of Hunger, who towers over everything. He dictates the daily routine, is in the guts and in every thought. The hunger angel is perhaps the best image in the novel.
Müller sneaks up on the camp under the cover of metaphors. These are sometimes visually powerful, sometimes oblique and sometimes too deliberate. At times it seems as if she wants to depict the horrors of the camp in raw and poetic nightmares, in which it is easy to get lost and lose the thread with the author. As a result, the book reads like a collage of numerous miniatures that depict everything very precisely, but do not form an organic whole.
Perhaps this is because the first-person narrator remains a stranger. His initial fear of his homosexuality being discovered outside the camp is hardly ever addressed in the camp itself. It is as if he is robbed of his individuality there, which only comes to light in the frame narrative. His interactions with the other forced laborers remain wooden, silhouette-like. Of course, this reflects the monotony, the disengagement from time and the general dullness of life in the camp, but it makes the strange world even stranger. Which is perhaps a good thing.
In general, Paul Celan and the Kahlschlag literature shimmer through again and again, so that the work seems out of time - in a good way. I wanted to put it in a nest inside me, but I couldn't find one.
Müller sneaks up on the camp under the cover of metaphors. These are sometimes visually powerful, sometimes oblique and sometimes too deliberate. At times it seems as if she wants to depict the horrors of the camp in raw and poetic nightmares, in which it is easy to get lost and lose the thread with the author. As a result, the book reads like a collage of numerous miniatures that depict everything very precisely, but do not form an organic whole.
Perhaps this is because the first-person narrator remains a stranger. His initial fear of his homosexuality being discovered outside the camp is hardly ever addressed in the camp itself. It is as if he is robbed of his individuality there, which only comes to light in the frame narrative. His interactions with the other forced laborers remain wooden, silhouette-like. Of course, this reflects the monotony, the disengagement from time and the general dullness of life in the camp, but it makes the strange world even stranger. Which is perhaps a good thing.
In general, Paul Celan and the Kahlschlag literature shimmer through again and again, so that the work seems out of time - in a good way. I wanted to put it in a nest inside me, but I couldn't find one.
June 3, 2015
So, I started reading this book and it was just one of those One Day in the Life of …… kind of Russian Gulag books, and not much of one, really, as these things go, although it promised to be different because Leo Auberg is Transylvanian, a German transplant if you will. As if Stalin needs a reason. Leo is seventeen, and gay, but that’s not why he’s packed away. His bathhouse urges are just flecks of character. If they knew he was gay, he would have gone to a different camp, a shorter stay, and no return.
He wasn’t much of a rabble-rouser; and too doughy to be a German soldier. His parents, who believed in the black square of Hitler’s mustache got to stay. Somehow, only Leo was on the List. He packed and went, packed and went, carrying silent baggage.
So here he is, where his constant companion is The Hunger Angel.*
But then I took the book to breakfast. There, amid the bustle of morning souls, I read this:
From all around the mess hall came the clatter of tin. Every spoonful is a tin kiss, I thought. And every one of us is ruled by our hunger, as though by an alien power. But no matter how well I knew that in the moment, I forgot it right away.**
Did the translator err? While it can be grammatically correct for every one of us to be ruled by our hunger, that's only so when it's a collective hunger. Leo's hunger is very personal, instead.
This is what they mean, I think, when they give Müller prizes, and say she speaks of identity and displacement, of the dispossessed.
This book talks about Hunger, yes, but not a whiny Hamsun hunger. Sometimes the hunger is Homesickness, but a more profound version - not just missing home, but not being allowed to be home. The impossibility of Home.
In the camp we had lice on our heads, in our eyebrows, on our necks, in our armpits, and in our pubic hair. We had bedbugs in our bunks. We were hungry. But we didn't say: I have lice or bedbugs or I'm hungry. We said: I'm homesick. Which was the last thing we needed.
Oh, you say, maybe the translator got it right, speaking to the universal.
It may be that I'm the old gap-toothed man in the upper-left corner of a wedding photo that doesn't exist, and simultaneously a skinny child in a schoolyard that also doesn't exist.
Leo gets out of camp, out of his arbitrary five-year sentence. He comes home, but is still homesick. He left his Hunger Angel in the camp, but is still hungry. He gets married, but he still goes to the park.
This book is about nothing less than the human soul. Some souls wind up face down in a mortar pit; some souls watch a cuckoo clock, even when the cuckoo is stolen; some souls get theirs, in a culvert, a mouth gagged with a tie, an axe, having done its work, left on the chest; some souls survive.
----- ----- ----- -----
*The German title, Atemschaukel, is a compound word Müller made up - she does that - that is difficult to translate, meaning something like "breath-swing", according to our translator. I tried to imagine the book with "breath-swing" in place of "Hunger Angel" in each instance, but failed. Although, from a distance, the point of the book, as I understand it, makes more sense for me as "breath-swing".***
**I'll have the eggs over easy, black coffee, and a moment of clarity, please.
***Yes, I'm footnoting my footnotes. And not only to annoy those that are easily annoyed by annotations on the same page. This book was intended to be a collaboration by Müller and Oskar Pastior, a Romanian-born German poet who was deported to a Soviet camp, much like the protagonist of this novel. Pastior died in 2006 and Müller imagined and wrote the book on her own, although crediting Pastior for his reminiscences. I bring this up, as a public service, because Pastior was the only German member of Oulipo, a mostly French group or artists who believe in the seeking of new structures and patterns which may be used by writers in any way they enjoy. I know some Goodreaders who are having an Oulipo phase in their reading; and Müller, here, may be paying homage.
He wasn’t much of a rabble-rouser; and too doughy to be a German soldier. His parents, who believed in the black square of Hitler’s mustache got to stay. Somehow, only Leo was on the List. He packed and went, packed and went, carrying silent baggage.
So here he is, where his constant companion is The Hunger Angel.*
But then I took the book to breakfast. There, amid the bustle of morning souls, I read this:
From all around the mess hall came the clatter of tin. Every spoonful is a tin kiss, I thought. And every one of us is ruled by our hunger, as though by an alien power. But no matter how well I knew that in the moment, I forgot it right away.**
Did the translator err? While it can be grammatically correct for every one of us to be ruled by our hunger, that's only so when it's a collective hunger. Leo's hunger is very personal, instead.
This is what they mean, I think, when they give Müller prizes, and say she speaks of identity and displacement, of the dispossessed.
This book talks about Hunger, yes, but not a whiny Hamsun hunger. Sometimes the hunger is Homesickness, but a more profound version - not just missing home, but not being allowed to be home. The impossibility of Home.
In the camp we had lice on our heads, in our eyebrows, on our necks, in our armpits, and in our pubic hair. We had bedbugs in our bunks. We were hungry. But we didn't say: I have lice or bedbugs or I'm hungry. We said: I'm homesick. Which was the last thing we needed.
Oh, you say, maybe the translator got it right, speaking to the universal.
It may be that I'm the old gap-toothed man in the upper-left corner of a wedding photo that doesn't exist, and simultaneously a skinny child in a schoolyard that also doesn't exist.
Leo gets out of camp, out of his arbitrary five-year sentence. He comes home, but is still homesick. He left his Hunger Angel in the camp, but is still hungry. He gets married, but he still goes to the park.
This book is about nothing less than the human soul. Some souls wind up face down in a mortar pit; some souls watch a cuckoo clock, even when the cuckoo is stolen; some souls get theirs, in a culvert, a mouth gagged with a tie, an axe, having done its work, left on the chest; some souls survive.
----- ----- ----- -----
*The German title, Atemschaukel, is a compound word Müller made up - she does that - that is difficult to translate, meaning something like "breath-swing", according to our translator. I tried to imagine the book with "breath-swing" in place of "Hunger Angel" in each instance, but failed. Although, from a distance, the point of the book, as I understand it, makes more sense for me as "breath-swing".***
**I'll have the eggs over easy, black coffee, and a moment of clarity, please.
***Yes, I'm footnoting my footnotes. And not only to annoy those that are easily annoyed by annotations on the same page. This book was intended to be a collaboration by Müller and Oskar Pastior, a Romanian-born German poet who was deported to a Soviet camp, much like the protagonist of this novel. Pastior died in 2006 and Müller imagined and wrote the book on her own, although crediting Pastior for his reminiscences. I bring this up, as a public service, because Pastior was the only German member of Oulipo, a mostly French group or artists who believe in the seeking of new structures and patterns which may be used by writers in any way they enjoy. I know some Goodreaders who are having an Oulipo phase in their reading; and Müller, here, may be paying homage.
September 29, 2018
Sometimes things acquire a tenderness, a monstrous tenderness, we don’t expect from them.
Every short chapter of this is like poetry; it forces you to dwell on the words and glide through its haunting imagery. The depiction of life in the Soviet forced labour concentration camp under Stalin’s regime is based on the true experiences and recollections of Romanian-born German poet Oskar Pastior who died in 2006. It is immensely insightful; there is not exactly a lot of hope or humour to be found but a sharp-cutting perceptiveness. The atmosphere is icy-cold as the air of January in which it begins; the fear of an uncertain future is mixed with a particular almost guilty sense of anticipation.
The place is Romania, the year is 1945; the war is ending. Leopold Auberg is seventeen when he, among a group of other German-Romanians, is shipped off to Russia in the dead of winter to pay for Hitler’s crimes and to inevitably worship at the shine of the hunger angel for the next five long years of his life. Prior to being deported Leo is secretly not all-together unhappy about going away. He knows the feeling of uncertainty and fear well enough; they are under his skin and he knows how to tend to them. His fear is of a double disgrace; that the state will lock him away as a criminal for meeting with men in parks and bath houses in a time when that very act is illegal; and that his family will disown him out of shame. In his mind the concentration camp becomes almost a place of escape rather than a prison; a place that doesn’t know who he is. But the place in its very essence is dark and merciless; pervaded by a feeling of sickness from longing for a home that starts to lose its meaning as time passes and, more than anything, by hunger. The hunger becomes all-consuming to the point of defining every act, every thought. It becomes a significant part of the very being:
The different descriptions of hunger are startling and eloquent. As seasons melt together, the only point of orientation in terms of the passing of time is the fixed, circular evolvement of the orach; a plant that provides the residents of the camp with modest and tasteless but pivotal nourishment as long as the season allows it. Then it starts to grow jewelled flowers in poisonously colours that stabs the eyes before it finally freezes to death. By then it no longer serves the hungry; rather it becomes a servant adorning the hunger angel. The hunger angel is always there like a guardian except it’s not guarding you but your hunger. It’s company, nonetheless and it can’t not be there; its presence is accepted or at least endured.
Leo and his fellow labourers become shells of someone they used to be; someone the place refuses to let them remain as. Like the skeletons of wild oats shimmering like fish bones as they sway (a literal example of the haunting imagery), they become empty, sexless. They lose every perception of gender. All is taken from them, but the only thing valued is their labour. Meanwhile the hunger angel become increasingly powerful as it feasts on their hunger and tempts with alluring, peaceful and orange images of death. But there is also an unspoken and necessary stubbornness to accept. To not let death or the sadness that follows dwell or settle too long, to not wither into nothingness and be swept away. When the wind is strong, the soul is carried off in waves.
