The fox was already the hunter back then

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The fox was already the hunter back then is a 1992 novel by Herta Müller . It is significant for her work in two ways: on the one hand, it is the first novel in her work and, on the other hand, it is her first text after Herta Müller moved to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1987 . The novel is dedicated to looking back only the Ceauşescu - dictatorship and emerged after the dictator's death. The novel is considered her first major political work on the dictatorship of the 1980s in Romania . It can be classified in the genre of auto-fictional narrative texts, in which historical-political experiences are discussed.

content

The plot of the novel takes place in the final phase of the Ceaușescu regime in Romania and can be limited in time from the summer of 1989 to the beginning of 1990. Shortly before the novel ends, the execution of the dictator and his wife is mentioned, which makes a temporal turning point on December 25, 1989 possible. The main character Adina works as a teacher and her best friend Clara, who works as an engineer, works in a factory. Adina used to be with Paul, a doctor who is now one of her best friends. Adina is now with Iljie, a soldier. The settings are public institutions such as the factory, school or hospital. One day, Clara meets a secret service employee, Pavel. When she finds out, firstly she says nothing to Adina and secondly she wants him to leave her alone. Securitate people begin to search Adina's apartment, cutting off part of the fox fur on the floor every time they are there. Adina seeks help from Paul, who is active in the dissident scene. Together with Abi, he has a music group that sings songs that are contrary to the system, including the following verse, which appears again and again in the novel and marks the constant presence: "Face without a face", which becomes a motto of the novel and the dissident group. Abi is blackmailed and has to sign a statement that this verse refers to the dictator Ceaușescu. The people of the secret service keep coming back and there is soon no way out, they cut off more and more limbs of the hide, which becomes the constant and omnipresent torment of the secret service. Clara warns Adina that people should be arrested. Together with Paul she flees to a southern Romanesque village, to a mutual friend Liviu. Abi doesn't want to come with me. After the dictator's death, Pavel Mugru himself becomes the hunted and leaves the country with Abis Pass. The novel ends with the memory of her late friend Abi, who apparently died because of a joke that was against the system. Towards the end you also learn that he told this Romanian joke to the soldier Iljie.

characters

The character constellation of the novel consists mainly of four characters: Adina, Clara, Paul and Pavel. Adina is the protagonist of the novel. Clara is her best friend and works in a wire factory. Paul is Adina's former boyfriend and now her best friend. Pavel is a secret service officer at the Securitate and enters into a relationship with Clara during the course of the novel. There is also a high school diploma who plays in the dissident music group and dies in the end. One can only assume that it is a murder on the part of the secret service, since his apartment is described as being devastated and it can be assumed that they paid him an unfriendly visit. Adina and Clara are increasingly moving away because Adina has doubts about Pavel and later finds out that he is not working as a lawyer, as he himself claims, but as a Securitate employee. There are, so to speak, two constellations of three in this distribution of people: On the one hand, Pavel and Clara vs. Adina and on the other hand Pavel vs. Adina and Paul. It is noticeable that the group of people is rather limited and reduced to a few relationships, which is generally to be regarded as a characteristic of modern literature.

Important topics

Topics that come up again and again in the novel are, besides friendship and betrayal, above all the dictatorship. The human existence in a totalitarian regime is thematized from different perspectives. The main focus is on the oppression that Adina experiences from the secret service. It deals with humiliation, spying and oppression. The text expresses this monotony of her life performatively through recurring, slightly modified motifs, such as the fox fur. In this way a dreary and apparently hopeless everyday life is constructed.

Research approaches

The novel's approaches to interpretation often revolve around the question of genre and aesthetic means. The question is whether the stringing together of the associations does justice to the genre of the novel and how an exciting espionage story should be told. Müller counters this with a series of apparently everyday things in a monotonously constructed world. Ultimately, it is a poetological question of genre that the literary discussion is and must be devoted to. Furthermore, the imagery and perspective of Müller's poetics give cause for discussion. It can be interpreted psychologically, among other things, or it can be viewed internally in such a way that things and animals become actors and the perception of them is significantly influenced. The complex, poetic web of metaphors forces the reader to read it very carefully, as some constructions turn out to be puzzling at first, but try to be decoded. This creates a network of codes and different perceptions that is reminiscent of a collage . This is all the more significant, since since 2009 Müller has been making poetry almost exclusively in the form of collages. The criticism that is made here of the genre may be comparatively justified, but with Müller's texts you are dealing with a very special and unique narrative style, which perhaps precisely through this monotony is able to depict the life of the dictatorship very cleverly and pointedly.

