"Is writing the gift of cuddliness, of cuddliness to reality?

One would like to snuggle up, but what happens to me?

What happens to those who don't really know reality?

She's so disheveled.

No comb that can smooth them out.” With these words, Elfriede Jelinek opened her speech at the award ceremony for the Nobel Prize in Literature in autumn 2004, which she was unable to attend due to illness. “Anxiety disorder”, according to her self-diagnosis.

"Cuddly" and "disheveled" - the new text by the Austrian writer also moves in this dichotomy: "Angabe der Person", adapted for the stage immediately after publication (FAZ of December 19).

The reason for the book was initially banal: a few years ago, a tax audit was carried out on Jelinek because she lives both in her hometown of Vienna and in Munich, where her husband, the computer scientist Gottfried Hüngsberg, with whom she had been married since 1974, lived .

Hüngsberg died in early September 2022.

This news lies like a leaden shadow over the previously written text – an unexpected, almost unbearable burden for the reader as well as for the writer.

The tax office in Munich reported Jelinek because she also had to pay taxes in Germany.

The proceedings have long since been discontinued, but the author is still rumbling, because something outrageous happened to her here.

The investigating officers had removed all of their written work: manuscripts, hard drives, private e-mails, letters.

"That's the worst thing for me.

That they have everything that I have written.

I can't live with that, so I'm writing it here, I'm writing down what my life is, and then I'm going to throw it away." involved in this infamy should be held accountable - also historically.

In the tone of excitement and excitement

On the second page, Jelinek strikes the tone that gets her excited and excited.

The present and the past meet fatally: “Are you saying you were being persecuted?

no

I complain all the time, but no, I wasn't persecuted.

Others were followed.

Your gold rests gently in the vaults, my darling, do you have anything in writing? No, the main thing is that the money is safe and sound and doesn't toss and turn at night without sleep.

.

.

My grandpa was a bookbinder's assistant, where should he have gotten it from and not stolen it?

He was deposited himself, in a secret apartment, with others, my penniless grandfather in hiding with others, my grandfather was a whiner, incessant yelling, he didn't want to go here, he didn't want to go there, he didn't want to go to a safe third country,

Oppressive and gloomy, Jelinek combines the harshness of finance capital with the ruthlessness or generosity of the tax authorities, depending on who is in front of their barriers.

She meticulously lists where today's tax fraudsters can store their money on tropical islands, in shell companies, in mailboxes and elsewhere.

Money is a ghost game, on the keyboard of which smart guys know how to play virtuously and have willing helpers in the background.

Jelinek is on the trail of many: a Boris Becker, the football emperor Franz Beckenbauer, a screw king, cum and ex and the former art dealer Cornelius Gurlitt.

The co-creators of this situation also get their fat off, for example the Reich youth leader of the NSDAP Baldur von Schirach, who became Reich governor of Vienna and received the order from Hitler in February 1945

A world full of filth

The world is full of smuts, big and small, then as now, says Jelinek.

But the innocent dead who remain can no longer defend themselves, and if they are honored then it is an embarrassing duty after which one can safely go home.

And then there are the refugees, who nobody likes either, who have to sink and vegetate in dirt and excrement, but the world looks on unmoved, even if they drown in the Mediterranean.

Jelinek leaves nothing out.

She argues as if in a trance, breathless, shrill and then very tender again.

She makes assertions, contradicts herself, takes her word for it, takes everything back, because everything could be completely different.

Sarcasm and irony are her guiding principles.

In order to be able to stand it, Elfriede Jelinek had to take stock.

But just don't think that you now have certainty, because the author asks herself self-critically (perhaps a little coquettishly): "I am I?

Who says that please?

I'm not someone else, but then again I'm not, I'm not more than someone else, I can't help it, I'd be fine, then I could follow the course of history with my army, for which my ego would easily suffice or at least erect a small dam against them, it will soon become clear what I would be for or against.

I'm still waiting."

Elfriede Jelinek: "Indication of the person".

Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg 2022. 189 p., hardcover, €24.