Everything that happens is always simple. And there’s a principle to how things proceed, assuming that they last.
Every short chapter of this is like poetry; it forces you to dwell on the words and glide through its haunting imagery. The depiction of life in the Soviet forced labour concentration camp under Stalin’s regime is based on the true experiences and recollections of Romanian-born German poet Oskar Pastior who died in 2006. It is immensely insightful; there is not exactly a lot of hope or humour to be found but a sharp-cutting perceptiveness. The atmosphere is icy-cold as the air of January in which it begins; the fear of an uncertain future is mixed with a particular almost guilty sense of anticipation.
The place is Romania, the year is 1945; the war is ending. Leopold Auberg is seventeen when he, among a group of other German-Romanians, is shipped off to Russia in the dead of winter to pay for Hitler’s crimes and to inevitably worship at the shine of the hunger angel for the next five long years of his life. Prior to being deported Leo is secretly not all-together unhappy about going away. He knows the feeling of uncertainty and fear well enough; they are under his skin and he knows how to tend to them. His fear is of a double disgrace; that the state will lock him away as a criminal for meeting with men in parks and bath houses in a time when that very act is illegal; and that his family will disown him out of shame. In his mind the concentration camp becomes almost a place of escape rather than a prison; a place that doesn’t know who he is. But the place in its very essence is dark and merciless; pervaded by a feeling of sickness from longing for a home that starts to lose its meaning as time passes and, more than anything, by hunger. The hunger becomes all-consuming to the point of defining every act, every thought. It becomes a significant part of the very being:
What can be said about chronic hunger. Perhaps that there’s a hunger that can make you sick with hunger. That it comes in addition to the hunger you already feel. That there is a hunger which is always new, which grows insatiably, which pounces on the never-ending old hunger that already took such effort to tame. How can you face the world if all you can say about yourself is that you’re hungry.
The different descriptions of hunger are startling and eloquent. As seasons melt together, the only point of orientation in terms of the passing of time is the fixed, circular evolvement of the orach; a plant that provides the residents of the camp with modest and tasteless but pivotal nourishment as long as the season allows it. Then it starts to grow jewelled flowers in poisonously colours that stabs the eyes before it finally freezes to death. By then it no longer serves the hungry; rather it becomes a servant adorning the hunger angel. The hunger angel is always there like a guardian except it’s not guarding you but your hunger. It’s company, nonetheless and it can’t not be there; its presence is accepted or at least endured.
Leo and his fellow labourers become shells of someone they used to be; someone the place refuses to let them remain as. Like the skeletons of wild oats shimmering like fish bones as they sway (a literal example of the haunting imagery), they become empty, sexless. They lose every perception of gender. All is taken from them, but the only thing valued is their labour. Meanwhile the hunger angel become increasingly powerful as it feasts on their hunger and tempts with alluring, peaceful and orange images of death. But there is also an unspoken and necessary stubbornness to accept. To not let death or the sadness that follows dwell or settle too long, to not wither into nothingness and be swept away. When the wind is strong, the soul is carried off in waves.
Everything that happens is always simple. And there’s a principle to how things proceed, assuming that they last.
March 14, 2025
I think had I read this over the summer months it would have dragged me down too much.
But, early on in a cold and depressing January, when the post Christmas blues kicks in, I found reading of other people's suffering the perfect fit. Likened in some ways to Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Müller's haunting novel, which is based on the recollections of Romanian-born German poet Oskar Pastior, a former deportee of the Soviet labour camps, sees 17-year-old Leo Auberg narrate the story of his time spent working to the bone and surviving by any means necessary. Thus, the invention of the hunger angel as a way to cope with his ordeal. Told in brief chapters, this vivid and poetic work, which is shot through with such a bleak intensity, should be added to the list of noteworthy gulag literature. Only disappointing thing was that Leo's sexuality - it is revealed early on he is gay - could have been fused into the narrative a lot better than it was. That's four of Müller's novels now read and this was easily the most impressive.
August 24, 2014
This book ends with a grown man dancing with a raisin. And then eating it.
The fact that I, someone whose life has been as far from Gulag survivor as they come, can, after reading this book, not see that image as weird and inconsequential, but layered with all of the pathos, dignity, gruesomeness, rightness, irony, and beauty that the author intended, says much about not only Muller's gifts as a writer and Philip Boehm's gifts as a translator, but also about what this medium of fiction is and can do.
After a month where the honor of "weirdest book I read that probably changed my life" is kind of a toss-up between Invisible Cities, The Mezzanine, and this book, What can't fiction do? seems like a more appropriate question.
It's easy to be cynical about serious literature and serious writers. But when you want to describe and expose the pretensions of pretentious literary types, where do you go? To The Emperor's New Clothes, right? To a piece of literature.
The Hunger Angel is no less than an Emperor's New Clothes for the experience of being imprisoned and enslaved by a corrupt and expedient power. It creates a common language among all who have read it about certain kinds of human desperation, craftiness, beastliness, memory, reserves of will, and dreaming.
In "hunger angel" (Boehm notes at the end that Muller's word, Atemschaukel, translates literally from German as "breath swing," but I am quite fond of his interpretation) Muller names for the first time the amoral collection of desires and drives created by a starving person's hunger. Although given top billing, it is one of many new names given to previously elusive phenomena here.
Indeed, many chapters read like psycho versions of entries in the Boy Scouts Handbook. Instead of BSAH staples like "STAY DOWNWIND: To see mammals like deer in the wild, be quiet and stay downwind of their likely position..." Muller's narrator gives "advice" on things like how to pace one's bread rations and how to apply a theory of special relativity to the distorted realities of life in a work camp:
Words don't really go away in this book. They come back from temporary exile, like Leo, changed. They dance. And sometimes get eaten.
In this book, they are never thrown away.
The fact that I, someone whose life has been as far from Gulag survivor as they come, can, after reading this book, not see that image as weird and inconsequential, but layered with all of the pathos, dignity, gruesomeness, rightness, irony, and beauty that the author intended, says much about not only Muller's gifts as a writer and Philip Boehm's gifts as a translator, but also about what this medium of fiction is and can do.
After a month where the honor of "weirdest book I read that probably changed my life" is kind of a toss-up between Invisible Cities, The Mezzanine, and this book, What can't fiction do? seems like a more appropriate question.
It's easy to be cynical about serious literature and serious writers. But when you want to describe and expose the pretensions of pretentious literary types, where do you go? To The Emperor's New Clothes, right? To a piece of literature.
The Hunger Angel is no less than an Emperor's New Clothes for the experience of being imprisoned and enslaved by a corrupt and expedient power. It creates a common language among all who have read it about certain kinds of human desperation, craftiness, beastliness, memory, reserves of will, and dreaming.
In "hunger angel" (Boehm notes at the end that Muller's word, Atemschaukel, translates literally from German as "breath swing," but I am quite fond of his interpretation) Muller names for the first time the amoral collection of desires and drives created by a starving person's hunger. Although given top billing, it is one of many new names given to previously elusive phenomena here.
Indeed, many chapters read like psycho versions of entries in the Boy Scouts Handbook. Instead of BSAH staples like "STAY DOWNWIND: To see mammals like deer in the wild, be quiet and stay downwind of their likely position..." Muller's narrator gives "advice" on things like how to pace one's bread rations and how to apply a theory of special relativity to the distorted realities of life in a work camp:
"For instance, the hunger angel must have a Minkowski-wire of his own, only it's not clear from the book if the hunger angel's wire always stays attached to us, which is why he never really goes away when he says he's coming back."
Words don't really go away in this book. They come back from temporary exile, like Leo, changed. They dance. And sometimes get eaten.
In this book, they are never thrown away.
August 15, 2021
Despite the seriousness of the subject, I did not manage to imagine the content of this story chopped into naively childish sparks to approach an existential experience that one can hardly imagine unitary.
February 15, 2023
Lange wollte ich dieses Buch nicht lesen, da sehr viele Rezensionen eher negativ ausfallen. Der Stil sei zu verkünstelt und emotionslos. Umso größer war meine Überraschung als mich bereits die ersten Zeilen fasziniert haben.
Zugegeben die Sprache ist gewöhnungsbedürftig und in der Tat sehr experimentell. Manche Sätze ergeben einfach keinen Sinn oder sind in ihrer Aussage, wenn man sie dann mehrmals gelesen und schließlich erfasst hat, so banal dass es etwas enttäuschend ist. Das klingt eigentlich nicht nach der Sorte Literatur die ich bevorzuge. Sprache und Geschichte haben jedoch eine Atmosphäre entfaltet, die mich gefangen genommen hat. Ich kann nicht einmal erklären was genau mich so sehr fasziniert hat. Es ist mehr ein Gefühl, eine Stimmung die sich nicht in Worte fassen lässt und dieser sture, melancholische Überlebenswille des Protagonisten.
Dass nach einem solchen Erlebnis ein Anknüpfen an das alte Leben nicht mehr möglich ist und wie Verbündete und Leidensgenossen aus dem Lager in der Freiheit plötzlich zu Fremden werden, hat Herta Müller meines Erachtens am eindrücklichsten dargestellt. Besonders der furchtbare Umgang mit Traumata zur damaligen Zeit, als schlichtweg nicht über die Schrecken gesprochen und alles totgeschwiegen wurde ging mir sehr nahe.
Ein Buch das gewiss nicht jedermanns Sache ist, mich jedoch sehr positiv überrascht hat. Es wird nicht mein letztes Buch von Herta Müller gewesen sein.
Zugegeben die Sprache ist gewöhnungsbedürftig und in der Tat sehr experimentell. Manche Sätze ergeben einfach keinen Sinn oder sind in ihrer Aussage, wenn man sie dann mehrmals gelesen und schließlich erfasst hat, so banal dass es etwas enttäuschend ist. Das klingt eigentlich nicht nach der Sorte Literatur die ich bevorzuge. Sprache und Geschichte haben jedoch eine Atmosphäre entfaltet, die mich gefangen genommen hat. Ich kann nicht einmal erklären was genau mich so sehr fasziniert hat. Es ist mehr ein Gefühl, eine Stimmung die sich nicht in Worte fassen lässt und dieser sture, melancholische Überlebenswille des Protagonisten.
Dass nach einem solchen Erlebnis ein Anknüpfen an das alte Leben nicht mehr möglich ist und wie Verbündete und Leidensgenossen aus dem Lager in der Freiheit plötzlich zu Fremden werden, hat Herta Müller meines Erachtens am eindrücklichsten dargestellt. Besonders der furchtbare Umgang mit Traumata zur damaligen Zeit, als schlichtweg nicht über die Schrecken gesprochen und alles totgeschwiegen wurde ging mir sehr nahe.
Ein Buch das gewiss nicht jedermanns Sache ist, mich jedoch sehr positiv überrascht hat. Es wird nicht mein letztes Buch von Herta Müller gewesen sein.
