The Power of Linguistic Change in Herta Müller's Novel "Atem Schaukel"

Abstract

Aim of this study is to investigate how and what kind of language Herta Müller used in her post war novel “Atemschaukel”. In her novel, Herta Müller, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature, a German-born Romanian, mentions the life of a 17 year old boy who was sent to the Russian labour camp named Gulag like all German-born women and men between 17 and 54 ages. The boy returned home five years later as a victim of the war. In the novel, which consists of 64 consecutive titles, issues such as totalitarianism, captivity, forced migration, labour camp life, home return and survivors are presented by the first-person narrator, the Transylvanian Saxon fictional narrator Leopold. The narrative art of this novel is enriched by literary images of non-linguistic elements and ineffable things through forshadowing and flashback, word formation, close autobiographical elements, and, in particular, through linguistic transformations, and metaphors. Thus, the destructive power of post-war poetic language has become a rising monument.