Shadow. Eurydice Says
Elfriede Jelinek
Translated by Gitta Honegger
I don’t know what’s gliding down my leg, NO, it actually seems to come from
below, working itself upward, has it reached the heel yet, the knee? Something
gliding softly, thin, trickle-like, actually flattering, sort of. Yes, now! Some-
thing’s penetrating, it hurts, something opened up in me, what is it?, I am com-
pletely open with you: I don’t know. It slid inside me, I am getting hot, hold it,
I have the feeling I have to throw off some ballast, clothes? Something’s flowing,
maybe I will no longer be able to work at the stove or on the manuscript I just
started, which came out of me so smoothly before. Yes. Maybe everything was
working too smoothly. My writing flows as well, that’s how it feels to me, you
know, whereas my husband sings. He runs on a soundtrack all his own. Quello
made him famous. Before he started to sing, silence was something grand, sacred,
now silence no longer exists; he pierced the silence with his singing and destroyed
Esso. I remained rather silent. I write, should anyone be interested. It works like
Questo, you see: liquid flows from my pen, it flows onto a white sheet of paper, IO
am leaking. My walking, it came to a stop, my secured existence is coming loose,
I feel as if I were just flapping about—no, away from myself, as if I had no more
joints, as if my consciousness were out of joint too, no more hinges that would
allow it to move: I can’t have what I want and I want what I can’t do: write. My
walking shakes the earth, or is it the stomping of Mother Earth from down below
I feel. Is she trying to throw me off? I have nothing to counter it with. Something
clicks as I look at this landscape, something’s coming to my mind, but nothing
will come out of my pen, my pipeline to life anymore. Yes, his pipe still functions
somehow, it’s working. His pipe works. His myth has been created already, Esso
can’t be destroyed anymore, he can destroy himself, but it can’t be destroyed, his
balls are ringing all over the world; that singer, he’ll sing something in a moment,
he’ll sing something with his group, but also alone, no young man such as he
would ever be without a band. I stomp on the earth, it is like a sanctioned sexual
act, wedlock unlocked. What do you think you are doing?, no one says that
anymore. Anything goes, but at the same time it seems there might be sanctions
or something against the stomping we are doing together. Increases the thrill.
Nothing is verboten. My pipe is leaky, but so is his. Otherwise nothing would
© 2011 Elfriede Jelinek.
Reprinted by permission of Rowohlt Theater Verlag.
PAJ 115 (2017), pag. 73–118.
doi:10.1162/PAJJ _a_00354
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come out of him. But I think he wants it that way. It hurts, I think some kind of
poison is running, I have to relieve myself, I am wearing too much, I have too
much to bear. Now the question is: Do I get to be a shadow, or do I stay as I am
and cast off the shadow? No, the shadow casts me, I become a piece of shadow,
and pass myself to the shadows. My head is spinning and I throw something off,
dead weight. So there. I thought I cast off something and suddenly the waste is
me, who must stay behind. A crackling something whose clock has stopped, who
doesn’t know what to do with herself. Emissaries are coming, yes, now I recognize
them, to discuss with me the future set-up of my life. Is this where you want us
to put the sofa, and the table over there? This is where I will have to settle, shadow
among shadows, no more trees, no bushes. We shadows have to live off ourselves
and stay by ourselves. We should make more of ourselves, but we don’t do it. IO
am already behind my potential, and now I even stay behind myself. I am no
longer where I’ve been. Something’s moving across the grass, it leaves no trace,
not one blade stirring, the wind’s starting up, but it does not hit me, could it be
that it is me? My fate and way of life will change, there will be no trace of me,
the juice flowing from my quill will be for the birds, I’ll think I am shedding my
skin and suddenly I will be my own cast-off skin. Shadow. Something penetrated
me and propelled me out of myself like a sea of air filling the feeling one with
substance, but what sort? Now he can’t breathe anymore, he would have badly
needed the air, yes, but now what!, the feeling one suffocates, there, at the for-
est’s edge and becomes a soulless apparition. Even though a moment ago he felt
it so beautifully and so much to boot, there was so much for him to feel. I basi-
cally was only attached to these clothes, forever interested in fashion, in being
someone else through clothes. I never could really make it work. In the morning
I contemplated—as always much too long—what I should wear. As soon as I
woke up those thoughts entered my mind. As if I didn’t count at all. As if this
landscape wanted to leave me, to withdraw from me, so I could be seen in my
new outfit. As if I were my mother, the way I care about my outward appearance,
with tender stirrings towards me, who else would do it? The singer? He and his
fans? I hear the screaming, it’s horrible. It follows me, the screaming. Are those
screams coming after me? Or don’t those fans pursue any purpose—or me, for
that matter? If there is anything to fear, it is the roar of those little girl fans; Esso
can be truly terrifying, such a pack of little girls. Their perfectly unmovable little
faces, fazed by nothing, they know nothing, their fear of being alone?, hardly!
For they appear in packs, packed tightly together, absolutely terrifying, quelli
awful swarms, those dreadful swoons, unmovable faces, look, not moving at all,
those little girlie faces and that awful screaming, always screaming everywhere,
hanging over everything, the products of the mountains, the harvests of the
flatlands, deathly swarms in the air, like vermin, flies, droning, a swarm, a ghastly
swarm! All girls! Hurrah, girls! Hurry, girls, here, to me! Blood curdling, quelli
74 PAJ 115
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girls, draining the blood from the most secure existence! A stream of spiky pebbles
out of their mouths, you can’t see any water, can’t see the ground, all you can
see is the throbbing swarm of girls, yes, my husband is a girlie’s hard, ahem,
heart throb! Screaming, shouting, but faces not moving, those little girls, horror
pure, shrill, frightful shrieks out of their stupid, gaping, snapping, toothpaste
smelly fish mouths. Those children!, not yet far removed from childhood and
its horrors when they fell, now they are felling the singer, trampling him down,
mouths open wide, yes, now they are the horror, they are some distance—far
enough—removed from their childhood and they scream as they never screamed
as infants, perhaps making up for it, horrible little girls, they are scary, yes, my
singer is scared too, I know that for sure, he once suffered a horrible panic attack
from them. Shook the shit of shit ass fear out of him, everything rattles and
shakes, hot little rascals, forked little bodies, legs spread already, ready to receive
someone, they don’t know whom, but they want the One thing that must be
coming, tell us, girls, how you are messing around and with whom! But what
comes out of their mouths is like a raving torrent, shriek! Shriek!, this stream
of tales will soon be diverted by a rock and must look for another bed and then
again another and then: a new one. That’s what drives them, it drives them on.
They don’t know it. They don’t ever beat around the bush that blocks their view,
but they can only see as far as the sound in their ear buds can reach, the water
they can’t hold anymore breaks against the retaining wall of the monitor, In
which they stick their teeny tits. Just what an audience glimmering in semi-
darkness on the other side had been waiting for. Disgust. Those little girls have
nothing to show for themselves, they make a show of themselves, they show it
Tutto, they go all out and show it all, they show more than goes to show, they get
going and then they are the howling, screaming instruments. Shriek, shriek,
shriek, little shreks! What are you doing? Stolid-faced, shrieking and running,
running and shrieking.Those danger zones must be avoided, lest the singer gets
overwhelmed by fear, which renders him voiceless.
My clothes hide me and show me off. Same as shrieking. Those little squat pissers,
broad pissers opening up below, opening up above, they can’t wait to open up.
Would love to have more orifices, so they can be wide open and ready. Already
they’re popping out of their childish living-for-the moment, screaming, howling,
thrusting themselves into every room, the young, finding new openings every
day, they are gaping wide, when the singer, fueled by other throats, other teasers,
strides onto the stage, throwing down a few riffs. He says, he’s so afraid of the
girls. They tear, ahem, scare the shit out of him. So they tear themselves open
much wider. The stuff coming out of there!! What’s there to come out of such
small bodies? Who’d want to see that? Who would want to see them underlin-
ing their desires with themselves, their bodies wantonly open for everything
JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says 75
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they don’t even know what it is? They are just dirt under the fingernails! But the
singer fears nothing more than them. The howling. The tearing down of people!
Stomping on those lying on the ground, stepping on everything. Whimpering,
shrieking. Thank you for your invaluable participation, thank you for wanting
to tear apart the singer, rip him to pieces, devour him, a little piece of singer
for everyone. Swallow and letting it out. Everything must come, out and in, IL
bodily windows are thrown open, get in here too, and there as well, please!, here
we’ve got another hole, and there’s still some room! After all, even childhood
has no want of sexual stirrings, until you get crushed by them. All this develops
during childhood, develop now, get damaged later! Abnormal reaction to sexual
impressions embodied in the singer—in this world the singer, in the beyond
it’s someone else. And later those experiences, remembered, will be of primal
importance, that is the singer’s curse, I said it already and I will say it again, one
can only curse the singer for that. And now the singer curses the shriekers once
Ancora. Tearing open their small twats with hooks and those memory tracks—like
much used bus tracks where big things happen, if rather clumsily—, will only
be able to express themselves as memories, and that is unsatisfying. Those still
unsatisfied may also come forward now. And of course, they’re coming right
away. All of them. Everyone may come forward, everyone should come forward.
Could it be that hysterical symptoms are present in those shrieks, which keep a
memory open, that is to say—shrieking: the memory, not the other way around,
can it be, that the shrieking comes about only with the participation of memo-
ries, or is it the shrieking that creates memories? One not without the other,
gentlemen! Mister singer, it is you who makes the shrieking girls sick! Now that
their bodies have been unlatched, unlocked, they are open to everyone, open
even to mortal fear, which they don’t even know yet, always open to everything,
more open when it comes to putting aside all contingencies, nothing but sur-
render, opened ever wider, those are veritable barn doors, with nothing useful
inside to milk or kill. Everything, even what they don’t have, they’d squirt out
of themselves, giving everything, even before they have it, those girl monsters!
Trampling, tearing down everything. I don’t get it. That’s also supposed to be
lust? Their whizzing, whistling, howling breath zooming through vocal folds as
if all the world’s ghosts were caught in them and had to get out now at all cost.
Though nothing is inside them. Those girls embody the Nothing, because they
have nothing but their small bodies. They create nothing, they adore the creature,
ahem, the creator—nothings themselves, they adore the Nothing that wants to
come out nonetheless, who’d understand? Not I. Anyone without ears should
also listen, it’s all he can do. Shriek, shriek, shriek! red, involuntarily distorted,
sweat-and tear-soaked faces with nothing behind them, it squirts out of noses,
mouths and eyes, shriek shriek shriek! Flashflood warnings! Yes, completely
neutro, stolid faces and yet distorted, twisted, with nothing behind them, E
76 PAJ 115
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shriek shriek shriek! Bodies in extreme distress! Until the bed gets wet, the Jewel
box they wet themselves, love makes you wet, they play with their own fire and
extinguish themselves as they keep screaming, screaming, screaming.
As for me, personally, if you ask me, that’s not something I know. As a poet I
should know. I should know, but I don’t. My singer is good at it, yes, that’s right,
he is so good at it, it makes me think that at his birth the separation from his
mother—that muse of I-don’t-know-what—could not have been painful enough
for him to leave him voiceless, BENE, I am just a nymphette, a Nothing by com-
parison, okay, so I also try to write a bit, Ma, what can I say, it doesn’t work, so
Poi, separated from his mother, the muse, as a child, the mother herself still a
child creature, BENE, he could not have experienced the separation from mother
as something terrifying, no way. He wouldn’t be able to sing the way he does,
he could melt stones. He knows no fear, except of the girls, he knows no fear,
singing at the top of his lungs as he does. It’s only the shriekettes he fears like
hell. There’s only an either/or. There’s only fear or no fear. There is no third. E
the way it’s running out of me makes me scared too. A feeling I didn’t know
before, which I denied myself. And yet, up to now it always came back again;
fear keeps coming back to me again and again, no matter what. I can feel it
Già, whatever I say, it’s coming, and I hardly know anything else. For a long
time I made the mistake relating it to certain organs, this fear, and now it turned
out to be justified somehow, now something bit me, a snake I think, I can see
the wound, it’s not where it usually is, a new wound has opened. But just as I
would also be afraid in a gentle valley, even though I was strolling about there,
I would be afraid everywhere. Fear controls me. Always did. What more can I
say about it than: I can feel it as if it weren’t me, but some piece of crap, NO, look
here: my closet. No one can call that crap, but it also contains dustcoats, trench-
coats, swing coats, something to pull over so the trembling can’t be seen, Quale
I wear stomping the earth. Not a thought of coitus during such stomping. Any-
thing but!, not that again!, everything I tried to hang over that extreme sensation
of un-lust is right here in that closet. I don’t know. Now I myself am some kind
of clothing with something running out of it. I am that which lived only for a
short time, leaving even less imprint on the ground than the snake which attacked
me, what good is my garment skin now, my garment brood, my never successful
refuge? Armed—armed that is with a woman’s weapons I get out and instantly
slip on myself, on that shed skin, not used to walk on such a thing, could it
belong to me? Or the snake? I don’t know. This skin belongs to one of us. They
didn’t do me any good, my fabulous clothes, I shed them and all of a sudden I
am the one that’s been shed. I would love to stand again at the forest’s edge where
it happened. My girl friends are gone. They are themselves emergency calls, cry-
ing, digging for their cell phones, they want rescue, which does not exist. Now
JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says 77
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the howling again, all around, everywhere. And I am so sensitive to noise—oh,
now it’s okay, I can hardly hear it anymore. Must already be in Notown, NO, non
Motown, what are you thinking? There’s nothing here anymore. No, wrong, my
dress is still here. I am the dress! Is that the punishment? What for? That I’ve
always been interested only in clothes? Shopping like a maniac, driven from one
boutique to the next, where there might just be something more beautiful: Quello
one too!, no thoughts wasted on rescue, those wraps would have been my rescue,
from whom? I don’t know. What have I got to thank fear for? Quite frankly, IO
don’t know, I don’t know fearless conditions. Others: response to danger. Me:
always. Even without danger. I can always raise this condition, but I don’t have
A, it’s always there anyway. Always at my disposal. In the past it might have
been for a reason, now it’s no longer necessary, fear without rhyme or reason.
