Hello Gentle Reader and a warm welcome to Mike Emeritz
When Elfriede Jelinek won the Nobel Prize in Literature in two-thousand and four, there was a unanimous calling of “Who?”, in much of the world. Though in German speaking countries, the awarding of the prize to Elfriede Jelinek was met with a polarized reaction of congratulations but also of difficult understanding and appreciation of the author. One member of the Swedish Academy Knut Ahnlund, who had previously quarrelled with the Swedish Academy over its lack of involvement in criticizing and condemning the Iranian Fatwa against the British author Salman Rushdie, had further exiled himself from the Academy when he announced his disapproval of Elfriede Jelinek winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. Knut Ahnlund, who died in November of two thousand and twelve, had proclaimed that the two thousand and four Nobel Laureate in Literature’s work was: “pornographic and chaotic.” Further stating that her work is a: “whirlwind of text that appears to have been thrown together without a trace of artistic structure.” The late Knut Ahnlund had described his reading experience with Elfriede Jelinek as torture, and explained why: “[Elfriede Jelinek] treads on the spot in a largely incomprehensible way... Denigration, humiliation, desecration and self-disgust, sadism and masochism are the main themes of Elfriede Jelinek's work. All other aspects of human life are left out. That's why her work is so poor. It's burdened by the fruits of television and the Internet, saturated with a rotten mix of abhorrence and fascination.” Many to this day still feel that Elfriede Jelinek was a controversial and rather light weight Nobel Laureate, someone who allowed her own political convictions to overshadow her literary integrity.
A member of the Austrian Communist party for seventeen years; the author had made several enemies on the political and public stage. These political engagements have all but overshadowed and influenced Jelinek’s work. Much like a corrosive touch, for better or for worst, they have always made sure the author is in a dual light of, applauded writer who tackles social themes; and in a different light as nothing more than a mediocre author and angry woman. Who missed the opportunity to burn the bra, in suffrage movements.
What does make Elfriede Jelinek an interesting writer though is the almost impossible to categorize or define the authors mix brand of prose that without warning can indulge itself in poetry. Metaphors and similes and heavy image writing makes for both a disturbing picture and a undercurrent of social criticism. A parody and satirical viciousness of the ‘good life,’ and modern society. Its superficiality is hung on meat hooks like the carcase of some animal, where its nature is on full display – no pretty skin or identity left to elude ones understanding of it.
“Icy stream of neon light roar through ice cream parlours, through dance-halls. Clusters of humming lights dangle from whip-shaped lampposts over miniature golf courses. A flickering torrent of coldness. People HER age, enjoying the loll peace and quiet of habit, loll around kidney shaped tables. Tall glasses, containing long spoons look like cool blossoms: brown, yellow, pink; chocolate, vanilla, and raspberry. The colouful, steaming scoops are tinted an almost uniform gray by the ceiling lights. Glittering scoopers wait in containers of water with threads of ice cream floating on the surface.”
Bitterness is ever apparent in Elfriede Jelinek’s most recognized and famous autobiographical novel “The Piano Teacher.” This is a brutal novel, where poetic beauty and aesthetics, can quickly become a degrading show of humiliation of pornographic psychosexual studies of the darker secrets and desires of the human mind; especially one as the poor repressed spinster Erika Kohut. Erika was a child prodigy in music. Her parents, who only knew a thing or two about music, encouraged their daughter to be a successful concert pianist. Though encouraged may have been the wrong choice of words. As one sees quickly in the beginning of the book, encouragement is not something that Erika’s mother had done. She dictated and demanded, what was to be expected of her daughter. The relationship between mother and daughter is not equal; as Erika’s mother is domineering and obsessive; always quick to degrade her daughter to the role of a child. However Erika is no victim either. She lashes back at her mother, with physical violence and verbal insults. Only later for the two, to weep as mother and daughter come to forgive each other for the outburst of a moment ago. This duality is played out, throughout the novel. The professional and frigid Erika; a professor at the prestigious Vienna conservatory, is a respectable woman of society. Though underneath that appearance, lies a dark and twisted alter ego of Erika; one that participates in acts of dangerous voyeurism, sado-masochistic rituals and even self-mutilation. She also enjoys commuting on the Vienna trains, and takes sadistic and perverted pleasure in causing others pain, and watching as the victims of her torment are quick to scold and belittle others, who are most likely to have committed the act, like a working class man.
Erika though is mostly bitter, for her lack of success. She finds herself in an alternative and what she sees as a degrading position of her talents. Her life is deprived of pleasures, both physical and emotional. Even when she attempts to have an act of pleasure – for example buying a dress, that will most likely fall out of fashion within a month; it is placed on the stand of a trial where Mother is both inquisitor, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner; with one fell swoop she bemoans and degrades Erika for not only being late, but for wasting money on a dress! A dress that will go out of fashion and will never be able to be worn again. Though for Erika it is just a physical pleasure to enjoy it – looking at it, and admiring something that will forever be so alien to her. Much like the common man who looks at the stars and the moon, and admires their beauty; they will forever be something unattainable and out of reach.
“Their conversation becomes more vitriolic: Mother and daughter spray acid at students who do better than Erika or threaten to do so. You shouldn’t give them free reign, you don’t need to. You should stop them. But you let them get away with murder! You’re not smart enough Erika. If a teacher puts her mind to it, none of her a student will succeed. No young woman will emerge from her classroom and pursue a career against Erika’s wishes. You didn’t make – why should others reach the top? And from your musical stable too boot?”
