Romania Has Perfected the Art of Forgetting
Key takeaways
- Hardened by five years in a Soviet labor camp, her mother rarely showed affection. “Love disguised itself as a question.
- For Müller, a novelist who lived under Romania’s brutal communist dictatorship, a handkerchief is never just a handkerchief.
- “Do you have a handkerchief?” was the question Herta Müller’s mother asked her every day before she left the house.
Hardened by five years in a Soviet labor camp, her mother rarely showed affection. “Love disguised itself as a question. That was the only way it could be spoken: matter-of-factly, in the tone of a command, or the deft maneuvers used for work,” Müller said in her speech after winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 2009.
For Müller, a novelist who lived under Romania’s brutal communist dictatorship, a handkerchief is never just a handkerchief. When a man drops dead in a city street, a handkerchief is the “wordless condolence” of passersby used to cover up his face. A handkerchief is a “piece of private property” she places on the office stairs to mark her new workstation after being forced out of her desk for political reasons. It is a flickering symbol of dignity and care amid decades of darkness.
“Do you have a handkerchief?” was the question Herta Müller’s mother asked her every day before she left the house. Hardened by five years in a Soviet labor camp, her mother rarely showed affection. “Love disguised itself as a question. That was the only way it could be spoken: matter-of-factly, in the tone of a command, or the deft maneuvers used for work,” Müller said in her speech after winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 2009.