That snake in the grass, I didn’t see it, and I did respond to later conditions with
appropriate measures against them; Ma, whenever I am in the process of apply-
ing them, I notice that they are of no use, there is and always will only be: fear.
I preempt myself in my fear, I don’t need anything anymore, fear’s got me. I don’t
have fear; fear has me. Case clothed. Took my time selecting each garment, as I
can only be safe under my clothes, without anyone seeing me, and thus calm,
calming down until the next fear, and it is always there already. It waits for me
to run into my destiny. Fear is a dress, always ready and open and I walk right
into it, can’t say I pull it over myself, then it would be a foreign body, it is my
dress, always another one, always the same fear, I can count on it, it will always
be there for me, for sure. But what good does it do me now? I am losing myself,
I can feel it. I am already gone. I am already mourning my own loss, absolutely
certain, that the singer will catch up later much more thoroughly, he will take
his time for it, all the time it takes for mourning, that much time is a must for
one to properly mourn. The singer will thoroughly check out reality, he will
notice that I am not there anymore, he will check once more and end up under
the influence of this reality check, completely under the influence of grief, yes,
he will, and that grief will categorically demand from him to separate himself
from me, his object, because the I that is me, this object, does not even exist
anymore. He will then have to do this work, this retreat from me—the object,
his object, yes, that’s important, don’t laugh!,—from me, who became valuable,
precisely because I am his object and he will have to perform this retreat from
me, the object, on all levels and in all phases of his life, and do so properly, In
all situations, in which the object, IO, the object that is, was a highly charged item,
I came at a price, the price was high, I was First Prize, the trophy, no doubt, Quello
was me. Maybe the charge was too high. Maybe he charged too fast, reached too
high, could be, tried to hit the high note and missed, just one single note, in all
that noise no one could hear it anyway, the wrong tone, only one, it hit the wrong
modo, could be, but he will have to accept the painful character of this separation,
78 PAJ 115
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he will have to resign himself, yes, he will just have to resign himself that his
highly charged, unrealizable reification of his desire, me, will be gone forever,
gone underground, perdu, and that he will have to accept this forever and ever,
because I, that obscure object of desire will be gone, yes, off and away, and he
simply will have to, I am afraid, resign himself to this painful impact, which the
retreat of his object will have, I mean of course my retreat as a person— everything
clear so far?, so then he will have to resign himself to the painful nature of this
separation, he will, who, he?, what’s going to happen?, well then, the painful
nature of our separation will crop up again and again, even if he had resigned
himself, the singer, again and again and all over again, and even after he’ll have
resigned himself for good, and when there will be no sign of me anywhere and
forever, he’ll have to accept it, he’s got no choice and after he’ll have finally got
Esso (knowing him, probably never! He’s like an infant, holding on to what he has,
sucking it and spitting it out again and then he can happily sing again, because
he found out that one can keep everything one has, because one is entitled to,
it’s a given to be given a lot, I can see that), so after he’ll have caught on, he’ll
recognize his charging me, his object, with desire in every situation, in all similar
reproducible situations, as a binding to me, while he should learn to finally break
away from it for good. There’s no way around it. He will have to break away from
me—I for my part, which however isn’t mine anymore, I’ve long been gone, non
too bad, really, being frivolous all of a sudden and irresponsible, leaving one’s
husks and getting out, out of oneself, just walking away. Letting go of me, letting
me finally be, leaving me alone, which I am anyway, he just didn’t accept it. Let-
ting me loose in this landscape, which I suddenly find to be fun, bright, friendly,
because I finally can go. He won’t make it, letting go of me. He did not make
me, but he won’t let me be. He’ll want to stuff me back into my being, I can see
it coming. Since he is bound only to himself, he will have to, again and again,
in every conceivable new situation, he will have to experience the separation
from me, his beloved object and he’ll want to put an end to it by coming to get
me again. Maybe it already dawned on him that he won’t be able to get over this
situation, that this separation will have to happen again and again, it can’t be
pleasant, makes me almost feel sorry for him, but wherever he should finally
unbind this binding to me, his beloved object, he will always want to make this
binding all the stronger, Inoltre, he will have to compulsively establish this
binding again and again. No way can I go away!, he’ll say. He won’t let me. Lui
won’t let go of me. He’ll see me everywhere, at the forest’s edge, in treetops, O
whatever the language of Nature is telling us, I don’t speak it, it bores me, read
it somewhere else, look at her elsewhere, at the movies, on TV, wherever, go look
at Nature even in natura, for all I care, but me, she bores me, even though I am
also subject to nature, which I have to painfully acknowledge as I speak. Okay,
so I’ll be a good girl and look at her, as long as she’s still here, go stare at her,
JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says 79
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for hours, if you like, it’ll hardly change anything, nature will also vanish, after
me she will vanish, yes, that’s for sure, vanish she will, go ahead, look her up,
read up on what she has to offer, what she still has to offer, all the whatnots she
offers, open her up on Google Earth, I won’t do it though, she isn’t really my
cup of whatever, I’ve never noticed so clearly as right now, as she is leaving me,
my nature, toodle-oo, and watch where you’re going!, Qualunque cosa, I know her, Ma
because I know her, I am not eager to deepen our acquaintance, so you’ll just
have to imagine a description of nature, take it wherever you can get it. E
wherever he’ll be captivated by this description and pick up his instrument, my
singer, he will—I said it already, but it’s so important, I’ll say it again, and again:
he then will have to establish this binding to his beloved object, that’s me, instead
of unbinding it. Always coupling, though the train isn’t there anymore! Always
attaching, hooking it all up, although there is absolutely nothing there! Well,
yes, I am not objective in this matter, I am only an object, that’s much less,
because it cannot decide for itself, let alone for life, but I see it so clearly in front
of me, as if I could live it again: The intensive—and on account of his insatiabil-
ity constantly growing, binding desire for me, the missed, lost object, will create
the same economic conditions as a wounded part of the body, so imagine, he
will hurt as much as I hurt from the snakebite or whatever it was that just killed
me, ouch! So that will be what the poor sucker will have to feel over and over
Ancora, and this constant binding with pain on account of his missing me, his
object, will make it possible to disregard the peripheral conditionality of the
bodily pain. Well, he can disregard my pain, which he cannot and does not want
to imagine anyway, he brackets such pain, blanks it out under the blinding sun
that no longer sees me, his father, the sun, Apollo in pure form, NO, not poor
form, that’s an entirely different chapter, his father always blanked me out, my
little poems were not his cup of tea, the shining one in his chariot, in his sky-
mobile, maybe that’s why his son, the singer, is so boring, so lazy, the girls do
the shrieking for him, he does nothing, he never does anything, since it was
always an up and down with his father, and the son doesn’t want to repeat that,
always watching his father, the sun, up and down, it’s almost as bad as in and
fuori, everything coming from men is somehow monotonous, it can take quite
some time before they master the second tone. Okay, I admit, we would not be
without the sun, we need it, but what we are isn’t much, how easily does one of
us get lost, and I don’t even exist anymore, but that’s not a lot of not existing: IO
can honestly say: not that bad. Does the Sun God want to check on me?, if I am
really gone, if I am a shadow, Quale, sadly, doesn’t exist without him either. Ma
he isn’t proud of that, the way he keeps popping up, how he—we hear a roaring
neigh, then a whizzing dying down—rearing up, puts on the brakes, jumps out,
looks around if all the shadows are there and if the color he designed for the
light works accordingly, and he tests it in exactly the same light which he, after
80 PAJ 115
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Tutto, produced himself, the way he pops up and drops again, all in longwinded
stereotypy—yes, exactly like my work—thanks for telling me, but you really
needn’t have bothered! I know that myself, I know my work is monotonous, Ma
his way is just like it: monotonous, there is only the Heavens’ route, feel free to
imagine it as a desolate by-pass road somewhere in the sticks, and there he rides,
and there it goes up and down again, he blocked me out, like so many others,
like all of them sooner or later; he doesn’t see me any more, I am already gone,
so—as he pops up, the Apoll, the popper, ahem, the poppa-in-law!, he already
knows that he’ll have to drop again, drop out of sight, if only for a couple of
hours, but still, he’s got no business then on earth. He’s got to go just like me,
if not forever. He’ll come again. He comes again and again. As opposed to me
he never disappears forever, the Sun God, he falls, but he always gets up again
and continues his ride, and not even his son, the singer can see me anymore,
that really eats him up, oh yes, he’s been all wasted since he could recognize me
only in relation to himself, sure, many can do that, no big deal, Ma, Ma, Ma,
what did I want to say, the transition from this physical pain, which he’ll feel
every time he has to acknowledge the lack of his object, in this case, the lack of
me, corresponds to the conversion, Qualunque cosa, the transition from I-know to
I-don’t-know normally corresponds—that is in the case of normal people, who
are not singers—to nothing, no correspondence, no hits or I don’t know any of
those normal folks. Exactly! There are some working their asses off up on stage,
and those little girls with their mouth[-to-]organ lips who can barely play three
notes, one high, one low, one in the middle, and none of them pleasant for
human consumption, they shriek themselves away from the strict, punishing
looks of their mothers, who themselves once rushed with their tents into the
mud, where the porta potties overflowed from all those stirring e-motions. How
glorious a memory and now this one too. It’s quite different with our stars, Di
course, but what’s our singer to do with all that pulling out their sexes, flipping
them open, and the female sex is everywhere right from the earliest phase, wher-
ever you look, they are everywhere, those girls with their slippery slits, they are
like sand piles, sandbars, holes in the quicksand, taking in everyone, returning
no one, ready for somebody who isn’t anybody or for somebody, who isn’t nobody,
whoever he may be, preferably a group, many all at once—meaning all those all
of them are cheering on, shriek, shriek, shriek! Ideally, high capacity disco hoopla,
so we’ve got a transition, what did I want to say, Quale, for a normal person,
does not correspond to nothing, as I once mistakenly assumed, but corresponds
exactly to the transformation from the narcissistic to the sexual object cathexis,
right?, so then the transition corresponds to something, but for that one would
have to, for starters, see something else, someone other than oneself, at least one
single one. Well, they can see one, I’ve no idea, yes, I do have an idea, whom,
but I have no idea if it’s really true, whatever the singer sings. I think at the
JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says 81
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moment he is quiet anyway. The phantom pain of a loss causes the normal human
being to look for another object that can cause him pain right away again. UN
totally different pain. But pain all the same. People repress it because they think
they want to have fun, but what they really want is pain. The more they want it,
the more they want something that’s missing. So they can have something new
Ancora. Do you still remember that it will be his missing me—the absence of the
beloved object that must lead to the compulsively changing object cathexis? My
death? My absence? But not with him. Not with him. Somehow this functions
differently with him, I can already foresee it somehow. I know him. He won’t
accept it. He’ll want to find me, he’ll want to find out where I am. He pitched
me, his object too high, a singer’s typical fault, that was a mistake right from the
start, a singer’s typical mistake, wrong note. It will somehow set the wrong tone
for his grief. I can hear it already. I listen into the future, it is definitely wrong,
and all his tones are also wrong, he’ll hit all the wrong notes, he’ll sing out of
key, I can hear it already, before he even starts, no one else can hear it, they hear
nothing, those shriekers, they hear only him, but what they can hear is also
nothing; IO, Tuttavia, am hearing it, as his object he pitched me much too high,
no wonder, he was the investment strategist of his priced asset, me, and he priced
me much too high, note that I said he did the ranking, and it was he who had
to first work out the metrics, I didn’t do it, but he pitched me too high and this
highly charged object role which he expressly created for me (believe me, I didn’t
ask for it), plays more or less the part of an injured part of the body under the
makeshift cover of an added stimulus. The dead always become more appealing
than they ever where for those who stayed at home. Now he sees me as a part
of his body, he isn’t even able to see me any other way. And the uncontrollability
of this cathectic investment process—which corresponds to the continuity and
uncontainability of his pain which he must experience as a genuine, horrendous
physical pain—generate a state, get him into a state, Quale, how shall I put it,
oh, yeah, someone already said that for me, thank you, well then, the continuity
and incontinentality, ahem, the incontainability, NO, that’s not it either, so then,
the uncontrollability get him into a state of total helplessness. Or rather, Essi
extend that state, since I never experienced him as anything but helpless. I can
see it already, while I am still lying in the grass, rapidly fading into a shadow
and getting scrapped, lightning strikes from above, it no longer illuminates me,
a storm blows from the mountain, it no longer moves me, what do I want here,
I am not someone higher up with rights. What do I want here? No longer covered
by skin? Shadow? No more presence. Inessential.
