ABSTRACT
After studying in Vienna Jandl became a secondary school-teacher of English. Having been influenced by the Wiener Gruppe, he began in the 1950s a close friendship and working relationship with Friederike Mayröcker, which led to the joint composition of experimental radio plays, for one of which, Fünf Mann Menschen, they received the prestigious Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden in 1968. Drawing on the innovations of the Dadaists, the Wiener Gruppe and the concrete poets, he has developed his own characteristic form of sound poem, which achieves its full impact only in performance or recordings, as well as a wide variety of other games with linguistic material, based on simple procedures such as the omission, addition and transposition of sounds, syllables and words, including English, marked by wit and, in Selbstporträt des Schachspielers als trinkende Uhr (1983), melancholy. Other collections include Laut und Luise (1966), der künstliche baum (1970), dingfest (1973), serienfuss (1974), die bearbeitung der mütze (1978) and der gelbe hund (1980). In the four talks die schöne kunst des schreibens (1976) and the Frankfurt literature lectures Das Öffnen und Schlieβen des Mundes (1985) he makes illuminating comments on his own work. The Gesammelte Werke appeared in four volumes in 1985; idyllen (1989) and Stanzen (1992) are further collections of poems.
Jelinek trained as an organist and pianist, then studied art history and drama at the University of Vienna. She is firmly rooted in the Austrian tradition of social criticism via a critique of language (Kraus, Horváth, Wiener Gruppe), to which she adds a combative feminism and a radical subjectivity, wir sind lockvögel baby! (1970), a montage of motifs drawn from pop culture, and Michael. Ein Jugendbuch für die Infantilgesellschaft (1972) criticize the mass media. Die Liebhaberinnen (1975) shows the effects of marriage on the lives of two women; here Jelinek is revealed as a Marxist feminist, aiming to transform a male-dominated and class-divided society. Die Ausgesperrten (1980) traces the origins of European urban terrorism by exposing the social and psychological disorientation of a group of young people in the Vienna of the 1950s. Die Klavierspielerin (1983) centres on a piano teacher whose voyeuristicmasochistic tendencies are seen as the consequences of a stifling maternal upbringing. Oh Wildnis, oh Schutz vor ihr (1985) belongs to the genre of anti-Heimatroman common in recent Austrian literature.
