Sex & The Book / Sexual repression and the search for the extreme in Elfriede Jelinek's writing

Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004, Elfriede Jelinek was born in 1946 in Mürzzuschlag, Austria, and lives between Vienna, where she grew up, and Munich, her husband's hometown.

The father was a German chemist of Czech-Jewish origin, while the mother came from a well-to-do Viennese family of Romanian descent, which had fallen from grace. Elfriede lost several family members to Nazi persecutions during World War II, but fortunately her father was able to escape thanks to his position in the industry where he was employed.

Jelinek had a very strict education both in the Catholic girls' school that she was forced to attend in Vienna, and in the Conservatory, where she studied various instruments under the pressure of her mother, a difficult and authoritarian woman, who imagined a future for her as a musician. He graduated in organ and then enrolled at university, which he was unable to finish due to the ever increasing anxiety attacks.

Erika is watching. The object of his curiosity is touched with a hand between his thighs and shows that he enjoys making a small "O" with his mouth. Enthusiastic about the presence of all those men who have come to look at her, she closes her eyes and reopens them turning them upside down, raises her arms and rubs her nipples until they stand up. Then she sits comfortably and spreads her legs as much as possible, so that from below you can peek inside. The woman plays charmingly with her pubic hair, licks her lips ostentatiously, while in front of her now one, now the other shooter hits the target with her rubber worm. The face makes you realize how beautiful it would be if it were with you. Unfortunately, however, it is impossible due to the high demand. In this way everyone can enjoy a small part, not just the individual.

Jelinek made her debut in literature in 1967 with a collection of poems, an art in which she dabbled from an early age. She has written dozens of novels, many plays and devoted herself to both literary criticism and translation. The Pianist, published in 1983, is his best known book, also due to the film of the same name that was based on it, directed by Michael Haneke and winner of the Cannes Film Festival in 2001.

It is difficult not to grasp the autobiographical traits in the story of the protagonist Erika, a middle-aged piano teacher, who still lives with her mother, suffocating and oppressive, in a small apartment where she is not even allowed the privacy of a bed all to herself. . In fact, not only does he share the double mattress with her, but he lets his mother have full control over every aspect of his life, from clothing to dating, as if she were still a child who has been raised, however, with the severity of an adult.

Even work, the passion for music, seems to have been a maternal choice rather than hers, continually accused of not having put her talent to good use, of being distracted by any human relationship she tried to forge. Erika and her mother live in a glass dome, united by a sick and morbid affection, made up of quarrels, reconciliations, torn hair and feelings of guilt, and in all this the daughter has never had the freedom to seek her own identity, even sexual. She never even touched herself, always pinned down by her mother's surveillance, for whom her hands could only be used for playing. Erika represents "a taboo for herself".

See also

Extreme sex

Candaulism: what there is to know about this sexual practice

Fetishism: what it is and how to deal with this sexual behavior

In the passage you have read, we find Erika in a suburban neighborhood, with red lights, intent on paying - the only woman - to observe a peep show in a dark room, through a peep hole. Among the dirty handkerchiefs left on the floor by the men who witnessed the erotic show before her, she observes the performance of a female body. He observes her as rapt and does not even mention touching herself. He cannot, he does not know how to give himself pleasure. What she is looking for is closest to a mirror, it is the closest thing she can imagine to observing herself naked in front of a mirror.

In the course of the novel, Erika will forge a bond with one of her piano pupils, but the story will have terrible results, in a crescendo of physical and psychological violence, for which the protagonist will fall victim to her own self-harm, without being able to free herself from the deadly trap that the mother and herself have built around it. Despite the gloom of the story, Jelinek offers us a brilliant, ironic writing, rich in metaphors, in full control of such a cruel matter. It is really true that in order to love someone and be loved by them, we must first of all accept that, after all, we really deserve that love.

by Giuliana Altamura

Here you can read the previous appointment with the address book Sex & The Book / Carnal love and linguistic virtuosity in the verses of the writer George Sand