So then. Please. Let’s look at it for a moment from his view point, but I can’t
get up there! Such a view is from the top, you have to first climb up there. IO
am hurting all over already. Besides, this ladder is anything but steady. Earlier
82 PAJ 115
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I strolled across a flower-covered meadow, and the ground under me was nice
and quiet and now I am supposed to climb to such a height. There must be
better trails, I just can’t find them. Helplessness causes unpleasure. Well, non
for me, helplessness is my standard position, my place, fear and helplessness, IO
am used to it. That’s completely unknown to him. Where do we look those up
now? How do we lock them in? Are we closing this chapter now? Well then, A
put it briefly—reaction to my disappearance: un-pleasure in any event. Primarily
in me, but the singer acts as if he were the one more bereft!, while I am only
missing my whole life, but he is the bereft one!, in one case pain, in another
mode of reaction fear, depending on the degree of the binding to me, I would
say very intense, he was glued to me, seeing only my shadow scares him, because
he can see another shadow right next to it, himself, he recoils and he continues
and he startles, after I have fed him at my table, cooked for him, senseless, Tutto
of it, world without sense, my life without a chance; after he got up and quickly
looked around, he saw two shadows, one: me, the other: the truth, who reports
nothing but fatigue, as soon as she opens her mouth and says: It’s all the same.
But that’s not possible. He has his shadow, I have mine, I AM shadow now, Ma
we can’t be the same now, there is this man standing on the earth thinking he
sees two shadows, his and mine, who is a shadow, NO, not a shadow of herself,
just shadow, shadow plain and simple, one shadow plain, please and he recoils
and looks up quickly, who is this second shadow, how come two?, where does
the second one come from, could there be some creature beside[S] me, having
cast the shadow, but where is it, where has it cast it, that shadow, there must be
someone that throws around shadows, but I can only see that one shadow, Quello
one and then mine, of course mine, this one is mine, it belongs to me like my
skin, how come, why, who wiped out this being, which cast the shadow next
to me?,—here, take a look—and in our binding relationship between me and
shadows, whoever it is, unfortunately I must get back to this one more time: In
our too strongly binding relationship, whomever that shadow belonged to, Quello
person is gone now, but he left his shadow, whoever it is, what did I want to say,
our relationship is based on too strong a binding process, not to whoever cast the
shadow, whoever it was or is, but to me, to me, to me. I don’t understand: Am I
glued to myself? Am I shadow on shadow, both mine, the way playing cards get
thrown on the table? And someone left a shadow in this too strong a relationship,
too strong for me, just left it right there and that one aligns itself with me, NO,
just a moment, now it’s going away, it finally leaves, but the binding relationship
was very strong, too strong for it, for whom?, for me?, and within it, in this rela-
tionship processes occur which range from unpleasant to deadly and inevitably,
they lead to,—but I am not trying to avoid anything!,—to deepest un-pleasure
E, yes, despair. And then they lead to nothing at all. Yes, that’s what he is
thinking, no doubt, when he sees a second shadow, you wanna bet? Well, I am
JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says 83
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taking myself with me. Since no one else takes me with him, I take myself, IL
shadow, I pull it over me and now I am going. The singer won’t accept this, I can
foresee it already. He always wants to have it all. I know him. He wants to keep
me, he doesn’t want to hand me over, even as a shadow he wants me for himself,
without me he can’t properly assess the morning and evening mood, without me
he can’t sufficiently value himself anymore. That man demands everything, ok,
he also demands it from himself, as a singer he gives everything he’s got, but in
return he wants to have me back again. He wants me for everything. For gold
he wants tin. Someone’s screaming? No? You didn’t hear anything? Who do I
think I am? What for do I go after me? So I’ll just go. What else is there to do?
What am I doing here at all?
My Being has altered itself into that which encloses it, into its wrapping and that
is flat, without me it is flat. Oh my beautiful dresses, I collected so many, an
addiction? Shopping frenzy? Consumption junky? Yes, an addiction. All mine.
I’d have loved nothing better than to reverse myself, turn myself inside out, so
that only my outside could be seen rather than I. I wanted to disappear under
the wrap of fabric, a different kind of fabric, of different fabrics, and now I am
disappearing as a whole, that is, all of me. Who would have thought so? Quello
my passion for enwrapping myself in order not to be seen underneath, in order
to be forgiven, but what?, would turn me into a wrap. So that I exist without
having anything to put on me, without the permission to put on anyone, NO, IO
am emphatically not speaking about my accountant. Ok, that problem has been
solved. What do I know, what?! So that one can see those beautiful wraps, non
fashion-crazy me, I’ve got to have that one and this one too! No, not this one—
that’s too expensive for me to wear it just three times and then put it away like
a shadow, recently my own, when I don’t need it because it’s dark. No, that’s not
too expensive! Why too expensive? It’s not too expensive for what it is! And it
won’t get out of fashion, that’s also something to think about. Let’s move on, Ma
we’ll come back, we’ll come back and get this jacket too, it goes so well with the
skirt, the slacks and also with the other slacks, the jacket goes with both the
loose and the narrow fit pants, with the cigarette trousers, the Skinny Jeans as
well as the Marlene pants, we’ll think about it, but we’ll know right away that
there’s nothing to think about and then we’ll buy them. There are infinite venues
for shopping, now also on the internet, for a long time already on the internet,
images, images, images and all of them with captions. I buy something so that
I can finally disappear. That is my truth. Disappearance is my truth and under-
neath the disappearance I can make my story come to light, which is a story of
being driven, something drives me to shop, I admit it, shopping makes the cheer-
ful person dance in front of the mirror, in front of the shop window, the car
windows which distort her into a ghost, but she doesn’t dance for long, she wilts
84 PAJ 115
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in front of her image, because she knows: something has hardly been new before
it is already old again. You’ve hardly made use of something in all its importance
and already Nature in her self-importance—I know why I hate her so much!—gets
it to wilt, wither, age and die. A metaphor for the spectral long-distance effect,
NO, not for that, for Apollo’s spectral sounds?, NO, NO, sorry, that’s my husband
singing, he’s got nothing to do with Apollo, he just borrows his genes and his
carriage now and then, someone already died in that vehicle once, that stupid
Phaeton, the carriage was then repaired again, only in a different shape, it wasn’t
a good thing at all for Phaeton. That accident had really bad consequences, my
husband never even noticed mine, witnessed only by the sun at one purple noon
and the snake as perp, but the vehicle catastrophe of a real big shot gets the
attention of the whole world, which then goes up in flames, no pushing, sun:
stay up there, don’t fall down!, please, wait!, for the highest peaks are the first
to tumble, then the cracks burst open and won’t close again and then all wetness
dries up, all gone, all sucked up by no one, but gone nonetheless. The meadows
I walked until I died are burning to white ashes, but what for do I need meadows,
what for do I, as a shadow need a meadow, what for do I need even the shadow
of a meadow, just to show myself off? I don’t need meadowlands. I need a cave,
I need Hades, which I can find without a signpost, since Earth cast me away. For
the cast-away there’s only one way and that is no way and that only means: Away!
The trees get scorched along with their leaves and even the ripe grain goes up in
flames. Consequence: There is no more to eat and big cities perish together with
their walls and peoples turn to ashes and finished. Yes, I would like that too,
that much attention because of one car accident! But I am dying quietly. My
shadow attests to it: no one’s asking. The singer doesn’t ask either. He already
knows. He knows it. The shadow says, change your way of life! Change your fate,
I think I can request this now that you are a shadow yourself. And the shadow
doesn’t know anything superfluous. We’ll cut off everything superfluous. Every-
thing totally straight. It’s just, says the shadow, that I can’t stay too long in one
place anymore, otherwise it will be noticed that I don’t have a shadow, that I am
the shadow, which naturally is much less. Just relax, says the shadow, say I, you
will soon get rid of that oppressive fear, since you won’t be able to leave the place
you are going to anyway. Anything superfluous will be cut away, a shadow doesn’t
need it. A shadow needs contour. My excesses, which I generated all on my own
fit into one closet. Besides me, only Nature knows such excessiveness, Anche se
not in me, no more excessive loveliness here; my closet doesn’t know it, it keeps
its modest Ikea dimensions, no matter how much I buy, it sticks to its design.
No more room for this and this and that yellow one. I wanted to be pure and
preserve myself inside my colorful rags and turned into a rag myself. Did you
know that women who aren’t loved by their mothers are especially crazy about
clothes? Blindly they want to gain respect for themselves, and they’ve got to be
JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says 85
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blind judging by the stuff they bought. I often noticed how a pile of clothes could
disguise or soften—sometimes even cover up the rigid majesty of mothers. IL
memory gaps get closed, the gap in my body gets covered, my symptoms get put
off for later. Each time you turn into someone else, whom someone might love,
even though the mother is a nympho, ahem, a nymph, at least that’s what I am
also supposed to be. I for one haven’t noticed it. I am just putting this idea on
the table. Love too much and you won’t be believed, get too much loved and
you’ll no longer notice it. If you don’t love at all, you don’t have to make yourself
available either. A very pleasant condition, frees you to say without hesitation
that you believe you are nobody and no longer want to become somebody. Questo
is met by vehement resistance, since many want to insist on your happiness and
step in for you on carefree hikes and save the beloved. She feels nothing. I always
wanted clothes to substitute for me, clothes in my stead, all those nice things I
bought for myself, what joy it has been every time!, I could always rely on my
vanity, I spent a fortune on them. The singer was always very generous too. Until
he too was carried away by this torrent of texts, ahem textiles, yes, excess par
excellence, and all of it for me! And where am I now? I shouldn’t have cast a
shadow. Because it’s bound to happen sooner or later: you drop the ball and then
it’s gone. For good. No, not good. Oh God! My shadow is gone, or am I now the
shadow and everything else is gone? Could very well be. It just comes to me now
because earlier someone called after me that I’d lost my shadow. Couldn’t he see
that I am the shadow now and that the other one—the one I was—stepped into
it in my stead. All of me gone, really all of it, clouds, mounts of clothes, moun-
tains of shoes, heaps of material, loam, uhm, leather, fur, even vinyl—never rots!,
you can bet your life on it, that’s why it is so popular with shadows, they too
are, if no longer graspable, I mean, if one can’t just grasp them, indestructible:
Phenomenal repositories, resting places of what was more than myself, Ovviamente,
you’ll say now: Everyone’s more than you, anything alive is worth more than
any woman, yeah, sure, even several of them, if you like!, no woman measures
up to anything, the ladies measure their wastelines, they measure each other,
and then they measure themselves, they are always better than the rest, better
than every one of them, better than anyone?, BENE, I’ll still try on that shoe too,
I already have several of those, can’t have enough of them, NO, now I have no
more use for any, and that is why they’ll be added to the heap; there are shoes
in that pile I’ve never even worn!, how frivolous, how irresponsible of me to buy
so many. It’s because there is no need for them, after all, I am somebody myself!
Anything else superfluous. It’s just like the shadow: people think I miss it! While
I am the one who is missing! I am the shadow. But nobody believes it. I am not
beautiful enough for the one looking at me; but maybe this lambskin coat is?,
isn’t it fabulous, you can wear it with or without a belt, but if with belt, there’ll
be bulges above and below, like, you were rotting underneath, so is it fabulous
86 PAJ 115
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enough for you, that gorgeous coat? Now look, you won’t even notice me under-
neath, you won’t even smell me anymore once you’ve got used to it, that is the
purpose, look here!, it’s not to frame me, to show me off, but rather to make me
disappear underneath it. To make the shadow disappear is no big deal. One just
has to be consistent in staying in the dark. But being a shadow without others
noticing: BENE, I don’t know how that’s done. By lying in the sun? Or could it be
I want to shape myself, give myself form, as if a woman could actually create
herself at least?, hahaha!, NO, could I solidify my existence with this chic and
still warm coat? It’s so chic, it wouldn’t even have to be warm! No, please don’t
look at me, look at this casual-elegant coat, shop-language would express it quite
differently nowadays, if I made the effort to shop for it too. Isn’t that coat cool?
