ADVANCED FORMS of EMPTINESS Handke and Jelinek in Berlin

ADVANCED FORMS OF EMPTINESS Handke and Jelinek in Berlin

Paul David Young

Über Tiere (Concerning Animals), by Elfriede Jelinek, directed by Nicolas Stemann, Deutsches Theater-Kammerspiele, Berlin, May 2007; Spuren der Verirrten (Traces of the Lost), by Peter Handke, directed by Claus Peyman, Berliner Ensemble, Berlin, February 2007.

lfriede Jelinek, winner of the 2004 momentarily the identity of the author Nobel Prize for Literature, said and the political concerns that drive her she prayed that her compatriot work. Über Tiere (Concerning Animals) PeterE Handke would receive it instead in the Kammerspiele at the Deutsches and that he deserved it. Seeing plays by Theater in Berlin, begins with the entry both of Austria’s most respected if con- of a handsome, thoughtful-looking troversial living playwrights a few days young man (Sebastian Rudolph) who apart after their 2007 Berlin premieres, shyly takes a seat at a desk and receives I could not help but compare them a letter that he tells us is from Jelinek. and wonder whether Jelinek was right. The contents of the letter, which he At least superficially, one can under- begins to read aloud, seem perhaps to stand Jelinek’s gracious and self-effacing have something to do with an affair, an remarks about the relative worthiness acidic billet doux, and soon the young of her writing compared to Handke’s. man is joined by a young woman who Throughout his career, Handke has might be taken for the aggrieved lover diligently and obstinately pursued a rig- and, likewise seated at a desk, reads on. orously theoretical and intellectual form The role of the woman opens up or, of writing for the theatre. Jelinek’s texts, rather, is duplicated by other women, although somewhat obtuse, have a more seated at desks, reading, as the play liter- obvious political agenda, and because ally unfolds like origami, revealing more of their overt sexual content provide facets, expanding in dimensions, gaining the satisfaction of pornography. She a kind of universality by the duplication celebrates the cheap joke or the clever of gendered representations. pun as part of her style. As in much of her work, Jelinek is here Jelinek’s latest play starts on such a sweet concerned with the inescapable oppres- and enticing note that one could forget sion of women. Her early groundbreak-

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2008.30.2.76 by guest on 25 September 2021 ing Was geschah, nachdem Nora ihren the men are themselves inhumanly ani- Mann verlassen hatte (What Happened malistic in the way that they treat the After Nora Left Her Husband), imagined women. The evening descends into a what might have ensued after Nora left drunken, brawling orgy and concludes Ibsen’s doll house. Jelinek’s post-libera- with the anomolous tableau of a middle- tion Nora, trapped in the infantilized aged woman at home. role of seductress and lacking profes- sional skills (except that of dominatrix) The Deutsches Theater production, or the imaginative capacity to establish under the confident and imaginative herself independently, returns in the end direction of Nicolas Stemann who has to her husband. directed three other Jelinek’s plays, never fails to dazzle the eye and utilize the stage Similarly, economics and the histori- space to great effect. The production cal patrimony of power along with the opens up the stage space progressively: delusion of love subjugate the women of after the initial monologue, conducted Jelinek’s Über Tiere, confining them to before a walled-off proscenium, the wall a set of demeaning roles and narrative is pulled away to reveal the additional paths. The unfolding of the play beyond women. A trap door functions as a sort the opening tableau pushes the women of gateway to a fantastical underworld. explicitly into the role of prostitutes and The bordello occupies an elevated area their madam. This is of course a transla- at the rear of the stage. At the conclu- tion by Jelinek of the love relationship sion, the wall is restored; the cast comes that begins the play and conveys her forward intimately toward the audience. cold-eyed look at the meaning of love The costumes are often fanciful enough and its effects on women. The men, to be entertaining by themselves, which including the gentle, sensitive young is fitting since Jelinek in her work man who opens the play, are transformed and public persona has cultivated an into clients in a bordello. On the way ironic fascination with fashion. Video to their roles as clients, however, the projections of a luscious mouth and production takes the men on a detour the cavorting whores and johns whip in gender identity. One of the two male up the frenzy toward the end. The cast actors is introduced first in garish drag from the outstanding ensemble of the and the young man of the opening Deutsches Theater is unfailingly brilliant undergoes an onstage makeover into a and game for whatever humiliations the woman. The women are also given their play demands of them. turn to play at being men. This distribu- tion and redistribution of speaking parts The dynamism and surefootedness of the and gender roles further desentimental- performance that Stemann has achieved izes the brutal text. are especially remarkable given the nature of the text, which is an undifferentiated Gender identities resettle, though, and mass of words without the assignment the men conduct a loud, boorish conver- of roles. It is extremely fragmentary sation in dialect, discussing the physical and often driven by word association virtues of the women they are about to or various kinds of frequently sexual buy at the bordello. These men discuss puns. For example, a frequent and rather the women as if they were animals and sinister joke is the phrase “mit Ohne”

