Testimonial Literature and Ethical Obligation to Truth: Relationships Between Testimony, Falsification and Heterobiography

Abstract

This article deals with characteristics that define testimonial literature and a special position this type of literature has amongst other literary genres. Although the expression testimonial comes from the field of law, its function in literature is, of course, not used in the same way. Telling the truth or provable historical reality in testimonial novels is still inevitably linked to the process of fictionalization, it still has to achieve its own autonomy as a work of fiction and its own aesthetic effect. – However, the truth still remains one of the most important characteristics of this kind of work because the most important characteristic, differentia specifica, of testimonial literature is the ethical obligation of the author to write the truth – his own and also of those who did not survive the traumatic experience. The other important characteristic that is crucial for the reader to recognize the work he is reading as testimonial is identifying the author, the narrator and one of the characters (not necessary the main one) of that particular book as the same person (“testimonial act”). This is most easily achieved by the same name – the one on the cover of the book and the one used in the contents of the same book and with the use of the first person narrative (as a sign of integration of narrator as a character in events/plot). The other very important way of the author communicating to the reader is through a kind of a commentary – this is the part of the novel where the author distances himself from the literalization and in doing so warns the reader that what he is reading is actually historically accurate. – However, testimonial literature also includes works where an author works together with a survivor and writes his or her (the survivor’s) story that is not his own. Herta Müller’s The Hunger Angel (Atemschaukel) is an example of such literature. Because this novel shares some of the characteristics of testimonial literature and also heterobiography the term “heterotestimony” seems to suit it best.