AUSTRIA, ARTISTIC HYPOCRISY, AND THE NOBEL PRIZE

By Todd Buell

“Who?” I wondered aloud when I heard the news that an Austrian named Elfriede Jelinek had won the Nobel Prize for literature. In four years of university German study, I had never read any of her works and, even throughout a year of living here in Austria, I had neither noticed her books in bookstores nor seen her interviewed on television. However, once news outlets reported the Nobel committee’s decision, her obscurity to me ended. In learning more of both her works and, more saliently, her politics I see that she is a member of the club of writers and artists who espouse Communism. Though I understand why artists take up the banner of Marx—it is a tempting alternative from perhaps bland or conformist bourgeois life—the true record of communistic oppression against artists should dissuade contemporary artists from doing so.

To say that Jelinek was unknown in her own country prior to her receiving the prize would be false. Even if one is not a member of the Austrian literati, one would likely be familiar with both the graphic nature of Jelinek’s work and her unabashed criticism of the infamous “black/blue” coalition that came to power here in February of 2000 (after the far-right Austrian Freedom Party was invited into the coalition, Jelinek refused to allow her plays to be performed in Austria, and the EU placed economic sanctions on Austria for a brief time).

Her lurid style is extraordinary even in this culture where topless women are par for the course on TV during most hours of the day. A teaching colleague of mine said that his daughter had to read one of Jelinek’s works when she was in high school. He explained that the gore and sordid sexual descriptions disturbed her. He soon thereafter read excerpts from the work and shared his daughter’s reaction. Yet it is not Jelinek’s use of raunchy words or salacious presentation that bothers me. (How could it? I haven’t read any of her work.) However, what does disturb me are her politics. Jelinek is a self-proclaimed member of Austria’s Communist party.

I am not certain what Jelinek’s prime objections were to the ascension of the Freedom Party to the coalition. Judging by other criticisms at that time, she likely viewed the party to be fascistic, neo-nazi, and repressive. Her likely views were not without just cause. It is undeniable that Jorg Haider, the party’s then chairman—and current governor of my province (Carinthia)—both stated an admiration for Hitler’s “employment policies” and advocated a reactionary anti-immigrant citizen referendum in the early 1990s, which failed to pass.

However, with what does she wish to replace these repressive politics? Communism (i.e., more repression)? Jelinek is, of course, not alone in the world of Künstler, Dichter, actors, and other literati in being generally sympathetic to the beliefs of Marx and Engels. Jean-Paul Sartre and Michel Foucault immediately come to mind as intellectual communists, albeit peerless thinkers. As another teaching colleague of mine noted, there is something “intellectual” about left-wing politics.

This statement on its own makes sense. Writers, artists, musicians, and actors tend to eschew the materialistic values that one often associates with at least “fiscal” right-wing politics. Art has never been a lucrative profession; in the aristocratic era one had to please a noble person to be successful, and in today’s democratic era, one must find work with an artistic body that private funds can keep solvent.

Also, looking at the “social” side of right-wing politics in both the US and Europe, there is a clear element of repression and control inherent in these politics that most artists find repellent. In the United States, it is the “social conservatives” who are the most indignant when Janet Jackson’s bra proverbially falls off. The avant-garde or modern is often scorned, and the sexually explicit is sanctioned harshly. Who can forget John Ashcroft’s insistence that the bare breasts of statues be covered during press conferences at the Justice Department?

In Europe, one need only think of the Berufsverbot (profession banishments)—or worse—that the Nazis placed on artists and academics who would not conform. (A moving cinematographic representation of such a story is the 1982 German film Die Weise Rose [The White Rose], which chronicles the resistance and later execution of Prof. Huber and the Scholl siblings in 1943. There are now streets in honor of them near Leopold Maximillian University in Munich.) One could possibly argue that even today, the attempts of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to influence media is a modern example of right-wing repression.

However, for every Huber and Scholl, there is a Vaclav Havel or Alexander Solzhenitsyn—an artist or writer killed or repressed by Communism. It is hypocritical of Jelinek, or any writer, to support the beliefs of a political system that has so clearly damaged the freedom of expression that artists need to flourish. A more responsible way for artists to influence the political process would be to support political systems or movements that both respect freedom of expression and encourage a cultural climate that is beneficial to artistic endeavors. This creed would marginalize extreme parties on both the left and the right wings of the political spectrum.

Some could argue that this aforementioned climate is what exists in the US now and that it is not conducive to art. Our politics are perhaps too centrist, too geared toward equality, or too focused on finances to be conducive to great art.

As I think about our supposed bourgeois-cum-capitalistic conformity that some artists may see in contemporary American, I cannot help but think of the end of Philip Roth’s novel American Pastoral, which chronicles the disintegration of a typical American nuclear family in the Vietnam era. At the end of the novel, where it is clear that the family is no longer cohesive, the narrator asks, “what could possibly be wrong with the Levins?”

Some readers would probably answer with nothing, or would see nothing wrong with the ideal of the nuclear family and would blame its disintegration wholly on the members of the family who did not conform. In the book, it is the artists, a professor and the anti-war daughter, who rebel against the conformity. They judge America to be oppressive; it is a state and a system that chokes their creativity.

This discussion also forces the question: must one, as a reader, agree with a particular writer’s politics to find his writing appealing? Or put another way, can one separate a writer’s writing qua writing from her politics? The first question is in most cases clear: No. We should not cease reading or listening to the works of Sartre, Foucault, or, for that matter, Martin Heidegger (who was an unreformed Nazi) and Richard Wagner (who was virulently anti-Semitic) simply because their politics are repellent. To discourage the reading of certain writers because these writers have repressive politics would itself be an act of repression and would obscure rather than clarify the difference between an admirable liberal worldview and a contemptible totalitarian worldview.

However, we can answer no to the first question and respond affirmatively to the second question. As we reflect on, for example, Foucault’s analysis of prisons or Heidegger’s subjugation of reason in favor of a “struggle” to fulfil the destiny of a Volk, we must keep in mind the real and historical consequences and ends of these thoughts. (A thorough exegesis on Foucault and Heidegger is “out of my pay scale” and beyond the scope of this article.)

A contemporary example reveals where politics and art could result in a defensible boycott of a controversial artist’s work: some conservative friends of mine insist that they will never attend a Michael Moore film in a theatre because they do not wish to give him any financial support. Though I do not entirely agree with their specific salvo against Moore, theirs is an honorable position. For example, is one really obligated to give financial assistance to someone who is promoting the gulag or the gas chamber? I am not suggesting that Michael Moore promotes Holocaust denial or the gulags. My point is simply to illustrate a situation where a person could be justified in refusing to attend a lecture or artistic offering, especially when he or she must pay to enter, because the opinion of the artist or lecturer is so repugnant to the viewer. However, this situation arises rarely. In my own life, I recall a time where I was almost literally dragged to a performance of the The Vagina Monologues. I had read that the play was gruesome, lurid, and anti-man. I went to the show and realized that though it is certainly for a mature audience, it is not a bad play and promotes a good cause.

Going back millennia through the Hellenic period, Renaissance, twentieth century, and today, art and politics have coexisted—sometimes overtly connected and other times not. Though one can surely appreciate great art detached from politics, one should not lose sight of an artist’s political positions, especially when she, like Jelinek, aligns herself politically with those who would diminish the freedom that she and all artists need to succeed. 

 

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