title

General

The title of the novel is doubly indicative of the work: on the one hand, it names the leading motif of the novel, the fox, more precisely the fox's fur, and on the other hand, it initially poses a riddle. Because what does it mean if the fox was already the hunter back then? This enigmatic is at the same time programmatic for Müller's poetics , which construct a very special relationship to things and, in this novel, especially to animals. The title makes two assertions that can only be made through a decryption: First, it claims that the fox enters into a connection with the hunter and - contrary to expectations - the fox is the hunter. Second, "Back then" claims that it has always been that way. An interpretation or decoding of the fox skin is offered in the flashback of Adina, in which she tells how she wanted a fox skin as a child: "The hunter put the fox on the table and smoothed his hair. He said, on Foxes are not shot, foxes are trapped. His hair and his beard and the hair on his hands were red like the fox. His cheeks too. The fox was already the hunter back then. "So there is a striking resemblance between the hunter, who let the fox fall into the trap, and the fox itself. On the one hand, the fur is to be understood as a metonymy or part of the child and his desires and fears and, on the other hand, as a metaphor for the surveillance of the secret service. In this way, the fur plays a decisive role in creating structure. Because it refers to its function in the novel: The text moves from perception to perception and is decisive about oppositions such as inside vs. Outside, center vs. Shell and hunter vs. Hunted structured. The fur functions as a metaphor for a manhunt that is now prevalent in the dictatorship. Foxes do not usually hunt people, but they invade their surroundings when they go to the garbage bags, for example. That makes them border figures between nature and culture . In the novel, the fur gets its function mainly from its passive function: the secret service uses a razor blade to cut off a leg or arm of the fox every time.

Animal motif

In that the razor blade is actually intended to shave human skin, the fox skin figure discusses the boundary between animals and humans. In this discussion, which resonates between the lines, a closeness and a simultaneous distance are constructed, using the skin as a boundary. On the one hand, Adina sees the fox fur from a distance and, on the other hand, she perceives the fox fur with all her senses, for example by feeling it with her feet. Whatever happens and how close she gets to the fox, she can never fully grasp him, he is and remains just a shell. The fox remains something interpreted by the human point of view. This process is characteristic of Müller's poetry, because that fox is performative demonstrated how people with animals round. Ultimately, accessing the animal world is an interpretation, it remains with feeling, touching and looking at the animal or just like here: the fur. Furthermore, various hunter-prey relationships are also considered and addressed via the animal skin and the title. The fox of the title is a hunter because he behaves like a hunter in nature, in which he lurks and attacks, and because there is a hunter who - with his red hair - is like a fox. In addition, the state becomes a hunter in a dictatorship, but the victims here also become the hunters, since the novel is situated shortly before and shortly after the execution of Ceaușescu. The Securitate acts as a hunter for Adina herself, but she hunts her friend Clara because she is with Pavel. Pavel, in turn, chases Adina and after the dictator is overthrown, becomes the hunted himself and leaves the country. One observes a complex network of hunter-prey relationships in the novel, which is characteristic of a life under dictatorship and which is cleverly placed in the title. This dimension only arises through a decoding of the network of motifs and thus reveals Herta Müller's poetics. In the novel there are other depictions of animals that are characteristic of the text, if they are read allegorically , right at the beginning: "The ant is carrying a dead fly. The ant cannot see the way, it turns the fly and crawls back. The fly is three times larger than the ant. [...] The fly lives because it is three times larger and is carried, it is an animal to the eye. " First, this passage refers to other depictions of animals in Müller's work, which we still have to investigate. To classify them in terms of literary studies would be the goal. Secondly, at this point - read retrospectively - another aesthetic program by Herta Müller reveals itself. This scene represents, so to speak, in miniature what it means to live in everyday life under dictatorship and refers to an important element of the novel's aesthetics , which is both structural and thematic: the gaze.

