The Piano Teacher

by Elfriede Jelinek, Joachim Neugroschel (Translator)

Erika Kohut teaches piano at the Vienna Conservatory by day. But by night she trawls the porn shows of Vienna while her mother, whom she loves and hates in equal measure, waits up for her.

Into this emotional pressure-cooker bounds music student and ladies' man, Walter Klemmer. With Walter as her student, Erika spirals out of control, consumed by the ecstasy of self-destruction.

First published in 1983, The Piano Teacher is the masterpiece of Elfriede Jelinek, Austria's most famous writer. Now a feature film directed by Michael Haneke, The Piano Teacher won three major prizes at the Cannes 2001 Festival including best actor for Benoit Magimel and best actress for Isabelle Huppert.

Elfriede Jelinek was born in Austria in 1946 and grew up in Vienna where she attended the famous Music Conservatory. The leading Austrian writer of her generation, she has been awarded the Heinrich Boll Prize for her contribution to German-language literature. This edition was translated by Joachim Neugroschel.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Nobel Prize, German Literature, Contemporary, Novels, Literary Fiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Elfriede Jelinek is an Austrian playwright and novelist, best known for her novel, The Piano Teacher.

She was awarded the Nobel Prize in 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."

Reviews

[Shawn McComb · Rating 5 out of 5]

unable to rate

[Paul Bryant · Rating 1 out of 5]

A bit like the moment in The Gold Rush where Charlie Chaplin opens his cabin door and the howling gale blasts him across the room and he spends the next five minutes trying to shut the door again – so many raging roaring ideas came hurtling out of these pages that I struggled to close the book at all. Actually, that’s not the right image! Too healthy! It was more like one of those exhibitions of biological curiosities you got in some old teaching hospitals, somewhat frowned upon now, I imagine. Something in a huge murky jar which you flinch from and turn away, sickened. Well, it was a combination of insane howling tempest and formaldehyded grotesquerie. It was both at the same time.

SOMETIMES IT SEEMS THAT WOMEN DON’T MAKE IT EASY FOR THEMSELVES

That’s a bit of a sexist generalisation, maybe, but I give you

The Story of O by Pauline Reage
American Psycho directed by Mary Harron
50 Shades of Gray by E L James
Topping from Below by Laura Reese

And now

The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek

These women should be busted for aiding and abetting the enemy. (Story of O, for instance, was written by a woman to rekindle the waning interest of her lover – how gross is that?). Men are quite capable, indeed very eager, to create books and movies portraying women as secretly desiring abusive violent behaviour due to their strong innate masochistic tendencies (Blue Velvet, Lust Caution, Bitter Moon, Secretary) without women helping the men by handing them live ammunition. Intellectual men will read stuff like The Piano Teacher and Story of O; and although they won’t read 50 Shades they will note the amazing success of that book, and that its readers are 99% female; so these things become the cultural background radiation of our times; and the idea gets around that on some level maybe women actually want to be dominated and mistreated, whatever they might say with their feminist voices. Treat em mean and keep em keen. So you get a situation where the grisly Robin Thicke gets caned up and down the land for his dreadful song Blurred Lines (and the video)

You the hottest bitch in this place
I feel so lucky
you're an animal, baby it's in your nature
Just let me liberate you
I'll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two
Swag on, even when you dress casual
I mean it's almost unbearable
Nothing like your last guy, he too square for you
He don't smack that ass and pull your hair like that
I know you want it

Etc etc

Whilst at the same time these high culture depictions of female masochism like Story of O and The Piano Teacher (not to mention the writings of de Sade) are strongly defended, and Mary Harron’s film of American Psycho is parlayed into some kind of feminist statement.

(Non-intellectual men won’t be reading any of this stuff, they’ll be playing Grand Theft Auto and pretending to kill hookers they’ve taken hostage.)

So that’s the case for the prosecution. The Piano Teacher, whatever it may be, is not helping.


CASE FOR THE DEFENCE


The introduction says

This book does not set out to please or entertain the reader. It does, though set out to reveal all kinds of uncomfortable truths

A NYT critic wrote

Many, particularly in academic circles, believe she has achieved a triumphant combination of avant-garde technique and progressive social criticism.

The Nobel prize committee wrote :

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

(Wiki adds : However one member of the Nobel Committee resigned over this decision, describing Jelinek’s work as “whining, unenjoyable public pornography” and “a mass of text shoveled together without artistic structure.” )

In some way this 300 page descent into extreme female masochism is supposed to be a protest against patriarchy, or fascism, or Austria, or male sexuality. This reading would set The Piano Teacher next to Ariel by Sylvia Plath, and would note her suicide – examples of male oppression being internalised to the extent that women become self-haters. Myself I think a healthier response to male oppression was provided by Aileen Wuornos.

I THINK IT’S TRUE TO SAY THAT EVERY SENTENCE IN THIS NOVEL IS UNPLEASANT TO READ.

There may be two or three exceptions. Our author’s voice is present-tense horrified-repulsed-lascivious-demented-sneery commentary. The author’s voice is as horrible as the main character is crazy. For pages at a time it’s only possible to glean a general sense of what’s happening. It often gets very close to complete gibberish. Most of the time you get a ranting commentary on Erica which is made up of an unceasing flood of metaphors which change or get dropped mid-paragraph and never quite make sense.

Here are some of my favourite DAFT SENTENCES. Because of the style, it’s sometimes hard to tell if this stuff is supposed to be a reflection of the character’s diseased brains or is a comment by the author. Also, it is impossible for me to say if this translation is by someone who was unable to write a non-contorted straightforward sentence in English; or if Elfriede Jelinek wanted to sound like an earnest Martian who has not quite mastered Earth languages yet. So with those caveats, I give you my top thirteen.

THE FEEDBAGS OF MATERNAL DETRITUS

Striding along, Erica hates that porous, rancid fruit that marks the bottom of her abdomen.

Simply by living his own life, he has created his own sperm, arduously and tediously.

Her body is one big refrigerator, where Art is stored.

Erika distrusts young girls; she tries to gauge their clothing and physical dimensions, hoping to ridicule them.

Turkish men don’t like women; they never suffer their company willingly.

Mother smacks away at the loosened hairdo of the late-season fruit of her womb.

Erika’s will shall be the lamb that nestles down with the lion of maternal will. This gesture of humility will prevent the maternal will from shredding the soft, unformed filial will and munching on its bloody limbs.

She stands on the floor like a much-used flute that has to deny itself, because otherwise it could not endure the many dilettantish lips that keep wanting to take it in.

You can capture any woman if you exploit her awareness of her own physical inadequacies.

A man who meticulously slices up his wife and children and then stores them in the refrigerator in order to eat them later on is no more barbaric than the newspaper that runs the item.

She yearns for a man who knows a lot and can play the violin. Once she bags him, he’ll caress her. That mountain goat, ready to flee, is already clambering through the detritus, but he doesn’t have the strength to track down her femininity, which lies buried in the detritus.

She is one of those people who lead and guide most people. Sucked into the vacuum of the absolute inertia of her body, she shoots out of the bottle when it opens, and she is then flung into a previously selected or unexpected alien existence.

[After a performance of Bach] Both performers rise from their stools and bow their heads. They are patient horses sticking their noses into the feedbags of everyday life, which has reawakened.


GIVE ME A BREAK


The Piano Teacher, then, is the rancid fruit in the feedbag at the bottom of my abdomen.

[Traveller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Are our children ever our property? Is it ever justifiable for one human being to take possession of another human's will and freedom; is it okay to retain another human being for our own personal use, like you would do with a motor vehicle or a cup or a comb? Even when that human being belongs to another nation, or is our own child?

There is currently a world-wide ban against making slaves of persons belonging to other nationalities, though there is not yet consensus about making 'slaves' of other species, or of our own children.
Some people are even more passionate against making captives of wild animals, against torturing them with an unnatural existence and having us preside over the fate of their life or death, than they are about doing these things to human beings.

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly--. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

The Panther--Rainer Maria Rilke

One thing that Erika Kohut cannot do, is to give of herself, because there is no self to give from. Erika's self has never had a chance to come out from behind the bars of maternal protection, has never had a chance to stretch itself fully, in the light. Has never had a chance to feel the stretching and contraction of emotional muscles in action, and so, confined by the tight bars of her prison, the muscles of Erika's self have atrophied and withered away in the darkness, until all that was left was Mother and the great heights of The Mission.

Erika has failed in her Mission, constructed and assigned by Motherdear: of becoming a famous and revered concert pianist. Not that Erika has not busted a gut trying: practicing the piano is all she has been doing since her pre-schooler years, literally. There is no space for anything else, because even if we had the time to do anything but practice, we dare not do so, for any slightly robust activity might cause the child to injure her precious ten-tipped tools; and then, what would be left in the world for Erika and Motherdear? Just one another, the television screen and sour gum bon-bons. Not even poor Father, because he exited soon after daughter Erika entered the familial bed - he was taken to the mental health funny-farm in the back of the pig-butcher's truck.

This novel is starkly unforgiving in showing us the interior world of Viennese culture and the world of music professor Erika, her mother, and Erika's student and love-object Walter Klemmer. Three is a crowd, they say, but who is the superfluous one in this uncomfortable ménage à trois?

In Motherdear's methodology of smothering her child's will to independence, I was reminded of the terrifying image of a Muslim mother who, after her daughter became pregnant due to having been raped by her sons, decided to erase the stain from the family honor by taking action herself, and proceeded to cover the head of her pregnant daughter with plastic bags, subduing her with blows from a mallet, and squeezing the bags down over her face, holding and holding and holding it there until Daughterdear stopped twitching and kicking. This mother was not incarcerated for this murder, because our children are our possessions, are they not?

Mother in The Piano Teacher doesn't do this physically speaking, of course, but perhaps the pregnant daughter stifled by the plastic bags, had a quicker out than Erika has. Because Erika cannot feel anything anymore beyond rudimentary pain, and even her pain has become a distanced thing, something that has to be given expression by cutting or pricking herself, because Erika cannot vocalize emotions or recognize them in their direct emotional form. Once upon a time she still longed to get away from piano practice sessions to play outside with other young people, but those urges are now long gone. The urges knocking and pushing to come out now, are met with a blind wall, a wall where there is no opening. They cannot come out anymore, no matter where Erika cuts herself, because she has had to build a wall around them. She has had to wall off the filth inside her, like an obedient child.

Oh, not that she hasn't kicked against the walls of her tight prison, not that she hasn't rebelled, showing her rebellion now and then by buying one of the frivolous, wasteful pieces of clothing that Motherdear hates so much. Of course, such purchases are met with blows and kicks and screeches, and often, Motherdear takes revenge for Erika's arriving home late (even at age 35) by shredding some of these beloved pieces of clothing, shredding the symbol of rebellion; the only thing that Erika has that is hers, that doesn't belong to Motherdear.

So is it a wonder then, that anything as 'filthy' and rebellious and natural as sexual urges, builds up and up and roils around inside blindly not knowing where to go? Urges which cannot find any expression, because Mother guards those hands day and night, literally checking that hands stay above board at night from her co-position in the shared maternal bed.
We know how to look, but we know we should not touch. So, when we feel aroused through Peeping Tom activities, or by the beauty of music, the only way we can find expression, is to relieve internal pressure by relieving our bladder. This activity is allowed, and so, this has become symbolic of relieving pressure. I reckon it's not a co-incidence that the urethral phase is the Freudian stage of separation anxiety. I guess it's just another (and rather superfluous under the circumstances) way of Jelinek telling us that Erika had become frozen in the urethral stage--unable to deal with separation anxiety.

