Elfriede Jelinek on Josef Fritzl

Last week there was some lively discussion around the post concerning the "Monster of Amstetten (Austria)" who fathered seven children with his own daughter.  It was only a matter of time before the Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek - the notorious Nestverschmutzerin of Austria - would weigh in on this horrible tragedy.  After all, everything she has written points to the possibility - or necessity - of something like this happening. Well, Elfriede has delivered with an essay on her Web site entitled Im Verlassenen (In the Abandoned - under Aktuelles on the site menu). The essay is a miniature masterpiece of invective against her countrymen (emphasis on men).

I can't think of any writer more difficult (impossible) to translate than Elfriede Jelinek: the myriad of puns, allusions to Rilke, Nazis and the Catholic Church, high sarcasm etc... only works in German. Besides, all quotations of her texts are strictly forbidden, as per the warning on her home page: Sämtliche         hier wiedergegebenen Texte sind urheberrechtlich geschützt und dürfen         ohne ausdrückliche Erlaubnis in keiner Form wiedergegeben oder zitiert         werden. ( "All texts here are protected by copyright and should not be reproduced or quoted in any form without permission"), However, the brave souls at Sign and Sight have translated and published a snippet, which I reproduce here:

"The performance by this grandfather-god-the-father who has constructed an idyll which he has artlessly built in the form of a female body, with its many niches and passages, where you can't look in at everything from everywhere, it is not art to use something as the female body, even if you don't have one, there are blow-up sex dolls, hollowed out apples, animals etc., but it is an art to build spaces as a woman might, and decorate them with pretty patterns, a temple, only built for the lust of the father."

Already the first sentence is classic, and sets the tone for the whole essay: Österreich         ist eine kleine Welt, in der die große ihre Probe hält. (Austria is a little world where the big world holds its rehearsals.)

Anyway, if you enjoy kind of thing and are hooked on Elfriede's dense style like I am, you can also read for free on her Web site a brand new novel she just finished:  Neid (Envy).  I will not undertake to read this anytime soon, since the novel is estimated to be 900 pages, and I can only read a few pages of Jelinek in one sitting before getting exhausted.  On the other hand, she has threatened to remove Neid from her site whenever she wants, so procrastination could be risky. Her German publisher - Rowohlt Verlag - insists the novel will never appear in a print edition.

Comments

[Hattie]

She is so daring and goes much much farther than anyone has ever gone in the English language in damning the patriarchy. She makes me think about the millions of girls and women who have NO LIFE AT ALL. She's terrifying.

[David]

It is remarkable that Elfriede suffers from agoraphobia and "social phobia"(her words) and yet is such a fearless writer.