Devastating Novel "The Land of Green Plums" by Herta Müller

Herta Müller in 2007
Amrei-Marie unter
cc-by-sa3.0 und GFDL

Recently I read a devastating novel, The Land of Green Plums, by Romanian-born German writer Herta Müller (17 August 1953-), and have been haunted by the unbearable hard life she depicted unflinchingly ever since.  The original title, however, was Herztier, Heart Animal, or Heart Beast as the phrase translated by Michael Hofmann for Picador Book.  Besides being a novelist, Müller is also a poet, essayist and she was the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Niţchidorf, Timiş County in Romania and her native language is German.[wikipedia]

The novel was set at the height of Ceauşescu's reign of terror and a mere daily existence was a heroic struggle, particularly for intellectuals.  The green plums were referring to omnipresent surveillance agents who chewed on those plums constantly.  Heart Animal was a living presence inside an individual the state was striving to stamp out like wildfire.  The stories she told was intentionally episodic and not always coherent and logical, thus she created a hallucinatory atmosphere and a nightmarish living environment one could not escape from.  The novel impressed me  most by its accurate depiction of seemingly inconsequential but cumulatively enormous burdens the state imposed upon individuals.  The book was a devastating read, particularly for people like me who grew up under the similar circumstances, if not as severe, and have close relatives and friends suffering the similar oppressions even now, more so than I had ever experienced, as the political situation in China gets more insufferable as the Communist Party's legitimacy gets shakier and the totalitarian regimes get lonelier.

The language Müller employed was halting and haunting yet deceptively simple, and the images she conjured up hallucinatory, the morals clear, through tortuous paths. I have to quote some passages from the translated version, which would eloquently correlate all the points I just made.

Its preface was a poem by Gellu Naum (August 1, 1915 – September 29, 2001) was a prominent Romanian poet, dramatist, novelist, children's writer, and translator.[wikipedia]

   Everyone had a friend in every wisp of cloud
   that's how it is with friends where the world is full of fear
   even my mother said, that's how it is
   friends are out of the question
   think of more serious things                                             
                                     
                                        - Gellu Naum

On Page 94, Müller wrote:

I have been interrogated by Captain Pjele on his own without the dog Pjele. Maybe the dog Pjele was having a break, to eat or sleep. Maybe the dog Pjele was off in one of the building's many hidden rooms being trained, either learning something new or practicing something he already knew, while Captain Pjele was interrogating me. Maybe the dog Pjele was with the man and the canvas bag, on the tail of someone else in the street. Maybe with a different man and no canvas bag. Maybe the dog Pjele was following Kurt while Captain Pjele was interrogating me. How many men were there, and how many dogs? As many as a dog has hairs.

On Pages 121-122:

If Frau Margit spent too long reading and ate too many wafer scraps, her stomach would get so holy that she would belch as she peeled the potatoes, and then she would swear even more. Since I've known Frau Margit, holy for me means a dry, whitish crackling in the mouth that makes you belch and swear.

Finally, on Page 177:

On her wrist she had one of my father's dead wristwatches. Why do you wear if, I asked, if it doesn't work? Nobody can see that, she said, and you have one too. Mine works, I said, otherwise I wouldn't be wearing it. If I wear a watch, it makes me feel more secure, she said, even if it's not working. Then why ask me what time it is? I said.

Because that's all I can talk to you about, said Mother.

It was a most memorable book, beautiful and repulsive simultaneously.


This reminded me of another dystopian book I read recently, just before it was awarded a Pulitzer for fiction - The Orphan Master's Son, by Adam Johnson, who claimed that after his thorough research on the brutality took place in North Korea, he deliberately left many harrowing details out, so as not to render the book "unreadable".  Pity.  It was a missed opportunity.

Though the book did give us a sense of sinister atmosphere in North Korea and was eminently readable, it ultimately disappointed because the entertaining and amusing accounts of the hero's adventure went beyond black humor and much of those amusements became dangerously close to be at the cost of the sufferings of the poor North Koreans.  The hero's implausible achievements ultimately rendered the book much closer to an action hero comic book than a serious novel depicting blood and flesh characters.  The pervasive danse macabre could have been perfect if one sensed that the puppeteer was the heartless North Korean leader; instead, it was the author who constantly pulled the strings, quite visible ones and that cheapened the whole enterprise. 


Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst:
- Ashamed of Oneself - Reading Book "Never Let Me Go"
- Molotov's Magic Lantern: A Journey In Russian History by Rachel Polonsky and Some Journeys of My Own
- David Malouf's Ransom
- Review of "As Above, So Below" by Rudy Von B. Rucker
- Banned Books in Mao's China

Art from Ancient Worlds at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Ever since the opening of the new Greek and Roman Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on April 20, 2007, I longed to visit it.  Finally, I got chance to admire the beautiful hall, as well as incredible collections there.  In the same trip, I also concentrated on Byzantine works, which I had not paid much attention in my previous visit.  For a museum as big as the MET, I had to strategize and concentrate on a portion of its vast collections in order to really look at the art, instead of just greetings and then moving on.

I found this introductory video online and it can guide my dear readers who are not familiar with this project.




At the entrance hall to the Greek and Roman wing, visitors can see most imposing statues and columns.







Below pictures are only the corridors to the big display rooms at the end and smaller ones on the sides. 





Greek sculptures from all periods are included and I can spend hours and hours in these rooms.






Marble head of a youth from a relief, Greek, late 4th century B.C., Said to be from Rhodes

Beyond the beautiful sculptures so identified with Greek culture, there were many other objects with high historical, cultural and artistic values.  I particularly love the weird small sculpture below, like the Female Figure with strange profile and the Harp Player in the strange pose, and terracotta and metal artifacts below:


Marble female figure, Cycladic, Final Neolithic, c. 4500-4000 B.C.


Marble female figure, Cycladic, Final Neolithic, c. 4500-4000 B.C.


Marble seated harp player, Cycladic, Early Cycladic I-Early Cycladic II, c. 2800-2700 B.C.




Terracotta neck-amphora (storage jar), Greek, Attic, Proto-Attic, second quarter of the 7th century B.C.






Terracotta krater, Greek, Attic, Geometric, c. 725 B.C.


Terracotta neck-amphora (jar) with twisted handles, Greek, Attic, c. 440 B.C.




Two Bronze Helmets, Greek, South Italian, mid-4th-mid-3rd century B.C.




Terracotta sarcophagus rim, East Greek, Clazomenian, last quarter of the 6th century, B.C.


Gold phiale (libation bowl), Greek, 4th-3rd century B.C.

Roman Art obvious continued Greek tradition but also developed in the directions of its own distinction.  Beyond the usual busts closely associated to Roman arts, I love those murals and mosaics very much.




Marble head of a Greek General, Roman, 1st-2nd century A.D.


Marble head of an athlete, Roman, Antonine period, c. A.D. 138-92, Copy of a Greek bronze statue of c. 450-425 B.C.


Marble Sarcophagus, Roman, about A.D. 220-230


Roman Portrait of a young boy












Bronze medallion of Mantinea - BETOYPIOC, bust of Antinous, favorite of Hadrian_TOIC APKACI, horse Mantinea, A.D. 130-137



Byzantine Art collection is relatively small and I had hard time to locate them - they were underneath the main staircases facing the entrance hall.  There were some incredible fabrics from that period and Byzantine Egypt but my batteries went dead before I could capture some images.









I had been to the Egyptian wing before but somehow, I totally missed the gigantic reconstructed Temple of Dendur, Egyptian, Dendur, Nubia, Roman period, ca. 15 B.C.  They were quite well preserved - mysterious and imposing, yet not uninviting, due to the bright light in this room.














The last portion of the artifacts from ancient worlds I want to include in this post mostly contained gold masks and crafts from South America, Mexico, Columbia, etc. They were stunningly rich and slightly grotesque.  Most interesting thing to me was that they resembled some huge bronze masks I saw in Sanxingdui, Sichuan Province, China.  Perhaps, there were some hidden connections since that particular civilization emerged and disappeared mysteriously as well and didn't resemble much of other part of Chinese culture.  Strange indeed.









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