Iconicity as a Doorway to a New Space: Lesser Known East German Women Writers in the Seventies and Eighties — Page 2:
6 Why might it be that unrecognised works by East German female authors hold so many surprises as far as literary iconicity is concerned? Their innovative potential is due to their very specific place of emergence. Since East Germany remained a patriarchal country in spite of its progressive socialist laws, in this particular context language appears to be dual, existing simultaneously as a factor of oppression and a key to emancipation. Iconicity enables the writers to cope with language duality:
The iconic force in language produces an ENACTMENT of the fictional reality through the form of the text. This brings realistic illusion to life in a new dimension: as readers, we do not merely receive a report of the fictional world; we enter into it iconically, as a dramatic performance, through the experience of reading. (Leech and Short 236; emphasis in the original)
Leech and Short allude to the emotive value of iconicity for the interpretation of literary texts. They refer here to an "enactment," which leads to a reader-based "dramatic performance." This performance is by definition a subjective process, which is an individual result of the act of reading. It means that the representation of the text (the sense) does not exist before the act of reading, which makes it difficult for censorship (as well as self-censorship) to work efficiently. This is why we can assume that literary iconicity is particularly vivid in works written by East German female authors, due to their very specific way of life.
7 More than in Western Europe, the life of lesser known women writers in the former GDR was affected by the double standards described above. First, they experienced this contradictory situation as women — living in a state where the question of women's liberation was considered solved but the mentalities remained patriarchal. Secondly, they felt the rift between principles and reality, between theory and practice in their life as writers. On the one hand, the GDR society was extremely literature-friendly: many people read a great deal of books; the authors were in close contact with their editors and readership. Moreover, even books considered hard to sell were published; editorial decisions were not governed by the commercial rules applied in capitalist countries. On the other hand, literary creation was subject to censorship, which automatically induces self-censorship. Thirdly, lesser known East German women writers experienced marginalization in the literary landscape because their works were considered second-rate or not considered at all. During the GDR era their texts were not duly reviewed or analysed by literary critics. Recognition finally came late and with hesitation (i.e. after the Wende in 1989-1990).[1]The following examples illustrate this late and only partial recognition by the scholarly community: The volume Vogel oder Käfig sein (an overview of art and literature in independent GDR magazines from 1979 to 1989) presents only 23 contributions by women from a total of 158 texts (Michael and Wohlfahrt).In her "obituary" dedicated to GDR female writing, Christa Wolf mentions only her — already famous — colleagues Irmtraud Morgner, Inge Müller, Brigitte Reimann, and Maxie Wander (Wolf 19). Instead of searching in anthologies or high-circulation magazines, one should track down lesser known GDR female writers in isolated articles or in case studies written from a feminist point of view: Ph.D. theses (Schulze, Dahlke) or scholarly articles (Abret and Nagelschmidt).
8 Beyond these GDR-specific difficulties, East German women writers — like other female authors all over the world — also coped with the problem of what Sigrid Weigel called "double place" (Weigel, Topographien 262; my translation). They experienced this phenomenon both in their life and in their writing: they lived in an inherently patriarchal society, which at the same time pretended that the equality of rights between the sexes had been achieved. They faced a male language that tended to exclude them, but also served as their first means of effective expression. Thus, they had to look through what Weigel calls "the man's glasses," in her much-cited essay on the topic of Feminine aesthetics, entitled "Der schielende Blick" (Weigel, Blick 85).[2]"The title [. . .] is full of ambiguities. 'Der schielende Blick' can mean 'the cross-eyed gaze', 'the surreptitious gaze out of the corner of the eye' or 'the gaze directed in two divergent directions'" (Translator Harriet Anderson, in Weigel, Focus 303). Indeed, for East German female authors, there were no other ways to see: the patriarchal glasses are the language in which they articulate themselves, the reason they need to draw conclusions. But the paradoxical status of women in a patriarchal society as both subject and object allows them to squint: with one eye they see through the glasses but with the other they dare to peek at another reality (Weigel, Blick 104). Iconicity may serve as a literary technique enabling these female authors to rule the norms instead of being ruled by them.
