Wolfgang Hilbig - 'I'

The prose piece entitled ‘ I ’ (I envision a novel-length work of 150–200 pages) is the attempt to find a literary form for the ‘inner biography’ of a so-called IM ( Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter ). An IM — the abbreviation has become almost universally familiar, at least since the collapse of the GDR — that is, an Unofficial Collaborator of the State Security Service of the GDR, reflecting on his existence as such in the first person, is the protagonist of the first part of the story. — Am I playing a role? the author asks himself.

As the public debates, mainly journalistic, on the subject of the ‘Stasi’ seem to have brought to light little of substance about such figures, who must have existed by the hundreds of thousands, it seems possible to me that what best suits the subject is a literary form — that is, a form that eschews the attempt to ‘clarify’. Indeed, so far we have had little illumination regarding the nature of IMs: this seems to be explained by the very so-called conspirative element surrounding such figures, who, after all, conduct their ‘clarification’ in the dark. — Reflecting on the conceptualization of such a protagonist, I asked myself a rather disturbing question: To what extent can the work of an informer be compared with the literary work of a writer? Immediately I told myself that the results are different. . but that posed the question of the extent to which a secret service, too, is dealing ‘only’ with a fiction of reality; and is this not in fact its intent? — I asked myself to what degree reality, in an IM’s reports for his superior, must be a fiction approaching a literary fiction. Isn’t an IM report also supposed to contain the greatest possible authenticity? How does an informer cope with this demand for authenticity when, in the dark of his underground work, he must forget his subjective interpretations in order to maintain his credibility? Or are the IM’s superiors — as a rule these superiors are able to psychologically assess the IM — not even interested in authenticity any more, only in reacting to their own image of reality? Couldn’t a clever informer hit upon the notion of reaching a consensus with his case officer on a fiction of reality. . on a reading of reality?

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, when several writers were exposed as Unofficial Collaborators of the Stasi, I was surprised only for a moment; immediately I asked myself whether a writer, in particular, must not be especially well equipped to report for a secret service. And perhaps, I said to myself, the loss of the ‘I’ experienced by a collaborator, who works in secret on an image of reality, can be compared with that experienced by a writer, who in the course of his work is confronted more than once with the question: Who or what does the thinking within me? — I am aware that I am posing the question of ‘vocation’ here in a very provocative fashion. But probably, literature can be expected to ‘clarify’ only by continually posing questions.

The second part of the story is a fictitious treatment of the IM’s background; he finds himself no longer able to precisely reconstruct the circumstances that led to his collaboration with the secret service. Here the text shifts entirely to a retrospective narrative, and the protagonist describes himself in the third person; his life story seems to have taken on a completely fictional character. And yet it is not an unusual life; it is one of the many fatherless lives of the post-war generation. Growing up in impoverished circumstances, confronted with adults who seemed to lack an ‘I’, the young man was forced to invent the parameters of his life, apparently helped by his introspective tendencies. Early on he occupied himself with writing attempts, and the only people who seemed to take these attempts seriously were members of the secret service.

In the third part of the story, the narrative shifts back to the first person. The hero as subject seems to have reorganized himself. But from this moment on, the author finds it necessary to use the quotation marks that belong to the title of the narrative of ‘I’.

Wolfgang Hilbig

Edenkoben, 12 August 1992

I’m moving around my cold corners again. Back on my way, but I won’t report on that. No brief movements of the lower face; at this point I’d have to say that being on my way is in my nature. Better leave nature on the sidelines, though: in our game, we’re just here to pass the balls, and leave everything extraneous out of play, that’s the kind of game it is. — On my way, up the streets, down the streets. . up above and down below: take things a step at a time, as they say, that’s my nature. Let me put it this way, I’m not the type to get ahead at all costs. I’m not exactly what you’d call scrupulous, but I weigh the steps I take — most of them, anyway, but more on that later.

Still, I have an unusual knack for running my head through walls. And on the whole, I’ve had things come easily to me. Early on, I was taught that seizing advantages from the powers-that-be goes quickest with their cooperation. That’s the thing to understand: you don’t coax forth their acquiescence, you force it from them. And they may feel cheated or robbed, but more than that they feel flattered, for with each advantage for yourself, you lay claim to what is theirs. Each modicum of privilege you extract from their control pays tribute to their property, an honour it would lack were there no one to ogle it. That’s why the powerful are most comfortable believing themselves threatened. And lacking signs of a palace or street revolt, they invent them.

Let me go back to the beginning: when running my head through walls, I did use the appropriate apertures, that is, windows and doors, occasionally chimneys or skylights; but more and more often it’s the basements that give me the access I seek. This option first presented itself in Berlin, though: I lived for some time on a street that was all bleak rows of soot-blackened tenements, probably dating from the turn of the century. Beneath these blocks, one continuous basement passage led from one cross-street to the next, often even beyond the cross-street to the next row of houses. No matter which house entrance you used, if you got into the basement you could always find your way underground into the house where you had some business, or where you lived, as long as you could keep track of the houses you passed under by counting the basement stairways. — For a time, whenever I entered a vestibule, I would first look for the basement door and unlock it if I could, aiming to minimize the element of chance in the city’s usable entrances and exits — that was a time when I took my duties much too seriously. Such precautions — so often thwarted when the very next orderly coal-scuttle-lugger locked the door again — now strike me as overrating the so-called conspirative element inherent to my field of activity. Incidentally, a jaded view of such unnecessary and amateurish pedantries is the first sign of a certain advancement, which many of us who go for years believing ourselves beginners (a belief attended by a slender and very deceptive hope) are unable to see, or refuse to admit.