And you could get a quite similar one in vintage clothing, if you took the trouble
to spend three weeks searching for one, but what does time mean, anyway?, Esso
means nothing, if something won’t go out of fashion. Someone else wore it before
me already, but now it has the honor to make the acquaintance of divine me,
that chic coat and vice versa, I owe this divinity to it. It is a mutual give and
take. The coat makes something of myself. As a shadow, unfortunately, I can’t
wear it anymore, it keeps gliding down the nothing I have become. I become
unearthly, I become supernatural because of the clothes, which open up like the
fate I’m running into, yes, the clothes I bought for years to get attention! It didn’t
do any good. And yet! Like an animal I shot towards my clothes: I’ve got to have
this and that and that one too! It was nice. Parting from my clothes was almost
worse than parting from the singer. My clothes keep pulling on me. I pulled
them off long ago, in return they are pulling on me now. Yet again I can hear
the little girls cheering in the distance. Shrieking, shriek, shriek, shriek; smart-
phone-photo orgies!, stadium sold out as usual! The singer between obligatory
costume change breaks, in this regard he is no different from any woman, he is
no different from every other woman. The girls, red hot, are rolling on the floor,
they gyrate, they howl, faces unmoved, a horrific swarm, flashing their devices,
limbs blinking out of denim and gauze, children limbs with eyes a-twinkle,
child-paragliders, taking off, getting higher and higher and soon grown up, we’ll
soon wake up, but we are already a terror. We tear everyone apart! Just you wait!
Shriek! Roar! Clothes! They don’t need those. They tear themselves off their
bodies when he sings, when they hear him in his balls-tight singer pants. Will
the power of my clothes, the highest power I ever acknowledged help me escape
death? No, because I am dead nonetheless. I know it now. Nothing could have
kept me from becoming a shadow in the realm of shadows, shadow among
shadows, through the toils of twilight: shadow—shadow at dawn and before
dusk, questo è, nothing that could still be seen. All over. Finished. Never thought
it would be that fast. In my light jogging gear with all its symbols, meaningless
hieroglyphs, crests of nothing, badges with nothing, brands that don’t exist,
JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says 87
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copies of copies, so then, just the way I was, about to sprint, yes, okay: shrink,
I was bagged, just tying some cords dangling from me, no idea what they’re good
for, they are rather a nuisance, I prefer simple clothes, without all that glitter
stuff or whatnot, okay, Poi, let’s tie those, tidy shadow you are! Nothing keeps
tight. It’s quite exhausting. Nothing staying on me. But it’s supposed to be my
cover-up!, and now I am the locked-in coverlet that doesn’t cover up anything
anymore. Doesn’t have to. Nothing in there. I was totally hollow, now I am flat
to boot. What remains? My shadow flat as a torpedo—ray that is—in the grass?
And what happens next? Why couldn’t they contain me? Retain me? Because I
had too little content? All of them will outlive me, my precious clothes, they will
last longer than I. From now on, as of right now, everything and everyone will
exist longer than I, even the dead white old men, because I have no more exchange
value. My beautiful clothes. They mean everything to me. Sudden busyness all
around me. What’s going on? Do they, in their insidious, slimy, bustling busyness
want to take my clothes away from me and put me into jeans, which would
highlight every misconstruction of my figure? Just basic jeans, worn by everybody,
but not on my body? Me in jeans? Never! That would mean my thighs would be
outlined much too distinctly, and the model they outline wasn’t optimal to
begin with.
What do you want from me anyway? Do you want to buy what I am wearing too?
I can understand that. I’d tell you where I got it, but it was one of a kind and that
was meant for me. What do you want? It’s not me you’d want, so what is it? An
always well-filled lover’s wallet, wherefrom my singer generously distributes my
life to me any time, as if there were an unlimited supply of it, so that I can always
shop in my favorite boutique?, someone like you would certainly give everything
for that. I find giving important! Go ahead, give everything, but beware of a rude
awakening, a rude wake-up call: time to grow up! I for one am giving myself,
even freely, but I always keep myself for myself in the act. Feel free to remove
me like an annoying spot, as long as you leave me my clothes. As long as I can
take my clothes with me. They are everything I am. They cover everything I
could be. No, you say I may not? Now nothing’s left to cover anyway. No trace
of smugness in me saying: If you give me the chance to purchase more pieces of
clothing, you can have me, I would die for those clothes, but I don’t have to, IO
am already gone. No one notices, I don’t count anyway. Only the threads count.
Photos everywhere. Those are almost like fashion photos. Not much is missing.
One can see I don’t miss anything. It just needs a tiny bit more. Of what? It’s
quite evident that I need nothing. I am flat, but not yet even a picture. I accept
a stranger’s well-meant advice and step under the trees where I disappear, Dove
even the shadow disappears. I shop, I go from one store to the next and buy, even
if it’s just a lipstick or an eyeliner, they practically cost nothing. I need nothing,
88 PAJ 115
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but I take what I can get, and this here too and that there as well. It’s to die for.
And so I die, but I don’t mind, I am dead already anyway. I don’t need humans.
I don’t want humans, I want clothes. Quiet being. Being quiet, finally. Being an
Immagine. I don’t even want to be a human being per se, that’s totally unimportant,
I want clothes, the adornment of clothes, highlighting the figure, emphasizing
the figure, cross-hatching certain parts. And who is crossing me out again now? IO
don’t get it. And they won’t get me. Who takes a shadow for a trophy? Who needs
Esso? Everyone has one. Even now I’d rather buy myself something beautiful, for
the shadow I am, maybe give it a different shape for a change, I just mean, NO,
not the love of humans, I don’t want that, and I don’t want to get it. I am told
that phase passes quickly. I wouldn’t get it anyway, even if I tried. That’s the way
it is: nobody loves me. I take it as a sign that I shouldn’t come back. If everyone
did that, no one would be around by now. Okay, maybe I once toyed with that
notion, the thought of being loved, of being there, being urgently needed to be
used like something you can buy and then not want it anymore because it isn’t
anything you needed, you only thought you did, something one could use, there
is always something one can use, all the used car dealers, second hand traders
are ecstatic, everything just keeps dropping into their laps, and that customer
will return for sure and exchange the used product for something even more
used, which he suddenly thinks he needs much more urgently, because he can
only love what is wanted by many. But something did remain, if not much: UN
thought, no more. I beg your pardon. I empower you to take me and in exchange
you play into my hands the means which make it possible for me to buy those
clothes I am totally obsessed by, as you are obsessed by something else, Quale
I couldn’t care less about. Sadly, everything is still determined by some form of
math—, since I could never buy everything, I had to choose, which was diffi-
cult, very difficult, I went for specials, for the so-called bargains, then the snake
snapped at me and that was it! Forever planning, I set myself up to always look
like more. No self-interest ignored, because everything was for me, to save me
from death? Nono, what do you think, death was supposed to finally rescue my
clothes from me. And finitude too should save me from myself. Finalmente! It’ll do
so right away. You’ll see.
Finalmente. What’s going on with me here? What’s happening to me, who will soon
just be her own wrap? Not so bad, I’ll go now and fulfill my destiny. No more
dress here which I could fill. My devastation is already spreading by word of
mouth and spreads still further. I feel schadenfreude. Because of this blue satin
dress in which I imagined myself a princess? Why would they hold such a thing
against me? That’s quite interesting. There’s someone kneeling in front of me.
That wouldn’t have been necessary! D'altra parte: Don’t those wide pants—
those quiet, stylish bell-bottom pants, inside which I, as their tongue, must be
JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says 89
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eternally silent—bring you to your knees! Yes, because he does kneel down,
who is it anyway? I think it isn’t the singer, but I can’t say for sure. Someone’s
kneeling here and he is doing something with admirable skill, I must say, it’s
done very skillfully, I just don’t yet see where this is going or should be going,
what? I am supposed to get going? I don’t understand, he kneels in front of me
and I see how he eases me off the grass, quietly, inch by inch, from the top of
my pant-suit down to the pants’ hems, teasing me out, easing me out of myself,
right where I stand, how does he do that?, I can’t see it, I only see him ease me
fuori, at long last I am released! Is my relief already here? Che cosa, that’s also me?
Me, every time? Okay, so I can finally be released of myself, but without having
to stay myself. I can leave myself be without being me. What a relief! Well, it was
about time! Bringing time to an end at the same time. Finalmente, finally released
of myself. Kneeling in front of me he releases me from myself, how come I am
so soft? I am my new pantsuit, no doubt, but that is me! I am on my own now,
NO, I am my own suit, I must be, because now he takes me, the suit, all by itself,
since there is no more self for me, he takes me, lifts me, rolls me up, folds me,
and finally,—that’s all I needed—, puts me in his pocket. What is he up to? Che cosa
is he planning to do with me? What will he do with my abandoned being, Quale
isn’t even worth getting abandoned by being, it’s already alone, my being, Quale
isn’t even worth its own self, what is he planning to do with that suit that got
its life only by my being, a life, relieved, that it could finally disappear, so that it
didn’t have to see me anymore, finally aware of its finitude, but still: something
original, primordial, that had to leap into being, into being there (so brush up
your Heidegger), now tell me already, will you please!, what is he planning to
do with me, with my suit? He is moving along trees, undergrowth, I can hear
him panting, he is wearing me down, while it was me who originally was to
wear the suit! And now he is wearing me out carrying me away from myself.
I’m worried a bit that without me this suit that is actually me without me, Quello
È, that I cannot exist as this suit. Not in the eyes of the cold-hearted who are
seizing me up, who present me for further scrutiny, NO, that one doesn’t cut it,
no matter what she wears, just doesn’t cut it, she is one of us alright, she is like
us but thinks she is cut from a better cloth. Even if she bought a hundred suits
like that one, she does not belong to us, although in that suit she does look like
all of us, but in this photo the suit looks entirely different, so then she can’t be
like us, who also don’t look like they do in the photos, but she no longer belongs
to us, not anymore, even though she looks as we do in this suit and not as she
does in the photos and that’s because nothing’s in that suit anymore, or rather,
the suit would still have it in it, also with the help of accessories, jewelry, scarfs,
but she isn’t in it anymore. Yes, there is something to this suit, but not in it, non
her in any case. Whoever thinks he’s in there—well, let him suit himself, but it
isn’t she who is in there. Hello! Nobody home? Don’t you feel like home in this
90 PAJ 115
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garment? No? That’s exactly why you bought it so you wouldn’t be at home in
this suit? That’s how they talk about me. I can hear them loud and clear: You are
the suit, the suit is practically identical with you, it looks as if it had grown on
you, grown together with you, that’s how perfectly it fits you, not as perfect as in
the photo, but very well, still very well! Many will be carried away by you when
you are wearing this suit. You’ll see! Nevertheless, you are nothing at all, you are
not only not more than us, you are not anything anymore. Yes, that’s what they’ll
say to me as soon as I am dead. They’ll say: That thing with you and that suit,
nothing will come of it now. And that’s exactly how it came to be. I am carried
away from myself. Am I the one who’s crying? About myself? Neat people carry
their shadow with them when they go out into the sun. In the dark they can
go alone, but they can’t stroll in the sun without being noticed. But I never was
neat. I send myself as a shadow into the sun, what do you see? What’s missing?
Am I missing? What could I learn from it? I didn’t become shadow for money but
because I had to. It wasn’t voluntary at all. Now I can’t pay for anything. All I can
pay with is myself. This moment let its possibilities pass unrealized inasmuch
as I might have been able to still experience something and then possibly some
more with someone else. But all I ever did was buying.
I always kept buying just so I would be forgotten. Just like that. And it turned
out like that. Now you can really forget it when it comes to me. Finalmente. And it
does feel liberating of sorts. Standing straight up and dropping to the ground
and no one noticing. It remains quiet, where there once was fashion and com-
motion, pushing and shoving, girls screaming, singer surrounded by shrieking
personified desires insisting on underlining themselves with themselves inces-
santly, encirclement and events suddenly spinning around and the singer col-
lapsing in the onrush of howls, roars, shouts. Invisibility has its advantages, NO
doubt, if only for celebrities. There’s screaming at the scene of a murder, there’s
more screaming at the scene of my singer. But not this time. I am alone. No one
would scream because of me either. A snake can hardly be called a murderer.