October 13, 2024
Mein Großvater war 16 Jahre alt, als er als Soldat eingezogen und an die Front geschickt wurde. Nach einem Jahr wurde er inhaftiert und in ein Gefangenenlager gebracht, das er schließlich nur früher verlassen durfte, weil er noch so jung war. Zwar hat er später vom Krieg erzählt, aber es war immer mit einer gewissen Distanziertheit und sicherlich waren es nur ausgewählte Bruchstücke seiner Erlebnisse, die er mit mir geteilt hat.
Ich habe seine Geschichten gehört, habe davon gehört, wie im Lager Leichen auf dem Boden lagen und um die Lagerzäune nirgends mehr Gras wuchs, weil die Gefangenen es vor Hunger ausgerissen hatten, aber ich bin ehrlich, wirklich vorstellen wie das war konnte ich nicht. Es gibt zu viele Dinge auf dieser Welt, die man als außenstehende Person vielleicht in der Theorie begreift, aber nie wahrhaftig verstehen und nachvollziehen kann.
Auch Herta Müller erzählt in ihrem Roman Atemschaukel von einem jungen Mann in einem Arbeitslager. Der Kontext ist ein anderer (Siebenbürgen, rumänendeutsche Verfolgung unter Stalin) und die Art wie vom Lagerleben gesprochen wird gänzlich anders als die Berichte meines Großvaters. Aber was sich gleicht ist mein Gefühl zwar auf gewisse Weise teilzuhaben, letztlich aber nicht wirklich zu verstehen.
Bei einer Besprechung von Atemschaukel sagte Herta Müller, dass es ihr als Kind oft schwerfiel das Verhalten ihrer Mutter, die in einem sowjetischen Arbeitslager Zwangsarbeit verrichten musste, einzuordnen. Für sie war es nicht Teil ihrer Welt, wenn ihre Mutter davon sprach, dass Durst so viel schlimmer als Hunger sei oder wenn sie einer Kartoffel so viel Bedeutung beimaß.
Bezogen auf den Text selbst waren es vor allem die Erfahrungen des Lyrikers Oskar Pastior und anderen Gefangenen, auf denen Müller Atemschaukel basiert hat. Das erklärt vielleicht, warum der Text so metaphernreich und poetisch anmutet. Hungerengel, Atemschaukel, Herzschaufel - es wird viel mit Sprachbildern und Situationsimpressionen gearbeitet. Vieles bleibt dabei auch ungesagt und offen. Atemschaukel ist kein Buch, dass dem Lesenden alles klar präsentiert, weshalb es vielleicht nicht jeden für sich einzunehmen vermag.
Gleichzeitig hat es meine Erwartungen untergraben, weil es sehr anders ist als andere Texte zur gleichen Thematik. Das ist in jedem Fall eine große Qualität von Atemschaukel. Trotzdem blieb mir die Welt unseres Protagonisten sehr fremd und teilweise nur schwer zugänglich. Manchmal ist alles sehr abstrakt. Müllers Anmerkungen haben mir zwar beim Einordnen geholfen, aber ich hätte die Figuren gerne noch etwas besser verstanden, ohne, dass man es mir erklären muss.
Wer interessiert ist, hier der Link zum Interview von Herta Müller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StSe1...
Ich habe seine Geschichten gehört, habe davon gehört, wie im Lager Leichen auf dem Boden lagen und um die Lagerzäune nirgends mehr Gras wuchs, weil die Gefangenen es vor Hunger ausgerissen hatten, aber ich bin ehrlich, wirklich vorstellen wie das war konnte ich nicht. Es gibt zu viele Dinge auf dieser Welt, die man als außenstehende Person vielleicht in der Theorie begreift, aber nie wahrhaftig verstehen und nachvollziehen kann.
Auch Herta Müller erzählt in ihrem Roman Atemschaukel von einem jungen Mann in einem Arbeitslager. Der Kontext ist ein anderer (Siebenbürgen, rumänendeutsche Verfolgung unter Stalin) und die Art wie vom Lagerleben gesprochen wird gänzlich anders als die Berichte meines Großvaters. Aber was sich gleicht ist mein Gefühl zwar auf gewisse Weise teilzuhaben, letztlich aber nicht wirklich zu verstehen.
Bei einer Besprechung von Atemschaukel sagte Herta Müller, dass es ihr als Kind oft schwerfiel das Verhalten ihrer Mutter, die in einem sowjetischen Arbeitslager Zwangsarbeit verrichten musste, einzuordnen. Für sie war es nicht Teil ihrer Welt, wenn ihre Mutter davon sprach, dass Durst so viel schlimmer als Hunger sei oder wenn sie einer Kartoffel so viel Bedeutung beimaß.
Bezogen auf den Text selbst waren es vor allem die Erfahrungen des Lyrikers Oskar Pastior und anderen Gefangenen, auf denen Müller Atemschaukel basiert hat. Das erklärt vielleicht, warum der Text so metaphernreich und poetisch anmutet. Hungerengel, Atemschaukel, Herzschaufel - es wird viel mit Sprachbildern und Situationsimpressionen gearbeitet. Vieles bleibt dabei auch ungesagt und offen. Atemschaukel ist kein Buch, dass dem Lesenden alles klar präsentiert, weshalb es vielleicht nicht jeden für sich einzunehmen vermag.
Gleichzeitig hat es meine Erwartungen untergraben, weil es sehr anders ist als andere Texte zur gleichen Thematik. Das ist in jedem Fall eine große Qualität von Atemschaukel. Trotzdem blieb mir die Welt unseres Protagonisten sehr fremd und teilweise nur schwer zugänglich. Manchmal ist alles sehr abstrakt. Müllers Anmerkungen haben mir zwar beim Einordnen geholfen, aber ich hätte die Figuren gerne noch etwas besser verstanden, ohne, dass man es mir erklären muss.
Wer interessiert ist, hier der Link zum Interview von Herta Müller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StSe1...
November 16, 2019
أحمل معي كل ما عندي، أم أحمل معي كل ما أملك؟
أراد كل واحد من معارفي أن يعطيني غرضا قد ينفعني حين لا ينفع شئ، ولكن متي عادت أشياء هذا العالم بالنفع علينا؟
..
ماذا يمكن أن يقول المرء حول الجوع المزمن؟
كيف يدور المرء حول العالم إذا لم يكن لديه ما يقوله عن نفسه سوي أنه جائع؟
كنا مُحاطين ببؤسنا فقط، ولم نكن نستطيع فعل شئ آخر، لقد كنا عميان جوع ومرضي حنين إلي الوطن، كنا خارج الزمان، وخارج أنفسنا، ومستغنين عن هذا العالم، أو كان العالم مستغنياً عنا
..
لقد كنت سجين نفسي، ومنتزعا منها مرميا إلي خارجها، ماعدت منتميا لهم، وفي تلك اللحظة كنت أفقد ذاتي. كنا نعرف كم تغيرنا وإنا لن نعود ثانية كما كنا، ياله من عبء أن تكون غريبا! لكن العبء الأكبر هو أن تكون القريب الغريب، أن تتأرجح بين التقرب والتغرب
القراءة الثالثة لهيرتا موللر بعد روايتين لم أكملهما، ولم أتوقع حقا أن تصالحني هذه الرواية عليها، وإلي الآن لا اعرف حقا لماذا اخترت هذه الرواية بالذات في هذا الوقت بالذات، لكنني سعيدة حقا بهذه التجربة
أرجوحة النفس ...
حين نتأرجح بين أنفسنا وبين الآخرين .. ونتأرجح معهم ومعنا في أيام ضبابية كثيفة المشاعر والأفكار والذكريات
حين تقذف بنا أرجوحة الأيام إلي الأعلي نحو السماء ثم تهبط بنا سريعا نحو هاوية العمر والسنين، فلا ندري أين كنا ولا إلي أين سنذهب بعد قليل
هي رحلة .. رحلة لا تتوقف في أرجوحة عملاقة تضيق بنا علي اتساعها .. ولكنها حياة رغم كل شئ
نعم أقول أنا البيانو الذي لم يعد صالحا للعزف
الرواية ذكريات يومية لشاعر لم اسمع عنه من قبل يدعي أوسكار باستيور عاني أيام صعيبة في معسكرات العمل الشاق الروسية، رواية متعبة رغم جمال اقتباساتها .. ما صعب عليّ تحمله دقة الوصف، وقسوة الألفاظ
هيرتا موللر ... لقد صالحتني الرواية عليكي حقا
April 6, 2021
Gaila,bet nusivyliau🙄,nors tema skaudi,bet manęs nesujaudino ir nesudomino😐,viskas kažkaip padrika ir iki galo nelb aišku, minčių kratinys.🤔
March 28, 2022
17-year-old Romanian Leo Auberg is sent off to a Russian labour camp with a gramophone case filled with poetry, aftershave, socks and a silk scarf. He will spend 5 years shovelling coal, lugging cement and pitching slag armed only with the words of his grandmother "I know you'll come back."
The book is comprised of short chapters recounting aspects of Leo's life in the gulag. It is filled with oblique details that reveal Herta Muller's long correspondence with poet Oskar Pastior who endured 5 years in a Soviet Labor Camp. This isn't misery porn, some grandiose statement of suffering - it's more precise than that and all the more pervasive.
There's the cheek-bread, so named for the white hunger-fur that appears before death that reveals bartering for food is wasted on them. The nightly exchange of bread and the curse of your ever shrinking exchanges. Trading 50 pages of Nietzsche's Zarathustra cigarette paper for 1 measure of salt. The ridiculous image of the cuckoo-less cuckoo clock - the mechanism reduced to a small piece of rubber, like an earthworm that vibrated with a pitiful rattling noise as it called the hour. And the hunger angel. Even sixty years since his release from the camp, Leo can't escape the memory of the hunger angel — is still locked up inside the taste of eating, that he is still eating against starvation.
Interesting to talk to someone who read it in German and the poetry of the original language. Credit to translator Philip Boehm for his word choice as much of it is still retained in the English translation. Some subtlety is inevitably lost in hunger angel, breath swing, heart shovel and hase-vey but I appreciated the distinct word construction.
The book is comprised of short chapters recounting aspects of Leo's life in the gulag. It is filled with oblique details that reveal Herta Muller's long correspondence with poet Oskar Pastior who endured 5 years in a Soviet Labor Camp. This isn't misery porn, some grandiose statement of suffering - it's more precise than that and all the more pervasive.
There's the cheek-bread, so named for the white hunger-fur that appears before death that reveals bartering for food is wasted on them. The nightly exchange of bread and the curse of your ever shrinking exchanges. Trading 50 pages of Nietzsche's Zarathustra cigarette paper for 1 measure of salt. The ridiculous image of the cuckoo-less cuckoo clock - the mechanism reduced to a small piece of rubber, like an earthworm that vibrated with a pitiful rattling noise as it called the hour. And the hunger angel. Even sixty years since his release from the camp, Leo can't escape the memory of the hunger angel — is still locked up inside the taste of eating, that he is still eating against starvation.
Interesting to talk to someone who read it in German and the poetry of the original language. Credit to translator Philip Boehm for his word choice as much of it is still retained in the English translation. Some subtlety is inevitably lost in hunger angel, breath swing, heart shovel and hase-vey but I appreciated the distinct word construction.