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2008.30.2.76 by guest on 25 September 2021 or, literally “with without,” like a menu porary Austrian playwright and novelist item (e.g., with onions), except that here Thomas Bernhard. Jelinek’s defense the “without” means without a condom, seems to be that, like her characters, it that the prostitutes will have sex, for an is impossible for her to escape within the additional fee, without prophylaxis. The framework of language and theatre from repeated phrase “ficken ficken ficken” or the dominance of men. All she can do “fucking fucking fucking” evokes the life is demonstrate this invariable structure of the prostitutes and the repetitious and poke at it humorously. demands of their customers. Über Tiere arises in part from the story of an under- In this abdication, she may not be far age prostitute held as a sex slave and from Peter Handke’s position as illus- compelled to service clients even as she trated in the Berliner Ensemble’s recent is sick and taking antibiotics to combat premiere of his 2006 play Spuren der sexually transmitted diseases. She kills Verirrten (Traces of the Lost). Like Über herself by bashing her face in. Tiere, Spuren also begins on a deceptively familiar and comforting note. Obviously Consistent with most of Jelinek’s other invoking the tradition of German fairy work (e.g., the monologue cycle called tales, a man and a woman leave traces The Princess Plays), the play dispenses behind them as they walk through a for- entirely with character and plot, and we est. They are followed by a numbingly are treated to the voyeuristic enjoyment large number of other pairs who also of the sexual exploitation of women even mark their path. In each case, the traces as the author seems to condemn such are blown away by a strong wind. The behavior. In the performance and nar- message is clear: we will not find our rative components of the text, the men way home and we don’t know where remain the dominant and dominating we’re going. The structure of Spuren figures, the women confined drama- is reminiscent of Handke’s 1992 The turgically and ideologically to inferior Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other, a positions throughout. In this respect, play without dialogue in which isolated Über Tiere shares the lusty entertain- figures and sometimes small groups ing political nihilism of, for example, pass across the stage fleetingly. It also Jelinek’s earlier Krankheit oder Moderne incorporates the audience: at the end the Frauen (Sickness or Modern Women), stage instructions, which constitute the which features dominant, though clue- entirety of the play, indicate that one by less male figures and abused women, one members of the audience join the who are vampires. characters/actors on stage.

Since Western culture is so fully domi- Compared to Jelinek’s, Handke’s work, nated by sex, Jelinek’s dramaturgy is a dating back to his 1965 Offending the risky business. Although didactically Audience, has a rather more delicately critical, it entertains by virtue of the self-conscious use of theatre and its same graphic images that sell in the modalities as a way of testing the limits popular culture. As she has modestly and purpose of theatre itself, an almost acknowledged, her writing does not rise purely abstract and cerebral inquiry. to the same level of eloquently mordant Indeed, Offending the Audienceis entirely venom as the recently deceased contem- devoted to categorically eliminating

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2008.30.2.76 by guest on 25 September 2021 Top: Spuren der Verirrten (Traces of the Lost) by Peter Handke, directed by Claus Peyman, Berliner Ensemble, Berlin. Photo: Courtesy Berliner Ensemble; Bottom: Über Tiere (Concerning Animals) by Elfriede Jelinek, directed and designed by Nicolas Stemann, costumes by Marysol del Castillo. Actor: Almut Zicher. Deutsches Theater-Kammerspiele, Berlin. Photo: Courtesy Iko Freese.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2008.30.2.76 by guest on 25 September 2021 any claim to representation of any sort. war in former Yugoslavia. There the char- Handke’s 1970 The Ride Across Lake Con- acter of the “Historian” stated that there stance is likewise a formal metatheatrical, was no history and had never been; that plotless, and objectless exercise; the text history had been a falsification, a false is almost like a novel in the present tense, religion of reason. Indeed, Spuren seems describing a series of physical actions and almost a diluted repetition of Die Fahrt; occasionally bits of dialogue that take the structure, style and arguments are place upon a stage. virtually the same. The difference is that Spuren takes place in a nameless, perhaps These earlier works laid the groundwork mythical non-place, while Die Fahrt for the Gnostic vision of the playwright occurs specifically in the former Yugo- in Spuren, an absent god who will not slavia. One might understand the sub- authorize, who will not decide on the traction of geographic specificity in the characteristics of a character, who will context of the public whipping Handke not create a hero, who will not or cannot took for his Serbian sympathies. At the describe what is happening on the stage. time of the Berlin premiere of Spuren, These themes are explicitly discussed and Handke was embroiled in controversy further developed in Spuren. Toward over his pro-Serbian stance as the city the end, the text meditates openly on of Duesseldorf was considering retract- the impossibility of tragedy and of the ing its award to him of its Heinrich tragic hero, leaving the audience with Heine prize, until the playwright him- shadow figures of postmodernism, ghosts self withdrew from the offer and Berlin without magic or suspense. The play is awarded Handke its own Heine prize. in many ways a piece of nostalgia for Handke promptly donated the Berlin the ideas of time, narrative, language, prize money to Serbian causes. and theatre. One of the characters dis- plays an enormous book at which he In Spuren, a train of couples tramps points with exaggeratedly long fingers, through and then reappears in increas- though nothing is there for us to read ingly haggard and brutalized form. The and nothing is said or clarified, as if to loving couple is fighting; the elderly are drive home the point that literature and desperate; the travelers look like refugees playwriting are empty gestures without from a war zone. Trading in heavy- referents. As the play dissolves into itself, handed symbolism, a cross is carried the characters argue around these ideas across the stage and a condemned man and eventually sing a choral finale with is led to his death; the play refers to the the refrain, “Das waren noch Zeiten, das one who is returning to Ithaca. Eventu- war die Zeit,” (“those were the days, that ally, the wanderers are made to follow a was [the] time).” rope, a representation of both increased social tyranny and diminished physical This nostalgia for the loss of time and and mental capacity to act indepen- the play’s almost total abnegation of sto- dently. Their stories are worn away and rytelling evoke the philosophical theme no longer available to them or us to be of the end of history, which had already read. We cannot recall the past except surfaced as a theme in Handke’s 1999 as disordered fragments with elusive and Die Fahrt im Einbaum (The Voyage in useless meanings. the Dugout Canoe) concerning the civil

