Elfriede Jelinek Bio (Biography)
Real name:
Elfriede Jelinek
Date of birth:
October 20. 1946
Place of birth:
Mürzzuschlag, Styria, Austria
Astrology Sign:
Libra
Tags:
Biography
Elfriede Jelinek was born in 1946 in Austria. She has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and is most well-known as being a feminist novelist and playwright. Jelinek's father was of Jewish descent, but managed to avoid the holocaust because of his career. Her mother was from Vienna, and Jelinek was forced to attend classes for a variety of musical instruments from a very early age, she went to a Roman Catholic convent school in her mother's native, Vienna.
She later studied at the Vienna Conservatory and eventually received an organist diploma, but she was also attracted to history and drama and had been writing poetry since a very early age. This early love of the written word and the dramatic helped to shape her later works. Her fierce political views also added into the equation, causing her work to not only be engaging and intricate, but has also been known to divide the world of literary criticism. But the reactions that her work inspires contribute to the overall appeal of her writing.
One of the reasons that so many are so deeply divided by Jelinek's work is the fact that the large body of it deals with female sexuality and social criticism. Her attempts to directly work with such overwhelming and often abrasive subjects with irony and wit led to her receiving the Nobel Prize in literature in 2004. Because of the social paralysis that had caused her to drop her hopes of a performance career early in life, Jelinek did not think that she would be attend the ceremony to receive the award. So she recorded a video message as a way of circumnavigating this problem.
However, the fact that she was a recipient of the award did not hold well with everyone, even going so far as to cause Swedish writer and historian, Knut Ahnlund, to leave the Swedish Academy out of protest. He believes that her work is chaotic and pornographic and has done more harm than good for the world of literature and art. This sharp contrast and mixed responses seem to be exactly what Jelinek strives for in her work, and they are also why her work will continue to be studied as relevant for years to come.
She later studied at the Vienna Conservatory and eventually received an organist diploma, but she was also attracted to history and drama and had been writing poetry since a very early age. This early love of the written word and the dramatic helped to shape her later works. Her fierce political views also added into the equation, causing her work to not only be engaging and intricate, but has also been known to divide the world of literary criticism. But the reactions that her work inspires contribute to the overall appeal of her writing.
One of the reasons that so many are so deeply divided by Jelinek's work is the fact that the large body of it deals with female sexuality and social criticism. Her attempts to directly work with such overwhelming and often abrasive subjects with irony and wit led to her receiving the Nobel Prize in literature in 2004. Because of the social paralysis that had caused her to drop her hopes of a performance career early in life, Jelinek did not think that she would be attend the ceremony to receive the award. So she recorded a video message as a way of circumnavigating this problem.
However, the fact that she was a recipient of the award did not hold well with everyone, even going so far as to cause Swedish writer and historian, Knut Ahnlund, to leave the Swedish Academy out of protest. He believes that her work is chaotic and pornographic and has done more harm than good for the world of literature and art. This sharp contrast and mixed responses seem to be exactly what Jelinek strives for in her work, and they are also why her work will continue to be studied as relevant for years to come.