10 - Heiner Müller: Discontinuity and Transgression

Summary

Heiner Müller belongs to those writers who were strongly influenced by the poststructuralist critique of metaphysics. The absence of a positive ideal and value system to which literature could relate impacted not only the aesthetics of Müller's works, but also his reflections on history. Living in the GDR, he could observe the crisis of dialectics. In a situation of lost origins, the dialectical process of revolution can no longer mean progress but is instead presented by Müller, as we will see, as a constant deconstructive cycle of revolution and counterrevolution, leading to perpetual violence.

Heiner Müller's works find themselves on the ashes and rubble of a deconstructed reality. They consist of stories, elements, events and characters of recycled history, and are a performance of this deconstruction. In a commentary to his play Die Hamletmaschine (The Hamletmachine), Müller writes:

Mein Hauptinteresse beim Stückeschreiben ist es, Dinge zu zerstören. Dreißig Jahre lang war Hamlet eine Obsession für mich, also schrieb ich einen kurzen Text, Hamletmaschine, mit dem ich versuchte, Hamlet zu zerstören. Die deutsche Geschichte war eine andere Obsession, und ich habe versucht, diese Obsession zu zerstören, diesen ganzen Komplex. Ich glaube, mein stärkster Impuls ist der, Dinge bis auf ihr Skelett zu reduzieren, ihr Fleisch und ihre Oberfläche herunterzureißen. Dann ist man mit ihnen fertig.

[My main interest when I write plays is to destroy things. For thirty years Hamlet was for me an obsession, so I wrote a short text, Hamletmachine, with which I tried to destroy Hamlet. […]