Elfriede Jelinek

Elfriede Jelinek , born the October 20th 1946 in Mürzzuschlag in Styrie, is a Austrian Woman of letters , Nobel Prize of literature in 2004. It maintains a reciprocal and virulent hatred as much with this country that with its sex. It was member of the Communist party of Austria of 1974 with 1991. It exchanges imprécations with the Extrême right-hand side (which makes rimer its name of Czech origin with Dreck : “dirtiness”, and badly kissed ) and women with the capacity. It always violently positioned against the ideas and the personality of the former leader of FPÖ: Jörg Haider .

Biography

His/her father, chemist Jewish of Czech origin is employed in the search for weaponry. He escapes, thanks to this strategic station, with persecutions Nazis. He is quickly dominated by a wife resulting from the catholic middle-class, that Elfriede describes like “despotic and paranoiac”. It seems to be never released of the weight of its hated parents both. She does not forgive them absolutely anything: she reproaches in particular her insane father, death in a psychiatric hospital, not to have known to impose itself upon a woman castratrice and not to have protected her daughter, she which was forced to line up maternal side “under the weight of a crushing Darwinism”. His/her mother, mistress-woman, prevented it as of her four years from leaving the family hearth and the French forced it to learn, the English, the Piano, the Orgue, the Violon, the Recorder and the viola. After having followed musical studies to the academy, it decides to take courses of theater and history of art to the Université of Vienna without giving up the music for as much. Very early, Jelinek nourishes a great passion for the literature and the writing. It is in contact with the student movements that it passes the step and is directed towards a career of writer, which is worth to him to cause uproars and polemics with each publication of work to which it gives a clear coloring of social criticism. Amantes ( Die Liebhaberinnen , 1975) betrays already inclinations for the reasoning corrosive, obsessional, the diatribe then the denunciation of humiliation physical and moral made to the women, which catalogued the novelist like “feminist sympathizer ”. Excluded the ( Die Ausgesperrten , 1981) is an appalling portrait of an group of youth criminals extremists whose exactions are covered by a company in a hurry to dissimulate a past Nazi that it forever exorcized. In the Pianist ( Die Klavierspielerin , 1983), largely autobiographical account, it makes a terrifying of a woman sexually frustrated, victim of his dominant then of his mother, possessive cultural and social position and choking painting, resembling curiously his, died in 97 years. Like its heroin: Erika Kohut, the auteure lived all the time with this mother whom it supported until her death, even in spite of a marriage celebrated in 1974 (quickly dissolves in addition). Its following novel: Lust (1989) is the description, released of any rule of conventional narration, a pornographic and perverse relation between a woman and her husband, head of undertaking. The goal that the écrivaine had been fixed and that she explains in the French postface of the book, published at Point-Threshold (in a maintenance granted to the one of its translators: Yasmin Hoffmann), was “to explore all the most complex possibilities of the language for déconstruire the ideological substrate and programming science which underlies any human society, namely the dialectical master-slave which sees the triumph, on the intimate and social level, of the exploitation by dominating of the labor force of dominated entities, in fact by the employer, that of his employees and by the man, that of his wife. The figure of the husband-owner resulted from the same normative idea because the violence exerted physically and psychologically on his wife is the same one as it inflicts symbolically in his factory with his workmen. ”

In 1977, it had rewritten the part a Doll's house of Henrik Ibsen which it transposed at the time current, in a factory, and to which it had given a new threatening title: What arrived when Nora left her husband, or pillars of the company: only misfortune .
It denounced there the fate made to the women in the work world. In 1981, it reconsiders with Clara S the life of the wife of the type-setter Maurice Schumann: Clara. In Sportstück (1998), it explores the fields of the Violence, the Chorégraphie and the apology for the virile body in the sport, first steps of a fascistic ideology.

It is titular of a diploma for the occupation of organist obtained in 1971. She collaborated with the young Austrian compositrice Olga Neuwirth ( Todesraten , Bählamms Fest , musical drama according to Leonora Carrington). She spent her time promoting in Austria the work which she considers “scorned”, of Arnold Schönberg, Alban Berg and Anton von Webern.

Speaking perfectly the French and the English, it translated into German, to provide for its needs, several parts of the traditional repertory of which certain light comedies of Eugene Labiche and Georges Feydeau or some tragedies of William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. She also translated novels of Thomas Pynchon.

In his youth, the author remained with Rome and Berlin. It has a time-sharing its life between Vienna and Munich but its increasing agoraphobia pushed it to remain in the Austrian capital.