Some of this novel seems to be autobiographical, since Jelinek herself studied music as a result of her own overbearing Motherdear's desires. Jelinek had to stop her studies and retire back under the maternal wing (from whence she eventually launched her writing career) due to 'an anxiety disorder'. Her own father also ended up in a mental institution, and although Jelinek eventually married, she remained living with her mother, only visiting her husband on weekends, right up to her mother's death.

As such, I need to mention that this novel is not erotica, and I mean not even for BDSM lovers, since sexual titillation is not what the book is about, but it is closer to being a psychological study, almost a dark avant garde memoir clad as fiction, with deep characterization.

The novel is written in non-linear form, but without making use of 'flashbacks'; relying purely on contextual evidence to orient us towards where in the narrative we are from a temporal point of view. This adds to the experimental feel of the prose that is written from the viewpoint of an omniscient narrator who speaks the thoughts of the characters so loudly and with such seamless transitions, in a less subtle version of Virginia Woolfe's stream of consciousnesss style, that one often finds it hard to distinguish who is 'thinking' and whether it is Jelinek's or the character's ideas and thoughts that we are reading. As with Joyce's Ulysses, one eventually becomes accustomed to this stylistic quirk.

The novel is a stark condemnation of the negative aspects of the patriarchal, puritanical side of traditional Teutonic society which denies nature as something ugly and filthy and in which cultural structures of power, control and submission, always angles hierarchical structures to respect age over youth, male over female, and tends to twist natural human relations into contorted shapes in order to conform to societal pressures.

One of the recurring themes in the novel, is scenes depicting parents hitting their children; no wonder these kinds of behaviour breeds and perpetuates a culture of violence.

The novel is also a socialist critique of bourgeoisie culture and the elevated status that classical music enjoys in the Viennese society that Erika grew up in. (Jelinek lived in Munich, but her grandparents were Austrian, and she seemed to have a bee in her bonnet about destroying popular images and conceptions of Austria as an idyllic place.)

The sharp hyper-realism of Jelinek's strokes reminded me very much of the art of Frida Kahlo, who, judging from photographs, tended to paint herself in a harsh unflattering light. Erika reminded me of this work by Kahlo:


The 'hyper-realist' feel of the novel has to do with the fact that Jelinek's artistic perspective was indeed an attempt at a literary version of Kahlo's artistic 'honesty'. Jelinek purposely focuses on the ugliness of everything in order to offer the reader no retreat, to force the reader to face the harsh 'reality' of the psychological landscape she paints, leaving us no option but to see its ugliness.
The problem is that the human psyche cannot be painted in flat, realistic tones, because it is always an onion with layers. (With credit to Shrek for the latter observation.)

The novel is unrelenting in its characterization, giving no quarter to any of the main characters: we see no redeeming qualities in the small, petty, selfish world of Motherdear's pathetic existence, and although we might feel twinges of sympathy for Erika at times, make no mistake that she is drawn relentlessly with harsh clear strokes, allowing no room for rose-tinted glasses: we see Erika in all of her inner ugliness in which there is yet intrinsically pathos--but there is no heroism, no reprieve, no redeeming qualities; just deep frustrated need--a need for love and recognition that Walter is unable to meet, because he himself is needy; he needs a mother-like love and he needs recognition and admiration from an authority figure in order to bolster his shaky self-esteem--something which older Erika cannot give because she herself is unable to give; she is emotionally and sexually a frozen being. She is also even less able than Walter to initiate loving, mutually reciprocal relations when it comes to love or sex.

After all, the only thing that Erika has had any experience of doing, lies in the structures of dominance and subjugation. Erika has been taught that extreme subjugation to imprisonment and abuse, is the way to procure love--Motherdear has taught us this, and this is the recipe that has worked in getting Motherdear's love, so why is Walter not seeing extreme subjugation as love and acceptance? Erika does not understand.

I feel that part of the social and to some extent feminist commentary in the text, lies with the fact that the only sexual role that Erika sees open for herself as a woman, is that of subjugation, a role she imagines will bring her love. This is not only a commentary on sexual roles, but also of the authoritarian Teutonic way of doing, where everything exists in terms or power and domination, and firstly maleness/machismo and then age determines your place in the pecking order of society.

There are some interpretations that would have it that Erika is just intrinsically kinky, but Erika's behaviour can clearly be linked to her socialization process with Mother. Mother says she loves Erika, but Mother also hits Erika, even as an adult, and so Erika has learned to associate love with captivity and physical abuse: " His voice is almost toneless. Erika knows that tone from her mother. I hope Klemmer won’t hit me, she thinks fearfully.

Please note that since we're talking about something as unpredictable and as yet not a fully charted landscape as the human psyche, that my interpretations of the character's behaviours are only some interpretations out of a myriad of possibilities.

Another interpretation of Erika's behavior, (which I think is also plausible and does not necessarily collide with my interpretation), is that masochism is ultimately manipulative behaviour, which seems to fit, because the submissive seems to believe that they are procuring love with their submissive behaviour, but this argument loses me in the extension that the 'sub' in a sadomasochistic relationship, is actually per se the dominating partner.

Hmm. I think that I can go with that in that in this novel, Erika thought that she would be able to manipulate Walter and elicit love from him in the same way that she does with Mother, via apparent subjugation of herself. This apparently failed because Walter realized she was trying to manipulate him, and he rejected that version of their dynamic by re-asserting his own dominance by first rejecting her demands, and then foisting an approximation of these demands upon her but at his convenience, and I can agree with this interpretation to some extent, but I think the Walter/Erika dynamic is possibly even more complex than just that. (And I know there is an establishment review out there that suggests certain interpretations, but the writer of that review is under the impression that Klemmer's main sport is hockey, for f's sake! (Among other misreadings) So there was definitely not a close reading there).

A close reading of the text takes me back to the scenario where I feel that Walter's overriding requirement from his relationship with Erika is a situation where he gets to shine, but in the presence of a quasi-maternal authority-figure, which is how Erika must have appeared to him in the classroom situation. So he basically wanted to get it off with the teacher, who suddenly is not acting like the teacher anymore. She tended to be superior and cold towards him and to criticize him in the classroom, but he wants to maneuver her into a position where she is going to give him warm approval and acceptance.

But also, what Walter needed Erika to do, was to react to him in a reciprocal way, and I don't think we should condemn him for feeling repulsed by Erika's demands beyond that we might condemn him for being judgmental, because in Erika's scenario, as he voices the result himself: "What do I get out of all this?" In Erika's scenario, not only does he have to act in ways that feel 'unnatural' to him, but he doesn't emotionally receive any of the things he had been looking for from the relationship.

When Erika and Walter are in her room the first time, when they shut Mother out via the wardrobe in front of the door, "The woman has made contact with him in writing, but a simple touch would have scored a lot more points. She deliberately refused to take the path of tender female touching. Yet she seems to be in basic agreement with his lust. He reaches for her, she doesn’t reach for him. That cools him off. "

This and other sections where it is mentioned that Klemmer wants something 'real' from Erika, suggests to me that it is Erika's emotional and sexual passivity and inability to feel, to respond appropriately, and 'give' of herself that frustrates him. One could argue that Erika is withholding from him as an act of passive aggression which the 'establishment' review I read seems to suggest, but my feeling is yet again that this is not so.

It seems to me that Erika's pain and her yearning are real. But human beings 'learn' relationship behaviour along with all our other social behaviour in a process called socialization, which is a process that all mammals undergo, and it is learned from the senior members of a community, most often the parents.
Since Erika's father was absent and she had spent her entire life in a tightly controlled relationship with Mother, she would have learned most of her socialization from her mother. So, in Erika's world, subjugating herself in this manner, is the only act of 'love' that she knows, and in this lies the pathos of the character for me, and even some social commentary and some feminist commentary.


If Erika does not have the sharpest of self-insight, I don't think one should conclude this about Jelinek, who seems to be painfully aware of Erika's shortcomings, for instance, since nobody else seems to really appreciate poor Erika's playing, it appears as if Mom is controlling her by being the only one who does, in fact, praise her playing. So Mommy dearest's wing seems warm and re-assuring, because it allows Erika to hide in her illusion of being a great and wonderful piano player. One suspects that the reason as to why Erika isn't a great player, lies in the clue Erika gives about her playing: she cannot 'submit' to the composer, which I think means that she cannot give feeling to her interpretation, because Erika cannot give herself to feelings, she has been trained to cut herself off from them.

Another instance of how Jelinek has insight but Erika hasn't, lies in how we see and hear people sniggering at her attempts to "dolly herself up", whereas Erika herself thinks she did a fine job.

This brings me to the prickly subject of the aggressive and in some instances, cruel and sadistic acts that Erika performs on unsuspecting people around her. I really hope that Erika's sadistic acts, especially one revealed towards the end of the novel, are fictional, because some of these acts are truly ugly.

So, partly autobiographical as the character of Erika may be, she is definitely not shown in a sympathetic light, which brings me to how I should rate this book.

BOTTOM LINE:
If I were to rate the novel according to my enjoyment factor, I would rate it one star, because as a few friends have said, this book is ugly in almost every aspect. If I were to rate it as an intelligent, uncompromising attack on certain aspects of Germanic society, and a hyper-realist look at Jelinek's own situation in life, and an insightful and heart-wrenching exposè of some of the possible causes of sadomasochistic and self-harming behaviour, as well as an uncompromising look into the pain of a damaged person, I'd give it 5 stars.

As it is, I think I'm inclined to give it something in between. I have to take at least one star off for the ugliness, for having had to live through the experience of Jelinek forcing me to look through those darkly stained glasses through which Mother makes us look at the world.
I think Jelinek would understand. ;)

I wonder if I should warn people that this book is not erotica? Hehe.

[Guille · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me encantó, me impactó su dureza, su sinceridad, su patetismo. Me gustó tanto que inmediatamente me compré otro libro suyo "Los excluidos". También excelente, en la misma línea que el anterior.

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I vowed after wasting my time somehow managing to get through her utterly detestable novel Greed, that I would never read Elfriede Jelinek again, avoiding her books like one would avoid the Bubonic plague. But I ran into a problem lately, that being Actress Isabelle Huppert, of whom I'm a massive fan, and one of the few films of hers I've yet to see is Michael Haneke's 2001 film adaptation of Jelinek's novel. After contemplating as to whether or not I read the book, I decided that I would, out of respect for Huppert, plus, I would always, at least where possible, want to read any novel before watching the film its based upon. I don't all of sudden think any different about Jelinek as I did before, and I still scratch my head about her receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature, but at least The Piano Teacher was an improvement from what I'd read before. I did find problems with this, one that it suffered from being too naive in places, but at least it was better written, made more sense, and even though there were moments when I wanted to turn away, I simply couldn't.

