Arts and Literature in Canada:Views from Abroad, Les arts et la ...

IJCS/RIÉCdecades, the two writers seem to have little in common. They inhabit totallydifferent realms of art and their respective fictions, worlds apart in tone andtexture, do not readily suggest a common point of departure for a comparativestudy. In spite of such disparity, this paper aims to point out and explorethematic and narratological similarities in Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls andWomen and Christa Wolf’s Kindheitsmuster that provide substantial groundsfor comparison.The mainspring of Christa Wolf’s fiction is a profound political commitment.As a citizen of the German Democratic Republic, she subscribed to the Marxistideology of her society. Since the beginning of the unification process she hasbeen severely criticized both for her former political allegiance and for herpresent reluctance to unconditionally welcome Germany’s new politicalsystem. In the turmoil of the German Democratic Republic’s decline and fall,Christa Wolf maintained a dignified distance, warning her compatriots againsttoo precipitous a somersault. This position should be accepted and respected,especially in an artist who repeatedly criticized the tenets of Communism, aswhen she raised the following question:[...] you ask yourselves why the conviction that man should be guidedby his knowledge, rather than by his faith, has thus far produced solittle beauty. 1Alice Munro, on the other hand, has repeatedly denied having any politicalcommitments. In one of her most recent interviews, given to American criticKay Bonetti, Munro explains her apolitical stance as follows:There are probably enormous flaws and gaps in what I’m doing as awriter. There is nothing much I can do about that. I don’t believe youcan do much to remedy your vision, to enlarge it. I think you can as aperson, as a political person you probably can. But as a writer you arepretty well bound by something I don’t think you have much controlover. I know some writers who make an attempt, a very consciousattempt to write a kind of sociological novel, a responsible novel toshow society where it is and where it is going right now. And thosenovels often seem to me interesting and worthy, but lacking in somekind of essential liveliness. 2Christa Wolf’s Kindheitsmuster is the type of novel Munro is referring to, “akind of sociological novel, a responsible novel to show society where it is” andhow it has become what it is. The collective past (from the rise of NationalSocialism in Germany to the end of the sixties in the German DemocraticRepublic) is mirrored in the protagonist’s personal memory:64