Its work, not easily readable, written in a style dry, peremptory and choosing a type of omniscient narration, reconciles the linguistic experimentation érudite, the musical composition and an obsessional, nevrotic and brutal expression, vituperating until the absurdity on the socio-policies power struggles and their effects on the sentimental and sexual behaviors. Pornographic rhetoric is déconstruite there and denounced then the cultural and functional substrate unconscious which consists in seeing the triumph of the man on the woman, analyzed and fustigated. The show business, the entertainment and its untrue propaganda are also the target of its invectives. Its theater, very dialogical, filled up brechtianism, seeks, him, to peel the acts rhetorics and the fascinating capacity of the verb which it estimates to be the vectors or the instruments of the imposition of the dominant ideological dogmas, relayed and put in scene by the great media (especially televisual). Also, Jelinek is delayed it on the ambiguous historical role of the intellectuals vis-a-vis it political power and to the fascistic theses, which it exposes in particular through the figure of the philosopher Martin Heidegger in his part Totenauberg (1991). The repeated metaphor of the vampirism and the influences of Marxist philosophy hégélienne and as its taste of the Freudisme come to complete the composition of its texts which want to be a militant and political fight constant. Admiring of certain French intellectuals such as Pierre Bourdieu, Guy Overflow and Roland Barthes or authors such as Georges Bataille and Antonin Artaud, it is anchored in a national tradition of polemist inherited inter alia Karl Kraus and of Thomas Bernhard.

It is prize winner many rewards of which a plethora of trophies of better playwright. It also obtained the Prix Heinrich Böll 1986, the price Georg Büchner 1998 and the price Heinrich Heine 2002 for its contributions to the German language then is finally seen allotting the Nobel Prize of literature by the Swedish Académie in 2004 for “the flood of voice and against-voice in its novels and its dramas which reveal with an exceptional linguistic passion the nonsense and the authoritative capacity of the social stereotypes”. The October 7th 2004, it declares nevertheless that its health condition does not allow him to go to Stockholm to seek its medal and its diploma there the December 10th: “I will certainly not go to Stockholm. The director of the publisher Rowohlt Theater will accept the price for me. Of course, in Austria, one will try to exploit the honor which is made to me, but it is necessary to reject this form of publicity. Unfortunately, I will have to draw aside crowd the importunate ones that my price will attract. In this moment, I am unable to give up my solitary life. ” (source: international Mail ). For the ceremony of handing-over of price, she will anyway have addressed to the Swedish Académie and the Fondation Nobel a video of thanks.

Among the usual chorus of praises accompanying the advertisement by this kind of distinctions, it is necessary to notice the “moderate” reaction of Jacqueline Chambon, translator and French editor of the first six books of Elfriede Jelinek which, in a maintenance where she however does not hide her admiration and its friendship for auteure, affirms despite everything “to have stopped publishing it because of the translations which became increasingly heavy, difficult. Lastly, the permanent aggressiveness of its books obstructed me. ” (source: Le Figaro , August 10th, 2004). In fact the Éditions of the Threshold took again the relay after the defection of Jacqueline Chambon. The decision of the Swedish Académie this year was a true surprise. She prone to controversy within its was even sworn. In October 2005, Knut Ahnlund resigns besides of its functions of academician in protest of this choice which he considers unworthy “of the reputation of the price”. It qualifies the work of auteure in the national daily newspaper Swedish Svenska Dagbladet of “anarchistic tumble” and “pornography”, “plated on a bottom of obsessional hatred and larmoyant self-centredness”.

In 2006, it belongs to the artists and intellectuals who support Peter Handke vis-a-vis the censure whose he is the object on behalf of the French Comédie after he went to funerals of Slobodan Milosevic.

It is the object, of a biography written by two young women (Mathilde Sobottke and Magali Jourdan) and published in the editions Public menace, entitled Which is afraid of Elfriede Jelinek? See on the site of the editions: http://www.dangerpublic.net/index.php?2006/04/25/50-qui-a-peur-d-elfriede-jelinek. In 2005, its former translator and friend: Yasmin Hoffmann had already devoted a work to him: Elfriede Jelinek, a biography , with the editions Jacqueline Chambon.

Its novel more known and more sold: the Pianist , was adapted to the cinema in 2001 by Michael Haneke with Isabelle Huppert, Annie Girardot and Benoît Magimel in the main roles. Jelinek took part besides in the adaptation of some of its works. In 1991, it had also cosigné the script of the film Malina of Werner Schroeter (according to an autobiographical account of Ingeborg Bachmann), already interpreted by Isabelle Huppert.

