Monday, May 19, 2008

Austrian Literature & Patriarchal Monsters

An interesting and informative essay about Austrian Literature in light of the recent Fritzl case in the TLS. As regular readers of the blog know I love Austrian literature very much but really they give me the creeps too! Ritchie Robertson says:

Fritzl existed in literature before he existed in life. We should attend more carefully to those critical writers – Nestroy, Anzengruber, Nabl, the Canettis, and numerous others – who are too readily dismissed as caricaturists. Their monstrous and grotesque characters, from Gundlhuber to Benedikt Pfaff, actually turn out to embody some of the twisted energies at work in Austrian society.

Surprisingly he doesn't talk about more famous examples in the essay. For example Moosbrugger, the serial killer of prostitutes in The Man Without Qualities or the novels of Ingeborg Bachmann, Thomas Bernhard and Elfriede Jelinek. It is horrifying even to suggest that the plot, characters and settings of these novels may not all be rhetorical artifices. In Ingeborg Bachmann's Malina for example the narrator dreams of being tortured by her father in a Nazi death-chamber. Elfriede Jelinek's Lust is nothing but 200 pages of rape and abuse.

The abuse of patriarchal authority seems to be one of the running themes in Austrian fiction. It is coupled together with a thoroughly morbid view of sexuality. The essay also talks about the in-famous case of Dora and Freudian psychoanalysis. This also reminds me of Arthur Schnitzler's brilliant novella Fraulein Else - another tale of patriarchal abuse.

6 comments:

Kubla Khan said...

An innocent question really.....why are you so obssessed with Austrian/German literature? i know you are well read, but.......( please understand, this question has no hidden, sensitive motives, i so admire your blog, as you know. i wish i didn't have to repeat it,thinking this question might offend you, another reason to turn towards lacan, zizek, psychoanalysis etc)........

Alok said...

well read? haha!! thanks anyway:)

hmmm i will to think about that. But in general I like the way they deal with Big questions and are so uncompromising. Literature of extremes and a literature built around negation also fascinate me.

Kubla Khan said...

I am glad you didn't mind.
is it a literature of extremes....? really.....or a morbid narcissistic self fulfilling paranoia?
the negation and self destructing rants of say Bernhard seem really the opposite.....an uncompromising love for the hated object.
a literature of extremes would stretch itself beyond recognition till the finished page sprouts in hope. not negation.

Alok said...

self-fulfilling paranoia? there is definitely some truth in what you say. the bleakness of German history in the modern age somewhat confirms it too. Woyzeck, Nietzsche, Young Torless, Kafka, The Magic Mountain, Man without Qualities - these are all paranoid works but they were also prophetic. I don't know it sounds a little pretentious but I feel that these works managed to capture a sense of world-historical forces at work...

praymont said...

In regard specifically to Austrian literature, I like the fact that there were more scientifically trained, and accomplished, figures who took up artistic expression. E.g., Musil was trained as an engineer, Canetti's university degree was in chemistry, Broch had a technical background, and Schnitzler was a medical doctor. I don't think the 'art vs. science' split was as pronounced there as it is in the English-speaking world.

Alok said...

Yes, I love this aspect of Austrian literature too, it is specially true for Musil. IN our time this Art vs Science split has become even worse than it was when Musil wrote about it in Man Without Qualities. On one hand we have soulless scientists and on the other hand we have "artists" who peddle unrealities.