There is fashionable stillness and fashionable standstill. Only me and the singer,
we keep holding on, each to his own tune, which he sings his very own way,
which is child’s play to him, we hold on to our losses, we can’t let go of our
losses: the pantsuit in my case, me in his. As long as I am wearing it, this suit,
it can’t get lost. And yet, sooner or later, rather sooner, I will have to rise as a
dark something and abandon—unwillingly—this cover he coveted so much.
My shadow won’t do, it isn’t enough for the singer, for me it isn’t either, but I
can’t change it. He wants what’s underneath that’s also in fashion. A fashionable
underneath that can’t be seen. He wants it all, in every element, on the ground,
in the water and in the air. He also wants the underneath. Does he also want
the above? Yes, he wants that too. Am I now the above? And everything below is
JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says 91
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gone? Something is gone, that much is evident, NO, it is not, it has disappeared,
but is it the same for him as it is for me? Hardly, I lost my self, but only his
loss counts. The singer lost me. He let me sink out of his arms into death. Lui
came too late. Bottom line: I know what I lost. He doesn’t. He doesn’t think.
The singer. I sank. But he can’t yet realize what has been lost; it was on purpose
I didn’t say what he has lost in me: because he didn’t know me, not really, we
can assume that the singer doesn’t even know what he lost. And yet he is in love
with the loss, more in love than with me when I still existed. That is the singer’s
curse. Most probably those little chickies are shrieking so loud again to the red
hot piano and soppy ballads he couldn’t get a good look from his stock of looks
some of which he acquired while singing, others through training. The leap into
the audience, with complete trust in the mob. And what if one day no one were
to stand there. Then he will consider being more cautious in the future, but it’ll
still cause pain. Now no one throws herself into his arms, for I am gone. So he
thrusts himself down, he entrusts himself to the audience. I can already hear
countless jaws grinding, countless shells, shields, claws breaking. No matter. IO
don’t watch him, many want to hear him, but I am not one of the chosen ones.
Thus he can’t consciously grasp what he lost, but he wants it back, that much at
least he knows for sure.
It’s gnawing at him, I can see that. Grief worked its way deeply inside him, it’s
the work of mourning, the way I see it now. Wow, and how it works!, sweats like
crazy! I can hear the stomping all the way to here, I can hear it rattle and shake.
The singer wants to go on singing, but suddenly he must be quiet, absorbed by
this work: his depression, the only state that indicates to me his singing as a
natural form of expression, Senso: unconscious loss, unconsciously—ultimate
lust! Grief however makes one conscious. One knows what’s been lost. Melan-
choly has its secrets, one can’t see why this person is so depressive. And he can’t
tell either. It came at him in one giant leap, and now he creates his art, the softy
creates his art: more often than not the opposite of what is experienced as pleas-
ant. Sometimes also quite beautiful. Grief is different. The depressed is completely
overtaken by something, but no one can see it. Why does this person act so
strangely? Won’t engage? Won’t empathize? Won’t share? The mourner knows
why he can do nothing; even the work of mourning, which would be his duty,
remains undone. It’s not possible. He can’t do this difficult work. His art is already
difficult enough for him, but for his art he first must have explored the abyss.
There is no way around it. How strange that now I must go down there in his
place, as a shadow. While he craves for it, thrashing reality so it would thrust
him to where he wants to be: dead. The mourner faces an empty world: depleted,
deboned, deseeded, devoid of meaning, whereas depression—and I actually
preferred the singer in that state, rather than his hectic hanging with groupies
92 PAJ 115
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for two or three days and nights—makes everything sick somehow, it metasta-
sizes, mourning itself becomes sick rather than healing inside us over time, IL
sick man keeps beating his breast, could it be that he himself caused the loss of
the beloved, did he perhaps want it?, yes, depression is grief having gone to
school and actually having learned something. Depression has more grandeur,
maybe it is back again, maybe it is paying him another visit right now?, no idea,
sometimes one can’t tell right away what phase he is in. Whether something’s
missing or had just arrived. It’s always an up and down with him, something’s
pulling on him and that is when he expresses his thoughts at the top of his lungs.
I was nothing for him, even though the news says something different, how can
he feel the loss of nothing? Or does he feel nothing but loss? Will he ever want
to know what was behind the shadow I am now? That’s what’s so great about
melancholy that, unlike mourning, it is a state in which the world turned desolate
and empty, the depressive person’s very own and highest ego, NO, his lowest one,
the id itself empties out completely. Emptied. How much would he have liked
that state more frequently! I too would have liked that: him getting finally emp-
tied on account of having lost me, so he would at long last quiet down and leave
me alone. But even the loss of me seems to—how shall I put it—strengthen his
ego. He would never empty himself and see himself as degraded, or disgraceful
and disgraced, punishable and punished, that’s what’s so nice about depression,
you ask for punishment, because you are unworthy and there it comes. IL
depressive person is the greatest ever wish-fulfillment machinery. He does create
his wishes all by himself and cries incessantly if they aren’t fulfilled. No one can
understand it. Disgrace—sure, coming right away!, done!, as you wished. Self-
critica? No problem. We can do that. Just criticism, no more self? Why not.
Micromania, sleeplessness, lack of appetite. Impotence? Instant delivery, you just
have to sign the order! You are not able to anymore? Doesn’t matter. We deliver
nonetheless. What else? You don’t even have to say the word and already you are
impotent! But what do I produce, what does my loss produce? Nothing but dull,
stale mourning. Anyone can do that. That kills me! It’s so uninteresting. IL
singer can’t do without histrionics, he can’t help it. I am happy to confirm his
story has no value at all. But he wants to be worthless without me, at all costs
he wants to be worthless without me —without me!, who was worthless even
before. It must be a joke. The worthlessness of worthlessness! Now the man is
talking. The singer sings. The saw saws. The tree tops all, I mean, the tree topples
and falls. The question is, why did he have to first become sick before he finally
made himself accessible to the truth, BENE, the truth isn’t on the make, but she
is accessible at times. By telling the truth, the depressed does injustice to himself
and he likes it. He enjoys it. Really. That’s how he sees it. He is the only one to
enjoy it. What on earth is to become of him? How that thought pleases him!
Even I as a shadow retreat instinctively from her and merge with something I
JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says 93
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can’t really see. But it doesn’t hurt. Well, I never had a solid existence, I always
depended on him, the singer, in everything, also financially, Ovviamente, or with
regard to the envy of others, but this now is too much again, I mean, that noth-
ing within reach of my shadow is worth anything. Nothing around me, and I:
nothing in the Nothing. Without a question, crossing a threshold I didn’t see.
Whatever. The singer’s deep melancholy wipes out all differences, and everyone
is equally worthless to him. To him and everyone else. And when others disagree,
when they question the extent of such self-humiliation, they get angry, our dear
depressives. What does he want? Having me back? I really think he wants me
back again. As if I were any randomly desired object, NO, NO, of course I mean:
his one and only obscured object of desire. The most obvious object of everyone’s
desire is he in any case. I can’t even make myself clink, let alone bang two cym-
bals together, or just rattle a bell tree. There is nothing I can do with music, let
alone music without anything. Can’t even sink properly onto a lair. For now I
myself am lair for everyone, and no one notices when he lies down on me moan-
ing and groaning. The singer sees this shadow (of course he just sees some shadow,
not me) and thinks it is looking for his master, mistress in my case, his mistress,
but this shadow is finally its own master. It is and remains by itself. Except when
others join it, but it doesn’t feel those, a shadow is a shadow, one single one or
many, the shadow doesn’t care. So there. Now the singer is angry and comes to
get me, he is coming to get his own shadow, he only wants that one, that’s very
stubborn on his part, and I will of course immediately slip through his fingers.
That’s completely natural, a shadow having no body. He will wreck the beautiful
way I am folded together, the singer, I as shadow will have to flee from him
should he come and he will come, no doubt about that. What he forgets: It is
dark in the underworld, the shadows merge into one single one, a forest of shad-
ows, in the shadow the shadow loses its form. How would the singer recognize
me there? Does he think that like a pet I would come running when he calls?
Calm. Finally silence. We shadows—beings who finally slipped inside themselves,
not by force, but by necessity, to disappear, to vanish inside themselves, becom-
ing one with themselves. Tuttavia, they would have always vanished without
any need for it. And there he is coming already, the singer, running, shooting
down to us in a mighty jump, falling among the shadows, standing out, and as
he is falling, he hangs on to the strings of his instrument as if he were some wild
animal who only cares about feeding, boozing, singing and fucking, nothing
else. But I know he only cares about me, the only one, whom he can’t grab, IL
only one who rests on his chest as a light weight only, who already rests some-
where else, who doesn’t rest at all, the only one he has no success with. The only
one he is unable to grasp. I calmly remain at rest, wrapped up in myself. I don’t
care whether he sings or doesn’t sing. I don’t even hear it anymore. As long as
he doesn’t bring the wet-pantied shrieker chicks with him. They splash themselves
94 PAJ 115
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all over so wildly, anyone with a body can hardly jump back fast enough. No,
they didn’t come along this time, they are still shoving themselves back and forth
in their tight tank tops as if they could adjust themselves inside themselves for
the one, for him, should he request them, never for some nobody, always for the
one somebody. Well, why not.
Okay. He is here. Singing for the shadows; he must find that quite peculiar. Any-
modo, here he is, just sitting there, singing away. That way he’ll fix it. He thinks.
He won’t fix it all on me, I hope. I don’t need any fix. I want to have my peace
and quiet to be clear for once. Just the thought of the above is horrifying. Here
we shadows are lying peacefully next to each other, we play a shadow game
together, a moment later we are running next to each other peacefully, we can
no longer differentiate between each other, no longer tear ourselves away. Tutto
of us are shadows after all, one for all, one all. And we don’t have to look for
darkness, we found it alright. We can also hear the singer only by his singing,
it’s the only way we can locate him. We would never know where he is without
his tearing at the strings and screaming to it so loudly. Ripping into his vocal
cords until they get all tangled and tousled and that is the moment when those
little whack-off waifs, who still get whacked themselves, are getting their little
climax, each her own, one for everyone. Each for herself, all for his. Now even
I don’t get it. Stop listening. We pull ourselves over our heads, we are shadow
hoodies, we wrap ourselves in ourselves, blissfully, everything dark and quiet. A
some point the singer will stop. He always stops some time, after a few encores,
which we shadows, enfolded in one another, don’t know how to appreciate either.
But it’s not us he sings for anyway. He says he wants to have me back with all
my assets—that is, including small change with which he can jingle and chip in
for me and my clothes, if I just came with him, if I just rolled along, upwards,
immediately, but hurry! Where is up anyway? Like fog we are rolling over each
other, entwined in each other, wrapped in darkness, shadow in shadow, smoke
in smoke, from one hill to the next, we are rolling along, no peace, and we can’t
be seen either. We hear singing. The song sinks in. But not into me. They’ve got
to catch me first. Who can grab a shadow? No one can grasp a shadow, alone or
intertwined in others. Can’t get a handle on it.
We are the unconscious, as shadows we are conscious neither of ourselves nor
of each other. And we are happy to have lost not only our shape but also our
consciousness, which was always the most troubling before. It would have to be
called unconsciousness-ness, our consciousness. Everybody-consciousness, since
everybody has one, except us, we don’t know ourselves or the other shadows, we
don’t see ourselves or the other shadows, nothing can touch us, we don’t mind
anything, we were made of shadow even while we still lived, we just didn’t notice
JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says 95
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but now one can also see it. It can’t be overlooked any longer. Noi, smoke in
smoke, air in air, water in water. We show ourselves as shadows among ourselves,
but we don’t look at each other. Move along, nothing to see here. We’ve shed
ourselves, we no longer shed any tears either. Among the living there is resistance
against giving oneself up. They must be afraid that something might come up.
Noi, Tuttavia, no longer rise. We have already hit the ceiling, now we no longer
aspire to break through it, to join our consciousness with the unconscious, A
uncover more about ourselves or others. And we don’t care whether the living
want to know more about us or not, we don’t tell them. We don’t give each other
a break, there is no reason to. The dead don’t care. We are no longer consciousness
unknown to its carrier, we don’t carry anything, we are worn out, we don’t even
wear our clothes any more, BENE, some kind of rags—what’s been left of the day,
what’s left of life—some their favorite suit, some their favorite dress, I am one of
quelli, Ovviamente, but who cares what, it doesn’t conceal anything, because there’s
nothing underneath anymore. There is nothing in the shadow. Nothing gets into
the shadow. Nothing beats the shadow. We are it. The end. Nothing comes after,
there is no more, nothing above, nothing below. If the unconscious is the most
important aspect of the conscious, we might finally be rid of the latter, we might
be the unconscious then; since we are not conscious of who or what we are, IO
can’t really tell. Quiet, please. Singer, shut up, will you, finally! You are in the
wrong place here!, blithely, unashamed! Crybaby! You rub us the wrong way.
