Abstract
Elfriede Jelinek’s play Wolken.Heim. explores German identity. Through her use of the “montage” technique she arranges quotes from German thinkers—among others, Hölderlin, Hegel, Fichte, Kleist, Heidegger, and the “Rote Armee Faktion” (“RAF”)—in such a way that one can see commonalities, contradictions and interesting points made by these authors about German identity as it progresses through eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century German thought. Jelinek’s selection, placement and slight alterations of the quotes speak to the type of theatre that she desires—a world in which the actor’s physical presence and the import of the lines that he speaks meld into a unified whole. In the case of Wolken.Heim., as both text and play, this unification is only possible through the imagination of the reader and audience member. The following paper explores her theory of unifying one’s body with language, and the various ways in which the theory manifests itself in her writing of Wolken.Heim.
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