Sexuality and violence are brought together in what was a dark, unsettling, and uncompromising work, but it's one I found was filled with humorous irony when digging around a little deeper. With themes of sado-masochism, morbid voyeurism, sexual violence, self-harm, and suffocating maternal love this isn't a novel for the faint of heart. Set in modern day Vienna, Jelinek's novel plunges us into the mind of Erika Kohut, a repressed piano teacher and failed concert pianist who inflicts pain on herself and engages in unpleasurable sexual voyeurism. She lives with and sleeps in the same bed as her psychotically controlling mother. The daughter is the overbearing Mother's idol, and she demands from Erika in return. It's a bizarre relationship which literally has them tearing each other's hair out. A spanner is thrown into the works causing greater dysfunction when the arrival of Walter Klemmer, a young pupil of Erika's at the Vienna Conservatory grabs her attention. Soon a mutual obsession develops between them, and it's not long before we venture into darker territory with a sadomasochistic relationship that refracts and reiterates the parallels between the relationships of mother and daughter, teacher and pupil, captor and captive. Overall the effect the novel had was like being hosed down with shards of glass.

I thought I'd end up hating this, but in the end its mixed feelings.

Having now seen the film, I'd say I only slightly preferred it to the novel.

[Valeriu Gherghel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un roman bun, dar nu într-atît de bun încît să merite un Nobel.

Am de făcut un reproș la adresa criticilor. N-am înțeles de ce toata lumea spune că Pianista ar descrie o relație sado-masochistă. Care relație? Există undeva o relație? Între cine și cine? Poate între mamă și fiică...

În romanul lui Elfriede Jelinek, n-am observat vreo relație între Erika Kohut și așa-zisul ei prieten mai tînăr, Walter Klemmer. De nici un fel. „Amanții” au doar trei întîlniri, mai mult pe fugă, mai mult ratate, nu-s în stare de nimic memorabil. N-au timp pentru tortúri erotice, n-au vreme de frînghii ude, de noduri și bice. Sigur, Erika este o ființă ciudată. Un om reprimat, chinuit, plin de idei fixe. Mama i-a cerut prea mult, a fost o scorpie pentru Erika. Fata n-a crîcnit, a acceptat, s-a supus. Acum trage ponoasele. Atît. Dar nu este cu mult mai ciudată decît oamenii de azi și dintotdeauna. Fiecare din noi e o Erika...

Am parcurs în grabă (și) o parte din recenzii (pe Google) și m-am convins încă o dată (deși nu mai era nevoie) că nimeni nu citește un roman înainte de a-l recenza. Și nici după. Altfel, criticii n-ar vorbi de relație sado-masochistă între cei doi. Nu există o relație de acest fel în carte (cel puțin în Pianista). Există doar o scrisoare a Erikăi în care ea își notează minuțios tot ce ar vrea sa-i facă amantul, în care biata femeie amorțită își prezintă o sumă de fantezii irealizabile: „Bate-ți joc de mine și numește-mă sclavă tîmpită și chiar mai rău!” (p.212). Dar în realitatea crudă a ficțiunii, Erika nu este o sado-masochistă mai masochistă, mai sadică și mai perversă decît oricare dintre noi, pardon de expresie.

Într-un final, săraca, mai ia și o mamă de bătaie de la așa-zisul ei amant, ca să-i iasă toți gărgăunii din cap și să se întoarcă smerită (și vinovată) în patul matern. Și gata. Nimic mai mult. Erika are doar tendințe voyeuriste (DEX încă nu știe cum ar trebui scris cuvîntul) și, într-adevăr, e cam uscată pentru o femeie de 30 de ani. Dar cine nu-i uscat la 30 de ani în amețitoarea lume contemporană?

Paginile trimit la ediția din colecția Top 10+ (2012).

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ich habe es versucht; Beim Grab meines verstorbenen Kanarienvogels schwöre ich, ich habe versucht, DIE KLAVIERSPIELERIN zu lesen.
Mein soziales Umfeld hat mich bei diesem Unternehmen nach Kräften unterstützt. Meine Frau hat mich mit noch gesünderer und ausgewogenerer Ernährung als sonst versorgt; ich bin der JA-Gruppe (Jelinek anonymous) beigetreten; ein personal trainer hat mich täglich massiert und mit Proteingetränken gemästet; Goodreads-Freunde haben mir Mut zugesprochen. Zugleich gab es unterstütztend dazu sanften sozialen Druck: Aber du willst doch weiter zur Lesegruppe dazu gehören? Du willst doch auch nach Wien zur Jelinek-Exkursion kommen?
Ja, ich will doch alles richtig und gut machen! Ich will die KLAVIERSPIELERIN lesen, ja! Ich bin doch kein verstockter Dummbatz, dem nicht zu helfen ist, ich werde das Buch lesen.
Habe ich gedacht. Habe 10 Seiten gelesen. 20. 30. Bin bis Seite 80 gekommen. Habe dafür so lange gebraucht, dass ich nunmehr das Buch in der Kreisbibliothek hätte verlängern müssen und stand also pflichtschuldig gesenkten Blickes mit dem unscheinbaren Taschenbüchlein mit der wenig gelungenen Umschlagillustration vor der Bibliothekarin; einer älteren Dame, die sanftmütig ist (normalerweise jedenfalls). Sie sah mir in die Augen und fragte: Wollen sie das Buch verlängern? Es klang, als hätte sie gesagt: Wollen sie DAS Buch (etwa) verlängern?
Ihr Blick hatte etwas Stechendes bekommen und ich musste mir den Schweiß von der Stirn tupfen. Eine berechtigte Frage, die ich zuvor möglicherweise unterschätzt hatte. „Ich mag meine Lesegruppe“, begann ich zu stottern, aber die Bibliothekarin blieb seltsam ungerührt. Ich hätte sie gerne gefragt, ob sie das Buch kennt, traute mich aber nicht. Offenbar hatte niemand das Buch vorbestellt, ich hätte es verlängern können. Das, oder es abgeben. Verdammt! Was tun?
„Haben sie den Wetterbericht gehört?“, fragte ich die Dame. Denn eines stand fest, auch nach 80 Seiten: Jelineks Prosa überzieht die Hölle mit Blitzeis.
Ich kenne viele bösartige Texte, aber dieser Roman stellt sie alle in den Schatten. Man soll ja nicht von Romanfiguren auf den Autoren schließen, aber muss man nicht ein Menschenhasser sein, um solche Figuren zu schaffen? Nie zuvor hatte ich überlegt, ob Zombies nicht doch ganz nette Kerle sein könnten. Unerträglich sind mir Erika Kohut und ihre Mutter, unerträglich ist mir, wie Jelinek die gestörteste Mutter-Tochter-Beziehung seziert und von einer Spitze auf die nächste treibt. Schrecklich sind alle anderen Personen des Romans, allesamt ihrer Menschlichkeit beraubt, Schaustücke jelinekscher Glazialkunst. Toxic Parents, toxic life. Wenn Jelinek vor sich hin ätzt, vergeht mir jeder Lebensmut. Das hat nichts mit Ironie oder Sarkasmus zu tun, dieser Roman vergällt mir die Lebenslust.
Jelinek lesen bereitet die gleiche Lust wie ein Zahnarztbesuch: da drillt der Bohrer durch´s ewige Eis, um es mal bildhaft, aber nicht überzogen auszudrücken, und man spürt und hört die Zahnarztgeräusche, die man so liebt. Wie heißt es anlässlich des Besuchs einer Eisdiele: "Sie gabeln unaufhörlich ihre Kältebissen in ihre Eishöhlen" - genau so!
"Mit einem kleinen Hammer klopft sie die Wirklichkeit ab, eine eifrige Zahnärztin der Sprache"; fürwahr eine sehr besondere Form des Lustgewinns! Wie gerne denke ich da zur Beruhigung an den lachgasmissbrauchenden Zahnarzt im „Little Shop of Horrors“, der ein echter Kumpel ist verglichen mit unserer Erika.
Hätte Arno Schmidt in einer Phase tiefster Depression einen Text über katholische Landwirte verfasst, er hätte nicht böser ausfallen können.

„Nein, ich möchte das Buch jetzt zurückgeben“, habe ich zur Bibliothekarin gesagt, und gleich schien sie wieder freundlicher zu schauen.

Und dann griff ich zum Äußersten (man muss wissen, ich bin Agnostiker) und sagte:

Lasset uns beten!
Vater, habe Mitleid mit den Lesern in Österreich
Und den schrecklichen Büchern,
die sie dort lesen müssen.
Amen.

[Issa Deerbany · Rating 2 out of 5]

الرواية عبارة عن تحليلات نفسية ، اعتقد انها زادت كثيرا عن المطلوب.
اريكا معلمة البيانو المقموعة منذ الطفولة من قبل أمها وجدتها لتصبح موسيقية عبقرية ولا تنشغل باللهو عن ذلك. ولكن اصبحت موسيقية بارعة ولا تصل الى حد العبقرية.

المعلمة تعيش حياتين ، واحدة تظهر بها امام المجتمع كمعلمة محترفة للموسيقيين شباب. وفِي السر تعمل أشياء تعافها النفس ويبدو ان تربيتها والضغط عليها جعلها تعيش هذه الحياة، فالمجتمع حولها منافق وهي يجب ان تكون منافقة.

حتى عندما يدخل الرجل بسلطته في حياة اريكا تريد منه حياتين واحدة امام المجتمع والأخرى سرية مليئة بالسادية والافعال حتى الرجل الذي كان يريد ان يقدم الحب ويناله بالمقابل فتفاجأ بطلبات يشمئز منها.

الام دائما نحاول طرد الرجل من حياة ابنتها وحتى اَي وسائل لهو اخرى تحاول ان تبعد ابنتها عنها وسيطرتها عليها.

اُسلوب الكاتبة معقد ومليء بالسرد الممل حول نقاط أشبعتها سردا طوال الرواية.

نقد المجتمع النمساوي ظاهر في احداث الرواية واتهامه بالنفاق والازدواجية.

[Pavel Nedelcu · Rating 5 out of 5]

LEGĂTURI BOLNĂVICIOASE

O analiză a sexualității și a problemelor pe care o sexualitate reprimată le poate genera pe termen lung. În același timp, o parodie a Vienei moderne, dar și o reflecție generală asupra relației dintre părinți (autoritari) și copii (neînțeleși). În același timp, un studiu despre violență în relații.

În mare parte inspirat din autobiografia autoarei, genial scrisă (stilul amintește de cel al lui Canetti din Orbirea), romanul are calitatea de a șoca evidențiind anumite aspecte ale vieții private și ale subiectivității bolnăvicioase de care fiecare dintre noi, în mod conștient sau nu, „suferă”.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I rarely think of Elfriede Jelinek anymore.

She used to be my favourite pet hate for a couple of years after she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Somehow I was reconciled with her in the year 2016. After all, she is an intelligent, talented woman who can write unbearably painful, yet eloquent and sophisticated prose. I don't like her writing, but she undoubtedly is a skilled and interesting author. She may deserve a Nobel Prize in Literature for that. So, peace made!

Today I reviewed my all time pet hate Strindberg, one of the authors I have loved to torture myself with since adolescence. His vitriolic, evil brilliance just defies my need for rational, aesthetic AND emotional approval. I keep reading him, and hating him, and admiring him, year after year. All of a sudden I realised that I have exactly the same relationship to Elfriede Jelinek, but that I am much less forgiving of her hatred, despite understanding it better than Strindberg's privileged whining. How come? Am I less tolerant towards brutal women? No. I don't think so. I was perfectly honest about my dislike of The Wasp Factory for its silly, gratuitous violence. And Banks' writing skills are not even close to Jelinek's.

What is it then?

My reading of Strindberg's I havsbandet made me come up with an idea. I did not take his hatred seriously, being so closely linked to his fears and need for control, and so little connected to how women actually are in real life.

