Elfriede Jelinek (b. 1946)
Austrian novelist, poet and playwright, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in
literature in 2004. Elfriede Jelinek's most famous novels include Wonderful,
Wonderful Times (1980), The Piano Teacher (1983), and Lust (1989). Due to her
themes of dominance and submission she has often been regarded essentially as
a feminist writer, although in Jelinek's work women's subordination basically
illuminate the relations of power, control, and manipulation in class
societies.
"Erika is such a live wire, such a mercurial thing. Why, she may be running
around at this very moment, up to no good. Yet every day, the daughter
punctually shows up where she belongs: at home. Mother worries a lot, for the
first thing a a proprietor learns, and painfully at that, is: Trust is fine,
but control is better." (from The Piano Teacher)
Elfriede Jelinek was born in the alpine resort of Mürzzuschlag, but she grew
up in Vienna. Jelinek's father, Friedrich Jelinek, a chemist, was of Czech-Jewish
origin. He died in 1969 in a mental hospital. Jelinek's mother, Olga was from
a well to do Catholic family; she died in 2000. Jenikek was the only child of
her parents, who relatively old when he was born, her father being 46 and her
mother being 42.
From 1960 Jelinek studied piano and organ at the famous Music Conservatory.
After graduating from high school, she studied theatre and art history for a
few months at the university. Jelinek collapsed mentally, and left her studies.
In 1967 Jelinek devoted herself entirely to writing. Her first book, Lisas
Schatten (1967), was a collection of poems. Jelinek's early works were written
under the influence of Dadaism, Expressionism and the so-called Vienna group,
established by the writer H. C. Artmann. In 1974 Jelinek married Gottfried
Hüngsberg, who worked in several films with German director Rainer Werner
Fassbinder. Between the years 1974 and 1991 she was a member the Austrian
Communist Party. However, she never adopted the standard aesthetic doctrines
of the Socialist Realism.
Jelinek has been a fierce opponent of the ultrarightist Jörg Haider and his
Freedom Party and forbade performances of her plays in Austria in protest
after the party joined the govenrnment. In Jelinek's work, 'Heimat' (homeland),
becomes often 'unheimlich' (uncanny' or unhomely).
Like Anthony Burgess in A Clockwork Orange (1962), Jelinek took the subject of
Die Ausgesperrten (1980, Wonderful, Wonderful Times) from the pointless life
of young criminals. The story is set in the late 1950s. In the beginning an
attorney is beaten up in a park by four teenagers, the protagonists, not for
money, but on principle. "And then: Police! But no one's listening. Anna takes
this as a reason to kick him in the balls, since she is against the police on
principle, as anarchists always are." Jelinek refers critically to
Existentialist philosophy: one of the characters reads Albert Camus's famous
novel The Stranger (1942), in which violence, killing a man, becomes a way of
escape from meaningless to its amoral hero.
The themes of sex, sadism, and authoritarianism in modern day Austria were
further examined in Die Klavierspielerin (1983, The Piano Teacher), partly
autobiographical novel about the love-hate relationship of mother and daughter.
In the story Erika Kohut, a piano teacher, lives with her tyrannical Mother (with
capital "M") and entangles one of her students, Walter, in her secret,
manipulative and self-destructive way of life. Walter rapes her and she
returns to her mother, unable to kill Walter or commit suicide. Jelinek has
described Erika as "a phallic woman who appropriates the male right to watch,
and therefore pays for it with her life." The film version of the novel,
directed by Michael Haneke and starring Isabelle Huppert, won in 2001 three
major prizes at the Cannes Film Festival. Lust (1989), in which insatiable
sexual hunger of a paper plant director is paralleled with capitalistic greed,
provoked accusations of pornographic sadism. Jelinek's argument was, that
sexual relationships in class societies are power structures.
Jelinek's dramas continue the anti-theater tradition created by Bertolt
Brecht, which rejects illusions to create distance between the audience and
the actors. "Ich will kein Theater," Jelinek once said. Totenauberg (1991),
which premiered in Vienna, dealt with the legacy of the Nazi era through the
famous relationship of Martin Heidegger, who joined the Nazi party in 1933,
and Hannah Arendt, his student, who was of Jewish origin. In her most
acclaimed play of the 1990s, Ein Sportstück (1998), Jelinek associated sports
with mass movements, war, and death. Jelinek has also written an opera
libretto for Olga Neuwirth's Lost Highway, based on David Lynch's script and
film. Two of her plays, Bambiland, partly inspired by Aeschylus' The Persians,
and the sequel, Babel, have dealt with the Iraq war; in the latter its media
reality is associated with porn.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Jelinek had received numerous awards,
including Heinrich Böll Prize (1986) for her contribution to the German
literature, the Büchner Prize (1998), Germany’s most important distinction for
letters, and Lessing Prize for Criticism (2004). Jelinek has also translated
works by Goethe and Botho Strauss. Confessing the she suffers from a "social
phobia", Jelinek decided not attend the Nobel Prize ceremony. She also moved
from the house her father bought because its address was too well-known.
