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Elfriede Jelinek

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Elfriede Jelinek (pronunciation in IPA: [ˀɛlˈfʀiːdɛ ˈjɛlinɛk]; born 20 October 1946) is an Austrian feminist playwright and novelist. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004, "for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power."

Biography

File:E Jelinek.jpg
Elfriede Jelinek talking to anti-government protesters in Vienna, June 2000

Jelinek was born on 20 October 1946 in Mürzzuschlag, Styria, Austria. Her father, a chemist of Jewish-Czech origin ("Jelinek" means "little deer" in Czech) managed to avoid persecution during the Second World War by working in strategically important industrial production. However, several dozen family members became victims of the Holocaust. Her "dominating" mother, with whom she shared the household even as an adult (compare The Piano Teacher) and with whom she had a difficult relationship, was from a formerly prosperous Vienna family. As a child, Elfriede suffered much from what she considered an over-restrictive education in a Roman Catholic convent school in Vienna. Her mother planned for Elfriede a career as a musical Wunderkind. From an early age, Elfriede was instructed in piano, organ, guitar, violin, viola and recorder. Later, she went on to study at the Vienna Conservatory, where she graduated with an organist diploma. Jelinek also studied art history and drama at the University of Vienna. However, she had to discontinue her studies due to an anxiety disorder that prevented her from following courses. Critics have noted that Jelinek's biography is often reflected in her opus.

Jelinek started writing poetry young. She made her literary debut with the collection Lisas Schatten in 1967.

In the early 1970s, Jelinek married Gottfried Hüngsberg.

Work and politics

Prior to winning the Nobel Prize, her work was largely unknown outside the German-speaking world and was said to resemble that of acclaimed Austrian playwright Thomas Bernhard, with its pathology of destruction and its concomitant comedic abrogation. In fact, despite the author's own differentiation from Austria, Jelinek's writing is deeply rooted in the tradition of Austrian literature, showing the influence of Austrian writers such as Robert Musil.

Jelinek's political positions (in particular her feminist stance and her party affiliations) are of vital importance to any assessment of her work. They are also a part of the reason for the vitriolic controversy surrounding Jelinek and her work.

Brief history of Jelinek's political engagements

Jelinek was a member of Austria's Communist Party from 1974 and 1991. The CPA is a fringe movement; public Austrian intellectuals, even professedly left-leaning ones, have frequently accused it of unreconstructed Stalinism. Jelinek became a household name during the 1990s due to her vociferous clash with Jörg Haider's Freedom Party. Following the 1999 National Council elections and the subsequent formation of a coalition cabinet consisting of the Freedom Party and the Austrian People's Party, Jelinek became one of the new cabinet's most vocal critics. Citing the Freedom Party's alleged nationalism and authoritarianism, many European and overseas administrations swiftly decided openly to ostracize Austria's administration. The cabinet construed the sanctions against it as directed against Austria as such and attempted to prod the nation into a national rallying (Nationaler Schulterschluss) behind the coalition parties. This provoked a temporary heating of the political climate severe enough for dissidents such as Jelinek to be accused of treachery by coalition supporters.

Jelinek's work

Part political commentary, part self-therapy, her work is multi-faceted and highly controversial. It has been by turns praised and condemned by leading literary critics. Likewise, her political activism evokes divergent and often heated reactions. Despite the public controversy surrounding her work, Jelinek has won many distinguished prizes, among them are the Georg Büchner Prize (1998), the Müllheim Dramatists Prize (2002 and again in 2004), the Franz Kafka Prize (2004) and the Nobel Prize in Literature (2004, see below).

