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Elfriede Jelinek’s Bambiland

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Anti-War Theatre After Brecht

Abstract

Since the late 1960s Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek has created work across a range of different artistic forms. Her oeuvre includes: radio plays, poetry, theatre texts, polemical essays, anthologies, novels, translations, screenplays, musical compositions, libretti and ballets, film and video art; a large body of work that continues to expand at a rapid rate. A child musical prodigy, Jelinek studied theatre arts and art history at the University of Vienna and classical music and piano performance at the prestigious Vienna Conservatory of Music (Sieg 1994, 149). In 2004 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the committee described as: ‘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’.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Jelinek is the child of a Jewish father and Catholic mother who lived in Austria throughout the Holocaust. Growing up in fascist Austria and living with the effects of the Holocaust upon her mentally ill father, Jelinek frequently explores the legacy of the Holocaust and Austrian anti-Semitism in her work. Even today she continues to speak and write publicly about Austria’s shameful history, frequently berating Austrian citizens for what she sees as their refusal to deal honestly with the nation’s Nazi past. Her accusations of an ongoing pervasive fascism in Austria have led to her being frequently labelled in the press as a Nestbeschmutzer – a person who befouls their own nest. She is frequently criticized and strongly disliked by much of the Austrian public.

  2. 2.

    My translation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia

    Lara Stevens

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  1. Lara Stevens
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Stevens, L. (2016). Elfriede Jelinek’s Bambiland . In: Anti-War Theatre After Brecht. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53888-8_7

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