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2008.30.2.76 by guest on 25 September 2021 The repetition of the series of couples play consists largely of stage directions, suggests the twentieth century’s demoli- describing at length the appearances and tion of the ideals of German Romanti- movements of his nameless characters as cism in which fairy tales were collected as they troop across the stage. Occasionally, part of the creation of Germanic identity Handke indicates an exchange of words in language and literature. The wander- that might, or might not, take place. The ing figures on the stage also suggest text of Spuren is constructed as the telling that Handke has himself lost his way, of a theatrical event, or rather, a telling becoming unable to utilize language or of a theatrical event as it occurs in the theatrical forms to any productive effect. mind of an unreliable writer/observer, This latter train of thought is directly an “I” included in the narrative who represented by Handke’s proxy, a figure explains what “I” see or how “I” per- seated like a prompter in a cutout at ceive something. The text indicates that the front of the stage and at the level of certain things take place, and then that the audience. Eventually, the characters they might not have, or that the action confront the prompter, and the dialogue is taking place in one geographic location conveys what we have already seen and or perhaps somewhere else. what unfortunately seems also true of the play itself. Handke has nothing left The play is paradigmatically opposed to say. In Spuren der Verirrten, he makes to the model of classical tragedy with little effort to experiment with form its central plot and hero; here Handke and, once he has established the basic instead offers the crowd a dispersion of traffic pattern of the couples crossing interest and repeatedly the indication that the stage, he seems content to repeat the he’s uncertain even how many people are pattern without expanding its impact. on the stage or whether they’re the same This made for a rather long evening for ones as before. Peyman has been given a short play. the unenviable task of interpreting this transient phenomenology of the theatre, In its final redundancy and almost its which makes for a much more interest- only break into storytelling, a character ing read than its staged incarnation at talks of a bird trapped in a house that the Berliner Ensemble. Despite the play’s has left its traces everywhere in its frantic theme of the absent author, Handke effort to escape; traces of shit, broken seems to have functioned for Peyman mirrors, crooked pictures; “powerful as a sort of closet dictator, prescribing traces of the lost.” Then the characters each movement, which Peyman slavishly ruminate on how a trapped bird or bee reproduced on the stage. He evidently flies once it’s freed. felt no freedom to enhance or open up the piece through his own imagination. Claus Peyman, who has directed The actors seemed to be hitting their Handke’s plays for over forty years, marks with the weary obedience of com- was not able to breathe life into this mercial television players. The meager set stultifying form. Peyman is the trapped design by Karl-Ernst Herrmann, prin- bird, banging around in Handke’s play cipally a few pieces of painted plywood without fresh air or freedom, pathetically at the back of the stage, did nothing to failing to escape. The text of Handke’s enliven the proceedings.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2008.30.2.76 by guest on 25 September 2021 Both Handke and Jelinek are pursuing sibly tragic historical events, retreating the paradox of playwrights who believe ever further—in his drama—from taking that they cannot overcome the conven- a point of view, except on the purely tions of language and theatre and are abstract qualities of theatre, and even unable to affect the course of events or there his only statement is as the town create a new or different space for human crier of the end time. understanding to unfold. Jelinek, despite her position as, crudely spoken, an ardent The qualitative question then becomes: feminist, is in a way simply mirroring a Which form of emptiness do we prefer? patriarchal world in which women are Based on what I saw in Berlin, I would powerless and sexually abused. Handke take Jelinek’s raucous pornography over positions himself as witness to possibly Handke’s redundant stylization. meaningless, possibly indiscernible, pos-

PAUL DAVID YOUNG’s play Times and Places was performed in Icelandic, Reykjavik, and English in the “Experiments” reading series at La MaMa E.T.C. Primary Stages presented his play No One But You in its PrimeTime reading series in October 2007. A graduate of Yale College and Columbia University Law School, he was a Fulbright Scholar in Germany and is in the MFA playwriting program at New School for Drama.

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