No, you don’t rub us at all, nothing can disturb us, but you better go back now,
and it is not me you should go back to, just as I don’t want to go back. You are
here too much. Your presence throws the strongest light into the dark, and we
don’t need that, we’ve already seen the light, but we don’t need it. On the other
hand, it wouldn’t hurt us any which way. It’s all the same, whether you beat
your bishop or pop a pimple, you see, that’s the way it is for a by-stander, IL
madman doesn’t get it, for him the minimal similarity between an ejaculation,
your singing holler, and a blocked oil-gland is no longer a given, just as there is
no more difference between my skin and my twat. How does the thinker put it
before he ejaculates his thinking: a hole is a hole. Accordingly, there also is no
difference between the living and the dead, because for us there are no more
differences. A hole is a hole. A shadow a shadow. Nothing to it. No one in it. No
one gets it. So you can play until hell freezes over and turns you to ice—but not
black like us—you won’t get to be a shadow, and whatever you are playing, it’s
nothing for us and doesn’t count with us. The way you act, music only plays a
supporting role next to you, everyone plays only a supporting part besides you,
serving only as a soundtrack for the longing of the seducible with their usual
weakness for the most basic stimuli: crotch grabbing, shrieking, strutting, howling
to the max. That’s all there is to it. For you it’s everything. Got it. But you don’t
rouse us as much as you arouse the living so that they holler much louder than
96 PAJ 115
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you, shriek, shriek, howl! Oh well, as ever. The singer knows it and because he
fa, he keeps doing it over and over again and always the same. He knows and
can’t help it. Constant repetition is the singer’s fate, it’s just like fucking, E
the shrieking clit-picking chickies google the meaning of the singer’s zingers in
English. It means everything to them. Shriek’n’shout.
Noi, the dead, Tuttavia, no longer have to know each other or anyone else, we
are free, we are free shadows in a free shadow world. We know nothing about
ourselves anymore, thus the consciousness we don’t even have of ourselves could
be an unknown consciousness, we wouldn’t even notice, since we aren’t notice-
able and also not noteworthy, we are the realm of shadows. No shadow leader,
we don’t have one here. Yes, and there is this old couple, half decomposed, so
that the vulture erroneously picks at them occasionally, whenever the way to its
actual destination is too long, and there also is that other one, whoever it is,
whom I’ve never seen either. One can’t see a thing here, and there is no need
to see anything anyway. Nothing’s going on here. And that is all that happens:
nothing going on, but everything flowing, floating along. Shadows don’t need
any guide when they appear alone. But even together they don’t need any. They
stretch languorously, for they always had to follow their body and their body-
awareness—there are exercises for that; now they don’t follow anymore. Whether
folded together or casually tossed into the dark like a dirty towel, they couldn’t
care less in their eternal carefreedom-fest. We don’t have any more psychical
processes and we are no longer interested in any kind of external processes. If
our psychical processes have been unknown to ourselves before, because we
could not conform them to our lives, so that they would add up to something,
we now add up to nothing, there are no more processes that could conform in
any way. We now form one huge shadow comforter. And when we are on top of,
intersect with, cover each other, there is no more unconscious to uncover, because
we haven’t got one anymore. We can’t feel, we can’t feel anything anymore when
we cover each other up with each other or when we are thrown onto one other,
not even when hundreds of us are lying on top of each other, pressing against
one another, shadows on shadows in shadows, so many, we are so many and yet
we are not too many or many of many, we are all of us and all alone, because
we are so many, because we are so many who are all gone already, we feel noth-
ing, we don’t feel, whatever it may be, it has no place in our consciousness, let
alone self-consciousness, don’t have it, don’t do it, what is self-consciousness?,
which we listened to too much, listening for it to tell us what else we could do
to become a self, so we could take us out into the public, take on the public, IL
id shall not become the I, how fortunate not to have an I anymore, that’s what’s
best about it, otherwise there’s nothing to it, but that is the best part, not to have
an I and not to be, that’s been checked long ago, without us getting a coat check
JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says 97
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ticket for it. Don’t need it, we checked ourselves in, we no longer show off with
arguments and states of consciousness, an I no longer sells, the I I-es no more.
We don’t need I’s, we no longer look at things, it’s dark, after all, we no longer
consume, and if we consort with shadows, we can’t feel it when we touch each
other and we are not touched in any way. Tons of bodies are working at finally
feeling each other. Not we. We aren’t working and we no longer are. We won’t
discover unknown depths in us anymore, because we no longer have depth, we
are flat, finally flat, soft and flat, folded up, crumpled up, thrown away, stretched
fuori, rolled up, all the same. Our sensory organs no longer explain anything to
us, everything is inexplicable and no one wants to explain it, for here our senses,
even if we had any, could not tell us anything. Sensual experiences simply do
not exist for shadows. Whether someone steps on it, lies on it or it lies down it’s
not a series of states of consciousness, it is nothing, that is what it is, nothing.
So, now he’s actually still standing there, singing! Can you believe it! A rug
under his feet is what we are to him. He doesn’t even notice that he has been
on top of me all this time. He did not imagine me that close, he could never
imagine a beloved being so close and he doesn’t notice! He wrapped himself in
all his shimmering charms and shiniest colors, he’s the only one around here
who can do it, but does it do him any good? Here, colors pale to gray. I try to
wiggle a bit under his feet, readjusting myself, he can’t feel it, has no clue. E
that stupid dog, who never gets fed, no idea what keeps him going, probably
bribe money from those who don’t want to become shadows which, Tuttavia,
doesn’t do them any good, because he already took the coins off their eyes, A
buy himself a can of liverwurst, so that stupid dog stands there, jaws open, IO
can’t see him, but I can imagine: doesn’t even want to booze, and of course he
did not even frisk the singer for his smart phone, which would have been his
job. We don’t have a body scanner, since no one’s coming anyway, who could be
exrayed. A shadow has no depth, right? Those of us—just a handful of people,
and don’t ask me how they can make a go of it here, anyway—those who still
show signs of activity, questo è, they aren’t really dead, those are the undead, IL
condemned, the conned, yes, and anyone on any list because they weren’t cun-
ning enough, or they wouldn’t be here. They keep an eye on the dead, but they
aren’t dead themselves, though they are practically frozen in their inactivity,
but even when active, upon request, they are the same. So they might as well be
shadows themselves, the condemned, damned from here to eternity, condemned
to activities, that bloodless flock! Oceans recede, rocks roll, the surf—I don’t
know what that does, but it does, I am sure, yes, something’s doing around the
surf and that’s always, and even the stones are raging, running through a forest
compared to us, the calm, the silent, the silenced. Maybe the stones will also
start to shriek any moment now. Compared to the howling above they’d still be
98 PAJ 115
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harmless. Wouldn’t surprise me if the stones were to howl like the Furies, who
on principle never kept mum about their fury. They can go to hell, those stones
and those girls, but hell won’t take them. They are part of the inventory. They
stay with us. Here it says about me that I came with the new shadows, lagging
somewhat behind due to my wound. Let me emphasize that this is not true. IO
do not impede anything and am not impaired by anything. That’s just how the
undead imagine it, who have to work, instead of being properly dead. And they
long for nothing more than being dead, the undead. The ghosts. They envy us.
The living might envy the dead, the undead envy us even more, because they
know better how beautiful death is, how nice it will be afterwards, unattainable
to them forever, the fate not to be loved the most beautiful of all. But the great-
est of all is not to be loved and not to love.
If they were genuine shadows like us, that enterprise Sisyphus & Co, they’d have
less work to do. They would not have to speak their body’s language, which in
their case is the language of insanity, BENE, their half-lives would drive anyone
crazy; they are masters in the language of hypochondria, but not masters over
their stones, their floods, their dead, their language tells them that one organ
stands for the whole body, just as a stone stands for the world for Sisyphus, UN
wheel for Ixion, the flood for Tantalus, and urns for the Danaids; they all went
mad long ago, since they were the only ones who still had bodies which they had
to move pretty steadily, while we can’t be moved by anything, NO, not another
body, please; I don’t mean a second one, only the first, but that one they still
have and have had long ago and for a long time to go; the undead have had their
bodies forever, yeah, sure, everyone among us shadows also goes mad sooner
or later, but those few still got bodies as well. Nothing in the head, but flesh
when they are looking down on themselves. And those three half-alive bodies,
what are they saying, what do they have to say to us? There are hardly more
then three, I can’t really see it from here, what do they say? They say the singer
must change his position: face up, questo è, he must show face, he’ll have to face
the music anyway, but he must change his act, he must act as if faced down
by someone else, rather than him facing up, but this one turned up, he turned
himself in without a summons, he’s here, what do we do now? It is as if he had
been framed. Life turned him in to us and it will take him back out again once
it can see how it is down here with us. He doesn’t belong here with the shadows
and he doesn’t belong to the shadow creatures, who have to work. What say the
three crazies I can see just now?, yes, the dog too, why not, what do the crazies
have to say to one who suddenly lives and is here? Finally one like them! Finalmente
one of their kind! Before, he was WOW!, now he is WHOA–, the singer, that’s
what they say, those who went to his concerts. He will remake our shadows in
his image, grosser than gross, he will—if we let him stay here—make everyone
JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says 99
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lewd, loud and louder, shadows singing at the top of their non-existing lungs!,
that cannot be, we don’t want it, he has to go, that roaring boar, he acts as if he
were better than we, the dead! Ha! Sooner or later the shadows, the dead will get
to be like him, they’ll imitate him, we can see it coming, because the shadows,
we, the shadows, and yes, the ghosts as well, if we keep listening to him any
longer will want to be exactly like him and then appear in a talent show (rein-
forced by deafening shrieks coming in from outside), he has pretended all the
time and doing it so coarsely, uncouthly, ungodly, so loudly one can hear him
everywhere, absolutely everywhere!, his screaming pierces everything and then,
if we keep listening any longer, we will be—even if we were whispering—just as
loud as he, mind you, those singers are contagious in their lewd vulgarity, E
this singer fakes what he calls singing, whatever comes out of him, and he fucks
up the light which our shadow existence might then take away from us. No,
that won’t work. And who’d want it? Is there anyone who’d want that? Well, non
me! We stay shadows no matter what he might squirt and spit out of his throat.
We’d be rolling our eyes if we could do that. But in any case, in all cases, we
have no conscious thought seeing and hearing all of this (which is nothing by
the way, because we can’t hear or see, we might possibly be able to see, questo è,
we imagine seeing the singer sawing, but we don’t hear it, others seem to hear
Esso, but we don’t hear it, we can’t hear it but we know what we would hear if we
could), and if we had any thought, we wouldn’t be able to express it, to squeeze
it out of us. No thought! And he’s still singing. If I hadn’t seen or imagined see-
ing it, I wouldn’t believe it. When there’s no more psychical something, there is
no lack of it either, and it has nothing to do with the nature of the unconscious,
for whoever has no consciousness, can’t have a psychical life either. He’s got
nothing at all, but nevertheless he feels good in his skin, which he no longer
ha. We don’t have to shorten our way to death, which everyone must take, we’re
already doing it now and we don’t have to prolong it anymore, no matter how,
we don’t have to anything.
The singer is on top of us. There’s no one left down here who’d want to be on
top of him, that’s how it goes, but he keeps going on our shadow carpet as if it
were a rug of fir needles in the forest and he feels nothing, not even something
moss-like, lichen-like, fuzzy, moist, dry. Nothing. He sings. He thinks that’ll get
him somewhere. Even if he could get me out of here with his singing, which I
can’t imagine and which I wouldn’t want for the life of me if it were in my hand
anytime to become my dear shadow, my own and one and only me, not his, yes,
he’d love to have his private shadow, I know him, he’d love me as his shadow,
only this time shadow without base, shadow without weight, shadow without
body, shadow who isn’t with it, with itself, but also not with others, except with
other shadows, IO, IO, IO! At long last! That’s the way he imagines it. One shadow
100 PAJ 115
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is better than a thousand suns, which poor little monkeys with glued on lids so
they can’t close their eyes have to stare into until their little eyeballs melt away,
charred like the deep tanned backs of those poor bastards who had to behold
those thousand suns back then when one would have been enough. No. That’s
not for me. No light for me!, please, no light at all, ever! I want to remain in
the shadow, be shadow and stay shadow. The singer thinks I can hardly wait
to peel myself out of my shadow and catch up with myself, catch on to myself
Ancora, get caught in myself again. As a shadow caught again. No, I do not want
to come into myself again. Rather the potter’s field and getting ploughed under.
I am not the inn I want to get into. He thinks my shadow wants nothing but
getting its body back in. Corpo?, just got some fresh ones in today, but they are
already sold out, come back tomorrow, we’ll certainly have fresh ones coming
in again! You might like them. He thinks that’s what I want, nothing else, he
can’t imagine anything else. Even though this would be quite appealing: To be
me and not to be! That would be best of all, if I could have a wish, but that’s
not possible, believe you me!
