Norman Manea’s Clowns versus Herta Müller’s Marionettes
Norman Manea’s Clowns versus Herta Müller’s Marionettes

Summary/Abstract: The topic of the paper I proposed, Norman Manea’s Clowns versus Herta Müller’s Marionettes, is generous and can be contextualised from an error’s perspective, understood here as a history error in line with the idea that totalitarianism is anexample of 20th century extremism. In this context, two ‘export’ writers of Romanian culture attempt to outwit censorship (Norman Manea) or to express an absurd reality using an expressly chosen typology of characters: clowns and marionettes. The question is predictable: WHY do the aforementioned authors directly or indirectly appeal to these prototypical figures? Incompatible with their forced living environment – communist Romania –, they become messengers of an original world, imposing through their game a set of new rules by ridiculing the given. The clowns and marionettes also represent genericmasks of the narrators, based on which the identity hiding-revealing dichotomy is achieved alongside the reconstruction of a page our country’s history.

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