Works

Novels

1979 : Bukolit. hörroman (started in 1968), Rhombus-Verlag, Vienna
1970: Wir sind lockvögel baby! , Rowohlt, Reinbek.
1972 : Michael. Ein Jugendbuch für die Infantilgesellschaft , Rowohlt, Reinbek.
1975 : Amantes ( Die Liebhaberinnen ), translated German by Maryvonne Litaize and Yasmin Hoffmann with the editions Jacqueline Chambon, Nimes 1992.
1981 : Excluded the ( Die Ausgesperrten ), translated German by Maryvonne Litaize and Yasmin Hoffmann with the editions Jacqueline Chambon, Nimes 1989.
1983 : the Pianist ( Die Klavierspielerin ), translated German by Maryvonne Litaize and Yasmin Hoffmann, with the editions Jacqueline Chambon, Nimes 1988.
1985 : Let us be wary of wild nature ( Oh Wildnis, oh Schutz VOR ihr ), translated German by Maryvonne Litaize and Yasmin Hoffmann with the editions Jacqueline Chambon, Nimes 1995.
1989 : Lust , translated German by Maryvonne Litaize and Yasminn Hoffmann with the editions Jacqueline Chambon, Nimes 1991.
1995 : Children of dead the ( Die Kinder der Toten ), translated German by Olivier Lay with the editions of the Threshold, Paris 2007.
2000 : Greed ( Gier ), translated German by Claire de Oliveira with the editions of the Threshold, Paris 2003.
Neid (Privatroman) (2007, to come for the German publication).

Radiophonic theater and parts

1977 : What arrived when Nora left her husband ( Was geschah, nachdem Nora ihren Mann verlassen hatte ), translated German by Louis-Charles Sirjacq with the editions of the Arch, Paris 1993
1981: Clara S. , Prometh-Verlag.
1987 : the modern Disease or Women: like a part ( Krankheit oder Modern Frauen, wie ein Stück ), translated German by Patrick Démerin and Dieter Hornig with the editions of the Arch, Paris 2001.
1985 : Burgtheater , Prometh-Verlag.
1987 : the President Abenwind ( Präsident Abendwind ).
1990 : Wolken.Heim , Verlag- Göttingen.
1991 : Totenauberg , translated into French by Louis-Charles Sirjacq, the Arch, Paris 1994.
1994 : Raststätte .
1996 : Stecken, Stab und Stangl .
1998 : Sporstück ( Ein Sportstück ), translated German by Maryvonne Litaize, Yasmin Hoffmann and Louis-Charles Sirjacq with the editions of the Arch, Paris 1999.
1998 : Desire and driving license ( Ich möchte seicht center, Sinn: equal Körper: zwecklos, Begierde und Fahrerlaubnis, Wolken. Heim. Er nicht als er ), translated German by Maryvonne Litaize, Yasmin Hoffmann and Louis-Charles Sirjacq, the Arch, Paris 1999.
2000 : Das Lebewohl: 3 Dramen , Berlin-Verlag, Berlin.
2002 : In den Alpen , Berlin-Verlag.
2003 : Work ( Das Werk ) matter of the accident of the funicular of Kaprun in November 2000, Berliner-Taschenbuch-Verlag Berlin.
2003 : Dramas of princesses: the Young girl and Death I - V ( Prinzessinnendramen (Der Tod und das Mädchen I - V) , Berliner-Tascherbuch-Verlag, Berlin; translated into French in 2004.
2004 : Bambiland , Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek.
2005 : Babel , Rohwohlt Verlag, Reinbek.
2006 : Ulrike Maria Stuart , Rohwohlt Verlag, Reinbek.
2006 : On the animals ( Über Tiere ), Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek.

Poetry

1967 : Shade of LISA ( Smoothed Schatten ), Eilers Relief-Verlag, Munich

Scénarii

1982 : Excluded the ( Die Ausgesperrten ), according to its novel, written in collaboration with the realizer Franz Novotny.
1991 : Malina of Werner Schroeter (according to the novel éponyme of Ingeborg Bachmann), coécrit with the realizer.
2000 : Die Blutgräfin (coécrit with Ulrike Ottinger).
2004 : Work ( Das Werk , according to its part) of Nicolas Stemann.
2007 : Ulrike Maria Stuart (according to her part) of Nicolas Stemann.

External bonds

Elfriede Jelinek, personal site.
Chieh Dog: Gewaltproblematik EIB Elfriede Jelinek - erläutert anhand of Romas '' Lust ''

Be-X-old: ЭльфрыдэЕлінэк Zh-min-nan: Elfriede Jelinek

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