Muller`s Atemschaukel (the hunger angel)‎ between Cassandra and Lazarus : a narrative of silence coffined in a broken gramophone

Abstract EN

The totalitarian regimes have always possessed such a dominating imperative tone rising above, even perching over the vocal cords of the enfeebled voices.

Burning in its seething cauldron, these desperate cries are transformed into a fog-like shadowy ascending vapor, thus acquiring a particular type a ghostly life.

In Atemschaukel, and in a countermovement to these systems, Muller has allegorically set her hero-Leo Auberg out for the dead world of the Russian concentration camp.

Dressed in Lazarus, he dives into the deep recess of its collective memory, tilling its barren land to bring the dead images to its surface, thus donating them one more chance to recount their story.

This paper intends to trace the defacement effect of the totalitarian regimes on the human psyche represented in the character of the hero, depending upon Jung`s stages of the individuation process.

In addition, it shows how the author herself, dressed in Cassandra couldn`t escape similar consequences.

In an identification manner with the enemy, Muller has manipulated words, plucking them out of their original context, implanting them in a new surrealist world.

The paper shows how she has allegorically succeeded in letting silence speak, a coded but a penetrating language.