Prevalent topics in her prose and dramatic works are female sexuality, its abuse, and the war of the sexes in general. Texts like Wir sind Lockvögel, Baby! (We are Decoys, Baby), Die Liebhaberinnen (The Lovers), Die Klavierspielerin (The Piano Player) showcase the brutality and power play inherent in human relations in a style that is at times ironically formal and tightly controlled. According to Jelinek, power and aggression are often the principal driving forces of relationships. Her provocative novel Lust contains graphically-delineated descriptions of sexuality, aggression and abuse. It received poor reviews by many critics, some of whom considered it little more than pornography, but was considered misunderstood and undervalued by others, who noted the power of the cold descriptions of moral failures.

In her later work, Jelinek has somewhat abandoned female issues to focus her energy on social criticism in general and Austria's difficulties to owing up to its Nazi past in particular (for example in Die Kinder der Toten (The Children of the Dead)).

Her plays often involve an emphasis on choreography. In Sportstück, for example, the issue of violence and fascism in sports is explored. Some consider her plays taciturn, other lavish, and others still a new form of theater altogether.

Jelinek's novel Die Klavierspielerin (The Piano Player) was filmed with title The Piano Teacher by Austrian director Michael Haneke, with French actress Isabelle Huppert as the protagonist.

In late April 2006, Jelinek stood up to protect Peter Handke, whose play Die Kunst des Fragens (The Art of Asking) was removed from the repertoire of Comedie Francaise for his alleged support of Slobodan Milosevic [1].

The Nobel Prize

Commenting on the Nobel Prize, she said she felt very happy to receive the Prize, but also felt despair: "despair for becoming a known, a person of the public". Paradigmatic for her modesty and subtle self-irony, she - a reputed feminist writer - wondered if not been awarded the prize mainly for "being a woman" and suggested that among authors writing in German, Peter Handke whom she praises as a "living classic", would have been a more worthy recipient.

Jelinek was criticized for not accepting the prize in person; instead, a video message was presented at the ceremony. Others appreciated that Jelinek openly disclosed that she suffers from agoraphobia and social phobia, anxiety disorders which can be highly disruptive to everyday functioning yet are often concealed by those affected out of shame or feeling of inadequacy. Jelinek has said that her anxiety disorders make it impossible for her even to go to the cinema or to board an airplane (in an interview she wished to be able to fly to New York to see the skyscrapers one day before dying), and she felt incapable of taking part in any ceremony. However, in her own words as stated in another tape message: "I would also very much like to be in Stockholm, but I cannot move as fast and far as my language."

In 2005, Knut Ahnlund left the Swedish Academy in protest, describing Jelinek's work as "whining, unenjoyable public pornography" as well as "a mass of text shoveled together without artistic structure" [2]. He said later her selection for the prize "has not only done irreparable damage to all progressive forces, it has also confused the general view of literature as an art".[3]

Bibliography

Novels

Plays

  • Was geschah, nachdem Nora ihren Mann verlassen hatte; 1977
  • Clara S.; 1981
  • Burgtheater; 1983
  • Krankheit oder Moderne Frauen; 1984
  • Präsident Abendwind; 1987
  • Wolken.Heim; 1988
  • Totenauberg; 1991
  • Raststätte; 1994
  • Stecken, Stab und Stangl; 1996
  • Ein Sportstück; 1998
  • er nicht als er; 1998
  • In den Alpen
  • Das Werk
  • Prinzessinnendramen
  • Bambiland; 2003

Translations

Opera libretto

  • Lost Highway (2003), adapted from the film by David Lynch, with music by Olga Neuwirth

Jelinek's novels in English

  • The Piano Teacher (1988), translation of Die Klavierspielerin by Joachim Neugroschel. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, ISBN 1-55584-052-3.
  • Wonderful, Wonderful Times (1990), translation of Die Ausgesperrten by Michael Hulse. London: Serpent's Tail, ISBN 1-85242-168-1.
  • Lust (1992), translated by Michael Hulse. London: Serpent's Tail, ISBN 1-85242-183-5.
  • Women as Lovers (1994), translation of Die Liebhaberinnen by Martin Chalmers. London: Serpent's Tail, 1994, ISBN 1-85242-237-8.

References

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