#elfriede jelinek

[kansassire]

La Pianiste, 2001, Michael Haneke

[liriostigre]

Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher (translated by Joachim Neugroschel)

[milksockets]

Patience: the fruit’ll ripen yet. That’s what you get if you stack your human habits one atop the other to pick something off the top of the tree, only to find you don’t like the taste after all.

Lust - Elfriede Jelinek

[s0uvlakii]

the piano teacher by elfriede jelinek (trans. joachim neugroschel)

[s-c-kh]

[tobydammit68]

Malina (1991) Dir. Werner Schroeter

[ravenkings]

one thing that i think is a really interesting difference between the piano teacher (the book) and the piano teacher (the movie) is that you spend A LOT more time around walter klemmer and in his head in the book than in the movie, and, in doing that, you realize that he’s just as nuts as erika kohut in many ways, but because he’s a young, healthy, conventionally attractive man, he is able to get away with it more than she is (and he KNOWS this and uses it to his advantage.) 

on another note, another thing i find FASCINATING about their relationship that comes from this is, in reading klemmer’s internal monologue, you realize that he actually does want to dominate erika (i.e. choose her clothes, force her to share his opinions, “teach” her things (in order to reverse the power she wields by *actually* being his teacher)) before he plans on eventually dropping her, but then, when she expresses her own desire to be sexually dominated by him and elaborates on exactly how she wants him to do it (which DOES actually include having him choose her clothes as well as more....risqué things....) he’s put off and disgusted while at the same time, the book makes a point of saying he’s aroused by it.

i think the point that’s being made here is that klemmer (and i would suspect more than a few men irl as well...) wants to dominate and victimize women under the guise of being a “casanova” in the sensitive “soft boy” mode, but once he encounters a woman who WANTS to be dominated and victimized, he (supposedly) loses interest bc if she WANTS it and sets the terms, she’s really the one in charge and klemmer cannot have that, even if he finds himself aroused by the idea of the acts themselves.

[sloanedodson]

Type of shit I’ve been on lately (various La Pianiste illustrations)

[grusinskayas]

All Erika wants to do is watch. Here, in this booth, she becomes nothing. Nothing fits into Erika, but she, she fits exactly into this cell. Erika is a compact tool in human form. Nature seems to have left no apertures in her. Erika feels solid wood in the place where the carpenter made a hole in any genuine female. Erika's wood is spongy, decaying, lonesome wood in the timber forest, and the rot is spreading. Still, Erika struts around like a queen. (...) Erika lifts up a tissue from the floor; it is encrusted with sperm. She holds it to her nose. She deeply inhales the aroma, the fruits of someone else's hard labor. She breathes and looks, using up a wee bit of her life. There are clubs where you can shoot pictures. Each client selects his model himself, according to his mood and taste. But Erika doesn't want to act, she only wants to look. She simply wants to sit there and look. Look hard. Erika, watching but not touching. Erika feels nothing, and has no chance to caress herself. Her mother sleeps next to her and guards Erika's hands. These hands are supposed to practice, not scoot under the blanket like ants and scurry over to the jam jar. Even when Erika cuts or pricks herself, she feels almost nothing. But when it comes to her eyes, she has reached an acme of sensitivity. (...) Erika watches very closely. Not in order to learn. Nothing stirs or moves within her. But she has to watch all the same. For her own pleasure. (...) Erika can't help it. She has to keep looking. She is off-limits to herself.

The Piano Teacher, Elfriede Jelinek.

[henk-heijmans]

"Who's afraid of Elfriede Jelinek? - by Elena Retfalvi, Spanish

[kansassire]

La Pianiste, 2001, Michael Haneke

[thewomanwithmissingfingers]

Time around Erika is slowly turning into a plaster cast. It crumbles the instant her mother strikes it. At such moments, Erika sits there, with remnants of time's brace around her thin neck. Mother has called her up, making her a laughingstock, and Erika is forced to admit: I have to go home now. Home. If ever you run into Erika on the street, she is usually on her way home.

The Piano Teacher, Elfriede Jelinek, 1983

[milksockets]

All in all, men would quite stand over us if we didn’t enclose them within us from time to time, till they are tiny and quiet and quite surrounded.

Lust - Elfriede Jelinek

[s0uvlakii]

the piano teacher by elfriede jelinek (trans. joachim neugroschel)

[davidhudson]

Happy 78th, Elfriede Jelinek.

[mrsdallowayreads]

—The Piano Teacher, Elfriede Jelinek