Fictions of Trauma: The Problem of Representation in Novels by East and Central European Women Writing in German by Lynda Kemei Nyota Department of German Studies Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Thomas Pfau, Supervisor ___________________________ Jakob Norberg ___________________________ Eric S. Downing ___________________________ William C. Donahue Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of German Studies in the Graduate School of Duke University 2013 i v ABSTRACT Fictions of Trauma: The Problem of Representation in Novels by East and Central European Women Writing in German by Lynda Kemei Nyota Department of German Studies Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Thomas Pfau, Supervisor ___________________________ Jakob Norberg ___________________________ Eric S. Downing ___________________________ William C. Donahue An abstract of a Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of German Studies in the Graduate School of Duke University 2013 Copyright by Lynda Kemei Nyota 2013 Abstract This dissertation focuses on the fictional narratives of Eastern and Central European women authors writing in German and explores the ways in which historical and political trauma shapes their approach to narrative. By investigating the atrocities of the World War II era and beyond through a lens of trauma, I look at the ways in which their narrative writing is disrupted by traumatic memory, engendering a genre that calls into question official accounts of historical events. I argue that without the emergence and proliferation of these individual trauma narratives to contest, official, cemented accounts, there exists a threat of permanent inscription of official versions into public consciousness, effectively excluding the narratives of communities rendered fragile by war and/or displacement. The dissertation will demonstrate how these trauma fictions i) reveal the burden of unresolved, transmitted trauma on the second generation as the pivotal generation between the repressive Stalinist era and the collapse of communism, ii) disrupt official accounts of events through the intrusion of individual traumatic memory that is by nature unmediated and uncensored, iii) offer alternative plural accounts of events by rejecting normal everyday language as a vehicle for narrative and instead experimenting with alternative modes of representation, articulating trauma through poetic language, through spaces, and through the body, and v) struggle against theory, while paradoxically often succumbing to the very same institutionalized iv language of trauma that they seek to contest. Trauma fiction therefore emerges as a distinct genre that forestalls the threat of erasure of alternative memories by constantly challenging and exposing the equivocal nature of official narratives, while also pointing to the challenges faced in attempting to give a voice to groups that have suffered trauma in an age where the term has become embedded and overused in our everyday language. v Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iv List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... ix Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... x 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1 2. Trauma, Language and Representation in Herta Müller’s Atemschaukel ........................ 25 2.1 Locating the Gap: Traumatic vs. Narrative Memory ................................................ 33 2.2 Trauma and the Problem of the Unarratable: ............................................................. 41 2.2.1 In the Shadow of the Holocaust .............................................................................. 41 2.3 Rendering the Unnarratable: Repetition, Metaphor and Metonymy...................... 51 2.3.1 Repetition and Entrapment ...................................................................................... 51 2.3.2 Narrative Progression through Metonymy ........................................................... 56 2.4 Metaphor and the Bipolar Nature of Trauma ............................................................ 73 2.4.1 Statistics as Narrative ................................................................................................ 73 2.4.2. Religion: Grasping Trauma through the Incomprehensible .............................. 76 2.5 Representing Unnarratable Collective Memory: Trauma and Taboo ..................... 83 2.5.1 The Signs of the Times: ............................................................................................. 85 2.5.2 Displacement and Repression of Collective Guilt: Der Koffer ........................... 87 2.5.3 Competing Narratives: Der Ersatzbruder .............................................................. 89 3. Spaces, Dislocations and Itineraries: Tracing Trauma in Zsusza Bánk’s Der Schwimmer ....................................................................................................................................................... 97 3.1 Going Home .................................................................................................................... 97 vi 3.2 Der Schwimmer ............................................................................................................ 100 3.3 Displacing Trauma ....................................................................................................... 105 3.4 Trauma’s Past, Present and Future ............................................................................ 111 3.5.1 Space and Freezing Time ........................................................................................ 111 3.5 Trauma and Coping: The Swimmer .......................................................................... 121 3.6 Tracing National Trauma ............................................................................................ 126 3.6.1 Forgetting and Being Forgotten ............................................................................ 129 4. Writing with the Body: Trauma, Visuality and Corporeality in Léda Forgó’s Der Körper Meines Bruders ............................................................................................................................ 142 4.1 Body Memory, Memory of the Body ......................................................................... 149 4.1.1 Body Memory .......................................................................................................... 149 4.1.2 Memory of the Body ............................................................................................... 156 4.1.3 Der Körper meines Bruders ................................................................................... 158 4.2 Rewriting the Socialist Body ....................................................................................... 165 4.2.1 Reclaiming Past Heroes in Folk Poetry ................................................................ 169 4.2.2 Dismantling of the Utopian Ideal in Soviet Film ................................................ 174 4.2.3 Reimagining History in Art ................................................................................... 182 4.2.4 Private Commemoration and the Usurping of the Official ............................... 186 5. Trauma after Theory: Terézia Mora’s Alle Tage ................................................................ 193 5.1 Trauma as a Global Condition of the 21st Century .................................................. 193 5.2 Staging Trauma: Alle Tage and its Modernist Precursors ...................................... 199 5.3 Crisis Spaces: The Trauma of Permanent Transit .................................................... 216 vii 5.4 Trauma and the Futility of Communication ............................................................. 228 6. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 244 Appendix A: Fragen an Frau Léda Forgó .............................................................................. 247 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................... 254 Biography ................................................................................................................................... 267 viii List of Figures Figure 1: Tracing Trauma. The Displacement of Kata’s Family throughout Hungary ... 105 Figure 2: Endre Ady (1877-1919) ............................................................................................. 172 Figure 3: Isthiander at the beginning of the film, angelic, young and idealistic .............. 180 Figure 4: Isthiander with his defeated look ........................................................................... 180 Figure 5: The Mephistophelean depiction of Pedro the Spanish pearl trader .................. 182 Figure 6: Csontváry, “Riders on the Sea Shore” (1909) ......................................................