The Piano Teacher
Author: Elfriede Jelinek
Release Date: May 3 2005
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Pages: 288
Austrian author Elfriede Jelinek won the 2004 Nobel prize for literature. The Piano Teacher was her classic from early 80s. Between the book and the acclaimed 2001 film version, I’m glad that I read the book first because…I don’t think I can stomach the visualization, especially of several horrible scenes involving self-multilation and rape. Also I wouldn’t be in a tantalizing hell pondering about characters’ underlying motives and feelings from the film, as these were all stated clearly like a psychoanalytical profile in the book. If interested read about the story here.
It is disturbing and unpleasant from beginning to end - endless suffocating psychoanalysis of its disturbingly perverted characters. The writing style is just as suffocating. There’s no chapter break, no dialogues, no quotation…maybe that worked well in German but it just read like one giant 300 pages of run-on sentence in English. I had to put down reading every 5 pages or so. But her prose get a bit addictive to read, especially the usage of interesting and powerful analogy. The painfully gripping and destructive ending was so devastating to get through, it’s like closing your eyes on a disaster in action yet can’t help peeking. It is a powerful pessimistic portrayal of relationships as power and control, submission and domination…between teacher and student, mother and daughter, man and woman.
I got lots of favorite passages, here’re a few:
p.38 on being left behind to decay
“SHE feels left out of everything because she is left out of everything. Others go farther, even climbing over her. She looks like such a minor obstruction. The hiker strides on, but she remains on the road, like a greasy sandwich wrapper, perhaps fluttering slightly in the breeze. The paper can’t get very far, it rots away right there. The rotting takes years, monotonoous years.”
p.67 on mediocricy
“Afterall, people with a herd instinct hold mediocrity in high esteem. They praise it as having great value. They believe they are strong because they are the majority. The middling level has no terrors, no anxieties. They huddle together, indulging in the illusion of warmth. If you’re in the middle, then you’re alone with nothing, certainly not yourself. And how content they are with that state of affairs! Nothing in their existence offers them any reproaches and no one could reproach them for their existence.”p.90, on death of art
“Every day, a piece of music, a short story, or a poem dies becaue its existence is no longer justified in our time. And things that were once considered immortal have become mortal again, no ones knows them anymore. Even though they deserve to survive.”p.194, on artist
“How often have we agreed that neither the creator nor the performer can endure rigidity. The artist prefers to avoid the bitter pressures applied by truth or by rules.”
Though for some blasphemous reason, when reading on the heroine Erika, I was reminded of Squidward (from Spongebob ^^;;;;;;), who’s also the unattractive, uptight, bitter, misanthropic loner pride in being different and ‘above’ everyone else for their rare artistic talent and unique appreciation and understanding for high art, yet they like to be bound by an overbearing authoritative figure, and got a perverse sadomasochistic side lurking beneath… ^^;;)
mintyalice
