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Menneen ja nykyisen yhteys Elfriede Jelinekin romaanissa Die Kinder der Toten

• Marja-Leena Hakkarainen Turun yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74906

Abstract

The Return of the Repressed: The Connection between the Past and the Present in Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Kinder der Toten

The increasing popularity of fiction dealing with historical events has once more called attention to the question of the relationship between art and reality. In his book Traumatic Realism (2000), Michael Rothberg introduces the concept traumatic realism as a means of constructing historical events with the assistance of metonymies and allusions. In addition, the genre of traumatic realism reflects on the limits of representation and deals with discourses dealing with historical events. In my article, I argue that by replacing the representation of reality with reflection on it, and by allowing the reader to participate in this process, the connection between the past and the present can be grasped in a flashing moment of insight, referred to by philosopher Walter Benjamin as ”the time of the now” (Jetztzeit). In her numerous novels and plays, the Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek (b. 1946) has emphasized the crucial role that Austria played in the Second World War and in the Holocaust (Shoah). In her novel Die Kinder der Toten (1995), the repressed past surfaces ghostly in the contemporary reality of an Austrian holiday resort. While the central subtext of the novel is the genre of horror fiction, it also includes various intertextual allusions to other genres, historical figures, and places. In addition, the novel reflects on the attempts of contemporary media to strengthen an allegedly innocent national identity by linking it with nature, sport, and entertainment. This article shows that Jelinek’s novel both tests the limits of representation and reflects on the repression of the past. While conjuring up the dead of history, Jelinek transforms the novel into a postdramatic theatrical space, where the audience is part of the performance. In so doing she creates a memory space, where the connection between the past and the present appears as Jetztzeit.