Elfriede Jelinek Details, Meaning Elfriede Jelinek Article and Explanation Guide

Elfriede Jelinek Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description

, June 2000]] Elfriede Jelinek (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."

Jelinek was born in Mürzzuschlag, Styria, Austria.

Her work—largely unknown outside the German-speaking world—carries only a rather cursory semblance with that of acclaimed Austrian playwright Thomas Bernhard: the pathology of destruction and its concomitant comedian abrogation. Little of her writings soar anywhere near Bernhard's olympean grandezza.

Yet in her native Austria she became a household name during the 1990s in her very public controversy against populist political ratter-manipulator Jörg Haider.

Partly porposeful political diatribism, partly self-therapy, her work is many-faceted and controversial.

Her prose and plays are not graded overly highly by leading German critics; her political activism, her hardiness, consistency and persistence in following her convictions on and off the stage however are well established and acclaimed by many.

Prevalent topics in her prose and dramatic work are female sexuality, its abuse and the war of sexes in general, trotting along the well-trampled paths of the post-1968 agenda. Texts like Wir Sind Lockvögel, Baby! (we are decoy, baby), Die Liebhaberinnen (Lovers) or Die Klavierspielerin (The Pianist) illustrate her point nicely and shock the reader with the unemotional description of brutality and power play in human relations. According to Jelinek, power and aggression are the driving forces of relationships.

Her novel Lust (novel) is a description of sexuality, aggression and abuse with pornographic qualities. It received little critical acclaim. Rather than the plot itself, the cold description of moral failures was perceived as haunting.

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. Her plays are taciturn, yet lavish productions with an emphasis on choreography like Sportstück which explores the issue of violence and fascism in sports.

Jelinek's novel Die Klavierspielerin was turned into The Piano Teacher, an acclaimed movie by Austrian director Michael Haneke with Isabelle Huppert playing the repressed pianist.

Jelinek supported the opposition against the Austrian (self-declared) non-collectivist, non-socialist government under Wolfgang Schüssel. She was a member of the Communist Party of Austria from 1974 to 1991.

Commenting the Nobel Prize, she has said that she was very happy but also felt despair; "despair for becoming a known, a person of the public". She also suggested that she had been awarded the prize mainly for "being a woman", also suggesting that Peter Handke would have been a more worthy winner.