Herta Müller: A Soul Sailor
赫塔.米勒：心灵的远航者

By Motoko Rich and Nicholas Kulish 译/ 李超

Herta Müller, the Romanian-born German novelist and essayist who writes of the oppression of dictatorship in her native country, won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy described Ms. Müller as a writer "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed."

Ms. Müller, 56, emigrated to Germany in 1987. She is the first German writer to win the Nobel in literature since Günter Grass in 1999 and the 13th winner writing in German since the prize was first given in 1901. She is the12th woman to capture the literature prize. But unlike previous winners like Doris Lessing and V. S. Naipaul, Ms. Müller is a relative unknown outside of literary circles in Germany. She has written some 20 books, but just 5 have been translated into English, including the novels The Land of Green Plums and The Appointment.

Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said Ms.Müller was honored for her "very, very distinct special language" and because "she has really a story to tell about growing up in a dictatorship...and growing up as a stranger in your own family."

Ms. Müller was born and raised in the German-speaking town of Nitzkydorf, Romania. Her father served in the Waffen-SS in World War II, and her mother spent years in a work camp in what is now Ukraine.

She wrote her first collection of short stories in 1982 while working as a translator for a factory. The book Niederungen—published in English as Nadirs—was published in Germany two years later to critical acclaim.

Niederungen and her other early works depicted life in a village and the repression its residents faced. Her later novels, including The Land of Green Plums and The Appointment, approach allegory in their graphic portrayals of the brutality suffered by modest people. Her most recent novel, Atemschaukel, is a finalist for the German Book Prize.

Even in Germany, Ms. Müller is not well known. "She's not one of these public trumpeters—or drumbeaters, like Grass," said Volker Weidermann, a book critic for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper. "She's more reserved."

Ms. Müller also has a low profile in the English-speaking world, although The Land of Green Plums won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1998.

Lyn Marven, a lecturer in German studies at the University of Liverpool who has written about Ms. Müller, said: "It's an odd disjunction to write about traumatic experiences … in a very poetic style. It's not what we expect, certainly."

About learning to become a writer while under a dictatorship, Ms. Müller has said: "I've had to learn to live by writing, not the other way around. I wanted to live by the standards I dreamt of, it's as simple as that. And writing was a way for me to voice what I could not actually live."

赫塔·米勒，这位出生于罗马尼亚的德国小说家和散文家，获得了2009年诺贝尔文学奖。米勒的作品主要描写的是罗马尼亚独裁政权对人民的镇压。瑞典文学院称作家米勒女士“以诗歌的精练和散文的率直描绘了一幅流离失所者的众生相”。

米勒女士现年56岁，1987年移居德国。自1999年君特·格拉斯获得诺贝尔文学奖以来，她是又一位获得该项殊荣的德国作家，也是该奖于1901年设立以来第13位以德语写作获奖的作家。同时她还是第12位获得该奖的女性。但与多丽丝·莱辛和V.S.奈保尔这些以往的获奖者不同，米勒女士在德国文学圈外基本不为人所知。尽管她已创作约二十部作品，但仅有五部被译成英文，包括《风中绿李》与《约定》。

瑞典文学院终身秘书彼得·恩格隆德称米勒女士获奖的原因是她“别具一格的语言风格”以及“她对于成长在极权之下……以及在自己家中像陌生人一样生活所作出的真实描述。”

米勒女士出生并成长于罗马尼亚的尼特基多夫，一个以德语为通用语言的小镇。她的父亲在二战时曾服役于武装党卫队，她的母亲在现位于乌克兰境内的劳教营里被关押过多年。

1982年，她在一家工厂里从事翻译工作时，出版了她的第一本短篇小说集。这本英文译名为《低地》的书于两年后在德国出版，并大获好评。

《低地》以及米勒女士其他的早期作品描述的是乡下村庄的生活以及那里的村民所受到的镇压。她后期的小说，包括《风中绿李》与《约定》，以讽喻的手法生动再现了普通大众的残酷遭遇。她的最新作品《我所拥有的我都带着》入围了德国图书奖。

但即使在德国，米勒女士也并不出名。“与格拉斯这些人不同，她不爱在公众面前高谈阔论或大肆宣扬，”来自《星期日法兰克福汇报》的书评家沃克尔·韦德曼说，“她更内敛一些。”

尽管米勒女士于1998年凭借作品《风中绿李》荣获国际IMPAC都柏林文学奖，但她在英语国家的知名度也不高。

英国利物浦大学“德国研究”专业的讲师利恩·马文曾撰文谈及米勒女士，他评论说：“用诗意的方式来记述痛苦的经历，会让人产生一种奇怪的分裂的感觉。而毫无疑问，这超出了我们的预期。”

在谈到如何在独裁政权下成长为一名作家时，米勒女士曾说：“我不得不学会依靠写作而生存，除此之外别无选择。我想按自己梦想的标准生活，仅此而已。对我来说，写作是一种呐喊的途径，用以表达我在现实中无法实现的生活。”