I do take Jelinek's descriptions of male-female relationships seriously, though. And therefore she causes me to feel more pain. I find it hard to distance myself from her brutal vision of sexual dominance and dependence, from the family relationships she describes that are defined by bonds of eternal hatred and humiliation. She gets under my skin the moment I start reading. And she is not exactly the kind of person whom I appreciate to feel under my skin. Therefore, as I am afraid of her crystal clear and dark observations, I do what Strindberg did: I hate what I fear.

I cannot despise it, however. It is too good for that. She proves her superiority by carefully painting a picture showing her inferiority.

[Dolors · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I am convinced the most unfortunate people are those who would make an art of love. It sours other effort. Of all artists, they are certainly the most wretched.” Norman Mailer

Erika Kohut, the piano teacher, is an instrument of nature aiming solely for artistic cleanliness. She is an outstanding interpreter but won’t ever be able to perform. Her soul has been sucked dry and her mind has been poisoned by a sadistic upbringing, damaging permanently the neuronal connection that unites music and humanity. She could have been a brilliant concertist, but her inability to feel, her incapability to express emotion after years of submission and mistreatment relegates her to a teaching position, which is ideal to refract her own frustrations onto her “working third-class” students and find creative forms of debasement as if she were writing the most sublime sonatas of repression and the most magnificent symphonies of abuse.
Music arises as a metaphor for human behavior and its inclinations. From rebel and sensual Schubert to the safety of technical perfection of Schumann, from passion and pain to intellect and security, from the most cultured, refined and pure musical magnificence to the most dissonant shriek of gruesome violence, Erika embodies a musical bipolarity in a crude first person atemporal narration veering between prose and poetry.

Erika Kohut, the piano teacher, is a deeply disturbed woman trapped in an obsessive love-hate relationship with her sickly controlling mother, maximum manifestation of a tainted society, who deprived Erika from her childhood, from her self-respect and her independence because of a perverse and selfish fixation for her daughter to become a talented musician, creating an unnatural bond between the two women, which leads to the complete annulment of Erika as a human being.
As “an insect encased in amber, timeless and ageless”, Erika is baked inside the cake pan of eternity. She is condemned to a withered existence, devoid of any hint of warmth, where only a vacuous flow of a systematic routine mercilessly torments her and fosters her libidinous instincts rooted deep in her entrails after suffering from decades of repression by her twisted mother.
No male members are allowed in their small apartment, only the ghost of a father-husband figure hovering around vaguely with no consequence after his death in a mental institution a long time ago. Erika’s life is reduced to piano lessons and buying dresses she won’t ever wear as an act of defiance against her stingy mother, on whom she depends in a pathological, submissive and almost erotically incestuous way.

Erika Kohut, the piano teacher, paints her life in circular motions framing indistinct moments as theatrical scenes and random shots of a putrescent world, where animal life rules implacably and predators hunt down their prey and copulation is an act of dominance and no spring breezes awaken anything. Decaying organic material prevails in the sordid streets of Vienna where Erika becomes a voyeur spying couples in public parks or attending peep shows, nurturing her distorted sexuality and her sadomasochistic tendencies.
Erika cuts herself to let her blood run in red streams of desperation trying to see past her inert and lifeless carcass of a body, trying to find her inner beauty, trying to prove her heart is still pumping blood into her hollow corpse. She can’t seem to feel anything, neither pain nor arousal, as much as she probes her flesh with knives and needles. Undefined form of emptiness and vacant glances are the only reflections in the mirror, a vampire of the maternal nest.

Erika Kohut, the piano teacher, resists her student Walter Klemmer’s romantic advances stoically, self-consciously reminding herself of her inaptitude to give and receive affection and of her inadequate tattered body. Erika senses her comfortably familial balance of power threatened by this golden and athletic man, who is ten years her junior and an admirer of Norman Mailer, and resists the temptation of seeking hope and redemption. She reaches the determination to show this sublime male specimen the dear price of his daring to desire her, proving her dominance and supremacy to the world.

But even the most shrivelled of souls can’t ignore the intoxicating illusion of love as instrument of absolution; and the balance of forces, both of love and power, expand and contract, merge and repel unpredictably, shifting first from mother to daughter, then from teacher to student, only to finally backfire and make of the abuser a victim and of the abused an aggressor, leaving only a blurred red trickle of blood glowing in golden sunbeams and festering wounds that will never properly heal.

Where to draw the line between the guilty and the innocent?
Should parents be blamed for the miseries of their children?
Should current generations pay for the sins committed by their ancestors?
Aren’t families a reflection of a hierarchical society and its classist structures that oppress in terms of age, gender and race?
Haven’t patriarchal societies subjugated, isolated and persecuted the unconventional throughout history?
Can art redeem the ones beyond salvation?
Erika’s wrenched attempt to transform her unsung symphony of love collides with the distorted cacophony of the rotten world she lives in, leaving an open, forever bleeding wound of silence, shame and hopelessness, annihilating the so-much-yearned-for harmony of this desolate song called life.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Show, not tell. The eternal plaint of literature. Do not tell us of the parade; bleed our ears to the beat of cacophony. Do not list out the throes of death; pierce our lungs and tie them up behind our backs. Do not speak of emotions with a single word; grip our hearts and plunge them into the carefully calibrated abyss.

Well, alright. Let me give that a try.

People say, oh, the joys of music! People sigh, oh, the mystic devotion of motherhood! People scream, oh, the sacrilegious desensitization of modern society! People mutter, oh, the banal unknowns of sexual proclivity. People think, oh, the place for man, and the place for woman.

Align yourself in pursuit of Art, snip and stretch and crack the lazy spine into proper positioning till you soar high, high above the masses in your ability to listen, replicate, understand. Seek meaning in every pain and pain in every meaning, and you will begin to perceive the discontent that drove the masters, those divinities so much better than the uncouth animals slobbering over the music they left behind. Throw your all into it, gild and grate your sanity into perfect form, and laugh at those whose pitiful minds cannot handle the wondrous Truth. Never mind the banalities of evil that crop up in the beginning, those will soon recede before the tide of the Greater Things in Life. In awareness, at least.

There is a singular feeling to be found in those who know their mother well, well enough to register their status as a financial investment in her eyes. Step to the beat, clap to the rhythm, and she will assume you functional; a working appliance does not require attention. Break from the track, run around on newfound legs and divest yourself in dividends undesirable to the maternal streak, and watch as the furious threats and emotional gutting chases after the errant child, determined to slap and beat and bunch it back into shape. How embarrassing! It seems, despite all that she has given it in the form of monetary stimulation and business schedule counseling and a dash of 'Iloveyous' when a debt needs to be filled, it has not yet been housebroken. Back to the pruning it goes, fill its head with thoughts of homelessness and disgrace, then place a sack of cash at the end of the track. Who wouldn't do anything for money? Those who value healthy emotional rapport over commercial value? Ha ha, nonsense! Mommie knows best.

Society isn't desensitized. The social construct is simply content with its vague descriptions of horrors in a meaningless void of sound and fury, its fuzzy images that fetishize the physical antagonist, its panderings at atrocious thrills that spawn emulation rather than disgust. Because as soon as a book like this comes along that portrays verbal abuse, emotional manipulation, casual rape, and so many more of the dregs in full relief, in lurid detail lit not by candlelight but a spotlight seeking out the drippings and punctures of every orifice, many shy away. Show, not tell, remember? Careful that you don't eat your words in panicked offense. No one said you were allowed to comfortably watch from the fully furnished box, high up in the usual lofty assuredness of the Reader-God, sanitized and sanctified by virtue of distance. No one said you weren't going to participate.

That includes the sex, and the sexual build up, and the sexual reasoning, and the sexual genders, and the sexual expectations of said genders, and the sexual expectations of who controls whom, and for how long, and what goes where, and how the violence is to be rendered, and the methods by which the violations are to be conducted, and what gets mixed up in the mind and sludges itself down into the genitals, and the pain. Above all, the pain. Who plays, whom they play, and how.

Human being, so confident in your non-objectified status, so content in the unexamined life, so ignorant of your inner mechanisms where bone runs to blood and nurture squares off with nature on the battlefield of desire, rampant where limits are a thing unknown for all the audience may shrill and bleat. Are you sure?

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Erika, the piano teacher, has issues. She’s in her late 30s, an age we are repeatedly told is quite old, and she sleeps in the matrimonial bed with her domineering mother: hands outside the covers, lest those fingers go wandering. The book opens with Erika pulling a handful of hair out of her mother’s head, and it only gets better-worse from there. To say much more would risk taking away the gasps a reader is entitled to when reading this.

The synopsis of The Piano Teacher didn’t really prepare me for it at all. I was looking forward to the mother-daughter dynamic, as I’m drawn to deranged parent-child relationships; I had no idea just how deranged it would be. Of all the foul and sadistic events in this book, a small, animalistic scene between mother and daughter in bed haunted me the most. I had to look away for a while, and I’m not generally one who is easily bothered. This book gets on you like slime.

The breathless narrative is ugly-beautiful. Jelinek’s voice was tormented and quite impressive, and her inner darkness translates to the page skillfully in the minds of the characters, all of which are damaged and pent-up. Erika’s perversions gnaw; the tension festers. She wanders around Vienna’s seedy neighborhoods, sniffing soiled tissues in peep show booths and peeing in bushes after watching a couple have sex. The tension builds. She tortures, taunts, cowers. She’s a woman-child suppressed to the utmost extreme, lost inside her urges, confused and faltering, and her cat-and-mouse game has very adult consequences. At times Erika is sadistic and controlling and we think that’s what she is, then she’s submissive and insecure. Halfway through I read that Jelinek’s writing is highly autobiographical; just like Erika’s father, Jelinek’s father was institutionalized, and even after Jelinek married, she remained living with her controlling mother, visiting her husband on weekends. The hold Erika’s mother had on her, and the deep torment she felt was an amplified howl of suffering from an author who can only have been stifled and deeply distressed herself. It was uncomfortable to read, not because the events and subjects are shocking and explicit, which they most certainly are, but because you’re much too close to someone’s private pain.

Fittingly, the story climaxes with devastating anguish on the very last page and it’s blinding and hideous.

[El Librero de Valentina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro denso que me costó sangre terminar, sin embargo no puedo dejar a un lado la historia y a sus personajes.
Una mujer sometida por la madre que tienen como objetivo convertirse en una reconocida pianista, sin embargo, ante la frustración termina por convertirse en una mujer compleja de pensamientos oscuros que manifiesta a través de diferentes experiencias relacionadas con el sexo. La relación madre e hija es de un nivel enfermizo digno de análisis.

[Manybooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well and in many ways, Elfriede Jelinek's 1983 novel Die Klavierspielerin (and which I have only ever read in German, although I do think the English language title of The Piano Teacher is a bit misleading as the original German language title means and indicates a piano player and not a piano teacher) is indeed pretty spectacular and textually stunning. Visceral, explosive, descriptive in a horrifying, yet also curiously enticingly engaging manner, Jelinek's featured text for Die Kalvierspielerin presents a massively cracked and crumbling, distorted mirror of society (and not just of Austrian society, but of society in general) and shows how stranglingly vigorous and seemingly impossible to fray and sever the patriarchal structures and fibres of power and clout are and continue to be (and how they consume and infiltrate everything and equally so everyone). So yes, with, in and throughout Die Klavierspielerin, main protagonist Erika Kohut's mother might seem a total and utter harridan and even appears and acts rather like a monster (and indeed, she is that and even much much more in my opinion). But on the other hand, the mother is also between and below the lines of Die Klavierspielerin most definitely being presented and outed by Elfriede Jelinek as just another spoke in the wheel so to speak, and that Erika herself, even though she has faced her mother's both verbal and physical abuse and silly dictates all of her life (including more than creepily having to rather incestuously share a bed with Mommy Dearest), Erika Kohut also deliberately and often maliciously chastises and degrades her piano students, transferring the abuse and thus course keeping the wheels of power, of societal embattlement and dysfunctional family structures spinning and as such continuously flourishing and regenerating.