August 29, 2024
Nachtrag/ gelesen ca. 2013
Bestürzend, anspruchsvoll, beklemmend, ergreifend.
Der fiktive Siebenbürger Sachse Leopold erzählt in Ich-Form, was er von 1945 bis 1950 in einem sowjetischen Arbeitslager erleidet.
Nüchterne, kunstvolle Sprache, viele Metaphern, 64 einzelne Kapitel wurden aneinandergereiht.
Bestürzend, anspruchsvoll, beklemmend, ergreifend.
Der fiktive Siebenbürger Sachse Leopold erzählt in Ich-Form, was er von 1945 bis 1950 in einem sowjetischen Arbeitslager erleidet.
Nüchterne, kunstvolle Sprache, viele Metaphern, 64 einzelne Kapitel wurden aneinandergereiht.
June 30, 2020
One of my earliest, strongest childhood memories is when my family picked up my uncle, who had been a political prisoner in East Germany, from the hospital where he had been placed after his release, like many others in his position, after his freedom had been bought by the West German government. Although I never personally experienced such treatment, I was inculcated at an early age with a deep, repellant understanding of the fact that there were people like my uncle who had been wrongly incarcerated because of their political beliefs, ethnicity, geographic location, or for just being in the wrong historical place at the wrong historical time.
So I was aware of what was happening in countless places behind the Iron Curtain. And during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution in China. And in Cambodia under Pol Pot. And in Uganda, the Congo, Rhodesia, South Africa. And in Chile and Argentina and Central America as people disappeared. And American prisons like Parchman and Angola, for that matter. These were just facts of life in the decades after World War II. Actually, throughout history. But as I read Atemschaukel, it struck me that many young people today have no memory or understanding of these episodes in history and how they were both distinctive and similar to the great socio-political fear of their age: terrorism.
For me, Herta Müller’s book is as much a cultural historical statement as it is a work of literature. This being the third book of hers that I’ve read, I'm warming up to her sparing prose, episodic chapters that almost become short stories in their own right, and inferences about the past and future. The nebulous opening of a young Romanian ethnic German, who has been designated to be a prisoner at a Russian labor camp as a form of collective, representational penance is chillingly cruel. His grandmother’s farewell, „ICH WEISS DU KOMMST WIEDER“ (“I know you will come back”) sets him off into an ordeal that will take years, and even when it is over, it never loosens its grip on his subsequent life. The daily torments, tragedies, frustrations, interactions with the other characters, and the ever-present Hungerengel (Hunger Angel) are punctuated and revealed through Müller’s writing.
The title Atemschaukel is more difficult to translate than most German words (especially since the word doesn’t even exist in German). The translators changed it to Hunger Angel, which is a decision I completely understand and accept given the repeated references to it in the novel. But rather than the use the literal translation of “breath swing,” I think the sentiment behind Atemschaukel is closer to “on the edge.” In this case it is the central character being on the edge of so many things—his existence, his identity, his interactions with others, his ability to deal with every contemporary moment of his life. Müller’s story is about more than an account of a Russian labor camp prisoner. Atemschaukel is a microcosm of what millions of people experienced in the latter half of the 20th century—and what countless anonymous persons still do. It is a link joining that era to today's fear of terrorism and the atrocities it can breed.
So I was aware of what was happening in countless places behind the Iron Curtain. And during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution in China. And in Cambodia under Pol Pot. And in Uganda, the Congo, Rhodesia, South Africa. And in Chile and Argentina and Central America as people disappeared. And American prisons like Parchman and Angola, for that matter. These were just facts of life in the decades after World War II. Actually, throughout history. But as I read Atemschaukel, it struck me that many young people today have no memory or understanding of these episodes in history and how they were both distinctive and similar to the great socio-political fear of their age: terrorism.
For me, Herta Müller’s book is as much a cultural historical statement as it is a work of literature. This being the third book of hers that I’ve read, I'm warming up to her sparing prose, episodic chapters that almost become short stories in their own right, and inferences about the past and future. The nebulous opening of a young Romanian ethnic German, who has been designated to be a prisoner at a Russian labor camp as a form of collective, representational penance is chillingly cruel. His grandmother’s farewell, „ICH WEISS DU KOMMST WIEDER“ (“I know you will come back”) sets him off into an ordeal that will take years, and even when it is over, it never loosens its grip on his subsequent life. The daily torments, tragedies, frustrations, interactions with the other characters, and the ever-present Hungerengel (Hunger Angel) are punctuated and revealed through Müller’s writing.
The title Atemschaukel is more difficult to translate than most German words (especially since the word doesn’t even exist in German). The translators changed it to Hunger Angel, which is a decision I completely understand and accept given the repeated references to it in the novel. But rather than the use the literal translation of “breath swing,” I think the sentiment behind Atemschaukel is closer to “on the edge.” In this case it is the central character being on the edge of so many things—his existence, his identity, his interactions with others, his ability to deal with every contemporary moment of his life. Müller’s story is about more than an account of a Russian labor camp prisoner. Atemschaukel is a microcosm of what millions of people experienced in the latter half of the 20th century—and what countless anonymous persons still do. It is a link joining that era to today's fear of terrorism and the atrocities it can breed.
October 24, 2020
Pirma šiais metais lietuvių kalba skaitoma knyga. Lentynoje manęs laukusi visus dešimt metų. Kai ji buvo išleista lietuviškai paskaičiau 50psl ir mečiau, nes nesamonė. Dabar pribrendau ir oi kaip to pribrendimo reikėjo!
Ar galima parašyti poeziją apie lagerio kančias? Herta Müller gali. Ir parašė. Skaudžiai lyg peilio pjūviu. Knyga nėra nei lengva, nei patogi nei miela.
Skaitant žodžiai liejasi ir persipina kaip dainoje. Ji nedaugžodžiauja, viskas apgalvota iki smulkmenų. Kiekvienas trumpiausias sakinys turi gilią prasmę. Apie žmogaus skausmą, kančios beprasmybę ir kaip ji subanalėja kai viską valdo alkis. Vietomis net kvapą užgniaužia kokia banali yra lageryje gyvenačio žmogaus kančia. Kai skaičiuoji uteles ir niekas neturi jokios prasmės apart maistą . Knyga nėra labai lengva, bet žodžiai liejasi tarsi savaime. Tokia alkio poezija. Yra ir tikros poezijos apie niekur nesitraukiantį alkio angelą.
Nėra jokio rišlaus chronoligiško pasakojimo. Tiesiog trumpi skyriai lyg posmai liūdnoje dainoje. Sodrus bei labai organiška tekstas. Tikras rašytojos talentas.
Romanas yra parašytas remiantis Oskaro Pastioro lagerio atsiminimų kuriuos autorė užrašinėjo į sąsiuvinius besikalbant.
Rekomenduoti nedrįsčiau niekam. Čia daugiau formos nei turinio. Patiks tikriems literatūros gurmanams. Arba nepatiks.
“Turiu planą
Alkio angelui mane sveriant, aš apgausiu jo svarstykles.
Būsiu toks lengvas, kaip mano pasitaupytoji duona. Ir lygiai taip pat sunkiai atkandamas.
Dar pamatysi, sakau pats sau, tai trumpas planas, bet jis ilgai tvers” p212
“Jau kelis mėnesius kojomis buvau namie, kur niekas nežinojo, ką esu regėjęs. Niekas ir neklausinėjo. Pasakoti galina tik tada, kai vėl vaidini tą, apie kurį pasakoji” p255
P.S. Nuostabus Antano Gailiaus vertimas. Retai kada sutiksi taip kokybiškai išverstą knygą
Ar galima parašyti poeziją apie lagerio kančias? Herta Müller gali. Ir parašė. Skaudžiai lyg peilio pjūviu. Knyga nėra nei lengva, nei patogi nei miela.
Skaitant žodžiai liejasi ir persipina kaip dainoje. Ji nedaugžodžiauja, viskas apgalvota iki smulkmenų. Kiekvienas trumpiausias sakinys turi gilią prasmę. Apie žmogaus skausmą, kančios beprasmybę ir kaip ji subanalėja kai viską valdo alkis. Vietomis net kvapą užgniaužia kokia banali yra lageryje gyvenačio žmogaus kančia. Kai skaičiuoji uteles ir niekas neturi jokios prasmės apart maistą . Knyga nėra labai lengva, bet žodžiai liejasi tarsi savaime. Tokia alkio poezija. Yra ir tikros poezijos apie niekur nesitraukiantį alkio angelą.
Nėra jokio rišlaus chronoligiško pasakojimo. Tiesiog trumpi skyriai lyg posmai liūdnoje dainoje. Sodrus bei labai organiška tekstas. Tikras rašytojos talentas.
Romanas yra parašytas remiantis Oskaro Pastioro lagerio atsiminimų kuriuos autorė užrašinėjo į sąsiuvinius besikalbant.
Rekomenduoti nedrįsčiau niekam. Čia daugiau formos nei turinio. Patiks tikriems literatūros gurmanams. Arba nepatiks.
“Turiu planą
Alkio angelui mane sveriant, aš apgausiu jo svarstykles.
Būsiu toks lengvas, kaip mano pasitaupytoji duona. Ir lygiai taip pat sunkiai atkandamas.
Dar pamatysi, sakau pats sau, tai trumpas planas, bet jis ilgai tvers” p212
“Jau kelis mėnesius kojomis buvau namie, kur niekas nežinojo, ką esu regėjęs. Niekas ir neklausinėjo. Pasakoti galina tik tada, kai vėl vaidini tą, apie kurį pasakoji” p255
P.S. Nuostabus Antano Gailiaus vertimas. Retai kada sutiksi taip kokybiškai išverstą knygą
December 14, 2015
The powerful futility of words
Words have a disconcerting power over Leo Auberg: the mere word AQUARELL (water colour) can make him stagger, as if kicked. That word seems to know how far he has already gone in his illicit bathhouse encounters. And yet, even more disconcertingly, a word like LAGER (camp), despite wartime, despite the penal camp near the canal from which those men arrested in the park or the bathhouse, brutally interrogated and incarcerated, from which they never return, or if they do then only as the walking dead, for that word LAGER, still, he is deaf. He is seventeen, he wants to get away from his family, and even the Russian police patrol, going round with a list, taking all those German speaking adults between the age of 17 and 45, even that seems to him almost like rite of passage, initiation into the adult world.
His grandmother's parting words to him are ICH WEISS DU KOMMST WIEDER.
I know you will come back. He didn't think much about those words. He didn't know they would follow him, work in him, become a confederate of his shovel, an adversary of the hunger angel. Those words would keep him alive.
Those words can transform into a handkerchief, the only person that took care of him in camp. Sometimes objects gain a tenderness, a monstrous tenderness.
Rain like knives of ice from October onwards: snow, sleet, howling gales: summer is a chance to warm the gnawing hunger. Gnawing lice, lice in the eyebrows, in the armpits, in the genital hair. Bed-bugs.