Mother and daughter’s relationship is just one instance of the predator and prey relationship that is buzzing within this novel. There is no equal playing field. There is only domination and submission. Compassion is nowhere to be found. In these brutal games of master and slave that is played in this poetic novel, there is no solace or hope of seeing a flicker of compassion. Erika is deprived of such a trivial emotion or human concept. Shaped by her Mothers neurosis, her life has been devitalized of pleasure. A perfect example is when on a childhood vacation, Erika’s cousin plays and revels in the pleasures of life and youth. Whereas Erika shares no such enjoyments. Her mother forces her to practice the piano. Perform, practice, perfect. It is at this time that Erika picks up self-mutilation as an action of punishment of her Mother and herself. All of this might truly sound like Erika is insane. She is quite sane, and pushes herself to the edges of insanity, to that thin threshold of absolute oblivion. Into a whirl wind of uncontrolled and unrestricted impulses. As a reader, one will find themselves, desperately and horrifyingly well acquainted with these impulses in this book. No matter how hard the reader tries to keep a refined and well-adjusted distance from the maelstrom of this book that with poetry lures one in, also quickly snaps shut like a Venus fly trap and suffocates one underneath the weight of the subject matter. Once ensnared there is only two possibilities of this book, running away from it or finishing it.
Now enters Walter Klemmer. Fascinated by Erika’s lack of sexual glamour or perhaps her autocratic air. Regardless the engineering student who has almost prodigious abilities at the piano, and plays Erika’s true love Schubert’s music – the epiphany of romanticism in its purest form; seeks to conquer and catch Erika. Only to be rebuffed; until finally in this dark twisted web of a story of a woman on the road to self-destruction, their love affair is brought to life and in a twisted fashion is parodied. It is not open or true love; but a sick game of power and control, one that can only be described as masochism. In this sense Elfriede Jelinek happily shows that in any relationship there is no equals. As much as Walter Klemmer demands and tries to make the playing field equal; Erika shows him that such a concept is not possible. One must always be emotionally dominant. In the case of doctors and patients; lawyers and clients; teacher and student – one is always under the thumb of the other. That does not mean however that one is stronger than the other.
The book that Elfriede Jelinek has written here is a dark and disturbing book. A expressionistic novel that explores the dark psychosexual realm, and the torments of the human psyche when its deprived of enough love and compassion and given only technical pursuits and encouragement that is a nice dagger wrapped up in a pretty bow. This entire novel is best compared to a present wrapped up in the most lush and beautiful paper possible. Though what lies in wait of this novel is a bear trap. It grabs hold, and drags you deep down into the sick world of the main character Erika; her poor desperate life, of sexual repression and denial of human emotion and any actual positive human contact. It explores the dark sick fantasies of one person, and uses it as an example the dark nature of all human beings. The dark corner of all our souls, where our most basic, primal and hidden desires remain under lock and key. For Erika those dark fantasies do not translate well into reality.
In the award ceremony speech of the Nobel Prize in Literature, read by Horace Engdahl the former Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, Elfriede Jelinek’s style of writing is described and discussed. The following description from that speech, is an adequate description of the work of Elfriede Jelinek and what to expect:
“Elfriede Jelinek deliberately opens her work to the clichés that flood the news media, advertising and popular culture — the collective subconscious of our time. She manipulates the codes of pulp literature, comics, soap operas, pornography and folkloristic novels (Heimatsroman), so that the inherent madness in these ostensibly harmless consumer phenomena shines through. She mimics the prejudices we would never admit to, and captures, hidden behind common sense, a poisonous mumble of no origin or address: the voice of the masses. She has said that she taps at language to hear its hidden ideologies, much as a doctor will tap on a patient's chest. Aghast, we discover how class oppression, sexism, chauvinism and the distortion of history echo through everyday conversation.”
Thus is the explanation behind the reason of Elfriede Jelinek’s Nobel accolade when they say:
“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.”
Subjugating and power, would be the key words. For everything in this novel dealt with domination. From Mother to daughter; from lover to sexual slave; teacher to student, the unequal relationships of the world are presented as such. Idea’s and ideals of human equality amongst all individuals has no place in Elfriede Jelinek’s work. Everyone is at the mercy of another. I have never read a book of this kind of violence, power, identity, degradation and humiliation and aesthetic purity before. It is like nothing I have ever read before. As much as the view is detached as a reader one will find that they are entwined with the happenings of this book. It is not like watching a film with an objective point of view. Elfriede Jelinek makes the motives the thoughts and the emotions of the characters quite clear – their dark thoughts and fantasies, is not melodramatic or of fake pathos. They are true explorations of the human concept of desire, control, and power in relationships. There is no escape. It is relentless; and not for the faint of heart either.
The style is quite interesting, because it is not full of a narrative – at least not in the traditional sense. To some it may be a hodgepodge of words shoveled together, welded and placed like a abstract piece of art work on display. Left open for interpretation and discussion. It is a novel that revels in its world play. In the contemporary and modern worlds, over stimulated use of entertainment. From soap operas, commercials, poetry, popular music, television to even pornography; Elfriede Jelinek takes them all, strips and skins their concepts and with the remains, creates her own brand and concept of what the world is in a schizophrenic age of to many voices each speaking over one another. Delightful wouldn’t be a word used freely to describe this novel. Unique and challenging would; and rewarding . . . in small doses. Nonetheless a true masterpiece, by a controversial author.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
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M. Mary
(a link to the Nobel Award Ceremony Speech)
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2004/presentation-speech.html
