Schubertin hauta

Abstract

Schubert’s Tomb. On the Intermedial Relationship between Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Klavierspielerin and Franz Schubert’s Winterreise As has been pointed out in previous research, Jelinek’s novel Die Klavierspielerin contains intertextual references to Schubert’s Winterreise. In this article, I show the connection to be so extensive that the novel as a whole can be seen as a thematic transformation of the song cycle. Furthermore, not limiting myself to the study of mere song texts but also listening to Schubert’s music, I interpret the relationship between the two works to be intermedial. Drawing on Gerard Genette’s theory of hypertextuality and on Werner Wolf’s typology of the musicalization of fiction, I analyze the textual strategies through which the novel’s relationship to Winterreise – and to its related myths – is constructed as parody. It is my argument that among these textual strategies, various techniques of musicalization play a central role. From a feminist and psychoanalytic point of view, I ask whether Winterreise is able to give voice to the secret melancholy that marks the novel’s story-line and discourse, both caught up in the universe of a pathological mother/daughter relationship. Jelinek’s deconstructive strategies question, but do not altogether destroy, the Winterreise’s potential as an imaginary space of identification for the reader.