9 The first type of iconicity used as a literary technique is the imagic one. East German female writers often use imaginisation in search of a suitable literary setting. They make literary use of a resemblance between an item and its referent by some — visual, pictorial, acoustic — characteristic. Katja Lange-Müller's work is one of the most striking examples. She plays with the phonetic shape of words and the evocative value of sounds in order to locate her writing between both German states (Lange-Müller, Kasper). Her story entitled Kasper Mauser — Die Feigheit vorm Freund tells us less about life in East Germany than about the author's break with her former existence and her transition to a new society.
- Fig. 3: Imagic iconicity in the works by Lange-Müller (examples based on the main characters' names)
The first character in Lange-Müller's story is the anarchist Anna. She calls herself "Independent Autonomous Republic Anna Nass" (21),[3]Unless otherwise stated, translations are my own. reminiscent of a confused and corrupt banana republic. The many cracks in her biography find an echo in the blank between her first and last names, "Anna Nass, like the tropical fruit" (23). Rosa Extra is Anna's "bosom foe" (18), both constitute a "neatly separated unity" (71). Rosa Extra's name is derived from the name of a sanitary towel only distributed in the former GDR, whereas pineapples (German Ananas or "Anna Nass") were a privilege of Western Germany. Kasper Mauser, alias Amigo Amica, is Anna's friend. Out of "cowardice" towards such a difficult "friend" — the socialist regime — he decides to leave the GDR and to follow Anna to West Germany. He chooses the allusive name of Kasper Mauser in reminiscence of the historical character of Casper Hauser. In the GDR he was living in a "cave-like room" (27). When he leaves his hiding place, he is deaf and dumb like the hero in Jakob Wassermann's Caspar Hauser oder Die Trägheit des Herzens (Caspar Hauser or The Inertia of the Heart). He is "from the Mongolian people" (62). Katja Lange-Müller knows Mongolia well, since she was sent there for one year after she had completed her studies. Thus the GDR regime kept her at a distance from the political events in her home country. The deplorable living conditions she experienced in Mongolia depressed her so much that she lost her faith in socialism and applied for an exit permit when she came back to the GDR.
10 Like a child, Kasper Mauser is a master in folk-etymology (i.e. he likes to link unknown parts of the wor(l)ds to wor(l)ds he already knows). For Olga Fischer and Max Nänny, this is a type of iconicity through which "children, and also adults, make sense of the world": "[Children] have a very clear need to make arbitrary signs transparent by relating parts of the sign to other previously learned signs so that the arbitrary makes sense to them in a 'natural' way" (5). The anti-hero Kasper Mauser indeed has a childish attitude in a supposedly adult world, refusing to have a steady identity, even refusing to be reduced to one person. Kasper, Anna and Rosa are likely to build a single, contradictory personality. After the Wende, Lange-Müller explained in an interview with Jürgen Krätzer:
In meiner damaligen Schreibhaltung war es eine Person, die sich die beiden anderen ausdenkt. Aber welche diejenige ist, die sich die beiden anderen ausdenkt, das wechselt. (Lange-Müller, Muse 176)
(At that time, I as a writer considered that one person would think up the other two. But which one thinks up the other two — that's what changes.)
From Mauser to Mauer (German for wall) there is only a one-letter difference. The East-West German wall indeed fascinates Mauser (27). Described as an "adopstep son" (14), Kasper Mauser indeed says he has "idento-infected" himself with Caspar Hauser,
[w]ohl wegen möglicher Assoziationen zur Kasper-Puppe, zum Suppen-Kasper, zu Müllers/Brechts 'Mauser', der Mauser der kanarischen Vögel, der Pistole gleichen Namens... (Lange-Müller, Kasper 62)
(probably because of possible associations to the puppet Kasper [Germany's Kasper, France's Guignol, and Britain's Punch], to the Suppen-Kasper ["The Story of Augustus who would not have any Soup" by Heinrich Hoffmann], to Müller's/Brecht's 'Mauser', to the moulting [German Mauser] of canaries, to the pistol of the same name...)
Coming back to the three basic elements constituting iconicity mentioned in Fig. 1, we could now illustrate them in the following manner:
- Fig. 4: Imagic iconicity conveyed by Kasper Mauser