Iconicity as a Doorway to a New Space: Lesser Known East German Women Writers in the Seventies and Eighties — Page 3:
11 Lange-Müller also uses acoustic iconicity to amplify the meaning of her prose. One senses the animal nature of Kasper Mauser, his insect-like motion, in clauses like "slit-eyed sly dog, speechless, black, gay" (14). The sound conveyed by the alliteration in sibilants echoes the sense: Kasper, sometimes also called "soot beetle" (13, 75), moves "Gregor-Samsa-like" (78), reminding us of the gigantic insect in Kafka's Metamorphosis. All these allusions are actually not cheap puns, but rather part of the imagic iconicity based on sound symbolism. Kasper the insect is a dumb and lonely creature on the fringes of society, even on the fringes of humanity — a typical outsider. Daniel Sich believes that Kasper Mauser deals primarily with the erratic nature of identity, i.e. changing persons in changing states (Sich 68). Thus we can assume that Lange-Müller applies an iconic writing strategy in order to cope with her central theme: unstable signs, constructed language make the world inside and outside the characters even more erratic. So Lange-Müller gets rid for a moment of "the man's glasses" hinted at by Sigrid Weigel: Literary iconicity makes it possible for her to glimpse with one eye and to see things which are blurry through the glasses, but clear without them. It makes her leave the place which she has been assigned in patriarchal society. By using form to add meaning, she captures her own authentic space of writing in a very concrete way.
12 Lange-Müller uses Kasper Hauser as a male mask in her piece. She is not the only female author in the GDR to do so occasionally; other women writers also take advantage of the freedom offered by a non-feminine voice. The imagic iconicity at work is based on a sign (i.e. the form of the literary text) having following characteristic: the authors choose predominantly (Burmeister, Hensel) or at least temporarily (Lange-Müller, Königsdorf) a male narrative perspective, as shown in Table 1 [please click image to enlarge].
- Table 1 [click to enlarge]: the male mask as a sign
* "Einen Mann fragt niemand, ob er sich beim Schreiben als Mann fühlt" (Hensel in: Dahlke 269).
** "die Unantastbarkeit des Individuums," i.e. "das Prinzip Menschenwürde" (Königsdorf, Prinzip 8).
Taking up the graph of the Peircean iconicity presented in Fig. 1, we can say that the overall structure of the works by these four female authors functions as a global icon of so-called "linguistic transvestism." As seen before in Kasper Mauser — Die Feigheit vorm Freund, the male mask used by these writers is a very specific one: the one of an outsider (German Außßenseiter). Beyond this main quality, the sign used in this image determines different interpretants, varying according to the author and her manner of writing, as shown in Fig. 5:
- Fig. 5: The image of "linguistic transvestism"
13 After having analyzed how imagic iconicity functions in the texts written by lesser known East German women, I now turn to the second type of iconicity, the diagrammatic. As described in Peirce's taxonomy of signs, diagrammatic iconicity is based on the arrangement of signs. It requires that at least two elements associated by some relation in the object be represented by an analogous relation in the sign. The nature of this dependence can be illustrated graphically (Fig. 6):
- Fig. 6: The principle of diagrammatic iconicity
A very basic example of diagrammatic iconicity is sound symbolism: The contrasting vowel sounds found in many adjectives expressing the "size" are diagrammatic in structure: The German klein and French petit contain front vowels produced with a very narrow aperture formed by the tongue relative to the palate; this contrasts sharply with groß or grand, where the vowels are open, generally back vowels produced with a much greater aperture of the vocal tract. This opposition is called diagrammatic, since there is a correlation between tongue height with respect to the palate and relative "size."
