Manifestations of Violence in Aglaja Veteranyi’s Novels

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the images through which violence manifests itself, in all its modalities, within Aglaja Veteranyi’s two novels: Warum das Kind in der Polenta kocht [Why the Child is Cooking in the Polenta] and Das Regal der letzten Atemzüge [The Shelf of the Last Breaths]. In the background there is the institutional violence exercised by the dictatorial regime, which will lead the author’s family to flee Romania, a place that the protagonist will not stop recognizing as “home”. Then the attention will be focused on the dramatic family and social situation, on the unresolved dynamic of self-recognition in relation to the other, in which the linguistic question will play a fundamental role in terms of incommunicability, which is echoed by a narrative style that reflects the author’s intimate lacerations.