However, as much as I have always appreciated Die Klavierspielerin (and still do in fact appreciate, thus a three star and not a two star rating for Die Klavierspielerin) regarding what the novel is and what Jelinek is textually saying and trying to demonstrate, I have also never (if truth be told) been able to fully and happily enjoy Die Klavierspielerin as an act of pleasure reading (and believe me, I have repeatedly tried) since both thematics and Elfriede Jelinek's writing style, while certainly enlightening and thought-provoking, they are also generally just too nauseating, just too all encompassingly offensive for me personally, with basically every single character being presented in Die Klavierspielerin appearing as dysfunctional, often abusive, sexually frustrated, often indeed being totally perverted, and that in fact and for me, no generally positively conceptualised, no even remotely likeable persons seem to exist at all within the pages of Die Klavierspielerin, within Jelinek's featured text.

Yes and sure, Die Klavierspielerin is therefore a story I most definitely am unfailingly glad to have read five times now, and that I do for some reason keep coming back to and revisiting Die Klavierspielerin (and I can also certainly understand why and how Jelinek won the Nobel Prize in literature for her oeuvre), but that I will also now definitely not consider reading Die Klavierspielerin again because I do think that five times and always not really finding my reading time all that pleasant is and should probably be the limit (well, unless required of me academically). Not comfort reading by any stretch of the imagination, Die Klavierspielerin (and in fact Elfriede Jelinek's work in general) makes you think and equally should make you think, albeit also and always leaving a necessary, but rather nasty and bitterly offensive, often truly and horribly nauseating textual aftertaste.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I cut myself with razors and bleed out, I consume it back, which is me, part of me, it is mine.
Sitting down in a pasture full of slimy eels, crushing them as they discharge their squeamish bits all over me.
Letting the gelatinous barrage of honey overwhelm me, while ants gnaw at my skin.
Breaking glass and running my fingers over it, crushing it in my bare hands, letting it stick out from every pore it manages to puncture.
This orifice of mine is not just mine, but someone else's; it can't tell me how to feel, but IT, THEY can enslave me. I am THEIR slave. Own me, Rape me, Gag me, Bind me, Devour me.

The above is given for the effect it had on me, it affected me in ways that no book ever has made upon me and I'll never forget it, it's highly unforgettable. It engages you in a story of a repressed adult, as you see her rip herself apart sadistically as she tries to figure out what love is. What is love, exactly? Is it being suffocated by the one who loves you or beaten by the one you think you love? She doesn't know and will never know.

The book offends you in many ways as it makes you cringe for your sanity, your breath becomes labored, but you read on, you read on until it's over with a statement; a glorious statement that she is free and wants wants WANTS, bleeding for you, for her love.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a tough one to rate and review. From a literary-technical point of view this book is phenomenal: a thoroughly constructed (though relatively conventionally told) story, hilarious episodes, a remarkable musical timbre (with episodes in a staccato- or andante-rythm) and lots of ingenious metaphors. The detached way of storytelling (very Canetti-like) underlines the strong sarcastic tendency.

Thematically this novel seems more like a psychological study of an extremely deviated personality rather than a fictional story. The 35-year old piano teacher Erika Kohut is the central character; she still lives with her mother and is completely controlled by this mother, or rather, lets herself be controlled by her mother. Erika has been perverted in such a thorough way that she is not capable of normal, open relationships. Instead she develops a passion to maniacally observe other peoples sexual behavior, going to peep shows and porn movie theaters, or secretly watching a man and a woman making love in a park. In the second part of the novel she tries to break loose of her mother in trying to engage in a sadomasochist relationship with her pupil Walter Klemmer, himself symbol of masculine arrogance and narcistic love. This develops into a very nasty finale.

No easy subject, for sure. And Jelinek excels in making the reader uncomfortable. She uses a very detached point of storytelling (Erika, the mother and the pupil are always described in the third person), but she mixes this with a very ingenious form of independent inner monologue. In this way the actions are recorded in an ice cold way, but enhanced with the inner motivations of the involved characters. All this strongly strengthens the effect of brutal harshness in the relations between the characters, stripped of every human emotion. And so the focus is on the power-relationships, with only two options: domination or subjection, very related to the sadomasochistic theme.

As a reader Jelinek pulls you into a gruesome, harsh world, belittling a misanthrope like the French writer Celine into a chorister. In other reviews a link is suggested with the marxist analysis of Jelinek, presenting the 3 main characters as alienated personalities, products of the capitalist system. But, honestly, I don't recognize this very ideological reading.

In short, this is a novel you cannot love, it is a story that seems repulsive and continually abhors the reader. But at the same time you keep on reading just because it presents an extremely perverse, but very interesting aspect of mankind.
(2.5 stars)

[Isidora · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have made my way through this painful and upsetting novel.
Ever since Elfriede Jelinek won Nobel Prize in 2004, but didn’t come to Stockholm to pick it up, I have believed that she was not for me. Elfriede was classified as pretentious, difficult, a woman, yes, but hermetic and hyper intellectual, or so I got it from the reviews.
How wrong I was. Her writing is very alive, yet to the darkest side. If there is a place called “domestic hell - for mothers and daughters only”, the protagonist, piano teacher Erika and her mother might be living there. Both of them have issues, and to say that their relationship is disturbed would be an understatement. Most sadistic and violent events go by, all of mere filmic quality (I haven’t seen the movie though). I won’t forget easily the little scene between mother and daughter in their bed at dawn, after a hard night.
The second part of the book is about Erika’s relationship to a young man, her student, Walter, and here we go again – sexual and other violence, abuse, domination, love and pain, brutal and animalistic scenes as in the first half. Although I can’t connect to Erika in the beginning and find her unlikable, nasty and vicious, while reading the last scene I’m crying for her for she really does not deserve all that misery.
I can’t say that I liked “The Piano Teacher”. It is in no way an easy read. Usually books I like do not hurt that much. This one left me sad, upset, shocked, hopeless, and miserable. When I eventually came back to reality, all I wanted however was to applaud to Elfriede Jelinek. What a great writing, what a power and courage. Sorry, Elfriede, for my mistrust. I am so very content with your Nobel, after all.

[Jan-Maat]

I had to check a couple of times while reading if this novel had any full stops it has , it had such an intense even breathless feeling at times. It is one of those welcome to Vienna, strange people live here, type novels, of which maybe this is the only one - I don't know. However I feel reasonably sure that Elfriede Jelinek did not become hugely popular in Austria for this story of a Mother's slightly overbearing love for her daughter and its consequences. Though it does offer up the potential of Vienna as a destination for sex tourism, which is perhaps not an angle that the hoteliers and guides are particularly keen to see developed but in these times of economic flux and uncertainly, it might be something to bear in mind.

I was lucky enough to chance open an old second hand copy of this book which had been used by some British A-level students learning German, I guess judging by the handwriting possibly three of them or possibly for the same reason, one of them, I imagine the book found its way on to the syllabus, because somebody with a sense of humour thought that eighteen years olds like sex and violence - which this book has plenty of - just not the kind of sexy sex and attractive balletic violence that you see in many films and tv series.

The levels and varieties of violence in this novel are fascinating, ok there is a certain amount of physical violence: slapping, ripping out of hair and so on, but virtually the whole of the book is about violence principally psychological and economic, in so far it is possible to separate the two, for example the mother oppresses the daughter to mould her into a professional pianist, the ostensible aim of which is to retire to the country on the daughter's earnings and have a (presumably large ) house built in (a presumably small) village or other though we might read this a bit further and suggest that this is so because the mother does not want the daughter to have any kind of life separate from the mother - perhaps she fears the violence and pain involved in the typical separation involved in a child's growing up or growing away from the parent then again maybe she is just a character in a book and this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Jelinek herself lived with her mother long after her own marriage for some years she only visited her husband at weekends, if Jelinek and her mother went as far as sharing the same bed as the mother and daughter do here, I am glad not to know though I suppose that if they did it would have saved on washing bed sheets. .

Unsurprisingly this violence spills over from one relationship to another a tiny example of this that I liked was the family who had been living in Vienna for four generations who were none the less described as Polish, this violent non-acceptance of self leads to extreme non-acceptance and judgement of others as irredeemably Other, connection and close relationship are impossible. The mother assaults the daughter for buying herself a new dress - money which could have gone towards saving towards the unbuilt house reminding me rather of the pardon me stupid people who blame young working people's inability to afford to buy a house on their consumption of avocado on toast rather than the steadily increasing disparity between wages and house prices while in turn the daughter "Im Unterricht bricht sie einen freien Willen nach dem anderen. Doch in sich fuehlt sie den heftigen Wunsch zu gehorchen." (p.103) but there we have the danger, the daughter's inclination to listen and to have contact, this weak point is exploited by one Walter Klemmer who on occasion becomes a Kafkaesque Walter K. who dreams of a relationship with her, intending from the start to move on from her - in his thoughts trade up as one does with a first car moving from clapped out old banger to slightly less old old banger with slightly less bald tyres. He is a homo economicus, well schooled in Austria, attending music classes as well as his technical college because this gives him a slightly higher status out in the styx (all this again is violence, the violence of social structures) The music school is though part of the architecture of social violence - it will produce musicians only for provincial organisation or at best the radio and tv orchestra, one needs more than talent and skill to get into the most prestigious bodies in the Capital. His thoughts are of himself as a hunter in pursuit of his prey, while in her actions she is more like a bird watcher, packing a roll and (a beautiful touch) chocolate milk to go out and spy on couples making love in the open. Sexuality is for her almost something alien to be observed in others, her upbringing has distanced her from from her self.

The piano pupil and teacher have sex in a toilet and in a cleaner's surprisingly commodious cupboard, interestingly liminal spots between the clean and the dirty, awkward spaces - this is not a relationship that is or can be comfortable or about comfort.

It is no surprise that the relationship between K. and his piano teacher (who is also a K. though never referred to by her Kafka initial) will be a violent one, though I was bemused by the exact form that it takes until towards the end it struck me that the daughter's self harm was a reification of her feelings about herself and her association of sex with shame (her mother in bed strictly enforces a rule that hands remain above the bed clothes - hands are for playing the piano not with yourself!)

No, this is not a nice book, nor is it about nice people though the ticket sellers at the peep shows are polite, but it is interesting, and befitting its main character, playful, referencing widely to other works of literature, however if I remember correctly the piano is a percussion instrument and I feel quite battered and possibly deep fried and well hammered after reading.

[°°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ʜᴇʟᴇɴ Ροζουλί Εωσφόρος ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° ★·.·´¯`·.·★ Ⓥⓔⓡⓝⓤⓢ Ⓟⓞⓡⓣⓘⓣⓞⓡ Ⓐⓡⓒⓐⓝⓤⓢ Ταμετούρο Αμ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Δυνατότητα-Δυνητικότητα-Αυτοπραγμάτωση.