style

Look

The gaze is initially an important thematic element, because life in a dictatorship is always the state's gaze at the population. Seeing is thus subordinate to the totalitarian regime , which is expressed in Müller's spying and interrogation . This goes hand in hand with a kind of omnipresence of stately power. Statements like "the black in the eye" refer to totalitarian surveillance. For all of her work it can be said in general that without Müller's view there is no literature. She elevates perception to the core of her writing style and the eyes and gaze play a major role in this. The narrative instances thus develop into experts in looking. This has become a core topic in modern literary discourse , because the question of how one sees or perceives something is one of the frequently discussed topics. Because perception and sight determine the representation ( mimesis ) of literature. And the how or the form of literature makes it what it is to a large extent. The eye-gaze of seeing is not designed as a gaze that has been thought through and reflected down to the last detail, but rather as an always attentive gaze that constructs an apparently neutral position. This view, perhaps rated as a neutral perspective, refers directly to the structural meaning of the gaze or the fictional narrator's perspective in the novel The fox was already the hunter and Müller's work in general. Müller constructs a "third position of perception" in the novel. This external position, which however suggests to be interpreted as internal focalization, moves on a threshold between perception and representation, which can be seen as central to Müller's writing. Because with the thematization of perception, the work also addresses literary creation in general, which always has to do with perception and representation or reading and writing. This reflection is all the more significant for this novel, since it deals with perceptions of animals in a great variety. Animals, like the fox fur, are always interpreted and perceived from a human perspective. The text shows what looking at the animals does to the animals and vice versa: Animals are also actors and contribute significantly to Adina's perception, because the representation also repeatedly addresses non-human perception. Thus "Müller's narration shows the illusion of observing a perception."

Others

Furthermore, the novel is characterized by the fact that it depicts the main plot with recurring perceptions in the zoom or wide angle , based on film technology . The novel is designed as a series of different associations and perceptions and creates a kind of impressions in collage form that challenge the recipient . This goes hand in hand with a lack of orientation, which on a certain level is the formal redemption of the subject of dictatorship. In addition, there is the fact that a red thread is missing in the plot, the episodes jump and a chopped up impression is created, which on the one hand was criticized, but on the other hand is viewed by Müller himself as an appropriate way of representation. Another element, especially at the end of the novel, is the narrator's perspective , which - as mentioned above - creates a closeness and a distance at the same time. The novel does not have a clearly zero-focussed narrative voice that has the overview. Rather, internal and apparently external focussing alternate with experienced speech. In addition, the sentences in the novel are kept very simple and are often repeated identically. However, the language is permeated with metaphors and metonymies. That is the reason why the environment takes on an important role and brings it into the plant as an actor. On the one hand, the tropics act as a leitmotif between individual parts of the text and figures, in that they also receive a structural function through intratextual references, and on the other hand, the tropics refer to a further level, which, however, must first be decoded. The metaphors in particular have multiple functions, which is why the precise definition of the rhetorical figures turns out to be rather difficult. For example, the question arises how the birthmark of Pavel, the secret service officer, is to be interpreted. This image of the Securitate employee with an obvious birthmark acts to recognize him and to create a kind of syntax , but can also serve as an expression of a certain perception, because Adina obviously does not trust Pavel. This is where Müller's poetic power reveals itself, because she manages to create tropes or to create images that can be understood, but which have no direct relationship between meaning and image. This is one of the elements that defines the novel and Müller's narrative in general. However, this type of metaphor has also given rise to criticism . The Romanian language also plays a major role in the imagery.

reception

The novel is considered to be one of the most difficult texts by Herta Müller to grasp. He has celebrated the third biggest success after the breath swing and the heart animal . Nevertheless, the work was discussed controversially, for example in " The Literary Quartet " and in the feature pages . The point of contention was the question of the metaphors and poetics of the novel and whether they are up to the topic and adequately depict it. In addition, the writing style and the short, simple sentences were criticized, but on the other hand also praised.

Text output

  • Herta Müller: Back then, the fox was already the hunter. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-498-04352-8 .
  • Herta Müller: Back then, the fox was already the hunter. Hanser Verlag, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-446-23333-1 .
  • Herta Müller: Back then, the fox was already the hunter. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-596-18162-9 .

