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ANNA LENZ Jelinek’s work is unquestionably political, which links her to a long tradition of Austrian playwrights, such as Johann Nestroy or Thomas Bernhard. She herself often appeared as a political figure, especially in her earlier career, when she was a member of the KPO, the Austrian Communist party. But even after having given up her membership, Jelinek took part in several events and demonstrations against an escalating xenophobia in her home country. Since winning the Nobel Prize, her public appearances have diminished. But she took up the debate again recently within Susanne Teutsch’s anthology “Was zu fürchten vorgegeben wird.” Alterität und Xenophobie.*° As early as 1994, Jelinek proclaimed the artist’s purpose as being to speak for those for whom no other person will speak in terms that, after the last few sentences, should sound familiar: Wenn wir Künstlerinnen und Künstler in unseren Arbeiten die Moral vergessen, die Verpflichtung, die wir den Fremden gegenüber haben, die sich zu uns geflüchtet haben, dann wird sich unser scharfer Blick letztlich trüben und wir werden überhaupt nichts mehr sagen können, was wahr ist. [...] Es ist unsere Aufgabe, für diejenigen zu sprechen, für die kein anderer spricht.” [If we artists abandon morality in our work, the duty we have toward foreigners, who have sought refuge amongst us, our keen vision will finally be clouded, and we will no longer be able to say what is true. [...] It is our duty to speak for those for whom no one else will speak.]* We have seen this in the play. Maybe the poet has forgotten this duty Jelinek spoke of more than 20 years ago. Has his sight become clouded? No! One notices a paralleling of words here: nothing he says is true, nothing we say will be true, if we forget. Ihe artist in his blindness still sees more clearly than the murky-eyed King, who is unable to even show his true face. In referring to the Oedipal myth, what leads to “truth” is less analytics and more based on faith — "blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." But faith in what? A benevolent God, who as a concept is immediately discredited, could not have intended this king to rule, so says our dead poet, attired with the crown of thorns. But there is no longer a need for a God beyond the one king that has constructed himself to be godlike. In the apocalyptic room a future is dismissed as well as a metaphysical belief system. The King, the God, as horrid as he now may be, is not to be found, and instead a differently masked king from the one before takes center stage and tries 16 Susanne Teutsch (ed.): “Was zu fürchten vorgegeben wird.” Alterität und Xenophobie, Wien, Praesens, 2006. After Pia Janke - Stefanie Kaplan: Politisches und feministisches Engagement, in P. Janke (ed.): Jelinek Handbuch, Stuttgart/Weimar, Metzler, 2013, 9-20, 9. Trans. Anna Lenz. 47 48 s 204 +
