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OCR
MyTH, INTERCULTURALITY, AND RELIGION IN ELFRIEDE JELINEK’S AND FALK RICHTER’S WORK... room, that has been constructed on stage, leaves its final words to a priest that preaches violence and fear. It is in this church of darkness and hate that an actress, wearing a skull as a mask crowned with a wreath of twigs, speaks Jelinek’s text. In this part of the play, the text has recourse to the Oedipus myth, that is a central theme from the beginning. At the end of Sophocles’ play, Oedipus blinds himself and leaves the world. He punishes himself by removing his own eyes, relinquishing vision, and thus symbolically taking away his means of understanding — at least an understanding that is linked to the concept of “logos.” The speaker in Am Königsweg is his own triple deity — as stated in the first quote of this article: he is poet, king, and Teiresias, the seer, all in one — or all in many, since in the staging of the play, the text is spoken by different actors in different costumes, as seen before. The King thus does not truly show his face, as it is masked behind collective — and intertextual — speech; and actual, physical masks, taking up the conventions of an Antique theater, which Hans-Thies Lehmann in his dissertation called “pre-dramatic,” thus linking the stages of “non-dramatic theater.”** While we see pictures of floods in the background, an apocalyptical scene transported to our “modern Thebes,” the speakers try to understand the current events themselves: Der König zeigt jetzt sein Gesicht, echt, das ist er?, wahr ist es nicht, will sagen, es ist nicht sein wahres Gesicht. Nichts ist wahr, was er zeigt, [...] und hier stehe ich, nein, keine Jungfrau, aber mit gekrümmten Klauen, ich Sprüchesängerin, Sprücheklopferin, [...] war es ein Gott, [... d]er gewollt hat, daß dieser Herrscher [...] über Theben herrscht, ausgerechnet!, eben. Aber 'Iheben ist es nicht, vielleicht ein modernes Theben?, macht nichts, kein Gott, an den ich eh nicht glauben würde, hat das gewollt. Das können Sie mir ruhig glauben!** [The King shows his face now, really, that’s him?, true is it not, I’m saying, it is not his true face. Nothing he shows is true, [...] and here I stand, no, not a virgin, but with arched claw, I, singer of sooth, banging out bogus, [...] was it a God, [...] who wanted this ruler [...] to rule Thebes, of all places! But it is not Thebes, maybe a modern Thebes? Doesn’t matter. No God, who I would not have believed in anyway, would have wanted this. You can believe me.]* #3 Hans-Ihies Lehmann: Theater und Mythos, Stuttgart/ Weimar, 1991. * See Falk Richter’s production of the play (from 49:25 to 50:15), within the printed text: 47 (Der König ... zeigt,), 60 (und hier stehe ich ... end). The orthography is quoted as in the printed text. Trans. Anna Lenz, except for “arched claw, I, singer of sooth, banging out bogus” which is kindly contributed by one of Elfriede Jelinek’s official translators, Gitta Honegger, who also shared insights into the complexity of translating Jelinek’s play with all its wordplay and multilayered meanings. Ithank her very much for her quick and open responses. Jelinek: On the Royal Road, 42. 45 + 203 +