14 Diagrammatic iconicity in literary texts is less evident at first sight. However, in poetic prose by Stötzer-Kachold,[4]Her works were published both under her maiden name Stötzer and her married name Kachold until 1991, when she changed back to her maiden name. the arrangement of textual and visual elements carries meaning, regardless of whether this arrangement is the result of a conscious decision made by the writer. I will now consider "heimchen ddr," written in 1988 but published only after the Wende in grenzen los fremd gehen (Stötzer-Kachold 150-152 — cf. Appendix). Diagrammatic iconicity concerns several levels here: single characters, textual sequences, and the global architecture of the text. The first point to be made is that diagrammatic iconicity hides in single characters. In order to deconstruct the master discourse (German Herrschaftssprache, Herr also meaning "man"), the writer uses an iconic dismantling strategy. Stötzer-Kachold discards punctuation and capital letters, which she accuses of symbolising hierarchic relationships in language itself (Fig. 7). She reshapes words and sounds, bringing them in new contexts and creating unheard-of associations of ideas and feelings:
heimchen ddr / heimland ddr / heimsuchung ddr / heimlichland ddr [. . .] heimlichkeit ddr [. . .] schweigeland ddr. (Stötzer-Kachold 150-152)
(small home[5]"Heimchen" can also mean an insect ("house cricket") or contemptuously "housewife." gdr / homeland gdr / haunting gdr / secretland gdr [. . .] underground gdr [. . .] silentland gdr)
She mixes up syllables and modifies the spelling of words: "nestneverfled badlyneverfallen" ("nestniegeflüchtet bösniegefallen" 151). By manipulating the typographic order we are used to, Stötzer-Kachold embodies meaning in form: her words sound like a nursery rhyme children repeat without understanding the sense of each part. They may also sound like a litany, a blunted expression reproduced over and over.
- Fig. 7: Diagrammatic iconicity in single characters (Stötzer-Kachold 150-152)
15 In "heimchen ddr," diagrammatic iconicity is also to be found in textual sequences: by breaking up the traditional form of sentences Stötzer-Kachold opens up new spaces of meaning:
wenn weihnachten ist wenn das schmunzeln kommt wenn die säcke nun gar leer wären die spermas sind unwahrscheinlich scharf hier und bespringen auch unabgestoßene eier noch im leiter. (Stötzer-Kachold 150-152)
(when it is christmas when the grin comes if the sacks [also means balls in German] were completely empty the sperms are incredibly sharp here and also cover unovulated eggs still in the tube)
No comma separates the sacks hiding the Christmas presents from the ones containing the semen; no punctuation prevents the writer and the readers from jumping from one idea to the next. All these images are connected to the central notion of "underground gdr": this interpretant also functions as a key to the next — and last — level of diagrammatic iconicity, which is conveyed by the whole architecture of the text. The main part of the text is made of what can be called a flow, a stream of speech whose source (the speakers) cannot always be identified with certainty. It sounds like a chorus of "us," a collective expression of nameless GDR inhabitants ("wir"). It is only interrupted occasionally by an anonymous cry, a refrain that undergoes slight modifications: "ddr heimland" becomes "heimland ddr." There is also graffiti on this wall: a drawing by the author representing an intertwined hermaphrodite couple, illustrating one of the leitmotivs of the text: "under the blanket" ("unter der decke"). Besides, the German expression unter einer Decke stecken means "being in league": the author possibly suggests that the GDR people are also accomplices of the regime they suffer under. Text and drawing are intimately woven into this piece, reflecting Stötzer-Kachold's composite artistic approach: apart from writing prose and poetry, she draws, takes photographs, shoots films and weaves. "heimchen ddr" is one of her woven carpets, iconicity being the shuttle she uses to shoot the woof through the warp. Since we are dealing with forms we shall illustrate them graphically (Fig. 8):
- Fig. 8: Diagrammatic iconicity in the main part of "heimchen ddr" (Stötzer-Kachold 150-152)
In diagrammatic iconicity as defined by Pierce, the relationship between the signs reflects the icon's referents: On the page (sign level), the text looks like a wall encircling the drawing of a human couple. On the object level, a real wall is encircling the "small home gdr." The parallelism between object and sign seems to be perfect. However, it is not static. Towards the end of the text by Stötzer-Kachold, a sentence takes up the entire line, like the undisputed verdict of a judge: "i cannot always speak with past shapes" ("ich kann nicht immer mit vergangenheitsgestalten reden"). This sentence introduces a turn in form and tone: the last seven sentences of the text each stand on their own line. The careful arrangement of the last sequence contrasts with the rough structure of the main part of the text. This visual change suggests an evolution in meaning. Indeed, the author begins to use the first person form, emphasizing that she has made a clean break with the past (Fig. 9).
- Fig. 9: Diagrammatic iconicity in the last sentences of "heimchen ddr" (Stötzer-Kachold 152)