Πιστεύω ότι η αξία του βιβλίου εξαρτάται σε μεγάλο βαθμό από τις εσωτερικές ρυθμίσεις του αναγνώστη.
«Η πιανίστρια», ένα δύσκολο βιβλίο για να το προτείνεις, και ακόμη πιο δύσκολο να γνωρίζεις
σε ποιον να το προτείνεις, χωρίς αμφιβολία όμως
ισχυρό και έντονο, άρρωστο, ψυχοπαθολογικό,
σκληρό, ρεαλιστικό, καυστικό με αρώματα ειρωνίας
της πραγματικότητας που φοβόμαστε να διαχειριστούμε.

Τούτο το βιβλίο έχει μια επιθετική απεικόνιση,
μια πολεμική τακτική εντελέχειας,
ένα καταστροφικό λυπηρό σενάριο υποβάθμισης
σε κάθε έκφανση υπαρξιακής ικανότητας και επιδεξιότητας.
θα ήταν εύκολο να προσεγγίσουμε αυτήν την ιστορία ως μια ματιά ενός σουρεαλιστή στη σεξουαλική καταστολή και την επιθυμία μέσα στην φωτεινή απο το καφκικό σκοτάδι της παρακμής Βιέννη.


«Η πιανίστρια» είναι λίγο ωμός σουρεαλισμός
και σκληρός ρεαλισμός μέσα σε μια λαμπρή γραφή
που προσπαθεί να ξεπεράσει το αποκρουστικό θέμα
με το οποίο καταγίνεται μέσω της τέχνης και της καλλιτεχνικής εμμονής.
Ασχολείται με πολύ ανθυγιεινές σχέσεις και
απευκταίες αντιλήψεις του εαυτού σε διάφορους ρόλους.
Μητέρα, κόρη, πατέρας, εραστής, φίλος, γείτονας, γνωστός, άγνωστος,

Αυτές οι αναρχικά δόκιμες αντιλήψεις εκδηλώνονται σεξουαλικά, με μάλλον ακραίους τρόπους.
Είναι αυτοί οι χαρακτήρες οριακά ή ουσιαστικά διαταραγμένοι ;
Ναι, αλλά είμαστε όλοι λίγο ψυχολογικά άρρωστοι ,
ο καθένας με τον δικό του τρόπο.
Η παραδοχή αυτού μπορεί να είναι εφιαλτική ,
και αυτό είναι που κάνει αυτό το βιβλίο τόσο τρομακτικό. Είναι εύκολο να το αντιμετωπίσετε;
Οχι!
Είναι απαραίτητο να το αντιμετωπίσουμε;
Ναί!

Ένα βιβλίο μπορεί να είναι αριστούργημα,
αν και δυσάρεστο, αδυσώπητο,επιβλητικό, επαναλαμβανόμενο και μπερδεμένο με έναν
ύπουλο σκοτεινό στοχαστικό προσδιορισμό ενστίκτων και συναισθημάτων καθώς και πνευματικής αντίστιξης με κάθε νοσηρή νόηση στην βιοψυχολογία των απλών καθημερινών ανθρώπων.

Είναι μια επικίνδυνη ανάγνωση διανόησης.
Η απαισιόδοξη άποψη της ζωής και των ανθρώπινων σχέσεων δεν αντικατοπτρίζει τα ιδανικά της ανθρώπινης οντότητας αν και εφόσον είναι σε θέση να τα προσδιορίσει.

Ο μονόλογος των χαρακτήρων και το εσωτερικό μαρτύριο απεικονίζονται με τόσο ειλικρίνεια
που ο τραγικός ρυθμός αυτογνωσίας και ταύτισης δεν πέφτει ποτέ.

«Η πιανίστρια» ως λογοτεχνικό έργου διαπνέεται απο πνευματική γενναιότητα.
Αξίζει την καλύτερη κριτική αξιολόγηση για πάρα πολλούς λόγους μα κυρίως διότι είναι
σοκαριστικά ώμο, αληθινό, ειλικρινές σε κάθε μορφολογική και λογοτεχνική έκφανση,
δύσκολο ανάγνωσμα με μια εξωφρενική πόλωση ανάμεσα στο «μισώ» και το «αγαπώ» και επιεικώς βάναυσο ως προς τις κοινότοπες αντιλήψεις σχετικά
με τη γυναικεία φύση που καταπιέζεται σεξουαλικά.

Αυτή, που ποθεί πριν στεγνώσει μέσα της κάθε οργασμός να απολαύσει έστω και την μουχλιασμένη υγρασία των αφυδατωμένων ηδονικών υγρών μέσω μαζοχιστικών και αγοραίων εμμονών ερωτικής λαγνείας.
Πάθος αρρωστημένο απο την καταπίεση του ομφάλιου λώρου που δεν κόπηκε, παρά μόνο τυλίχτηκε γύρω απο μητέρα και κόρη σαν φίδι, που σε κάθε κίνηση απελευθέρωσης έσφιγγε περισσότερο τις περιστροφικές συσφίξεις, υποβαθμίζοντας κάθε συναισθηματική εκπλήρωση που σέβεται
την ανθρώπινη ύπαρξη ως ελεύθερο πνεύμα
μέσα σε ένα σώμα αρχέγονης συμπεριφοράς.

Μια απογυμνωμένη απο αναστολές και ελπίδες
νόηση πνιγμένη στο χάος της μητριαρχικής καταπίεσης, σπονδή στον βωμό της τέχνης, χωρίς ιδιαίτερες ικανότητες που όμως επέβαλλαν πάντα στέρηση
απο κάθε απόλαυση της ζωής για την πιανίστρια ,
σε κάθε στάδιο της ωρίμανση της, ως θυσία στο ανύπαρκτο ταλέντο που διέκρινε στο παιδί θαύμα μόνο η ξεχωριστή μητέρα.
Μια μητέρα που είχε πειστεί πως το παιδί της είναι ιδιοκτησία της ως άβουλο και υπάκουο ον, που θα την αγαπάει και θα την φροντίζει πάντα.
Πάντα οι δυο τους. Πάντα μόνες.
Πάντα στερημένες απο στιγμές και χαρές οικογενειακών ή φιλικών επαφών.
Πάντα δυστυχισμένες μέσα σε μια εικόνα μελλοντικής ευτυχίας μέσω της καταστολής απο τα γηρατειά και της αποδόμησης κάθε ανθρώπινης ανάγκης.
Σκοπός θα ήταν η μοιρασιά των υλικών αγαθών
που εξοικονομόυνται απο την υστερική μετάβαση του ταλαντούχου παιδιού - θαύμα σε μια απλή, πρόωρα γερασμένη, ανοργασμική και διαταραγμένη γυναίκα που διδάσκει μαθήματα πιάνου.
Δεν ξοδεύει τίποτα και μαζεύει χρήματα για τα πλούσια γηρατειά παρέα με την μητέρα. Ανατριχιαστικά φρικτό.
Η μανία της ειδικότερα στη μουσική επένδυση των αισθήσεων, στις εσωτερικές δυνάμεις που κατακρεουργούν τις προσωπικότητες του «φαίνεσθαι» , απο κάποιο «είναι» που ζηλεύει ό,τι δεν πήρε απο τη ζωή και αρνείται ακόμη και την δύναμη της συναισθηματικά ερωτικής ηδονής αν δεν εμπεριέχει στοιχεία κακοποίησης, βιασμού, υποταγής και προσωπικού εξευτελισμού.
Αυτή η μανία αυτή η ιστορία μιας 35χρονης, νευρωτικής δασκάλας πιάνου,
της οποίας η ψυχή έχει στρεβλωθεί από την εμμονικά ελεγχόμενη μητέρα της. Δεν υπάρχει ανακούφιση καθώς η υπόθεση της δασκάλας πιάνου με έναν μαθητή εξελίσσεται σε κορύφωση δραματική
Εν κατακλείδι
Η Erika Kohut είναι μια καταπιεσμένη δασκάλα πιάνου απο την σκοτεινή πλευρά της Βιέννης της οποίας ο κόσμος αποτελείται από μια σαδο-μαζοχιστική προσήλωση στην τελειότητα, τον πόνο και
τον αυτοοικτιρμό σε βαθμού μισους.
Η Kohut λειτουργεί σε έναν κόσμο που επιβάλλει
το αδύνατο συλλογικό εγωιστικό ιδανικό
στα θέματα του.
Αυτό που αναπτύσσεται είναι μια συναρπαστική, αν και ανεξέλεγκτα εως βίαια επαναλαμβανόμενη, σχέση με τον ταλαντούχο μαθητή Walter Klemmer, ο οποίος έλκει τον μυστικό κόσμο της Kohut.
🖤🖤💥💥🖤🖤

Καλή ανάγνωση
Πολλούς ασπασμούς.

[To-The-Point Reviews · Rating 2 out of 5]

Woman wants to be punched during sex.

Reading this also made me want to punch her.

[Zee · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5, A violently confronting book about sado/masochism, feelings of control or loss of control, bitterness, envy and agoraphobia. We get this amazingly and beautifully descriptive piece by Jelinek about an ill tempered unsociable piano teacher who frequents porn booths/invades other lovers intimacy/watches heavy BDSM movies, spends money on never to be won clothes just to spite her mother who wishes for a big apartment and brings large instruments onto public transport for the sole reason of hitting others with them and starting fights on the way to her destination. A truly unlikable character.

We follow Erika the protagonist, who often gets referred to as SHE, HER, and the child in the narrative of her mother despite her being 30. Jelinek is able to use something as simple as pronouns for the main character that shows how sheltered and out of the loop she is from the rest of the world as it makes you look at her through an alien eye. We watch her pessimistic views of love, the male gaze, control, society, education, her mother and just about everyone and everything she comes across. This character is the true product of failed captivity, abuse and a lack of social conditioning and awareness.

This edge gets worse for her when she meets underage/popular boy W.Klemmer who bases his morals and views off a philosophical book and also has an interest in violence and together they end up in an abusive relationship where they gain almost everything they want whilst losing it in the process. I enjoyed seeing the dynamics of relationships parallel and become one as Jelinek shows the mother/daughter, abused/abuser, captor/captive, teacher/pupil beautifully. This book left me in true shock by its vulgarity and boldness of everything bad. I cringed hard at the images of Erika unwrapping her razor to harm herself in a variety of places in attempts to vent her anger and establish control over herself and her mother, a 10/10 every-time those scenes showed on my pages as it made me want to cry and push that book 12 feet away from me.

A 1.5 star drop for this book as I felt the book was ill paced giving how some of the descriptions seemed to take a life of their own and whilst I was being led down a whole page or two of unnecessarily long metaphors I found myself saying 'hey where did the plot go?'. Also thinking about the book a little longer made me realise that nothing truly astonishing happened that could've filled 300+ pages and some of them were fillers. I could see this book being super difficult if you tend to drift and skid off when a book strays too far from the point as there's a multitude of dead end descriptions that lure you to lala land and tell you to tun back around after 4 minutes.

Still an amazing recommend but I would've liked to see some of those loose ends get tied into the plot even if it was something minor.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The opposite sex always wants the exact opposite.

Jelinek writes in perfect compact sentences; streamlining and buffing those collection of words between periods to contain only what is needed, nothing more.

She knows that her mother's embrace will completely devour and digest her, yet she is magically drawn to it.

She packs those sentences full with minor motifs, brilliant characterization, startling imagery and sends them hurtling through the narrative. But there's a jack-knifed 18-wheeler of a theme that all this traffic must encounter: Possession. And when all of these sentences and the Theme collide, it is a powerful display of destruction; beautiful and unpredictible, like a volcanic eruption.

