Abstract
Saša Stanišić’s autobiographical text Herkunft (2019; Where You Come From, 2021), winner of the German Book Prize in 2019, offers an innovative way of writing about migration. Although Stanišić does trace his origins in Bosnia in his text (as the title initially suggests), its complexity invites readers to think well beyond categories of “here” and “there,” “native” and “migrant,” “reality” and “fiction.” Thus Rebecca L. Walkowitz’s concept of texts being “born translated” is of particular relevance in my reading of Herkunft. By critically engaging with history, including the meaning of memory (or losing memory), notions of migration, arrival, belonging, and language in today’s transnational context, Stanišić’s text appears to “engage […] in a project of unforgetting,” the re-evaluation and re-organization of (national) literary history that marks born-translated fiction (2015: 23). Yet Herkunft is also literally a “born translated” text: written in German, it consciously reflects language and the process of writing, not least as language is his, the writer’s, primary tool. Ultimately, it is the invitation to his readers to actively take part in the exploration of his, as well as his text’s, origins that enables Stanišić to question “the national singularity” (Walkowitz 2015: 25) of his, and any, work.
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Notes
- 1.
Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are mine.
- 2.
References will appear in the text with the abbreviation “W,” followed by the page number.
- 3.
For a critique of Stanišić’s perception as a “migrant” author, see Aspioti 2021, esp. 97–101.
- 4.
The Adelbert von Chamisso Prize was awarded between 1985 and 2017, when the Robert Bosch Foundation considered the project to have been completed. See http://www.bosch-stiftung.de/de/projekt/adelbert-von-chamisso-preis-der-robert-bosch-stiftung [accessed September 19, 2022]. However, it was re-instituted as Chamisso-Preis/Hellerau in 2017. Since 2023, as Chamisso-Preis Dresden, which is also linked to the Chamisso Poetikdozentur of the Saxon Academy of the Arts, it has been awarded to authors “who bring their individual experiences of a language or culture shift to bear in contemporary German-language literature” by the Saxon Academy of the Arts and the nonprofit association “Bildung und Gesellschaft e.V.” (Education and Society). See https://www.chamissopreis-dresden.de/home/ueber-den-preis/ [accessed July 10, 2023]. For a criticism of the prize, see Peterson (2018).
- 5.
This line of argument also chimes with Brent O. Peterson’s criticism of the Chamisso prize, which “presumes that there is such a thing as German culture, an edifice that is intact, homogenous, bounded and authentic […]. […] Others can only contribute to German culture. They are not part of it” (Peterson 2018, 83; emphasis in the original).
- 6.
Matthes also refers here to Taberner (2011, 626).
- 7.
Matthes also briefly discusses the German-Jewish author Maxim Biller’s criticism of Stanišić’s second novel Vor dem Fest (Before the Feast), set in a village in the Uckermark close to the German-Polish border and thus far removed from a biographical subject matter (2020, 95). Biller (2014) laments this as, so he argues, only authors with a “migration background” produce “bis ins Mark ethnische und authentische Texte” (ethnic and authentic texts to the core). The debate that followed in the German feuilleton is well documented. See also Aspioti (2021, 104–109) and Haines (2015, 146–147).
- 8.
This is also echoed by Anna Rutka who points out that “it is now commonly accepted in literary studies that these writers are not a ‘special case’ but should long have been regarded as a ‘norm’” (2022, 556).
- 9.
Peterson admits, however, that “[m]ost migration narratives will continue to be written by migrants or their children” (2018, 85).
- 10.
<IndexTerm ID="ITerm38">In my article on Stanišić’s novel Vor dem Fest (Before the Feast) I similarly conclude: “Challenging binaries such as migrant versus native, history versus story, and inclusion versus exclusion of people, facts, and cultural memory, and negotiating the tensions between those seemingly opposing concepts, […] Stanišić demonstrates convincingly that the seeming paradox of ‘Weltliteratur aus der Uckermarck [sic]’ […] captures the essence of his work well” (Matthes 2020, 102–103). See also ibid., 101 and 103.
- 11.
For instance, Stanišić’s first novel Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert has been translated into thirty-one languages (Herkunft book cover).
- 12.
See also Breger who refers to Herkunft as “a memoir with reflexive, essayistic elements, or as an extensive essay probing approaches to autobiographical writing” (2022, 192).
- 13.
In this chapter I occasionally use Stanišić’s name to refer to both the author and the (autobiographical) narrator of Herkunft. As Herkunft is an autobiographical text, the line between author and narrator is somewhat blurred. However, my analysis should make clear whether I am referring to the author or to the narrator.
- 14.
Dominik Zink also draws attention to the open question of genre which leaves “its status of fictionality unclear” (2021, 172).
- 15.
Incidentally, lists already play a significant role in Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert where making lists is an important way for the narrator to hold on to what was lost due to war and migration (chapter “Ich habe Listen gemacht” [254–297; “I’ve made lists”]).
- 16.
The English translation “What I want to say about where I come from” does not quite capture the narrative element that the German word “erzählen” (literally: to tell) has.
- 17.
On the significance of language in postmigrant writing, see also Rutka (2022, 558).
- 18.
The American actor Bruce Willis speaking German refers here to the fact that foreign-language films and TV programs are usually dubbed for German-language audiences.
- 19.
According to Breger, “the concluding adventure offers the reader to explore their own relation to such (be)longing and fantasy, choosing our own path and, perhaps, finding closure among ten possible endings” (2022, 206).
- 20.
Rutka sees in this final part suggestions of “infinity,” thereby counteracting “mortality and the death of the beloved woman [the grandmother, F.M.]” (2022, 564). However, she also emphasizes the “narrative construction” of one’s origins that are highlighted in this part (ibid., 564 and 565). Breger also highlights “the response to loss” that the final part offers (2022, 206). On the ending, see also Zink (2021, 175). Zink draws attention here to the dependence on context for the comprehension of the text, that is, a text can be understood in various ways depending on the context.
- 21.
Weissmann is referring here to Steven Kellman’s The Translingual Imagination (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2000).
- 22.
This is also Yildiz’s aim in her monograph, which “seeks to recast the German language both inside and outside German studies as detached from German ethnicity” (2012, 17).
- 23.
The phrases quoted here read in full: “The uniqueness and organic nature of language imagined as ‘mother tongue’ lends its authority to an aesthetics of originality and authenticity. In this view, a writer can become the origin of creative works only with an origin in a mother tongue, itself imagined to originate in a mother” (Yildiz 2012, 9).
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Matthes, F. (2024). “Struggles with Identity Don’t Care About the Latitude”: Saša Stanišić’s Herkunft (Where You Come From) as “Born Translated” Text. In: Stan, C., Sussman, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of European Migration in Literature and Culture . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30784-3_23
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