[lit-ideas] Re: Nobel in literature
- From: Judy Evans <judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2004 22:29:55 +0100
And from The Guardian
>Her most recent works have marked a return to one of her most
>fundamental themes: women's seeming inability to live happily and
>effectively in a world where they are stereotyped and overlooked.
and
>Despite her critical and commercial successes, Jelinek remains a
>controversial figure in her own country. She was a longstanding
>member of the Austrian communist party, from 1974-1991, and has
>frequently criticised her homeland in her writing, depicting it as a
>realm of death in her phantasmagorical novel Die Kinder der Toten.
>The academy saw this as a strength, noting that "her writing builds
>on a lengthy Austrian tradition of linguistically sophisticated
>social criticism, with precursors such as Karl Kraus, Thomas Bernhard
>and the Wiener Group".
Thursday, October 7, 2004, 10:06:25 PM, Robert Paul wrote:
P> Thursday, October 7, 2004
RP> Nobel Prize in Literature Goes to Austrian Known for Her Writings on
Sexuality
RP> and Aggression
RP> By SCOTT MCLEMEE
RP> The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2004 was awarded this morning to Elfriede
RP> Jelinek, an Austrian novelist, poet, playwright, and translator.
RP> Her satirical and often dark vision of sexuality and human aggression has
made
RP> her a controversial figure in Austria. The author is best known
internationally
RP> for her novel The Piano Teacher, made into a harrowing film about a
RP> sadomasochistic relationship between a music instructor and a student who
RP> seduces her.
RP> In its award citation, the Swedish Royal Academy noted that Ms. Jelinek's
work
RP> analyzes "the cold-blooded practice of male power," making a "fundamental
RP> criticism of civilization by describing sexual violence against women as the
RP> actual template for our culture." There may be an element of self-criticism
in
RP> the academy's decision, for Ms. Jelinek is only the 10th woman to receive
the
RP> Nobel Prize in Literature since the award was first presented, in 1901.
RP> In announcing the award, the academy lauded "her musical flow of voices and
RP> counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal
RP> reveal the absurdity of society's cliches and their subjugating power." The
RP> academy's citation also noted her place in "a lengthy Austrian tradition of
RP> linguistically sophisticated social criticism," including such figures as
the
RP> journalist Karl Kraus, the novelist Thomas Bernhard, and Elias Canetti, a
RP> polymathic author who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981.
RP> Ms. Jelinek, born in 1946, began publishing poetry and fiction in the late
RP> 1960s. Besides The Piano Teacher (1983; English translation, 1988), her
other
RP> novels available in English are Wonderful, Wonderful Times (1980; trans.,
1990),
RP> Lust (1989; trans., 1992), and Women as Lovers (1975; trans., 1994).
RP> In recent years, much of her work has been for the theater and radio. In her
RP> dramatic works, the academy noted, Ms. Jelinek "successively abandoned
RP> traditional dialogues for a kind of polyphonic monologues that do not serve
to
RP> delineate roles but to permit voices from various levels of the psyche and
RP> history to be heard simultaneously."
RP> She may be the first Nobel laureate in literature to have made a significant
RP> commitment to the Internet, frequently posting commentary on her own Web
site.
RP> Ms. Jelinek has also published translations into German of work by
Christopher
RP> Marlowe and Thomas Pynchon, among other authors.
RP> Among the materials available in English at her Web site is a series of
short
RP> essays on Bertolt Brecht. They reflect Ms. Jelinek's long-term interest in
the
RP> German playwright and dramatic theorist, whose (arguably exploitative)
RP> relationships with his female collaborators have in recent years come under
much
RP> scrutiny from scholars. But Ms. Jelinek's commentary also stresses Brecht's
RP> concern with "the basic tension ... between the real and what is said."
RP> That is among Ms. Jelinek's own themes. The academy noted that in her most
RP> recent plays, she puts on stage figures who are "less characters than
'language
RP> interfaces' confronting each other," an approach that thereby reveals "the
RP> inability of women to fully come to life in a world where they are painted
over
RP> with stereotypical images."
RP> Scholarship on the author includes Rewriting Reality: Elfriede Jelinek and
the
RP> Politics of Representation (Berg Publishers, 1994), by Allyson Fiddler, a
RP> professor of German and Austrian studies at Lancaster University, in
England.
RP> More information about the prize-winning author is available on the Nobel
Web
RP> site.
RP> ---------------------------------
RP> Forwarded by Robert Paul
--
Judy Evans, Cardiff, UK
mailto:judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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