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10. In Transit
- University of Nebraska Press
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10In Transit Transnational Trajectories and Mobility in Herta Müller’s Recent Writings Monika Moyrer Man verteilt die Gefühle ja oft auf seltsame Weise nach außen. Auf einige wenige Gegenstände, die sich ohne Grund dafür eignen, das Erinnern im Kopf zu verdeutlichen.1 (Müller, “In jeder Sprache” 16) Herta Müller’s preferred collage technique correlates her affection for inconspicuous details and Scherben [broken pieces of china] as she invests specific objects with an array of biographical, political, linguistic, and literary meanings. These objects, which transcend genres and languages, relentlessly reappear dispersed (and broken) throughout her oeuvre (regardless of their disfiguration) and map out a visible path to Müller’s process of remembering. In addition to empowering particular objects, this method highlights the new, more effortless mobility across borders, which resulted from the opening of the former Communist countries in In Transit 185 Eastern Europe. I contend that this flexibility has allowed Müller to create powerful material vessels that encapsulate the contradictions inherent in her memories. While essentially remaining dispersed, localized interventions, these objects further unsettle Müller’s notions of “home” and “homeland(s).” In this essay I focus on one particular cutout, the Mokkatassen, or mocha cups, as isolated, movable, and severed word objects that circulate in multiple Müller texts either as Mokkatassen, MOKKATASSEN, M/okk/at/assen, or ceaş/ca/de/MOCA. Specifically I examine these anachronistic, oriental objects and their function in Müller’s German and Romanian texts and show how through her collage technique these inconspicuous word objects become what I call “memory bites”—material and tangible collector’s items imbued with memory. When Müller sides with Jorge Semprún by arguing that “die Wahrheit der geschriebenen Erinnerung muß erfunden werden” [the truth of the written memory must be invented] (In der Falle 21), she at the same time takes issue with notions of “truth” and “memory” that conceal their invented (or fabricated) origin. This also explains Müller’s obsessive circling back to the same memory bites, through which the author simultaneously conceals and constantly reinvents her “truth.” The fragments reflect postwar traumatic incidents while also exposing Müller’s ambivalent or rather conflicted attitude toward Germany and Romania. I argue that the recurrent use of the same particular memory bites—in this case the tangible object of a mocha cup—results in spatial dispersions. These dispersions seemingly decontextualize the object from its “natural” surroundings while creating a trail of connections among texts. As material objects, these cups contain a bite of “truth” whose meaning must be assembled by the reader. Therefore I treat the different places where the mocha cups appear as Müller’s textual collection. Focusing on Müller’s textual collection of mocha cups, I read her collage volumes in which the Mokkatassen appear—Die blassen Herren mit den Mokkatassen [The pale gentlemen with the mocha cups] (2005), as well as her Romanian collages in Este sau nu este Ion [Is it or is it not Ion] (2005)—as textual Vitrine [glass display case] in which the possibility of assuming agency over recollected memories is presented. In my analysis [3.235.75.229] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 23:52 GMT) 186 Moyrer a proper visualization of Müller’s entire collection of Mokkatassen would entail a basic partitioning of the glass display case into several separate shelves: the large, publicly visible German shelf would consist of the wellreceived Die blassen Herren mit den Mokkatassen—which also testifies to the collages’ reception as visual “art”—and a second, smaller, almost invisible because not widely received yet audible Romanian shelf would consist of the volume Este sau nu este Ion and its accompanying audio recording . A third shelf would be reserved for the German prose texts in which the mocha cups appear—namely, in the speech “Die Anwendung der dünnen Straßen” [The exercise of the thin streets] (2004) and in Leopold Auberg’s story in the novel Atemschaukel (2009). As a whole this particular imaginary glass display case then would bring together the scattered memory bites (i.e., Mokkatassen) and house Müller’s textual mocha collection. Missing Links Scholars have often described Müller’s critique of the Banat-Swabian village in which she grew up and the ethnocentrism of the region (particularly in the author’s early texts) as one of the determining features of her writing (Kegelmann; Bozzi; Glajar). The traumatic collective incidents of the years...