Jelinek's Nobel lecture, entitled 'Im Abseits' was translated as 'Sidelined'.
For further reading: Political Ideology and Aesthetics in Non-Feminist German
Fiction by T.J. Levin (1979); Ich Gedeihe Inmitten Von Seuchen Elfriede
Jelinek-Theatertexte by Corina Caduff (1991); Elfriede Jelinek: Framed by
Language by Jorun B. Johns, Katherine Arens (1994); Elfriede Jelinek in der
Geschlechterpresse: "Die Klavierspielerin" und "Lust" im printmedialen Diskurs
by Anja Meyer (1994); Fremde, Vampire: Sexualität, Tod und Kunst bei Elfriede
Jelinek und Adolf Muschg by Oliver Claes (1994); Rewriting Reality: An
Introduction to Elfriede Jelinek by Allyson Fiddler (1994); Theatre and
Performance in Austria: From Mozart to Jelinek by Ritchie Robertson, Edward
Timms (1994); Elfriede Jelinek by Marlies Janz (1995); Vom Dialog zur
Dialogizität: Die Theaterästhetik von Elfriede Jelinek by Maja Sibylle Pflüger
(1996); Darstellung und Manifestation von Weiblichkeit in der Prosa Elfriede
Jelineks by Veronika Vis (1998); Dekonstruktion Des Mythos in Ausgewahlten
Prosawerken Von Elfriede Jelinek by Monika Szczepaniak (1998); Gewalt von
Jugendlichen als Symptom gesellschaftlicher Krisen by Heidi Strobel (1998);
The Rhetoric of National Dissent in Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, and
Elfriede Jelinek by Matthias Konzett (2000); From Perinet to Jelinek: Viennese
Theatre in Its Political and Intellectual Context by W. E. Yates, et al
(2001); Formal Approaches to Function in Grammar: In Honor of Eloise Jelinek
by Andrew Carnie, et al (2003)
Selected works:
* Lisas Schatten, 1967
* wir sind lockvögel, baby, 1970
* Michael: Ein Jugendbuch für die Infantilgesell-schaft, 1973
* Die Liebhaberinnen, 1975 - Women As Lovers (trans. by Martin Chalmers)
* bukolit, 1979
* ende: gedichte, 1966-1968, 1980
* Die Ausgesperrten, 1980 - Wonderful, Wonderful Times (trans. by Michael
Hulse)
* Die Klavierspielerin, 1983 - The Piano Teacher (trans. by Joachim
Neugroschel) - film 2001, dir. by Michael Haneke, starring Isabelle Huppert,
Benoît Magimel, Annie Girardot
* Burgtheater, 1984 (play)
* Clara S, 1984 (play, premiered at Bonn)
* Was geschah, nachdem Nora ihren Mann verlassen hatte oder Stützen der
Gesellschaft, 1984 (play)
* Oh Wildnis, oh Schutz vor ihr, 1985
* Krankeit oder Moderne Frauen, 1987 (play, premiered at Bonn in 1987)
* Lust, 1989 - (trans. by Michael Hulse)
* Wolken: Heim, 1990 (play, premiered at Bonn in 1998)
* screenplay: Malina, 1991 - film based on Ingeborg Bachman's novel, directed
by Werner Schroeter, starring Isabelle Huppert, Mathieu Carrière, Can Togay
* Totenauberg, 1991 (play, premiered in Vienna in 1992)
* Die Kinder der Toten, 1995
* Stecken, Stab und Stangl / Raststätte / Wolken. Heim, 1997 (plays)
* Ein Sportstück, 1998 (play)
* Macht nichts. Eine kleine Trilogie des Todes, 1999 (plays)
* er nich als er (zu, mit Robert Walser), 1998 (play, premiered in Hamburg)
* Das Schweigen, 2000 (play, premiered in Hamburg)
* Gier, 2000
* In den Alpen, 2002 (play, premiered in Munich and Zürich )
* Prinzessinnnendramen, 2002 (play, premiered in Hamburg and Berlin)
* Das Werk, 2003 (play, premiered in Vienna)
* Bambiland, 2003 (play, premiered in Vienna) - trans.
* Irm und Margit, 2004 (play, premiered in Zürich)
* Babel, 2004 (play)
* Ulrike Maria Stuart (play), 2006
* Neid, 2007 (Internet novel, www.elfriedejelinek.com)