Death. Death by crushing, by drowning, by being buried under cement, by the toxic effects of illicit schnaps. By slow starvation, because your own husband is taking your food. The fearful mathematics of death: 330 in March of the fourth year. The fearful mathematics of starvation: 1 lift of the shovel=1 gramme of bread.
Leo returns home to Hermannstadt in Siebenbürgen after five years in the labour camp, but he never leaves it behind him. The words on his treasures will never be DA WAR ICH, in the past. Nor will they be DA BIN ICH, in the present. On his treasures will stand the words DA KOMM ICH NICHT WEG. The gulag fills his head, colonises his thinking, from right to left, from day to night. It is with him always, there is no escape.
There is no defence. Silence will not help, but neither will speaking. That fear of letting go, that fear of freedom, that fear of being close to another, no words can ever overcome that. No words ever will.
Words have a disconcerting power over Leo Auberg: the mere word AQUARELL (water colour) can make him stagger, as if kicked. That word seems to know how far he has already gone in his illicit bathhouse encounters. And yet, even more disconcertingly, a word like LAGER (camp), despite wartime, despite the penal camp near the canal from which those men arrested in the park or the bathhouse, brutally interrogated and incarcerated, from which they never return, or if they do then only as the walking dead, for that word LAGER, still, he is deaf. He is seventeen, he wants to get away from his family, and even the Russian police patrol, going round with a list, taking all those German speaking adults between the age of 17 and 45, even that seems to him almost like rite of passage, initiation into the adult world.
His grandmother's parting words to him are ICH WEISS DU KOMMST WIEDER.
I know you will come back. He didn't think much about those words. He didn't know they would follow him, work in him, become a confederate of his shovel, an adversary of the hunger angel. Those words would keep him alive.
Those words can transform into a handkerchief, the only person that took care of him in camp. Sometimes objects gain a tenderness, a monstrous tenderness.
Rain like knives of ice from October onwards: snow, sleet, howling gales: summer is a chance to warm the gnawing hunger. Gnawing lice, lice in the eyebrows, in the armpits, in the genital hair. Bed-bugs.
Death. Death by crushing, by drowning, by being buried under cement, by the toxic effects of illicit schnaps. By slow starvation, because your own husband is taking your food. The fearful mathematics of death: 330 in March of the fourth year. The fearful mathematics of starvation: 1 lift of the shovel=1 gramme of bread.
Leo returns home to Hermannstadt in Siebenbürgen after five years in the labour camp, but he never leaves it behind him. The words on his treasures will never be DA WAR ICH, in the past. Nor will they be DA BIN ICH, in the present. On his treasures will stand the words DA KOMM ICH NICHT WEG. The gulag fills his head, colonises his thinking, from right to left, from day to night. It is with him always, there is no escape.
Man kann sich nicht schützen, weder durchs Schweigen noch durchs Erzählen.
There is no defence. Silence will not help, but neither will speaking. That fear of letting go, that fear of freedom, that fear of being close to another, no words can ever overcome that. No words ever will.
December 20, 2019
In each of her books Herta Müller succeeds in creating a very ingenious world, with its own language and idiom that illustrates the traumatic effect of what her main characters have to undergo. Also in this case, the experiences of a 17 year old Romanian German, which at the beginning of 1945 is arrested by the Soviets and transported to a camp, deep in Russia (or Ukraine), to do forced labour. The boy describes his experiences in short chapters, and they are absolutely shocking.
But it aren’t plain observations, Müller describes them with a huge sense of the psychological complexity of people who are driven to the margin of what’s liveable. In this her work does not differ very much of what Primo Levi did Survival in Auschwitz: wondering what a human is, in the middle of the most extreme inhumane. But Müller adds a linguistic layer to it: her character brings his trauma in a poetic-fantastic-horribly distorted language as with the handsome description of the "Hunger angel" who constantly pops up, or the "breath-swinging" movement in shoveling cement or coal; this magical-realistic language is clearly a means to survive.
All this is handsome, clever and gripping, surely if you reread it a number of times. But again I have to confess (this is already the 3rd book of Müller I read) that it really didn’t captivate me, I don't really like it, it's just too strange. Maybe I don’t have the stomach for it?!
But it aren’t plain observations, Müller describes them with a huge sense of the psychological complexity of people who are driven to the margin of what’s liveable. In this her work does not differ very much of what Primo Levi did Survival in Auschwitz: wondering what a human is, in the middle of the most extreme inhumane. But Müller adds a linguistic layer to it: her character brings his trauma in a poetic-fantastic-horribly distorted language as with the handsome description of the "Hunger angel" who constantly pops up, or the "breath-swinging" movement in shoveling cement or coal; this magical-realistic language is clearly a means to survive.
All this is handsome, clever and gripping, surely if you reread it a number of times. But again I have to confess (this is already the 3rd book of Müller I read) that it really didn’t captivate me, I don't really like it, it's just too strange. Maybe I don’t have the stomach for it?!
January 23, 2019
Auch wieder so ein Missverständnis. "Herta Müller", dachte ich, "das klingt nach DDR und beigefarbener Langeweile". Dabei ist es ganz anders und das Buch handelt von Zwangsarbeit im sowjetischen Lager. (Obwohl ich es wahrscheinlich auch nicht gelesen hätte, wenn ich das gewusst hätte, denn Bücher über Gulag, KZ und Verbannung habe ich schon genug für zwei Leben gelesen.) An sich ein schönes Buch, aber wie man dem Titel schon entnehmen kann, enthält es schlimme Dichterwörter und das verursacht mir eine Seelenbrezel.
May 17, 2024
Am tot amanat-o pe Herta Muller, bine ca am ajuns in sfarsit la ea prin aceasta carte cu un limbaj aparte, in care cuvintele au profunzime si ating corzi sensibile in suflet, dar in acelasi timp atat de trista.
Port cumva in mine suferinta bunicii mele care, ca si Leo din carte, a fost printre zecile de mii de sasi si svabi deportati in lagarele de munca fortata din Ucraina, pentru a participa la "reconstructia" URSS, sarmane suflete care au platit o vina ce nu le apartinea, o alta aberatie din istoria inumanitatii.
S-a scris prea putin despre asta.
In lagar fiecare om de acolo îşi poartă pe umeri Ingerul hămesit al foamei in "vremea-lui-piele-si-oase."
Ratia zilnica de paine este cantarita exact, dar fiecare bucată pare mai mare în mâinile celuilalt, ciorba este o zeama cu cateva fire de varza, munca este extenuanta, mizeria si frigul de nesuportat, ca si paduchii si plosnitele. Loboda mai amageste foamea in unele perioade ca si cojile de cartofi cautate in gunoaie.
Foamea este chinuitoare, un cosmar, ea bantuie in carte ca o fantoma.
Cinci ani de tinerete chinuiti si pierduti l-au marcat pe viata pe Leo, iar poate ceea ce l-a salvat a fost forta unor cuvinte spuse de catre bunica sa la plecarea in lagar.
„Am retinut aceasta propozitie, dar nu dinadins. Fara sa bag de seama, am luat-o cu mine in lagar. N-aveam idee ca ma insoteste. Dar o astfel de propoziţie nu depinde de tine. A lucrat în mine mai mult decât toate cartile pe care mi le luasem. STIU CĂ TE VEI INTOARCE a devenit complice cu lopata de inima si adversarul Ingerului foamei. Si pentru ca m-am reîntors, pot sa afirm : o astfel de propozitie te tine in viata."
Ma asteptam ca intoarcerea lui Leo acasa, in Sibiu, sa fie altfel, comportamentul familiei este ciudat pentru mine, ceea ce poate fi inteles este doar ca :
"Acum eram un om schimbat. Stiam unii despre altii cum nu mai suntem si nu vom mai ajunge niciodata. "
Cartea se bazeaza pe marturiile mai multor supravietuitori, dar mai ales pe cele ale poetului Oskar Pastior, prietenul scriitoarei.Mama Hertei a fost si ea in lagarele din URSS. I-a dat fetei ei numele unei bune prietene care a sfarsit acolo.
Am ascultat-o pe Herta Muller vorbind, mi se pare un om vertical si hotarat, inteligenta si sensibila, consider ca merita Nobelul.
O voi mai citi.
Port cumva in mine suferinta bunicii mele care, ca si Leo din carte, a fost printre zecile de mii de sasi si svabi deportati in lagarele de munca fortata din Ucraina, pentru a participa la "reconstructia" URSS, sarmane suflete care au platit o vina ce nu le apartinea, o alta aberatie din istoria inumanitatii.
S-a scris prea putin despre asta.
In lagar fiecare om de acolo îşi poartă pe umeri Ingerul hămesit al foamei in "vremea-lui-piele-si-oase."
Ratia zilnica de paine este cantarita exact, dar fiecare bucată pare mai mare în mâinile celuilalt, ciorba este o zeama cu cateva fire de varza, munca este extenuanta, mizeria si frigul de nesuportat, ca si paduchii si plosnitele. Loboda mai amageste foamea in unele perioade ca si cojile de cartofi cautate in gunoaie.
Foamea este chinuitoare, un cosmar, ea bantuie in carte ca o fantoma.
Cinci ani de tinerete chinuiti si pierduti l-au marcat pe viata pe Leo, iar poate ceea ce l-a salvat a fost forta unor cuvinte spuse de catre bunica sa la plecarea in lagar.
„Am retinut aceasta propozitie, dar nu dinadins. Fara sa bag de seama, am luat-o cu mine in lagar. N-aveam idee ca ma insoteste. Dar o astfel de propoziţie nu depinde de tine. A lucrat în mine mai mult decât toate cartile pe care mi le luasem. STIU CĂ TE VEI INTOARCE a devenit complice cu lopata de inima si adversarul Ingerului foamei. Si pentru ca m-am reîntors, pot sa afirm : o astfel de propozitie te tine in viata."
Ma asteptam ca intoarcerea lui Leo acasa, in Sibiu, sa fie altfel, comportamentul familiei este ciudat pentru mine, ceea ce poate fi inteles este doar ca :
"Acum eram un om schimbat. Stiam unii despre altii cum nu mai suntem si nu vom mai ajunge niciodata. "
Cartea se bazeaza pe marturiile mai multor supravietuitori, dar mai ales pe cele ale poetului Oskar Pastior, prietenul scriitoarei.Mama Hertei a fost si ea in lagarele din URSS. I-a dat fetei ei numele unei bune prietene care a sfarsit acolo.
Am ascultat-o pe Herta Muller vorbind, mi se pare un om vertical si hotarat, inteligenta si sensibila, consider ca merita Nobelul.
O voi mai citi.