In Erika's piano class, children are already hacking away at Mozart and Haydn, the advanced pupils are riding roughshod over Brahms and Schumann, covering the forest soil of keyboard literature with their slug slime.

Reading this book while in Vienna was a special treat. My wife and I went to the Albertina museum to see a Gottfried Helnwein installation; his famous "48 Portraits" of important women was one of the works, and right there in the middle of the beautiful prints was one of Elfriede Jelinek. I had never heard of her before friend Aubrey recommended this book to me; how great it was to read her most famous work in the city where it was penned - and to see her painted portrait by another famouse Viennese artist:

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excorciating psychological study of the utter failure of interpersonal connection. Austria would appear to have issues that can only be worked through via brutal works of art, and in many ways Jelinek is harsher than anything approached by Bernhard. In some ways Jelinek writes in an anti-style, just piling declarative sentences at the reader until they're forced to accept their content. But then she switches course and descends into convoluted structures of metaphor so mixed as to almost lose meaning -- which could be seen as another path towards anti-style -- but which somehow take on a weird beauty all their own that rises luminously above the cruelty.

[Anna Carina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lebenslesehighlight!!
Die ersten 50 Seiten funktionierten nur häppchenweise- so fremd war mir der Schreibstil, so bedeutungsschwanger jeder Satz, dass der Kopf rauchte.
Ich habe so viele Sätze 3 mal lesen müssen: "Warte mal, hat sie das jetzt wirklich so geschrieben? Moment, hahaha, wie geil, nää was??!!" Eine Typische Reaktion auf fast jeder Seite.
Ich liebe diese Selbstironie. Niemand, aber wirklich auch niemand wird ausgelassen. Sämtliche Menschen, Bevölkerungsgruppen, gesellschaftliche Normen bekommen ihr Fett weg.
Dieses Buch ist abgrundtief bösartig.
Das Fräulein Kohut, eine durch und durch kaputte Person, die sich selbst nicht mehr spürt. Die durch eine vergiftete Mutter-Tochter -Beziehung und einen wahnhaften Musikdrill, dem Leben entglitten ist. Wie weiß man zu lieben und diese zu zeigen, wenn diese nie bedingungslos erfahren wurde? Wenn man ein Gegenstand ist, Mittel zum Zweck? Völlig leer, freudlos, innerlich tot?!
Wer behauptet, es ginge in dem Buch um BDSM, hat meiner Meinung nach Frau Jelinek nicht verstanden. Es geht um Selbsthass und die zerstörerische Kraft, der ihr innewohnt und eine Gesellschaft die nix checkt, außer ob das Obst nun gespritzt ist oder nicht (Großartige Wochenmarktszene).
"Das letzte Stück Tag zerbröselt wie ein Kuchenrest unter ungeschickten Fingern..." Amen, Frau Jelinek. Selbst der Lauf der Zeit muss in Ungnade fallen 🤪

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite books. I can't even describe how amazed I was when I finished this book. Jelinek moves the reader from character to character, rarely telling us who we inhabit, yet unlike so many other books that abuse this device, it works. Commentary is mixed in with thoughts. Lurid sex scenes, violence, depression, despair, social commentary. It's all there, everything you need for a good weekend. Just add scotch.
Even the ending doesn't disappoint, which I was so sure, up until I read it, that it would. I don't understand how anyone could not like this novel. Maybe you don't like the message you get out of it. I can understand that, but you have to admire her skill and passion.

[Meike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gives you a severe feeling of claustrophobia and is clearly not for the faint of heart: A female piano teacher who is pushing 40 still lives with her controlling mother who is treating her like a mixture between a young child and a husband (e.g., there`s a curfew and she is sleeping in her mother`s bed). All her life, the piano teacher was pushed by her mother to become a famous concert pianist, which she didn`t achieve, but she internalized the strict discipline of piano practice and a feeling of superiority mixed with a feeling of constant pressure to live up to her mother`s and/or her expectations.

Growing up and still living in this mental straight-jacket, she is unable to feel herself and her body and tries to channel her oppressed sexuality in porn shows or by secretly watching couples during sex. When she tries to begin a sexual relationship with one of her students and reveals her sadomasochistic longings, disaster strikes…äähh…even more disaster strikes. There a two sex scenes in this book, and they are not Bataille/Ballard/Roth-like provocative, they are plain disgusting and repulsive, which of course makes sense in the context of the book.

Fun fact: When Elfriede Jelinek was young, she herself studied music at the conservatory in Vienna.

Jelinek juggles with all kinds of themes in this book: Family, control, (self-)hatred, violence, sex, age, and power. This is certainly not a fun read, as it is not intended to be, but it is pretty fascinating. I also would not necessarily call Jelinek`s language beautiful, but it is entirely her own with a very distinct sound. So much for the positive aspects of the book.

Still I have to say that I do not understand why Jelinek got the Nobel Prize when the jury also could have given it to people like Roth, Murakami and DFW (she received the prize in 2004 when DFW was still alive). This is not bad literature, but I think it is pretty overrated. “The Piano Teacher” is not very complex and - although shocking - conservative in a way that the reader does not have to do much thinking for himself as Jelinek does all that for him. I don`t like it when a book seems to assume that I as a reader would be unable to figure it out and just throws all its points right in my face. There is something condescending and, even worse, boring about that.

The book touches very interesting themes, but the text does not live up to its promise – I don`t see how this is enough for a Nobel.

[Roberto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Straziami ma di baci saziami

La lettura è sempre un grandissimo arricchimento personale, ma è anche vero che leggendo molto si tende ad alzare continuamente l'asticella del gradimento, si diventa più esigenti e, purtroppo, più disincantati; lo stupore è sensazione che si prova sempre più raramente.

Colpisce quindi quando invece questo accade. Questo libro, La pianista, della Jelinek, premio Nobel per la letteratura 2004, è riuscito a stupirmi.

Al centro della narrazione un rapporto malato, quello tra madre e figlia (rapporto già normalmente sempre difficoltoso). Qui la madre soffoca a tal punto la figlia, osservata in età differenti, da generare azioni drammaticamente fuori dalle righe da parte della figlia, in cerca di autonomia e amore.

Mi ha colpito la presenza di metafore nel romanzo e l'assenza invece di una introspezione dei protagonisti, il cui sentire si deve dedurre dai comportamenti, spesso aberranti e perversi.

Il sesso con tutte le sue derive (soprattutto quelle) è presente in modo abbondante; ma non è erotismo, non c'è desiderio, non c'è piacere, non c'è gioia, solo tanta perversione che serve a coprire drammi interiori non risolti.

La trama è abbastanza strana e intrigante, lo stile è particolare, i temi sono spesso allucinanti, la scrittura è circolare, metaforica e martellante. Proprio la scrittura, assolutamente peculiare, che può ricordare alla lontana quella di Bernhard, alla lunga mi è risultata un po' ripetitiva e noiosetta, anche se l'ironia contribuisce a ammorbidire la narrazione.

L'atmosfera è comunque opprimente, con questa madre dispotica che cerca di controllare in tutto la figlia pretendendo da lei il massimo e questa figlia che o obbedisce alla madre o, per sfuggire, si annulla completamente in attività disgustose, masochistiche, crudeli, violente e autolesionistiche.

Nessuna concessione da parte della Jelinek, nessun dettaglio omesso, nessun lieto fine. Lo dico sempre, certe cose (uhhh) possono essere narrate solo dalle donne.

Fa pensare, il libro, a quanto male può fare l'amore quando portato all'eccesso e quanto importante sia l'affrancamento dai genitori.

[Markus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Schnee, du weißt von meinem Sehnen,
Sag', wohin doch geht dein Lauf?
Folge nach nur meinen Tränen,
Nimmt dich bald das Bächlein auf.
[Wilhelm Müller, aus Die Winterreise]

Auf dem Fußboden und auch schon auf dem Bettzeug vereinigen sich die vier kleinen Bächlein zum reißenden Strom. Folge nach nur meinen Tränen, nimmt dich bald das Bächlein auf. Eine kleine Lache bildet sich. Und es rinnt immer weiter. Es rinnt und rinnt und rinnt und rinnt.

Was vermeid' ich denn die Wege,
Wo die ander'n Wand'rer geh'n,
Suche mir versteckte Stege,
Durch verschneite Felsenhöh'n ?
[Wilhelm Müller, aus Die Winterreise]

Ihr verlängertes Auge ist das Fernglas. Sie vermeidet die Stege, wo die andren Wandrer gehn. Sie sucht die Punkte, wo die andren Wandrer sich vergnügen – immer zu zweit.

Im schönsten Wiesengrunde
ist meiner Heimat Haus;
da zog ich manche Stunde
ins Tal hinaus.
[Wilhelm Ganzhorn, aus Das stille Tal]

Wie der Heimat Haus fickt sich das Paar aus dem schönsten Wiesengrunde heraus und in Erikas Augäpfel hinein.

Aber an K.s Gurgel legten sich die Hände des einen Herrn, während der andere das Messer ihm tief ins Herz stieß und zweimal dort drehte.
[Franz Kafka, Der Prozess, letzte Seite]

Keiner legt eine Hand an sie, keiner nimmt etwas von ihr ab. Schwächlich blickt sie über die Schulter zurück. Das Messer soll ihr ins Herz fahren und sich dort drehen! Der Rest der dazu nötigen Kraft versagt, [...] Sie geht nach Hause. Sie geht und beschleunigt langsam ihren Schritt. (Die Klavierspielerin, letzte Seite)

Kein Mord und keine Leiche, kein tragischer Showdown werden Erika Kohut am Ende zugestanden. Mit einer harmlosen Wunde in der Schulter geht sie nach Hause, zu ihrer Mutter. Alles bleibt wie es war. Das ist eigentlich das deprimierendste aller möglichen Enden, das Elfriede Jelinek für ihr Alter Ego gewählt hat.

Wir finden Worte für das, was los ist, aber es bleibt folgenlos. (Jelinek)

Die autobiografischen Aspekte in dieser bruchstückhaften Autobiografie sind schwerwiegend. Elfriede Jelinek hatte eine ebenso ehrgeizige wie totalitäre Mutter, die ihr hochbegabtes Kind von der Welt fernhielt und dafür in den Ballettunterricht schickte. Die kleine Elfriede musste neben der Klosterschule ein halbes Dutzend Instrumente lernen. Sie musste bei offenem Fenster üben, damit die Nachbarn das Talent des Kindes gebührend würdigen können. Um sich einst im Glanze ihrer Tochter sonnen zu können, dressierte die Mutter sie gnadenlos auf Erfolg. Der Vater erkrankte schon früh an einer Gehirnkrankheit und starb im Irrenhaus. Nach einem schweren Nervenzusammenbruch musste die Maturantin, gequält von Angstpsychosen ein Jahr zuhause verbringen.

Wenn kein Mensch zu Hause ist, schneidet Erika sich absichtlich in ihr eigenes Fleisch. Sie wartet immer schon lange auf den Augenblick, da sie sich unbeobachtet zerschneiden kann.

