Wolfgang Hilbig died in 2007, but his reputation continues to grow in Germany. Hilbig started writing while working as a stoker in the industrial wasteland of the GDR but he was hardly the ideal "worker-poet" in the eyes of the regime: he refused to pay tribute to the heroic proletarian, but rather wrote from the perspective of the oppressed - those at the bottom rung of society - even in the GDR Arbeiter-und-Bauern-Staat. His critical stance and pessimism proved too much for the Stalinist state, and he was allowed to leave in 1985. Hilbig remained an outsider in West Germany and for the most part was ignored by the literary scene there. His novel "Ich" appeared in 1993 and is now recognized as one of the most important novels of the post-Wende era. Nothing of Hilbig has appeared in English, which is unfortunate since Hilbig is a far greater writer than better-known East German writers such as Christa Wolf or Uwe Johnson.
"Ich" is written in dense, Kafka-like prose with multiple layers of meaning. It would take at least another reading to peel back the layers. The novel can be seen as a Wenderoman, since it depicts an illegitimate state in the throes of collapse. This is East Berlin, capital of the GDR, in the late eighties and the protagonist is a Stasi IM (informant). But the legitimation crisis of the state is inferred only indirectly through interior monologues; there are no grand scenes of Montagsdemos.
"Ich" is also a Künstlerroman, sincethe narrator/protagonist - M.W. or "Cambert" - is a writer, or at least an aspiring writer. M.W., like Hilbig, works as stoker in the East German provincial city A. and is compelled to write during his coffee breaks. This arouses the suspicion of his fellow workers, since it assumed that M.W. is writing reports for "die Firma" - which is what the Stasi is called in the novel. And, in fact, it is M.W.'s talent as a writer that attracts the attention of the Stasi, who coerce him to write reports on persons of interest. When M.W. makes his way to East Berlin he is recruited to inflitrate the unofficial group of writers and artists in the Prenzlauer Berg - known as "die Szene". M.W. achieves the reputation as a dissident writer after 17 of his poems - poems he doesn't recall having written - appear in West German literary journals. M.W channels his literary talents into his reports, and it is quickly apparent that die Firma is more interested in his style than in the content. His Stasi handler Feuerbach is a lover of American literature and complains that the reports lack the concision of Hemingway; he suggests that M.W. read Thomas Pynchon.
There is a Freudian subtext to "Ich". M.W.'s father perished during the war (just as Hilbig's own father fell at Stalingrad), and so he latches onto his Stasi handlers as father figures. Feuerbach especailly functions as a kind of super-ego, and M.W. is despondent and suffers from writer's block when Feuerbach disappears for months at a time. Sexually, M.W. is virtually impotent and unable to connect with women his own age. He finds refuge from his informant activities in a cellar beneath a graffiti drawing up a giant phallus and finally ends up in bed with his landlady who treats him as her son. M.W. accuses his "target" - the writer Reader - of being gay, and then he himself is sexually assaulted by his Stasi handler Feuerbach with the barrel of a pistol.
Mostly "Ich" is novel of an identity crisis, which is why Hilbig put quotation marks around his title. The ego is fragile, and the narrative perspective keeps shifting back and forth from first to third person. The narrator/protagonist is alternatively called M.W., or just W. or Cambert - his Stasi cover name - or just C. Finally Cambert takes over as M.W. succumbs completely to the false consciousness of the state. But Hilbig holds the reader's sympathy in check; M.W. is the author of his own destruction and is hated as an operative of a despised state:
" Die Gründe für diesen Hass waren nicht die unhaltbaren oder gebrochenen Verprechen der Regierung, nicht die Blindheit und das Krieichertum ihrer Repräsentanten, nicht die Wahlfälschungen, vielleicht noch nicht einmal die Mauer, die Polizei, die Parteibonzen mith ihrer Doppelmoral und Feigheit...der Grund für deisen Hass waren wir...Wir, die kleinen und niederen, unscharfen, unermüdlichen Schatten, die den Leuten des Landes anhingen: wir waren die Nahrung dür diesen Hass. ...Wir hatten keinem etwas getan... Wir waren der Schatten des Lebens, wir waren der Tod...wir waren die fleischgewordene, schattenfleischgewordene Dunkelseite des Menschen, wir waren der abgespaltene Hass. "Ich" war der Hass."
(The reasons for this hatred weren't the unkept promises of the state, not the blindness or the toadyness of its representatives, not the phony elections, maybe not even the Wall, the police, the party bosses with hypocrisy and cowardice. We were the reason for their hate. We, the insignificant, blurry, tireless shadows, who latched themselves on to the people of this country. we nourished this hate....We never hurt anyone. We were the shadows of life, we were death... we were the incarnation, the shadow incarnation of the dark side of people, we were the hate that had split off. "I" was the hate.)
Hilbig illustrates brilliantly in "Ich" how the fragmentation and ultimate dissolution of authentic identity mirror the dissolution of the false state. M.W. - or Cambert - is nothing more than a shadow.
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