Research literature

  • Friedmar Apel: Cutting. Separate. On the poetics of the headstrong look at Herta Müller. In: Norbert Otto Eke (ed.): The invented perception. Approaches to Herta Müller. Igel Verlag Wissenschaft, Paderborn 1991, ISBN 3-927104-15-9 , pp. 22-31.
  • Friedmar Apel: The dictatorship and the visibility of things. Self-assertion and commitment at Herta Müller. In: Eckart Goebel and Eberhard Lämmert (eds.): "Stand for many by standing for yourself". Forms of literary self-assertion in the modern age. Akademie, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-05-004007-6 , pp. 290-302.
  • Jaqueline Bauer and Nadja Kuhl: Back then, the fox was already the hunter: An exotic German literature or Herta Müller's irritation. In: Joanna Jablowska and Malgorzata Kibisiak (eds.): Austrian literature how is it? Contributions to the literature of the Habsburg cultural area. Wydawn. Uniw. Łódzkiego, Łódź 1995, ISBN 83-7016-851-5 , pp. 25-37.
  • Beverley Drive Beverley Drive: A Mutilated Fox Fur: Examining the Contexts of Herta Müller's Imagery in: The fox was already the hunter back then. In: Brigid Haines and Lyn Marven (eds.): Herta Müller. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-965464-2 , pp. 84-98.
  • Petra Günther: No consolation, nowhere. About Herta Müller's work. In: Andreas Erb (ed.): Construction site contemporary literature. The nineties. Westdeutscher-Verlag, Opladen / Wiesbaden 1998, ISBN 3-531-12894-9 , pp. 154-166.
  • Brigid Haines and Margaret Littler: Conversation with Herta Müler. In: Brigid Haines (ed.): Herta Müller. University of Wales Press, Cardiff 1998, ISBN 0-7083-1484-8 , pp. 14-24.
  • Walter Hinck: The security service's mole passages. Protocol of a soul terror. Herta Müller: "Back then, the fox was already the hunter." 1992. In: Walter Hinck: Roman Chronicle of the 20th Century. An eventful time in the mirror of literature. DuMont, Cologne 2006, ISBN 978-3-8321-7984-7 , S: 242-247.
  • Dagmar von Hoff: Room for Morality? Herta Müller, her texts and the poetic moment. In: Brigid Haines (ed.): Herta Müller. University of Wales Press, Cardiff 1998, ISBN 0-7083-1484-8 , pp. 86-108.
  • Martina Hoffmann and Kerstin Schulz: "In the breath of fear". Nature motifs in Herta Müller's The fox was already the hunter back then . In: Ralph Köhnen (ed.): The pressure of experience drives language into poetry. Imagery in Hera Müller's texts. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-631-30662-8 , pp. 79-94.
  • René Kegelmann: The fox was already the hunter back then. (On some peculiarities of Herta Müller's prose). In: René Kegelmann: "At the borders of nothingness, this language ..." On the situation of Romanian-German literature in the 1980s in the Federal Republic of Germany. Aisthesis, Bielefeld 1995, ISBN 3-89528-132-8 , pp. 125-133.
  • Hannes Krauss: Strange looks. On the prose by Herta Müller and Richard Wagner. In: Walter Delabar et al. (Ed.): New Generation - New Telling. Westdeutscher-Verlag, Opladen 1993, ISBN 3-531-12447-1 , pp. 69-76.
  • Julia Müller: Repetition and strangeness: the fox was already the hunter back then. In: Julia Müller: Sprachtakt. Herta Müller's literary style of representation. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2014, ISBN 978-3-412-22151-5 , pp. 182–205 (= literature and life, volume 85).
  • Wiebke Sievers: Eastward Bound: Herta Müller's International Reception. In: Brigid Haines and Lyn Marven (eds.): Herta Müller. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-965464-2 , pp. 172-189.
  • Marisa Siguan: Herta Müller: Auto-Fiction, Imagery and Memory. In: Marisa Siguan: Writing at the Limits of Language. Studies on Améry, Kertész, Semprún, Schalamow, Herta Müller and Aub. De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-034834-7 , pp. 242-285 (Linguae & litterae, Volume 45).
  • Carmen Wagner: Back then, the fox was already the hunter. In: Carmen Wagner: Language and Identity. Literary and didactic aspects of Herta Müller's prose. Igel-Verlag Wissenschaft, Oldenburg 2002, ISBN 3-89621-156-0 , pp. 54-56 (= literature and media studies, volume 87).
  • Paola Bozzi: The strange look. About Herta Müller's work. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-3252-7 .
  • Li Shuangzhi: From the heart to the animal and back again. An investigation into the versatile animal design in Herta Müller's heart animal . In: Jens Christian Deeg and Martina Wernli (eds.): Herta Müller and the glitter in the sentence. An approach to contemporary literature. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-8260-5746-5 , pp. 93–110 (= Würzburg Contributions to German Philology, Volume 42).
  • Jens Christian Deeg: Among other things. Animals as poetological reflection figures in The Fox was the hunter even then . In: Jens Christian Deeg and Martina Wernli (eds.): Herta Müller and the glitter in the sentence. An approach to contemporary literature. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-8260-5746-5 , pp. 111–130 (= Würzburg Contributions to German Philology, Volume 42).