May 8, 2014
Around the World: Romania
I really wanted to like this. It had some impressive moments, some images that caused my stomach to lurch in surprise and I have to give Muller credit for the unique style of this novel. But I just didn't like it. Frankly, I was bored. I couldn't connect to the protagonist, and the level of detail provided about every speck of dust and every scrap of food became wearing and frustrating. There isn't really a moving plot here--just poetic descriptions, images, and microscopic examinations of the minutiae of life in a forced labour camp. I eventually started skipping over huge sections, sometimes entire chapters just to get to the end. I realize that the structure and focus of the book was purposeful. I can appreciate Muller's project--an attempt to capture the bizarre contrast between the mundane and the horrific in the labour camp setting. Starvation takes away humanity, leaving empty husks of people in its wake, so its no surprise that there is no energy in the text, nothing moving. But I could only deal with so many descriptions of lice and potato peels. It was all too depressing. There were very few moments of joy, nothing to give the reader hope, nothing to temper the despair. So, unfortunately, I didn't like this book, and only pressed on because it won the Nobel Prize, otherwise I would have stopped after the first few chapters. I want to stress that I don't think this was bad writing. It may even have been a deeply important book, but I personally wasn't provoked by it.
I really wanted to like this. It had some impressive moments, some images that caused my stomach to lurch in surprise and I have to give Muller credit for the unique style of this novel. But I just didn't like it. Frankly, I was bored. I couldn't connect to the protagonist, and the level of detail provided about every speck of dust and every scrap of food became wearing and frustrating. There isn't really a moving plot here--just poetic descriptions, images, and microscopic examinations of the minutiae of life in a forced labour camp. I eventually started skipping over huge sections, sometimes entire chapters just to get to the end. I realize that the structure and focus of the book was purposeful. I can appreciate Muller's project--an attempt to capture the bizarre contrast between the mundane and the horrific in the labour camp setting. Starvation takes away humanity, leaving empty husks of people in its wake, so its no surprise that there is no energy in the text, nothing moving. But I could only deal with so many descriptions of lice and potato peels. It was all too depressing. There were very few moments of joy, nothing to give the reader hope, nothing to temper the despair. So, unfortunately, I didn't like this book, and only pressed on because it won the Nobel Prize, otherwise I would have stopped after the first few chapters. I want to stress that I don't think this was bad writing. It may even have been a deeply important book, but I personally wasn't provoked by it.
January 5, 2026
Çok iyi yazılmış, kasvetli ama bir o kadar da biricik bir metin Soluk Salıncağı. Çalışma kampına gönderilen 17 yaşındaki Leo üzerinden açlığı sadece fiziksel bir durum olarak değil, insanın düşünme biçimini, ahlakını ve dünyayla kurduğu ilişkiyi dönüştüren bir mesela olarak ele alıyor. Amacına da büyük oranda ulaştığını düşünüyorum. Büyük oranda diyorum çünkü daha çok sevdiğim Herta Müller romanları olmuştu. Burada eksik kalan bir şeyler var sanki ama bu, Soluk Salıncağı’nın çok iyi yazılmış bir roman olduğu gerçeğini değiştirmiyor. Büyük dramatik anlardan çok, küçük tekrarlar ve sessizliklerle ilerlemesi romanın en güçlü kısmı. Leo’nun iç dünyası, hayatta kalma refleksiyle dünyayı “şiirsel” bir yerden görme arasında gidip geliyor. Romanın kısa kısa (kesik kesik) bölümlerden oluşması da bu açıdan çok doğru tercih. Bir diğer sevdiğim kısmı da kamptan döndükten sonra bile travmanın nasıl devam ettiğini, özgürlüğün her zaman “geri dönüş” anlamına gelmediğini göstermesi oldu. Müller kesinlikle yaşayan en özel yazarlardan birisi.
May 11, 2022
slične temeljne atmosfere kao djela koja se bave nacističkim zločinima i logorima, dakle: bolna, sumorna, mučna i mračna. s druge strane, herta müller (nobel 2009.) je poeta pa je ovo djelo koje opisuje četverogodišnji boravak u ruskom radnom logoru (1946.-1949.) protkala finim, toplim i mekanim riječima poput "končić", "vjenčići", "malinovac" ili "rupčić". vrlo smislena i bez da je upala u zamku drame, čak se i okrutnosti uspjela othrvati, čitanje "ljuljačke daha" je istovremeno užitak od pažljivo i precizno biranih riječi i žalost nad povijesti ljudskog roda.
January 7, 2016
En el pasado la actividad literaria se encontraba limitada en muchos sentidos, ya que tanto los escritores como el público en general, en especial los lectores, estaba restringido a una clase social (alta y media-alta), una raza (blanca) y un género (masculino). Ahora debido a la evolución y a las nuevas condiciones de la sociedad, así como al momento histórico que vivimos con sus concomitantes y afortunados estímulos nos ofrece, entre otras cosas, una gran diversidad en la oferta literaria. Una de las resultantes más apreciadas de la caída de muchas barreras y prejuicios es que el talento de la mujer se ha visto eclosionado, fruto de ello son las grandes escritoras que se encuentran en la palestra de unas décadas para acá.
Un indicador de lo anterior puede ser el Premio Nobel de Literatura: a partir de que este Premio se instituyó en 1901 y hasta 1990, éste se entregó en 83 ocasiones, correspondiendo tal Premio a solamente 6 mujeres lo que representa un exiguo 7%. En cambio de 1991 a la fecha se ha entregado en 26 ocasiones, habiendo sido galardonadas un total de 8 mujeres lo que representa un 31%, casi la tercera parte del total de los Premios. Si manipulamos un poco la estadística haciéndola tomar un sesgo insidioso tenemos que de los tres últimos ganadores, el 66% han sido mujeres. ¡Y lo que falta!
Sin duda una de estas grandes escritoras es la Rumana-Alemana Herta Müller, ganadora del Premio Nobel en el año 2009 «quien, con la concentración de la poesía y la franqueza de la prosa, describe el paisaje de los desposeídos».
El sufrimiento, el dolor, las carencias, el hambre, la humillación y las miserias humanas son el tema principal de esta novela que se desarrolla en uno de tantos campos de concentración rusos tan socorridos por los gobiernos totalitarios. El relato acerca de cómo se reduce y degrada a su mínima expresión la condición humana en aquellos infiernos terrenales es impactante.
La autora logra encerrarnos literalmente en una lectura que es un fiel reflejo del campo de concentración: sórdida, poco estimulante, en un ambiente opresivo, sombría, sin emociones, con largas y monótonas descripciones de lo que sucede o de lo que no sucede en ese campo. Lo que sí ocurre son actos brutales que rebajan al ser humano y que lo hacen perder la noción de la realidad sensible.
Herta Müller hace llegar todo esto hasta nosotros sin crudeza, con mesura, como si fuera algo normal, inclusive con algunos toques de poesía viviente. Si la intención de la autora fue transmitirnos todo esto, lo ha hecho muy bien.
En el campo de concentración el mundo humano se encuentra subordinado a otros mundos: al mundo mineral, al mundo vegetal, a la química básica, a la fría y seca física. La vida no se mueve, se asemeja a agua sucia y estancada. Los pensamientos del protagonista se centran en escudriñar día y noche su mente, en pensar cosas sin sentido aparente, en inventar formas para olvidar el sufrimiento y el hambre.
Herta Müller le presta la voz a un narrador masculino que vivió los horrores de ese campo de concentración situado en Rusia, quien por cierto fue un poeta amigo de la autora y fue él quien le proporcionó “la materia prima” para desarrollar esta obra.
El tema principal de la obra de Herta Müller ha sido denunciar la destrucción del ser humano bajo la dictadura Rumana dirigida por el despiadado Nicolae Ceacescu quien ejerció el poder de 1967 a 1989. Este tema fue desarrollado ampliamente en sus anteriores trabajos, censurados durante mucho tiempo, y por los cuales le fue otorgado el Premio Nobel. En esta obra en particular también toca esos oscuros rincones de la humanidad pero ahora sitúa su obra en las crueldades y horrores que sufrió un núcleo de la población Rumana, el de los Alemanes-Rumanos perseguidos por Stalin.
Hacia el final del libro sentimos que se alivia un tanto ese clima opresivo y se nos permite respirar un poco cuando el protagonista regresa a su casa (¿hogar?) e inicia un proceso arduo para lograr su retorno a un mundo sensible y al abismo de su libertad.
Un indicador de lo anterior puede ser el Premio Nobel de Literatura: a partir de que este Premio se instituyó en 1901 y hasta 1990, éste se entregó en 83 ocasiones, correspondiendo tal Premio a solamente 6 mujeres lo que representa un exiguo 7%. En cambio de 1991 a la fecha se ha entregado en 26 ocasiones, habiendo sido galardonadas un total de 8 mujeres lo que representa un 31%, casi la tercera parte del total de los Premios. Si manipulamos un poco la estadística haciéndola tomar un sesgo insidioso tenemos que de los tres últimos ganadores, el 66% han sido mujeres. ¡Y lo que falta!
Sin duda una de estas grandes escritoras es la Rumana-Alemana Herta Müller, ganadora del Premio Nobel en el año 2009 «quien, con la concentración de la poesía y la franqueza de la prosa, describe el paisaje de los desposeídos».
El sufrimiento, el dolor, las carencias, el hambre, la humillación y las miserias humanas son el tema principal de esta novela que se desarrolla en uno de tantos campos de concentración rusos tan socorridos por los gobiernos totalitarios. El relato acerca de cómo se reduce y degrada a su mínima expresión la condición humana en aquellos infiernos terrenales es impactante.
La autora logra encerrarnos literalmente en una lectura que es un fiel reflejo del campo de concentración: sórdida, poco estimulante, en un ambiente opresivo, sombría, sin emociones, con largas y monótonas descripciones de lo que sucede o de lo que no sucede en ese campo. Lo que sí ocurre son actos brutales que rebajan al ser humano y que lo hacen perder la noción de la realidad sensible.
Herta Müller hace llegar todo esto hasta nosotros sin crudeza, con mesura, como si fuera algo normal, inclusive con algunos toques de poesía viviente. Si la intención de la autora fue transmitirnos todo esto, lo ha hecho muy bien.
En el campo de concentración el mundo humano se encuentra subordinado a otros mundos: al mundo mineral, al mundo vegetal, a la química básica, a la fría y seca física. La vida no se mueve, se asemeja a agua sucia y estancada. Los pensamientos del protagonista se centran en escudriñar día y noche su mente, en pensar cosas sin sentido aparente, en inventar formas para olvidar el sufrimiento y el hambre.
Herta Müller le presta la voz a un narrador masculino que vivió los horrores de ese campo de concentración situado en Rusia, quien por cierto fue un poeta amigo de la autora y fue él quien le proporcionó “la materia prima” para desarrollar esta obra.
El tema principal de la obra de Herta Müller ha sido denunciar la destrucción del ser humano bajo la dictadura Rumana dirigida por el despiadado Nicolae Ceacescu quien ejerció el poder de 1967 a 1989. Este tema fue desarrollado ampliamente en sus anteriores trabajos, censurados durante mucho tiempo, y por los cuales le fue otorgado el Premio Nobel. En esta obra en particular también toca esos oscuros rincones de la humanidad pero ahora sitúa su obra en las crueldades y horrores que sufrió un núcleo de la población Rumana, el de los Alemanes-Rumanos perseguidos por Stalin.
Hacia el final del libro sentimos que se alivia un tanto ese clima opresivo y se nos permite respirar un poco cuando el protagonista regresa a su casa (¿hogar?) e inicia un proceso arduo para lograr su retorno a un mundo sensible y al abismo de su libertad.
