La pressione dell'esperienza costringe il linguaggio alla poesia: fatti, finzione, autofinzionalità e surfinzionalità nell'opera di Herta Müller

A major factor in Müller’s work originating in her traumatic experiences in Ceauşescu’s Romania is the aversion she shows to all forms of authoritarian and totalitarian rule. Despite the undeniable importance of the political dimension, it would be one-sided to concentrate only on this part of Müller’s writing. In fact, the reader is enriched by the precise observation and the unflinching honesty in the portrayals of the surroundings and the self, conveyed by the author’s consummate artistry. The defining feature of her work is rather the way she develops an original and powerful style out of writing on the basis of her biographical experiences. The reader thus finds himself confronted with ‘autofiction’, or rather, ‘surfiction’ (R. Federman), i.e. with the fictionalization and the transfiguration of lived experience through writing, which both allows and facilitates access to a certain truth. Moreover, Müller focuses her attention on the kind of experience that reveals life itself as a fiction. While acknowledging that truth reached through creative imagination is ‘truer’ than truth constructed mimetically in reference to facts (representation), Müller stresses that a truly fictional discourse can only be self-reflexive. Genuine fiction constructs itself through self-destruction, constant suspicion of its fictiousness.