Iconicity as a Doorway to a New Space: Lesser Known East German Women Writers in the Seventies and Eighties — Page 5:
21 The utterance "(textual) form ----- // ----- free structures" refers to the stream of words literally opening on the page, words and sentences falling apart on both sides as in "Alex in M." ("H / uman"), denaturing the common sense of our "disfigured, enslaved expression." By jumbling up the order of textual sequences we are used to, Erb attracts our attention to the gaps in-between, to what she calls the "filler words" in our thoughts and discourses. She claims her right to arrange word groups not linearly but to let them "stand in an active connection to each other" ("Sie stehen [. . .] untereinander in einem bleibend aktiven Zusammenhang," Erb, Vexierbild 106). She wants the free textual composition to surprise her by opening new fields of meaning. The form not only carries, but also enriches the meaning. The utterance "(political) meaning ----- // ----- free individuals" refers to Erb's "small-scale utopia" mentioned above. She conceives her works as a literary and political experiment. In the following essay (Report on a New Way of Representing / Bericht über eine neue Darstellungsweise) Erb tells the reader about her mixed feeling after completing this experiment. On one hand, she feels happy,
frei [. . .] meinem realen Gewissen folgen zu dürfen hinein in ein geöffnetes und sich weiter öffnendes Feld
(free [. . .] to be allowed to follow my real conscience into an open and still widening field)
On the other hand, she feels sad, because she had to admit
daß Freiheit nur dort ist, wo auch Gefangenschaft ist, und sich das, was wir als Identität erstreben, jenseits von Gefangenschaft und Freiheit befindet. (Erb, Vexierbild 105)
(that there is no freedom if there is no imprisonment. What we strive after and call identity is beyond imprisonment and freedom.)
22 Like imagic and diagrammatic iconicity, metaphoric iconicity as well is a means of expression used by less known East German female authors. Four of them claimed to write "slave speech" in the eighties (Strittmatter, Lange-Müller, Königsdorf, Maron, Erb). They point out that slave speech corresponds to the rifts in their lives. This metaphor encompasses various meanings, but is based on a common ground. The authors use it to point out the malfunctions and discrepancies in their lives as women writers (Fig. 13).
- Fig. 13: "Slave speech" as metaphoric iconicity
23 These discrepancies can have different origins, depending on the author's intimate experiences. For Eva Strittmatter, "slave speech" means "male speech," the kind of speech she is forced to use because there is no other means of expression for her in a patriarchal society. Strittmatter hints implicitly at the internal conflict between her dream-life and her real one, exactly what Weigel describes with her concept of "double place."
Vielleicht kommt das Gefühl der Unbestimmtheit, der Verschwommenheit und Unsicherheit vor allem doch daher, daß ich mich von Anfang an — also seit Jahrzehnten nun schon — angepaßt habe an Bedürfnisse und Willen des Mannes, mit dem ich lebe? Daß ich nur in einer Sklavensprache rede und schreibe [. . .]? (Strittmatter 137-138)
(Maybe the feeling of uncertainty, of vagueness and of insecurity comes mostly from the fact that since the beginning — i.e. for many decades already — I have adapted to the needs and desires of the man I live with? That I speak and write in a slave speech only [. . .]?)
24 According to Katja Lange-Müller in Kasper Mauser — Die Feigheit vorm Freund "slave speech" is a synonym for self-deception. Anna, one of the main characters of her piece, remembers a part of a poem she had learnt when she was still living on the other side of the Wall.
- Sklavensprache — und wie sie noch sanft-dämlich für sich hin grinste — ja, wirklich, sie sah den schafhaften Ausdruck ihres Gesichts auch ohne Spiegel genau genug — machte sie schon wieder die, fast minütliche, phantomschmerzliche Entdeckung, daß auch dies Stück Gedicht aus der verbotenen, verlorenen Welt Mitgebrachtes war. (Lange-Müller, Kasper 38-39)
(- slave speech — and how she was grinning softly-stupidly to herself — oh yes, really, she saw the sheep-like expression of her face even without a mirror precisely enough — once again she discovered almost every minute like phantom pain, that this piece of poem was something brought from the forbidden, lost world.)
25 For Helga Königsdorf, "slave speech" hints at self-deception and double bind. Looking back at her life in the GDR, she writes in 1990: "slave speech [. . .] was also the language of power, since this language referred to the slaves as the masters, which made every resistance appear to be nonsensical from the very beginning" ("Sklavensprache," "die auch die Sprache der Macht war, denn diese Sprache bezeichnete die Sklaven zugleich als Herren, was jeden Widerstand von vornherein als unlogisch erscheinen ließ"; Martens).