SOURCE: Swales, Erika. “Pathography as Metaphor: Elfriede Jelinek's Die Klavierspielerin.” Modern Language Review 95, no. 2 (April 2000): 437-49.

In the following essay, Swales delineates the effects of Jelinek's “fierce pathography” through a close reading of Die Klavierspielerin, contending that her stridency generates “a sense of tensions that invite the reader to be not reductive but reflective.”

Whatever kind of reputation Elfriede Jelinek may have, it is not that of a subtle, thoughtful author. Indeed, for many readers and critics, the stridency of her writing is the most defining characteristic, a stridency that has been variously applauded or condemned. Yet even stridency can generate its own dialectically complex echo. I begin this article by indicating some of the tensions that mark Jelinek's relation to the literary market-place. Then, I consider one of her most strident texts, Die Klavierspielerin (1983).¹ Nothing can diminish the fierce pathography of this work, but I shall endeavour...