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MyTH, INTERCULTURALITY, AND RELIGION IN ELFRIEDE JELINEK’S AND FALK RICHTER’S WORK...
clearly marks those words including Abraham’s “Here am I.” as strange ones,
and as true ones as well, because they are not hers: “as I said, not mine, which is
why it’s true.” The originator of the call in the Bible is either God, when asking
Abraham to sacrifice his son, or the (here resurrected) angel, delivering God’s
message. In Am Konigsweg, it is the word itself that speaks the familiar words:
“And he said, ‘Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto
him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy
son, thine only son from me.” The sacrifice of the people, the child, has been
stopped. The word does not need the sacrifice, not even that of the king, which
had only been so briefly considered, as it does not need faith. On the contrary:
“horen Sie lieber nicht auf mich!”, [you’d better not listen to me]. Those are the
last words of a play that has failed to find a solution but also, does not want
to find a solution.
What it does find instead, what it does perform, is the need for artistic
speech, for art and ambivalence, for play and literature, and theater. The word
does not want your faith or your sacrifice, it doesn’t even want to be listened to,
but nevertheless, you have to listen, if you have come this far, you already have.
You have heard the word and seen ideas performed. You have not received an
ideology but have been challenged in your beliefs by a text that makes state¬
ments and defies them just a moment later. You have thus received a piece of
art that tests and plays with modes of speech, from politics to “politainment,”
from the entertainment industry to the clerical voice to ancient myths. It
shows that what we esteem as deconstructive, postmodern, or postdramatic
does not leave you with a morally coreless society, but rather fights for a re¬
discussion of our means of understanding and therefore, yes, reconciling to¬
ward a multivocal, varied society that, however, is not without unifying moral
values. Am Kônigsweg tries on discourses that provide meaning like one tries on
clothes in a dressing room. It “tries on” also the voice of the other, and leaves
you with this: consider collective hate. Consider it from all sides. Reconsider
everything you might know. Consider it in context. And challenge your beliefs
as well as your longing to see.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ANDERSON, Benedict: Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism, London/New York, Verso, 1983.
BARTHES, Roland: Mythologies, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1957.
BAZILIAN, Eric: One of Us [performed by Joan Osborne], Relish, BMG Direct
Marketing, 1995.
BRAUNGART, Wolfgang: Asthetik der Politik, Asthetik des Politischen. Ein Versuch
in Thesen, Gottingen, Wallstein, 2012.
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