January 4, 2017
Amazing. Breathtaking.
„Când n-aveam nimic de gătit, lăsam fumul să-mi șerpuiască prin gură. Îmi trăgeam limba-ndărăt și mestecam în gol. Mâncam salivă cu fum de seară și mă gândeam la cârnați fripți. Când n-aveam nimic de gătit treceam prin apropierea oalelor prefăcându-mă că înainte de culcare vreau să mă spăl pe dinți la fântână. Dar înainte de a-mi vârî periuța de dinți în gură, mâncam de două ori. Cu foamea ochilor mâncam focul galben, iar cu foamea din cerul gurii, fumul.”
„Rațiile gata cântărite și acoperite cu cearșafuri albe erau așezate pe polițe. [...] Muștele erau nevoite să se așeze pe cearșafuri în loc de pâine. La pâine n-ajungeau decât atunci când o țineam în mână. Iar dacă nu-și luau zborul suficient de rapid de pe ea, mâncam laolaltă cu pâinea noastră și foamea lor.”
„Îmi umplea lingura numai pe jumătate și sorbeam prelung. Mă învățasem să mănânc încet, și după fiecare lingură de supă să-mi înghit saliva. Îngerul foamei mă povățuia: saliva lungește supa și culcatul devreme scurtează foamea.”
„Apoi, m-am tocmit la sânge și-am primit pe cincizeci de pagini de Zarathustra - de răsucit țigări - o litră de sare, iar pe șaptezeci chiar o litră de zahăr. Pentru întregul Faust legat în pânză, Peter Schiel mi-a fabricat penru uz personal un pieptene de păduchi din tablă. Antologia de poezie de opt secole am devorat-o sub formă de mălai și untură de porc, cât despre volumașul Weinheber, pe ăla l-am transformat în mei.”
„Dimineața nu-i timp pentru asta, și nici n-ai ce schimba. Pâinea proaspăt tăiată arată toată la fel. Până seara însă, fiecare felie se usucă diferit, dreaptă și colțuroasă sau strâmb-burtoasă. Optica uscării îți dă sentimentul că pâinea ta te-nșală. Acest sentiment îl au toți, chiar dacă nu-și schimbă între ei pâinea. Iar când o schimbi, sentimentul se-ntețește. Schimbi o iluzie optică pe-o alta.”
„Cred că atunci când ți-e foame, orbirea și vederea sunt același lucru, foamea oarbă vede cel mai bine mâncarea. Există cuvinte de foame mute și altele zgomotose, la fel cum în foame există o parte secretă și-o alta publică. Cuvintele de foame, deci cuvintele de mâncare domină discuțiile, și cu toate astea tot singur rămâi. Fiecare-și mănâncă singur cuvintele. Ceilalți care mănâncă o fac tot pentru ei înșiși. Participarea afectivă la foamea celorlalți e zero, nu poți flămânzi împreună cu alții.”
„Abia acum mi-a atras atenția că popândăii m-au simțit că merg prin stepă singur, nu sub pază. Popândăii au instinctul ager, se roagă pentru fuga din lagăr - așa mi-am zis. Fuga ar fi acum posibilă, dar încotro? Poate că vor să mă avertizeze, crezându-mă de mult fugit. [...] Cerul, întins peste stepă ca o plasă albastră, se lipea în zare de pământ fără portiță de scăpare.”
„Și pe terasamentul căii ferate - când se-ntâmplă ca vreunul să rămână lat - există și plictiseala zăpezii în care zace cadavrul și lopata sa. De cum l-ai îndepărtat de-acolo, ai și uitat de el, fiindcă în zăpada groasă conturul cadavrelor slăbănoage nici nu se vede. Ci numai plictiseala lopeții părăsite. Nu-i bine să stai în preajma lopeții părăsite. Nu-i bine să stai în preajma lopeții. Când vântul bate ușor, sufletul își ia zborul împodobit cu pene. Când bate puternic, sufletu-i purtat valuri-valuri. Și nu numai el - odată cu fiecare cadavru pesemne se eliberează și câte-un Înger al foamei care-și caută o nouă gazdă. Dar nici unul dintre noi nu-i în stare să hrănească doi Îngeri ai foamei.”
„Că Bea Zakel a tras moarta de cap peste marginea mesei, până ce părul i-a atârnat în jos. Că moarta Corina Marcu, ca prin minune, nu fusese încă niciodată rasă-n cap și că felcerița a tuns-o acum zero să-i ia părul. Că Bea Zakel a pus grijuliu părul într-o lădiță de lemn. Că Trudi a vrut să știe la ce-i rebuie părul, și că felcerița i-a spus: Suluri pentru ferestre. Că Trudi a-ntrebat: Pentru cine, și că Bea Zakel a zis: Pentru croitorie, domnul Reusch ne coase suluri pentru ferestre, părul în geam oprește curentul.”
„Părinții mei și-au făcut un copil, fiindcă pe mine nu mai puteau conta. Așa cum mama prescurtează „născut” cu un n., tot așa ar prescurta și „mort” cu un m. A făcut-o de-acum. Oare mamei nu-i e rușine cu tighelul ei grijuliu de ață albă, când printre rânduri sunt nevoit să citesc:
Din partea mea n-ai decât să mori unde ești, am economi spațiu acasă.”
„Goi cum eram, niște creaturi chelboase, răsucite, arătam ca niște vite de povară reformate. Nici unul din nou nu se rușina. De ce să te mai rușinezi când ai rămas fără corp? Și totuși din cauza lui ne-aflam aici, ca să depunem muncă fizică. Cu cât corpul ți se împuțina, cu-atât te pedepsea el mai strașnic. Învelișul ăasta le-aparținea rușilor.”
„Comorile micuțe sunt cele pe care scrie: sunt aici.
Comorile mai mari sunt cele pe care scrie: ți-amintești...
Dar cele mai frumoase comori sunt cele pe care va scrie: am fost aici.”
„Am cheltuit mult la propoziția asta. Apoi am scris-o pe-o pagină goală. În ziua următoare am tăiat-o. În răsurmătoarea am scris-o din nou. Și din nou am tăiat-o, și din nou am scris-o. Când pagina s-a umplut, am smuls-o. Asta înseamnă să-ți amintești.”
„Când n-aveam nimic de gătit, lăsam fumul să-mi șerpuiască prin gură. Îmi trăgeam limba-ndărăt și mestecam în gol. Mâncam salivă cu fum de seară și mă gândeam la cârnați fripți. Când n-aveam nimic de gătit treceam prin apropierea oalelor prefăcându-mă că înainte de culcare vreau să mă spăl pe dinți la fântână. Dar înainte de a-mi vârî periuța de dinți în gură, mâncam de două ori. Cu foamea ochilor mâncam focul galben, iar cu foamea din cerul gurii, fumul.”
„Rațiile gata cântărite și acoperite cu cearșafuri albe erau așezate pe polițe. [...] Muștele erau nevoite să se așeze pe cearșafuri în loc de pâine. La pâine n-ajungeau decât atunci când o țineam în mână. Iar dacă nu-și luau zborul suficient de rapid de pe ea, mâncam laolaltă cu pâinea noastră și foamea lor.”
„Îmi umplea lingura numai pe jumătate și sorbeam prelung. Mă învățasem să mănânc încet, și după fiecare lingură de supă să-mi înghit saliva. Îngerul foamei mă povățuia: saliva lungește supa și culcatul devreme scurtează foamea.”
„Apoi, m-am tocmit la sânge și-am primit pe cincizeci de pagini de Zarathustra - de răsucit țigări - o litră de sare, iar pe șaptezeci chiar o litră de zahăr. Pentru întregul Faust legat în pânză, Peter Schiel mi-a fabricat penru uz personal un pieptene de păduchi din tablă. Antologia de poezie de opt secole am devorat-o sub formă de mălai și untură de porc, cât despre volumașul Weinheber, pe ăla l-am transformat în mei.”
„Dimineața nu-i timp pentru asta, și nici n-ai ce schimba. Pâinea proaspăt tăiată arată toată la fel. Până seara însă, fiecare felie se usucă diferit, dreaptă și colțuroasă sau strâmb-burtoasă. Optica uscării îți dă sentimentul că pâinea ta te-nșală. Acest sentiment îl au toți, chiar dacă nu-și schimbă între ei pâinea. Iar când o schimbi, sentimentul se-ntețește. Schimbi o iluzie optică pe-o alta.”
„Cred că atunci când ți-e foame, orbirea și vederea sunt același lucru, foamea oarbă vede cel mai bine mâncarea. Există cuvinte de foame mute și altele zgomotose, la fel cum în foame există o parte secretă și-o alta publică. Cuvintele de foame, deci cuvintele de mâncare domină discuțiile, și cu toate astea tot singur rămâi. Fiecare-și mănâncă singur cuvintele. Ceilalți care mănâncă o fac tot pentru ei înșiși. Participarea afectivă la foamea celorlalți e zero, nu poți flămânzi împreună cu alții.”
„Abia acum mi-a atras atenția că popândăii m-au simțit că merg prin stepă singur, nu sub pază. Popândăii au instinctul ager, se roagă pentru fuga din lagăr - așa mi-am zis. Fuga ar fi acum posibilă, dar încotro? Poate că vor să mă avertizeze, crezându-mă de mult fugit. [...] Cerul, întins peste stepă ca o plasă albastră, se lipea în zare de pământ fără portiță de scăpare.”
„Și pe terasamentul căii ferate - când se-ntâmplă ca vreunul să rămână lat - există și plictiseala zăpezii în care zace cadavrul și lopata sa. De cum l-ai îndepărtat de-acolo, ai și uitat de el, fiindcă în zăpada groasă conturul cadavrelor slăbănoage nici nu se vede. Ci numai plictiseala lopeții părăsite. Nu-i bine să stai în preajma lopeții părăsite. Nu-i bine să stai în preajma lopeții. Când vântul bate ușor, sufletul își ia zborul împodobit cu pene. Când bate puternic, sufletu-i purtat valuri-valuri. Și nu numai el - odată cu fiecare cadavru pesemne se eliberează și câte-un Înger al foamei care-și caută o nouă gazdă. Dar nici unul dintre noi nu-i în stare să hrănească doi Îngeri ai foamei.”
„Că Bea Zakel a tras moarta de cap peste marginea mesei, până ce părul i-a atârnat în jos. Că moarta Corina Marcu, ca prin minune, nu fusese încă niciodată rasă-n cap și că felcerița a tuns-o acum zero să-i ia părul. Că Bea Zakel a pus grijuliu părul într-o lădiță de lemn. Că Trudi a vrut să știe la ce-i rebuie părul, și că felcerița i-a spus: Suluri pentru ferestre. Că Trudi a-ntrebat: Pentru cine, și că Bea Zakel a zis: Pentru croitorie, domnul Reusch ne coase suluri pentru ferestre, părul în geam oprește curentul.”
