"I don't like to write. I don' t trust language. " : Shattering the dream & the courage to be literal

Language in itself doesn't exist. It  is only what we can do with it, what we will do with it, it is what happens to human beings, or what does not happen to them, language does not exist without human beings. I have learned not to trust language in a dictatorship, because I've learned all the things a dictator can do with it. Language can help to kill, it can help to save, and you can do everything with language, but language in itself is nothing without its relationship to the human being.

I am afraid of writing, this is why I don't really like to write... Writing is very hard work and it's a lot of trouble. Life is one thing and language is  another; language is a totally artificial thing and I have to force it to obey what I have to say.


Whenever I started writing, I became obsessed with it...it gave me some inner stability, something to hold on to, and the possibility to exist... With each book I thought this would be the last one, but then years later I found myself writing the next book and this is how it's been for the past 30 years. I never imagined that i would be a writer and I'd never really read literature. My interest in literature was how can one live. Literature was teaching me how to survive. Poems have shown me how to live; at least while I was reading them. After that I was alone again.

I started writing in order to be able to bear myself, i could not stand myself otherwise. I also needed writing to bear the time that I lived in... a dictatorship...All the unhappiness in the world it was not only about me but also what I saw around me...And then it also became a habit, after all it's a profession and once you get used to doing it, you don't to anything else: it is your job. It gave me something to hold on to and, at a certain point, work with, like a key that helps you open something.

This kind of language is a language of hiding; these codes are a way of hiding behind words...it is a language of fear; one cannot hide only behind objects, but also behind words.

(Herta Muller)

I discovered Clare Messud in the New Books section at the Public Library, years ago. Emperor's Children was often billed as the first book approaching 9/11 events in fiction and the potential high degree of plausibility and veracity of her story was an attractor of mixed effects. It was one of those books I piled "to check out" and then I couldn't put it down.

A few years ago I saw another interview with Herta Muller and I was disappointed. I couldn't help thinking: here is this exceptional writer, who has a global platform to espouse the ills and depths of oppression, but she cannot get over her own anger, cynicism, and distrust. The interview was in Romanian and during a trip to Romania and I surmise being immersed in that raw wound was not an easy chair to sit on. Claire Messud' s final question- regarding precisely the relationship with Romania- gave Herta a great context to map clearly, in a language of comfort and desired precision, her complex path to nowadays.

 I don't like to write. I don' t trust language... It may sound like artist's quirks or an attention grabber, but this the most comprehensive and the single self-evident truth, for all those cast behind the curtain. In an oppressive society you either live in a trope, or you don't live at all. As soon as you are born behind the curtain you are socialized in the reality of illusion and the illusion of reality. Your mother tongue is the figurative language of any idiom and, in many ways, you equate being free with being literal. So, to be free is to be literal. The highest form of art is not an act of invention, it isn't creating the dream; it's rather your skill and persistence in shattering the dream, the audacity to be literal and the chance and gift to tell or write the tale. The pursuit of happiness lies in the constant daily toil to reach figurative critical mass, to tune in to the right tropes of the day and heroes are those who dare strip the language of its higher meanings and just be literal. Herta Muller had the audacity to be literal and the chance to live and tell the tale. But in the beautiful remembrance of Oskar Pastior she also reveals the hidden heart-wrenching costs of freedom and the lingering question: Are we literal we who are literal?

Despite the beautiful imagery, I've struggled with Herta Muller's writing, perhaps with everything that is literal, too literal. There are comforts and discomforts in the familiar, the recognizable, the predictable; somehow the balance always strikes in favor of persistent unease as a reminder that "the known", " the familiar" is unchangeable and perennial. Herta chastises those who could not, or wished not to be literal, but at times she seems oblivious of the fact that she had the comforts of an unadulterated language, a language in which she could be "freer" as it was not the official language of mass deception. She's unforgiving -understandably- with those who did not dare be literal, but at the same time she explains the burden of language, when the ability to negotiate meanings becomes the crucial predictor of one's welfare and well being in the world. At some point she confesses she cut her hair so she would not have to hear her mother tell the story of deportation while combing her hair. Likewise, millions silenced themselves, distracted themselves, painted the walls in all sorts of colors so they could not see the shades and shadows anymore. Everyone finds salvation in their own way: the brave ones being literal, the rest being silent, or shadow-blinds. The brave ones are heroes, but does it really follow that everyone else is a coward?

Herta Muller & Clare Messud in Conversation, YouTube from PEN America