Power Line: Nobel Literature Prize Goes to Communist

October 08, 2004

Nobel Literature Prize Goes to Communist

The Weekly Standard comments on the Swedish Academy's award of this year's Nobel Prize for Literature to Elfriede Jelinek, an Austrian Communist. The balance presumably tipped in Jelinek's favor with the publication of her most recent work, Bambiland, a play that denounces the war in Iraq. Horace Engdahl, secretary-general of the Academy, said Bambiland depicts how "the patriotic enthusiasm turns into insanity." And, he added, "she's completely right about that."

Here is how Jelinek is regarded in Austria:

She is unpopular in her native Austria, where she was shunned by some political leaders, in part because of her vehement opposition to the rise of the right wing Freedom Party led by Joerg Haider, which became part of the ruling coalition in 2000 on a platform that critics called anti-Semitic and anti-foreigner. [Ed.--Actually, I think it was because of her membership in the Austrian Communist Party, which, as the Standard notes, was "little more than a KGB network."]
In recent years, Jelinek’s plays have received an icy reception in Austria, where screenings have been marred in the past by booing, shouting matches and patrons abruptly leaving the theatre.

Communist Party chairman Walter Baier hailed Jelinek as ”a feminist and one of the most important voices of the ’other Austria'", and he credited the writer for her ”unabashed and public attacks” on the Freedom Party.

I think I can understand why theater patrons boo and walk out of Jelinek's plays. Here is an excerpt from a recent review of her play Das Werk in Die Welt:

As has always been the case in Elfriede Jelinek's theatre pieces in recent years there is no dramatic structure: no trace of action, psychology, or dialogue. Only angry sentences, corny jokes, and crypto-citations; only hatred of the ugly and scorn for the supposedly, the violated, noble.

And that reviewer liked the play.

The Swedish Academy and its Nobel prizes have become a joke, at least outside the scientific realm.

Thanks to reader Wayne W. for the tip.

Posted by John at 01:30 PM |

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