Jelinek, Elfriede

(1946- )

   Playwright. Jelinek was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2004; her numerous plays have appeared from the 1970s on in several German-language theaters. They follow for the most part in the satirical traditions of Ödön von Horvâth, Karl Kraus, and especially Thomas Bernhard. Jelinek studied music at the Vienna Conservatory and theater history at the University of Vienna, completing a degree in organ music in 1971. She soon thereafter began writing radio plays; her 1974 wenn die sonne sinkt ist für manchen auch noch büroschluss (when the sun goes down some people think it's time to close the office) won critical praise. Short pieces for the theater, along with novels and poetry, mostly bespoke a critical stance toward her native Austria. Jelinek's plays are extraordinarily inaccessible, since the dialogue she creates does not emanate from characters but are disembodied voices emerging randomly from psychological and historical strata of Austrian society. As a result, her work has rarely appeared anywhere outside German-speaking Europe—and when it does it is in most cases poorly attended. Jelinek's "princess dramas" tend to focus on her fixation with female victimhood, in particular the inability of women in the West to overcome centuries of stereotypical images men have created. Jelinek has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Roswitha of Gandersheim Memorial Medal (1978); awards from the cities of Vienna, Bochum, Bremen, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Darmstadt, Mainz, Mühlheim, and Wolfenbüttel; the Berlin Theater and Radio Prize; the Else Lasker Schüler Prize (for her entire dramatic work); and the Lessing Critics Award (2004).