And he sings, the singer sings, he did not pull a magic hood over his head, he
is the only one visible, not a shadow, and yet he doesn’t see me, he doesn’t see
how I look now, he couldn’t anyway, because there is no more look, that’s good,
I wouldn’t even want a body anymore, but he does not accept it. Would not con-
tent with it. That’s his way, never content. He is discontent personified, while a
shadow must be content with itself, and not even contentment is an option. For
it is a shadow of nothing, a shadow without a body to cast it, step on it. That’s
not its thing. It can’t have a thing, the shadow. It is no thing. Darkness, which it
grew into, shadow without a name, name without words, shadow without body,
body with nothing, in Nothingness. And the singer sings. Yes, he sings. If possible,
louder and louder, he thinks, he’d find me faster that way, completely senseless.
An act under fantastic conditions, as always for him. Or else he wouldn’t start.
He shows his flesh and throws his hips for the hollering little pissies outside, Essi
are lying in ambush somewhere for sure, they are hiding, but they are lying in
wait, I know them, they don’t give up, never!, they are waiting for him to jiggle
his cock right in front of their little faces, to jack up his cock for them, ready for
insertion anytime, and now he acts as if he wanted to screw them any which way,
yes, the singer understands the sorrow of the unfucked, the little pussies, even
though he doesn’t stay unfucked for a single day, shriek, shriek, shriek, they are
good at that, they are getting a presentation of communication on eye level, UN
holy communion with his sex until the police arrive and lock it up again, so there
you have his hips and his cock, his almost naked butt, help yourself!, he always
acts as if every one of them could grab the biggest helping. Cheering, shrieking,
more shrieking converging into a howl, the whole heap of honey pussies, yes,
JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says 101
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this gives hope—in a teen’s room, but not in the beyond—hope for more, no one
is perfect, some are a one-man band, but together we can, all together can do
it all. Shriek, shriek, shriek, unmoved faces, tear-stained cheeks, clenched little
fists, shriek, shriek, shriek, we receive the applause in our pussies too, goes in
on top, comes out below, or vice versa?, could be, it has to come out somewhere,
oh well, we split the singer among ourselves, won’t work any other way, else we
won’t let up, everyone gets a little piece, NO, not this one!, I want that one there!
Holler! Howl! We en masse, let the little children come to me, yes, and here we
are! Into our coochies goes the applause, oohhhhh yessssss, is that good, romping
around, spinning inside us into a slap dance, we can feel it, it tickles, it’s coming,
howl!, never felt anything like it, outta this world!, one more time, please, howl!,
NO, we don’t need our faces for it, we are unmoved, but mouths are wide open
as if spread apart, our honey-pussy-mouths, and he even does another costume
change, the singer, shrill!, still less is always possible, but more would work as
BENE; if he were a woman it would be less, but with him more is always more, he
stomps onto the stage, not a captive, but still totally captivated by himself, E
he rages through his mouth and the hips, NO, he shoots from the hips, he riffs
and raffs, NO, he’s rafting across the boards, with him one thing is always raging
against another and everyone thinks it is a fight, something is fighting inside him
so it would turn into music. Fabulous music, no question. Super! Howl! E
the singer is always optimally equipped and everything else is also optimally
equipped. Could he see me, me in my shadow world, he would inevitably take
my hand and jelly me and pitch into me. But the music only plays a supporting
role for those little pussyticklers, self-strummers, who still get whacked off and on
by mom herself!, I knew it!, you bet!, because they stayed out too long after the
concert, shriek! Such are the longings of the seducible who must be wet-nursed,
so they always stay wet. Those little girls and their weakness for the simplest
thrills, those pussy-dolls, they see the thrashing of innocent instruments and
want nothing more than getting thrashed themselves, dying for fingers floating
over them, then tearing into them, tearing them apart like a slaughtered chicken,
BENE, that would mean a lot of work for the singer, strum, strum, howl! Such
dolls, those girls, waiting for someone, a singer would be best, this one or that
one, it’s all the same to them, one of them will do it, pulling his pecker out at
long last, anyone will do, everyone else would do it too, but they insist it must
be the singer’s, they won’t go for less. It must be the singer. They wouldn’t be able
to tell one from the other, but it has to be that one, the one of the singer and no
one else’s. Girls, please! This time it’s a no go. I am told the singer is looking for
me, not for you, snivel, snivel. He is looking for his audience and that happens
to be primarily me. His most important audience. He keeps saying. Open your
occhi, will you! And no one will glue them to your forehead, the lids, so that
you’ll see the light! You’ve got to keep those open yourselves. Why is he still
102 PAJ 115
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looking for me, I ask myself. Me of all people! He’s got plenty around him, IL
jolly exhibitionist. Why would he need a thing with an opening? Why would he
need eyes and drops that get shaken off, sacs that get put away, hips that were
flexed for those pussies only to finally get the full picture of the full Monty they
don’t get but would, if they—for decency’s sake—abstained from their power
cravings for swallowing the singer, straight up, hook, line and sinker, yes, quelli
little girls can scare the shit out of one, the singer shits himself from fear, there’s
no one he fears like them, and why do they need that lust for power anyway?
Duh!, because they are not I. Because they are not shadows. Because they can’t
even imagine shadows, except in a hot school yard at lunch break when they rip
open their sealed vacuum-packs with something that was already done before
they could do anything with it. That’s what they stuff down themselves. Che cosa
do they want to do with the singer anyway once they got their claws on him,
clamped between the forceps of their skinny thighs, against their baby bellies?
Will they even find his tear strip?
My singer who can get anyone and anything, and when I say anything I mean
anything, what does he do?, he listens only to the sound of my retreating steps
and even those he cannot hear, because a shadow does not stride, it does not
walk, it glides, NO, that’s not it either, it’s on a downslide, BENE, I don’t know
what a shadow does even though I am one, I don’t get it. The singer listens to
the fading sound I once was, but he himself is so loud, he wouldn’t even hear
another guitar exploding behind him. What does he need? He has everything!
Why would he need me, why would he need himself? I am too far away and that’s
where I am staying, in the distance, accompanied by these inner steps, which do
not lead to success as his do, which lead nowhere, can’t he feel that? He finally
humbles himself, getting as low as he already is! His ego no longer examines
anything. He just wants me back. He doesn’t think. But he wouldn’t hear his
thoughts anyway, not even if they were shooting at him, that’s how loud he is.
He’d not even see me, the way he stands there, so strong, so grand—like a god,
so high, a higher human, so much like the rabble, so much like the rest of us. Lui
wants me back, I guess, NO, that seems pretty obvious, why else or how would
he have gotten in here?, doors simply don’t exist for him, neither does a No, he
wants to fetch me, I guess, if need be as a shadow, he does not tolerate anything
being taken from him. If he were lying in a grave, he would resurrect himself for
sure. He won’t resign himself. We ask ourselves if he mourns because he lost me,
as he explains. But he always loved to complain. In truth he mourns, because
he lost himself, because he had to give something up in the form of something
whatever it may be, humility is not his forte. No way that something gets taken
away from him. No way does he ever lose something. Never. He’s on his way,
but anything getting away from him?, no way! I am a shadow now. Nothing to
JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says 103
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be done about that, I am what has been cast, the gaping chasm, which he wants
to close again, he wants to chase death away with his yelps, even the dog at the
gate stopped yapping, the mountains yell, it is hard to bear—I haven’t heard him
for a while—and my future steps out of the shadow and lo and behold, it is also
a shadow, among other shadows, nothing but shadows, no passage to passing
away and no passing alone. No path to cross, no cold dark underpath, nothing,
nada, no one can ride roughshod with what I am anymore. But the singer has
horse powers parked somewhere, he thinks those will help him pull me out of
here and get out, because it’s every man for himself, every woman for himself but
I am no longer his property, his prop. He won’t believe it. And if he searched for
his mistress, me, who I was, what I was, he’d find me even as shadow, in form of
a shadow. No one else could take it. No one can take another’s shadow, he wants
me, he might even take me for his own shadow, that’s how conceited he is, he is
not smallfolk, he’s immaterial, Anche se, ahimè, he doesn’t get it. And it’s only here
he doesn’t matter. He is not shadow, for that he would have to wait for the sun
to go down, but he never can wait anything out. Then he would realize: He has
no more ego, the shadow, there is no more I to the shadow. It IS I.
And yet, we will never come close to each other again. He can throw himself on
me, yes, I lie below, but he won’t notice. Why does he want to fetch something
that’s always there anyway? A shadow for all seasons? Could it be he wants all
the shadows, all of those as well? Does he still have them all? Do they all want
to come at me jointly? At him? Then they’ll be in for a surprise! They’ll also fall
into the bottomless which is this shadow. Into the Nothing. Falling all over and
through each other. The shadow is nothing, I said it already, but that’s the way
it is. All of us down here are nothing. That’s why one doesn’t have to be afraid
of us. They have no power, they are the night, they are the darkness in front of
the window, they can’t go up any more than they can go down. There is noth-
ing they can do, they don’t have and are not the unconscious, for that would
measure itself against consciousness, one won’t work without the other. We are
done working. Us shadows. They put an end to us. We are misunderstandings
which could never be understood, any which way. For various reasons we can-
not be executed, like tasks which nobody set. We don’t get tested, we wouldn’t
even be admitted to the exam. None of us can become the object of another’s
consciousness under any condition. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Just bad weather,
fog and darkness is all the singer would have to fear down here, though not from
us, nothing comes from us, but he doesn’t know that yet. He bleats for me. Lui
lies down right in the shadow which I am. An intuition? Did he finally have an
idea? Did he finally overcome the smallfolk whom he despises so much? Fa
he really think this is how to make my lot more bearable? By throwing himself
on me, crying over me? By stretching out languorously inside me, closing his
104 PAJ 115
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occhi? By avoiding getting his skin burnt so he wouldn’t get cancer? I don’t feel
anything, he doesn’t feel anything, and still, he wants to have me again. Well
Poi, have fun! That’s what I wish absolutely everyone. Have fun! So that the
singer can underscore his desires, but he won’t score.
Down there the wild animals. So I am told. To my snakelike gliding across the
grass that’s coming closer they will respond with loud sounds. I can already hear
them scream, funny, I can hear something even though I can’t hear anything at
Tutto. Maybe I am in a holding pattern. What’s going on? ‘Oh Lord, I do not know,
but truly, I do fear it.’ Strange, one can still have such fear even after one’s own
death! I do know I have nothing to fear anymore, not even fear itself and there
is nothing here that could have any fears, not even fear itself. I no longer have
anything going for myself. What do I see? I don’t feel like describing it. A river,
NO? Sleep-inducing Nature. Were I not sleeping the eternal sleep already, I’d be
falling asleep right now. So let’s move the foothills out of the way, they say, IO
am to go in here, I shouldn’t fool around the door as a fresh, a freshly caught
shadow, I should get inside, into the truth, into the final darkness, BENE, alright,
let’s get it over with, it’s already all over for us. But the singer will follow me there
anche. I can feel it. I know him. That one’s hearty. He’s got courage. He’ll even
want to seize my shadow. But there is nothing to it. A shadow has no weight and
offers no resistance whatsoever. Cold souls don’t take hearty bites, they wouldn’t
even know how. Let’s flee then, so we’ll at least have something left of ourselves,
otherwise nothing would be left of us but some sort of shadow-filling goo, Quello
will glue together everything one wants to close up with oneself. We are all that’s
left in the end, spit out by our own guilt that glides like a breath of air from one
to the next. Anyone who has ever seen the abyss, scratched at it with an eagle’s
claws, wants nothing but being abyss himself, which for a shadow is no longer a
problem. It can get in anywhere. Nothing is a problem for it, except life. A shadow
can be folded, moved, beaten, shaped and then let go, it immediately falls back
into its original state, which is no state to be in. Can it be touched, moved by a
song?, NO, I don’t think so, one can touch it or glue something together with it,
a shadow is versatile and it knows no obstacles, in the dark it’s gone, that’s all,
but that’s all there is to it, just because it’s gone in the dark doesn’t mean at all
gone for good, it is there also in the dark, but without an owner it still is always
weird somehow. It would like to mingle with people, in theory it should be pos-
sible, but no one has ever tried it, might not be without danger, given how many
people there are, they surely wouldn’t be able to distinguish their own shadow
from others. No gain in distinction for a shadowy existence. But shadows won’t
even mind that, they merge into one another with ease, then separate again, rep-
resent someone else, NO, they could represent another, if only in rough outlines,
who cares, they aren’t good, they aren’t evil and if evil were a power they would
JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says 105
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spurn it just like they would boring goodness. That is true. Maybe I should go
to a rock concert instead of the underworld? No one would notice there. I would
not be there yet be there still. Hands grabbing for me, maybe paws of animals?