  • Anna-Kathrin Warner: The forelock sees: Images of a totalitarian society in the work of Herta Müller. AVM, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-86306-732-8 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Norbert Otto Eke (ed.): Herta Müller-Handbuch. JBMetzler, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-476-02580-7 , p. 31.
  2. ↑ Herta Müller: The fox was already the hunter back then. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-596-18162-9 , p. 126.
  3. ↑ Norbert Otto Eke (ed.): Herta Müller-Handbuch. JBMetzler, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-476-02580-7 , p. 33.
  4. ↑ Norbert Otto Eke (ed.): Herta Müller-Handbuch. JBMetzler, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-476-02580-7 , pp. 33-34.
  5. ↑ Norbert Otto Eke (ed.): Herta Müller-Handbuch. JBMetzler, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-476-02580-7 , p. 34.
  6. ↑ Norbert Otto Eke (ed.): Herta Müller-Handbuch. JBMetzler, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-476-02580-7 , pp. 34-35.
  7. ↑ Herta Müller: The fox was already the hunter back then. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-596-18162-9 , p. 167.
  8. ↑ Norbert Otto Eke (ed.): Herta Müller-Handbuch. JBMetzler, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-476-02580-7 , p. 35.
  9. ↑ Jens Christian Deeg: Among other things. Animals as poetological reflection figures in The Fox was the hunter even then . In: Jens Christian Deeg and Martina Wernli (eds.): Herta Müller and the glitter in the sentence. An approach to contemporary literature. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-8260-5746-5 , pp. 111–130, here pp. 123–129 (= Würzburg Contributions to German Philology, Vol. 42).
  10. ↑ Jens Christian Deeg: Among other things. Animals as poetological reflection figures in The Fox was the hunter even then . In: Jens Christian Deeg and Martina Wernli (eds.): Herta Müller and the glitter in the sentence. An approach to contemporary literature. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-8260-5746-5 , pp. 111–130, here pp. 123–129 (= Würzburg Contributions to German Philology, Vol. 42).
  11. ↑ Norbert Otto Eke (ed.): Herta Müller-Handbuch. JBMetzler, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-476-02580-7 , pp. 35-37.
  12. ↑ Herta Müller: The fox was already the hunter back then. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-596-18162-9 , p. 7.
  13. ↑ Shuangzhi Li: From the heart to the animal and back. An investigation into the versatile animal design in Herta Müller's heart animal . In: Jens Christian Deeg and Martina Wernli (eds.): Herta Müller and the glitter in the sentence. An approach to contemporary literature. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-8260-5746-5 , pp. 93–110, here p. 110 (= Würzburg Contributions to German Philology, Vol. 42).
  14. ↑ Norbert Otto Eke (ed.): Herta Müller-Handbuch. JBMetzler, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-476-02580-7 , p. 36.
  15. ↑ Norbert Otto Eke (ed.): Herta Müller-Handbuch. JBMetzler, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-476-02580-7 , pp. 6–9 and 36.
  16. ↑ Herta Müller: The fox was already the hunter back then. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-596-18162-9 , p. 257.
  17. ↑ Paola Bozzi: The Strange Look. About Herta Müller's work. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-3252-7 , pp. 129-131.
  18. ↑ Jens Christian Deeg: Among other things. Animals as poetological reflection figures in The Fox was the hunter even then . In: Jens Christian Deeg and Martina Wernli (eds.): Herta Müller and the glitter in the sentence. An approach to contemporary literature. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-8260-5746-5 , pp. 111–130, here p. 129 (= Würzburg Contributions to German Philology, Vol. 42).
  19. ↑ Jens Christian Deeg: Among other things. Animals as poetological reflection figures in The Fox was the hunter even then . In: Jens Christian Deeg and Martina Wernli (eds.): Herta Müller and the glitter in the sentence. An approach to contemporary literature. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-8260-5746-5 , pp. 111–130, here pp. 129–130 (= Würzburg Contributions to German Philology, Vol. 42).
  20. ↑ Jens Christian Deeg: Among other things. Animals as poetological reflection figures in The Fox was the hunter even then . In: Jens Christian Deeg and Martina Wernli (eds.): Herta Müller and the glitter in the sentence. An approach to contemporary literature. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-8260-5746-5 , pp. 111–130, here p. 130 (= Würzburg Contributions to German Philology, Vol. 42).
  21. ↑ Norbert Otto Eke (ed.): Herta Müller-Handbuch. JBMetzler, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-476-02580-7 , pp. 37-38.
  22. ↑ Norbert Otto Eke (ed.): Herta Müller-Handbuch. JBMetzler, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-476-02580-7 , pp. 38-39.
  23. ↑ Norbert Otto Eke (ed.): Herta Müller-Handbuch. JBMetzler, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-476-02580-7 , pp. 39-40.