Die Geschichte der Klavierspielerin Erika Kohut baut zwar auf authentischen Gegebenheiten auf, entwickelt sich aber zu einer schockierenden Fiktion, zu einer Höllenfahrt durch die Abgründe der menschlichen Psyche, von manchen Kritikern auch als Porno missgedeutet. Freud hätte seine Freude gehabt. Unschwer vorzustellen, was man nach so einer traumatischen Kindheit und Jugend zu bewältigen hat, aber auch was Elfriede Jelinek ihrer Mutter und sich selbst mit diesem Roman zugemutet hat.

Jelinek verarbeitet ihre Erfahrungen jedoch nicht als persönliche Leidensgeschichte, sondern als Ergebnis gesellschaftlicher Bedingungen und Machtverhältnisse und distanziert sich ausdrücklich von weiblicher Selbsterfahrungsliteratur. Die Sprache spielt dabei eine Schlüsselrolle, denn die Sprache formt auch unsere Wirklichkeit. Sprache ist verräterisch. Durch den kritischen Sprachgebrauch werden die schon verinnerlichten Mechanismen von Gewalt und Missbrauch aufgebrochen und sichtbar gemacht.

Doch da steht schon die Mama groß davor und stellt Erika. Zur Rede an die Wand, Inquisitor und Erschieβungskommando in einer Person, in Staat und Familie einstimmig als Mutter anerkannt.

Besonders interessant fand ich das Vexierspiel mit der Erzählinstanz: Wer erzählt hier eigentlich? Ist es mal die Stimme der Autorin, mal einer Erzählerin, oder sind die beiden eins? Zu allem Überfluß übernehmen plötzlich Erika oder die Mutter, sogar mitten im Satz und ohne Satzzeichen wechselt die Perspektive. Direkte Rede mit Anführungszeichen gibt es nicht. Die Stimmen von Autorin, Erzählerin und Charakteren fließen in einer polyphonen Stimmführung zusammen.

Diese Erzählweise erzielt eine starke cinematische Wirkung. Wie eine Handkamera wechselt die Erzählstimme dauernd die Perspektive zwischen Autor, Erzähler und den Figuren - die Leserin wird zur Zuschauerin, erste Reihe fußfrei.

Das Fehlen der direkten Rede verstärkt meinen Eindruck, dass die Figuren nicht sprechen, sondern "gesprochen werden" und wie willenlose Objekte agieren, ferngesteuert von äußeren Kräften, nach Marx ist es das Sein, das das Bewußtsein bestimmt. Es schien mir gänzlich unmöglich, mich mit ihnen zu identifizieren oder Gefühle für sie zu entwickeln, weder Mitleid noch Abscheu.

Erika K. bessert den Bach aus, sie flickt an ihm herum. Ihr Schüler starrt auf seine ineinander verknäulten Hände hinab. Die Lehrerin blickt durch ihn hindurch, sieht aber jenseits von ihm nur Mauer, an der die Totenmaske Schumanns hängt. Einen flüchtigen Moment lang hat sie das Bedürfnis, den Kopf des Schülers bei den Haaren zu packen und ins Leibesinnere des Flügels zu schmettern, bis das blutige Gedärm der Saiten kreischend unter dem Deckel hervorspritzt. Der Bösendorfer wird dann keinen Ton mehr sagen. Dieser Wunsch huscht leichtfüßig durch die Lehrerin hindurch und verflüchtigt sich folgenlos.

In dieser Szene sind beide Personen völlig substanzlos, durchsichtig, die Lehrerin blickt durch den Schüler hindurch, und auch ihr Wunsch huscht durch sie hindurch und verflüchtigt sich folgenlos. Von leibhaftiger Substanz ist dagegen der Flügel mit seinem blutigen Gedärm der Saiten, das kreischend hervorspritzt, bevor der Bösendorfer keinen Ton mehr sagt.

Durch die Sprache werden gesellschaftliche Werte und Normen nicht nur transportiert und abgebildet, sondern genauso auch konstituiert. Durch die Sprache entsteht erst das Subjekt: "Die Sprache spricht uns". Durch die Technik des Zerlegens und Zusammensetzens entsteht ein neues Subjekt, das die Möglichkeit enthält, der Schwerkraft der Verhältnisse entgegen zu wirken (solve et coagule, eine alte Tradition der Alchimisten, lange vor Foucault & Co).

Bei mir ist es ja so, dass ich eigentlich, seit ich schreibe, ein und denselben Text immer weiter schreibe. Und dieser Text bin ich. (Jelinek)

Dieser Text gleicht einer Komposition aus literarischen Referenzen, Sprichwörtern, Reimen, Phrasen, Rede- und anderen Wendungen, je nach Wunsch im Stück oder aufgeschnitten, angereichert mit dem Flair der österreichisch-wienerischen Umgangs- und Vulgärsprache, alles gewissenhaft zerlegt oder geschreddert und neu zusammengesetzt. Nicht zu vergessen sind die zahlreichen musikalischen Referenzen, die man heute ja dank Spotify oder Deezer gleich nachhören kann.

Die Sprache Jelineks ist gewalttätig, provokant und akzentuiert, genauso wie komisch, grotesk und sarkastisch, sie kann zweideutig sein, hinterhältig und fies, sie denunziert ihre eigenen Figuren, sie verhöhnt sie und macht sich über sie lustig, sie entlarvt und stellt bloß. Sie zermürbt so das Fundament unserer patriarchalisch-kapitalistischen, quasi gottgegebenen oder als Naturgesetz verstandenen Werteordnung. Und sie ist unverwechselbar.

Nach einer Weile hört Erika auf und stellt sich vor den Spiegel. Ihr Bild fräst sich ihr mit Worten von Schaden und Spott ins Hirn. Es ist ein buntes Bild. Es ist ein im Prinzip recht fröhliches Bild, wäre der Anlaß nicht so traurig. Erika ist vollkommen allein. Die Mutter schläft wieder einmal tief vor lauter Likör.

Ein Zitat, das mir besonders gut gefällt, weil es den Kern des Buches selbst beschreibt. Worte von Schaden und Spott, aber ein buntes und fröhliches Bild. Bunt und fröhlich ist wohl ein wenig euphemistisch, trotzdem zieht sich ein unglaublicher Witz durch den ganzen Roman, ohne ihn wäre das alles nur schwer erträglich. Das ist es, was ich an dem Buch besonders mag, der spöttische, giftige Humor, den es in dieser Form wahrscheinlich nur in Österreich, speziell in Wien gibt.

Ganz wider allen Erwartungen fand ich also die Klavierspielerin trotz des tristen Themas ganz großartig, sehr unterhaltsam und leichtfüßig zu lesen. Der Roman entzieht sich allen gängigen Kriterien was Erzähltechnik, Sprache, Handlungsaufbau oder Figurengestaltung betrifft, trotzdem liest er sich ganz einfach und unangestrengt, ganz anders, als man es von experimenteller Literatur erwarten würde. Ich glaube, der Roman wird umso besser, je besser es dem Leser gelingt, den gewohnten Lesemodus zu verlassen und die Sprache selbst als das wesentliche Element wahrzunehmen, sich von Handlung und Figuren nicht vereinnahmen zu lassen und diese als das zu betrachten, was sie tatsächlich sind, aus dem Material Sprache geformte Artefakte, geschaffen von einer Künstlerin, die dieses Material äußerst gekonnt beherrscht.

Zwar hat mich ihr größtes und wichtigstes Werk, Die Kinder der Toten noch mehr beeindruckt, es war für mich auch thematisch interessanter. Trotzdem bekommt Die Klavierspielerin alle Sterne, weil ich neben der sprachlichen Virtuosität auch die Konsequenz und Unbeugsamkeit bewundere, mit der Elfriede Jelinek die Katastrophe ihrer frühen Jahre durchbrochen hat, über alle psychischen Folgen hinweg ihre ureigenen Worte gefunden hat und damit ihre persönliche Geschichte mit erstaunlicher Offenheit verarbeiten konnte.

Sie ist ihren Weg bis heute unbeirrt weitergegangen, trotz aller ekelhaften Anfeindungen, die ihr heimische Medien und Parteigranden samt Würden, Ehren- und Lederhosenträgern, unter grölendem Schenkelklopfen des sogenannten Volkes in diesem Land bis heute entgegenschleudern. Ihren Erfolg hat sie, wie ich finde, jedenfalls mehrfach verdient.

[Grazia · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Per quanto la si invochi, non si trova una sola anima buona"

Questo romanzo, l'ascolto di questo romanzo in realtà, è stato il compagno di viaggio dei tragitti di spostamento verso mete austriache e germaniche.
In particolare di un interminabile viaggio di ritorno da Monaco durato esattamente il doppio del tempo atteso causa congestione Brennero & co. Perfetto accompagnamento in stile sofferenza, mi sono sono somministrata il vortice livido e oscuro delle parole delle Jelinek. Una musica angosciante, sordida e disperata.

Devo dire che tanta violenza, tanto malessere, tanta stortura, mi hanno lasciato dapprima perplessa. Quasi senza parole. Con la Jelinek affrontiamo i recessi più oscuri in cui può affogare un essere umano.

Protagonista una donna, Erika, pianista con un trascorso di concertista fallita alle spalle, che si guadagna la vita facendo l'insegnante.
Protagonista è altresi' il rapporto malato con la madre, rapporto talmente spinto ed esasperato da parere una presa in giro sardonica e beffarda delle teorie psicologiche sul rapporto conflittuale madre e figlia, nonché una feroce satira di tutta la letteratura in ambito che lo ha preceduto (cfr. ad esempio Nemirovsky)
Protagonista è pure il rapporto "d'amore" travisato, esasperato, rovesciato tra la maestra di piano ed un suo allievo. (Amore virgolettato non a caso)

Una dichiarazione d'amore che segue i binari ordinari che arriva inaspettatamente alla docente da parte dello studente più aitante e più ambito, viene completamente ribaltata dalla visione distorta della pianista su cosa voglia effettivamente dire amare ed essere amata. Visione distorta generata forse dal fallimento, dalla relazione ambigua con la madre, dalla mancanza di esperienza della tenerezza. Ma non ci sono risposte certe.

Una lettera allo studente, con richieste esagerate, esasperate, in cui la manifestazione d'amore viene completamente travisata. O forse semplicemente una richiesta d'aiuto verso chi è visto come sano da chi si considera una scarto putrescente della società, e in quanto tale si avvilisce e si umilia con le più aberranti esperienze cercando in realtà semplicemente soltanto un amore tenero, bilanciato e corrisposto.

Una satira feroce e violenta questa della Jelinek. Che oltre ai recessi più turpi dell'animo umano, mostra gli aspetti più sordidi della società austriaca, i luoghi fisici più remoti e più oscuri ( il sesso mostrato nelle sue modalità più aberranti, peep show et similia che la professoressa si somministra e fa somministrare al lettore). Ben nascosti abitualmente ma esibiti dalla Jelinek come una bandiera. Una sfida. Una beffa. Un urticante modo di buttare in faccia a chi legge tutto ciò che è da evitatare con cura, da disconoscere, da disprezzare. Come dire, l'uomo è anche questo.

Una lettura che lascia atterriti. E che non può che evocare per il modo in cui è scritto, per la fallimentare figura del protagonista pianista, per nazionalità degli scriventi il contemporaneo Soccombente di Bernhard.

Davvero ottima la postfazione di Luigi Reitani che segue la lettura. Che orienta e contestualizza. Che mi ha aiutato a capire ed ad apprezzare, questa opera spiazzante e crudele, davvero molto bizzarra e al limite. Ma sicuramente di pregio.

Una lettura per stomaci forti. (Non oso pensare cosa possa essere il film 😱)