„Părinții mei și-au făcut un copil, fiindcă pe mine nu mai puteau conta. Așa cum mama prescurtează „născut” cu un n., tot așa ar prescurta și „mort” cu un m. A făcut-o de-acum. Oare mamei nu-i e rușine cu tighelul ei grijuliu de ață albă, când printre rânduri sunt nevoit să citesc:
Din partea mea n-ai decât să mori unde ești, am economi spațiu acasă.”
„Goi cum eram, niște creaturi chelboase, răsucite, arătam ca niște vite de povară reformate. Nici unul din nou nu se rușina. De ce să te mai rușinezi când ai rămas fără corp? Și totuși din cauza lui ne-aflam aici, ca să depunem muncă fizică. Cu cât corpul ți se împuțina, cu-atât te pedepsea el mai strașnic. Învelișul ăasta le-aparținea rușilor.”
„Comorile micuțe sunt cele pe care scrie: sunt aici.
Comorile mai mari sunt cele pe care scrie: ți-amintești...
Dar cele mai frumoase comori sunt cele pe care va scrie: am fost aici.”
„Am cheltuit mult la propoziția asta. Apoi am scris-o pe-o pagină goală. În ziua următoare am tăiat-o. În răsurmătoarea am scris-o din nou. Și din nou am tăiat-o, și din nou am scris-o. Când pagina s-a umplut, am smuls-o. Asta înseamnă să-ți amintești.”
January 25, 2018
NOCH SO EINE NOBELPREISTRÄGERIN?
Herta Müller – Atemschaukel (2009)
Fünf Lagerjahre – fünf Jahre der Zwangsarbeit, der unmenschlichen Bedingungen, des Eingeschlossenseins in die Flügel des Hungerengels – beschreibt aus der Ich-Perspektive eine fiktive 17-jährige Figur namens Leopold. Der junge Mann wird als in Rumänien lebender Deutscher in ein Arbeitslager verschleppt, um dort Aufbauarbeiten für die Sowjetunion zu leisten. Alles wird zugunsten des Hungerns geopfert, seinen „Faust“ und „Zarathustra“ wird er Seite für Seite als Zigarettenpapier verkaufen. Das Mantra „Ich weiß, du kommst wieder“ – die letzten Worte seiner Großmutter – helfen zeitweise, sich hartnäckig ans Leben zu klammern. Und doch: so viel Ungewissheit, ob man leben will oder nur noch einen Tag überstehen wird. Hilft da das Gedichtrezitieren, das Erinnern an die Heimat, die Flucht in Lagerliebschaften? Leopold zumindest versucht es.
Die Gesamtpoetik des romanhaften Stücks Literatur, das Herta Müller hier vorlegt, kann über die Grausamkeit und Wirklichkeit des Lageralltags absolut nicht hinwegtäuschen. Naturvergleiche, romantische Motive und das Verkriechen im russischen Vokabular machen den Tod nicht weniger unmittelbar. Leopold sieht und hört dafür einfach zu vieles und teilt dem Lesenden alles akribisch genau mit. Da sich der Lageralltag stetig wiederholt, arbeitet auch die Autorin mit den zwei wiederkehrenden Motiven HEIMWEH und HUNGERENGEL. Manchmal platzen diese beiden Worte auch unmittelbar in die Gedankenwelt des jungen Mannes, dem wir folgen und es unterbricht (leider) oft das versucht-flüssige Romankonzept. Nichtsdestotrotz war ich von Herta Müllers Sprache sehr fasziniert. Leopold konzentriert sich interessanterweise oft auf ‚weibliche‘ Themen im Lager, dadurch hatte ich das Gefühl, eher einer Frauenperspektive zu folgen. Das Gefühl wich bis zur letzten Seite irgendwie nicht so recht von mir. Vielleicht ging es anderen Lesenden auch so?!
Insgesamt halte ich dieses Buch für sehr lesenswert, man ertrage nur den Stein in Herz und Magen, den die Autorin einem beim Lesen zugedenkt mit ihrem Werk.
Herta Müller – Atemschaukel (2009)
Fünf Lagerjahre – fünf Jahre der Zwangsarbeit, der unmenschlichen Bedingungen, des Eingeschlossenseins in die Flügel des Hungerengels – beschreibt aus der Ich-Perspektive eine fiktive 17-jährige Figur namens Leopold. Der junge Mann wird als in Rumänien lebender Deutscher in ein Arbeitslager verschleppt, um dort Aufbauarbeiten für die Sowjetunion zu leisten. Alles wird zugunsten des Hungerns geopfert, seinen „Faust“ und „Zarathustra“ wird er Seite für Seite als Zigarettenpapier verkaufen. Das Mantra „Ich weiß, du kommst wieder“ – die letzten Worte seiner Großmutter – helfen zeitweise, sich hartnäckig ans Leben zu klammern. Und doch: so viel Ungewissheit, ob man leben will oder nur noch einen Tag überstehen wird. Hilft da das Gedichtrezitieren, das Erinnern an die Heimat, die Flucht in Lagerliebschaften? Leopold zumindest versucht es.
Die Gesamtpoetik des romanhaften Stücks Literatur, das Herta Müller hier vorlegt, kann über die Grausamkeit und Wirklichkeit des Lageralltags absolut nicht hinwegtäuschen. Naturvergleiche, romantische Motive und das Verkriechen im russischen Vokabular machen den Tod nicht weniger unmittelbar. Leopold sieht und hört dafür einfach zu vieles und teilt dem Lesenden alles akribisch genau mit. Da sich der Lageralltag stetig wiederholt, arbeitet auch die Autorin mit den zwei wiederkehrenden Motiven HEIMWEH und HUNGERENGEL. Manchmal platzen diese beiden Worte auch unmittelbar in die Gedankenwelt des jungen Mannes, dem wir folgen und es unterbricht (leider) oft das versucht-flüssige Romankonzept. Nichtsdestotrotz war ich von Herta Müllers Sprache sehr fasziniert. Leopold konzentriert sich interessanterweise oft auf ‚weibliche‘ Themen im Lager, dadurch hatte ich das Gefühl, eher einer Frauenperspektive zu folgen. Das Gefühl wich bis zur letzten Seite irgendwie nicht so recht von mir. Vielleicht ging es anderen Lesenden auch so?!
Insgesamt halte ich dieses Buch für sehr lesenswert, man ertrage nur den Stein in Herz und Magen, den die Autorin einem beim Lesen zugedenkt mit ihrem Werk.
December 11, 2020
Aš nesugalvočiau tiksliau apibūdinti šį kūrinį, nei apibūdino Ieva - skausmo poeziją apie lagerį.
Apie žmogų tremtyje galima parašyti visaip: gyvenimiškai, ironiškai, sarkastiškai, dramatiškai, skaudžiai ar paviršutiniškai. Tačiau, niekad nebūčiau pagalvojusi, jog knygą, kurioje įrašytas lagerio siaubas, kas nors mėgintų paversti literatūros šedevru. Na jei ir mėgintų - argi įmanoma, jog toks tekstas nusisektų? Jei skamba neįtikėtinai, žiūrėkite: Žolės vis laikė mane už kojų, kad nenukrisčiau į dangų.
Atsitraukiant nuo kalbos grožio knyga jokiu būdu nelieka tuščia, bevertė, be minčių, be gylio. Tiek daug jauno, bręstančio žmogaus sluoksnių, etapų, būsenų čia perskaičiau. Kiek skirtingų portretų, žvilgsnių.
Be abejonės tai visiškai išskirtinis pasakojimas, pabrėžiu visiems skeptikams, kurie nuo karo istorijų nusigręžia vos išgirdę: tikra; pagal tikrus; vos pamatę pavadinime: kepėjas, kirpėjas, ar koks kitas ėjas, ir visiems, kurie šiaip mano - kad tremtis, karas ne juos dominanti tema. Čia lageris fonas, o knyga apie virsmą, o gal dekonstrukcijas ir konstrukcijas asmens, kurio fiznis būvis privalo laikytis už jo dvasios, o mintys įsikibusios į atodūsius. Už tuos, kurių akys drėgnos, esu ne stipresnis, bet silpnesnis. Jie drįsta.
Ir vėl antrinu Ievai - atskiras bravo ir ačiū vertėjui.
Apie žmogų tremtyje galima parašyti visaip: gyvenimiškai, ironiškai, sarkastiškai, dramatiškai, skaudžiai ar paviršutiniškai. Tačiau, niekad nebūčiau pagalvojusi, jog knygą, kurioje įrašytas lagerio siaubas, kas nors mėgintų paversti literatūros šedevru. Na jei ir mėgintų - argi įmanoma, jog toks tekstas nusisektų? Jei skamba neįtikėtinai, žiūrėkite: Žolės vis laikė mane už kojų, kad nenukrisčiau į dangų.
Atsitraukiant nuo kalbos grožio knyga jokiu būdu nelieka tuščia, bevertė, be minčių, be gylio. Tiek daug jauno, bręstančio žmogaus sluoksnių, etapų, būsenų čia perskaičiau. Kiek skirtingų portretų, žvilgsnių.
Be abejonės tai visiškai išskirtinis pasakojimas, pabrėžiu visiems skeptikams, kurie nuo karo istorijų nusigręžia vos išgirdę: tikra; pagal tikrus; vos pamatę pavadinime: kepėjas, kirpėjas, ar koks kitas ėjas, ir visiems, kurie šiaip mano - kad tremtis, karas ne juos dominanti tema. Čia lageris fonas, o knyga apie virsmą, o gal dekonstrukcijas ir konstrukcijas asmens, kurio fiznis būvis privalo laikytis už jo dvasios, o mintys įsikibusios į atodūsius. Už tuos, kurių akys drėgnos, esu ne stipresnis, bet silpnesnis. Jie drįsta.
Ir vėl antrinu Ievai - atskiras bravo ir ačiū vertėjui.
May 20, 2022
Meraviglie della parola e della memoria
Quando un racconto, un'atmosfera, un'esperienza tragica e dolorosa si insinuano dentro di te e, tramite "la forza della poesia e la franchezza della prosa", ti scuotono, ti commuovono. E' tutto questo L'altalena del respiro. Difficile dimenticare la storia del diciassettenne Leopold Auberg (ispirata ai ricordi del poeta rumeno tedesco Oskar Pastior) e dei cinque terribili anni trascorsi in un lager dell'Ucraina. Difficile non restare impressionati da questo libro, certo non facile, scritto con una lingua asciutta, precisa, scarna, che avvince e ferisce. Eccezionale prova narrativa della Müller, un romanzo sconvolgente, sincero, unico. Per non dimenticare.
Quando un racconto, un'atmosfera, un'esperienza tragica e dolorosa si insinuano dentro di te e, tramite "la forza della poesia e la franchezza della prosa", ti scuotono, ti commuovono. E' tutto questo L'altalena del respiro. Difficile dimenticare la storia del diciassettenne Leopold Auberg (ispirata ai ricordi del poeta rumeno tedesco Oskar Pastior) e dei cinque terribili anni trascorsi in un lager dell'Ucraina. Difficile non restare impressionati da questo libro, certo non facile, scritto con una lingua asciutta, precisa, scarna, che avvince e ferisce. Eccezionale prova narrativa della Müller, un romanzo sconvolgente, sincero, unico. Per non dimenticare.
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