Trauma e poeticità nella narrativa di Herta Müller

Abstract

Among the many ways in which Herta Müller engages in reconstructing historical memory in her prose is her extensive use of poetic devices. This article will focus on illustrating the role of words-images and the collage technique, in short, on the functioning of the visual medium, with its varied signifying potential, in conjunction with words, according to a logic in which the montage encapsulates a fragmentary, exploded, alienated identity. This study will therefore shed light on some central aspects of Herta Müller’s prose concerning the problematic layering of the characters’ consciousness. These are victims of the most lacerating historical traumas that marked the 20th century and they often appear within the frames of an autobiographical narrative that does not separate ethics from imagination, or the representation of the wounds of history from poeticism and fiction.

Keywords

• trauma
• testimony
• image-collage
• visual
• montage
• identity
• poeticism
• autofiction
• autobiographical literature