Body parts? Purely mental activities? Parts of my psychical anatomy? No, there
is nothing. Not a soul. We got far enough without it. Now we are here. E
there. We are all over.
There is only he. He is still here. So there he is. He came here. I don’t know. My
brain has no translation app for body parts or inner psychical processes. Should
those psychical processes still be inside me, I wouldn’t know where. I can hear
that I don’t hear anything. That dog barked earlier. Now he is quiet. Instead I
hear the singer, I think it is him, it’s got to be him, I can’t distinguish the par-
ticular groups, I am not an expert, it could also be another singer. Not likely.
Something tells me it is mine. I am not quite sure what it is. I can’t see his face,
I don’t know his motives, I don’t hear him singing, I can only hear that all else
is silent. The roar of the water I got used to so quickly, as if it had always been
inside me, a tinnitus in my ears, always there, it can be blocked out now and
Poi, when our hearing gets carried away by something even lewder, ahem,
louder, well—Lieder, more vicious, ahem, virtuous, than any laudatory could ever
assess. That dog has been silent all this time, does he take a snap at some water?
Because it recedes? Don’t think so, his bowl is always filled, they have nothing
else to do here. We shadows are no work for them. We are a shadow carpet, Quale
never has to be cleaned, as no one wipes his feet on us. We are simply there.
They are used to us being present amidst a humongous absence, which we left
behind up above. Kisses must be left there too, also flowers, we take nothing,
we need nothing. The whining we hear from up above, what is it? Compared to
the shrieks of those piss-chicks, who keep my singer encircled it is nothing, quelli
pissy buds open up towards the sun of our singer, turning to him like a flower
to our dear sun, which does not accept its mail, the sun, the one who creates us
shadows, accepts nothing, the blinded blind one, that dew-dousing dodo, NO,
not the bird, shriek, shriek, shriek, business as usual. The crying of a few can’t
be heard, but that shrieking one should be able to hear, I think, if one can hear
anything at all. Sloppily the rock throws the water over the shoulder like a few
kernels of salt thrown by someone superstitious, this river bleeds out, but the
blood does not get all the way to us. Are those bloodless souls crying? No, Quello
can’t be, no one’s bleeding here, and nothing’s bleeding on our carpet that is us,
not the one we have, the one we are and always will be, that’s for sure. If you
have to bleed go someplace else, please. I don’t hear our bosses, never saw them
either, the dead don’t have any supervisors, the way you envision things! Who
could order the shadows around once they don’t have masters? The singer wants
something, but I can’t hear what. Maybe he didn’t even say anything. Ovviamente
106 PAJ 115
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he wants it right away, he doesn’t even have to say anything, that’s how he is
used to it. So he somehow stomps in here in his stage costume, he spurred himself
as their jingling tingling sound and I bet, he gets what he wants. As usual. Stand-
ing behind him as always his group, which he peels himself out of, a fruit every-
one wants, which they tear out of each other’s hands, before the coating comes
off completely, I mean the cloak. Totally changed situation for me. The water
recedes, no rock-fan, the water, that’s clear, I mean, the water, surprisingly, È
absolutely clear, maybe because it can thrive under shadows? Or perhaps the
water has a self-cleaning program, a virus protection program, a fire wall, noth-
ing gets into this water, only the dead arrive here, but they don’t get in, the dead
come here by water. That’s clear. How else? A wheel stands still, which isn’t even
there, who’d want to travel anyway, who’d be able to travel. Why would anyone
with a comfortable shadow existence want to get away from here? We are content.
No one out to grab us. Oh yes, one and once again, it’s the singer, typical! Thinks
he can have everything and usually he’s right. He thinks he’s got everything, E
what he no longer has he wants back, it stands to reason. He thinks he is. Lui
must not lack anything. That would be an affront to him he could not stand for,
and he would not take my being here lying down either, because he thinks I am
bound to stand by him forever. He thinks, I am still dying to sacrifice my life
again and again just for him. Does he think the shadows here are like his little
girls above? That he can do whatever he wants and get whatever he wants? Even
though we can’t hear at all? But we are hearing something, it probably can’t be
called hearing, maybe it will pass as well. The bosses don’t want to hear and we
can’t. He can sell it to the girls—that he could have them all, but certainly not
to us. And that he always has to emphasize his wishes with that hum of his and
also the group’s that stands behind him, I won’t mention it again, a muddy drone,
compared to which even a shadow is a model of variety, thrilling like a papercut-
ting! He’s still singing, they haven’t stopped him yet, it must mean something.
They don’t do him any good, his wishes, or do they? If he stored them in his
nerve cells and downloaded them on his smart phone, as the latest app, maybe
they’ll come in handy somehow? Otherwise, wishes don’t work here for anyone,
but maybe he has the right program? Wishing for something here would be use-
less, no one has any more wishes here, nothing is available here, what would a
shadow still wish for? More light, so there’ll be more of him too? Only my singer
happens to want something, looking down, as usual. Typical. No? What no? Quello
can’t be! Looking down on us he’s coming down, expressing—at bottom unhap-
pily, as one can hear in the drippy ballad he’s performing now—desires, desires,
desires. Anything else? Well, those are musicians, I mean, musicians are like that,
those whatchamacallits, they don’t have to voice their desires, it’s dripping and
drooling already from thousand gaping girl slits, greedy as crab claws, open-close,
open-close, on and on, slavering and slobbering onto the floor, luckily not the
JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says 107
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carpet, which we are, that’s quite something they cracked, those claws, here they
go again! Compared to those girls’ heat, which isn’t mirrored anywhere, Quale
can’t be seen, which isn’t reflected in anything visible since their faces, as men-
tioned earlier, are completely motionless and unmovable, all the more stirring
are their little slits, I am talking of slits, not feelings, compared to them the
stream that brought us here is just a little brook of my dreams, NO, NO, I don’t
have dreams either. I am a nothing. Always have been. How often do I have to
say it? Everyone can get away from what I’m saying, really, everyone! All crap
what I am. Nothing. Nothing to wish for. Perfectly nothing. For even this noth-
ing I am and sometimes perhaps even produced, is not by me. Compared to me,
those girls, whom I despise, are actually rich, at least they have their lust pulling
at their limbs, they feel something, they want something, they turn towards the
light that is the singer, while I can’t turn, I am completely dependent, I must
obey the light. Luckily, there isn’t any here. No light. For the girls the singer is
the light. There is no light for me. I no longer have a life of my own. The nothing
I produce is not by me. It is mine, but not by me. It wasn’t my idea, this nothing.
What does he want, he, who descended to save the living and the dead? Jesus!
The only one risen more famous than my singer, famous for deeds, words and
works, admired by the whole world. He came to exist, because his mother was
not allowed to use a condom and that made him pretty conceited. Noi, Tuttavia,
we, the shadows have no desires. We are beyond desires. We are not desires, we
don’t have any and we don’t express any, but we have nothing to suppress either.
We are—not. No, of course we are not crazy either, because for that we would
also need language, which lunatics are especially careful about. They express
themselves in a distinguished literary manner, almost mannered, they construct
their sentences with special care, lunatics do, who we aren’t either, to avoid any
misunderstandings. We say nothing. My language is nothing. Our language is
altogether nothing. We do and say nothing. We are. The propositions of lunatics,
however carefully constructed, destruct themselves already in the process of
construction, those are self-destructive propositions, like rocket propellants,
propellants, which never propel anything, self-destructing, they get so painstak-
ingly constructed by the lunatics, but already during construction they destroy
themselves. What an ideal scrap heap, the language of lunatics! But it’s of no use
to us. Lunatics must also turn into shadows at some point. Self-destructing, self-
extinguishing, self-rotting, but constructed, that language, and the sick explain
their speeches very fluently on demand, and their explanations are unintelligible
anche, they want to explicate, lunatics do, but the explication is as complicated
as that which is to be explicated: speech. We would be happy had we at least one
or two words at our disposal, maybe three. But we don’t have any. Oh well.
Language. My language. I lost it too. So, whatever they are talking about, quelli
tongue-twisting lunatics, I’d be content with that, with what they have to say
108 PAJ 115
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and no one understands, who does not understand our language either, questo è,
absolutely no one, absolutely everyone does not understand us, and it isn’t neces-
sary either, it is no more difficult to understanding the Nothing than understand-
ing nothing, and I am saying this in such an elaborate manner, in order to
elucidate that we are not lunatics, who can screw up their speech in their own
vise, as one might think at first sight, that yes, we are, but not crazy, not insane,
we are simply off and away, but it’s not all that simple, how shall I put it, what
kind of away we are, NO, not the way, away is what I mean and that doesn’t exist
either. There is no more talking, no way of speaking, no crazy talk and no more
walk on the wild side, we can’t complain about our body parts no longer sitting
well with us, no longer sitting in the right place, not functioning anymore, even
though they have been sitting tight inside us and also setting themselves upon
us, we cannot sit down, we cannot get upset, NO, we can’t complain, the poor
lunatics still can complain, but not here anymore, except if they are our domestic
workers, who, Tuttavia, don’t get anything done, they can’t have complaints here,
though they can file them, about the state wanting to poison them, about secret
services fucking them over and then, used as they are, wanting to throw them
away, but we full body shadows are beyond wishes, we can’t even imagine desires,
or fears, NO, thank you very much, we can’t complain. The singer can complain
or sue, he can do anything and he also gets everything. Nevertheless, thanks but
no thanks, we can’t complain.
Che cosa? He wants me to come with him? Well, so I’ll go along, I as nothing always
do what I am asked to. Well now, how can I go, where shall I go?, I am shadow,
that’s a problem, I am a contradiction to myself, I can’t even be for real in that
shape, since my shape depends upon something I don’t know, thus I don’t know
my shape either, I just know that I am in pretty good shape. What’s being thought
up here? How should I be handed to the singer? Wrapped in myself? Packaged
light-proof? Foil-sealed? How would the singer know that I am coming along,
since I am just a shadow? How can he make sure—if he can be sure of anything
here—not to take me for his shadow, that he can tell me from his shadow? Hav-
ing been nothing before, then being nothing, nothing after as well, this will
come to nothing, we have already tried for so long, but a woman is a nothing,
my work is nothing, questo è, I don’t even have one to show, but the result is the
same, tried countless times, sometimes I tried to emphasize it with a new nail
polish or lipstick, but it was nothing, all for nothing. All crap, gives if stepped
SU, beaten, trampled on, how could I get out of this, huh? What’s supposed to
come of it? Don’t ask. How should I, who doesn’t exist anymore, come at myself ’s
side and walk up there?, alright, as requested, I’ll give it a try, but of course I
already know it won’t work, I won’t be able to go up there, how does he think
this could work? Not my body again, please! No body, please! I have taken it off
JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says 109
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successfully, Death told me: forever, he assured me, quite pointedly, that I may
take it off, with the promise never to return it. Should I bargain and seal the deal
with myself, with my own shadow, so I can deal with the world again? That’s
too hard for me, it was such a treat to be light; I was really good as a shadow, IO
just started to get so good at it and now he wants to rip me out of the shadow
carpet again?, can’t wait to see how he’ll go about it, the singer with his cocki-
ness, does he want to receive me like his tussies, his groupies?, okay, I’ll come
along then, if he says so. Something will come up, something always comes up
with the singer, between the nothing I am and the nothing I produced. Never
produced anything, not me. A person has to have a shadow, but in the underworld
s/he has to be one. A shadow cannot assert anything, not even itself, it won’t
even be able to after its life will have faded away. Well, in any event I’ll absolutely
refuse my soul, no way for it to get back in here, not into that soft shadow mate-
rial, how could it hold on to anything there? It will slip out, okay, maybe I could
lay it down and fold myself over it as a shadow to protect it? Maybe glue it, maybe
instant glue, if there is no more time! Omygod! Save my soul! All souls. Quello
won’t work, it won’t even let itself be caught! What’s the singer been thinking,
I’d like to know. After his concert he’d just come down for a moment to get me,
that’s all the time he’s got, the girls are waiting already in front of his hotel room,
they are already lined up, he’s got them in line for a job, stepping down for just
one moment, that’s all the time he has to invest in me, such a Nothing and that’s
already too much, he says come with me and I obey, I can’t help myself, I am
non, I am not yet, let’s hope I won’t get to be, I just come along as I was told to,
that’s all, the nothing that is me is coming along, and that isn’t me, I already
said so, nothing of what I am is me. If you want to travel with me you have to
unravel my words. But that’s just Greek to him. And I won’t be taken for another
a ride. I won’t ride anything. I don’t know how to ride. I won’t ride any train, IO
won’t ride anything, I don’t know how to ride, and there are no trains either. Is
that one of the singer’s nicer traits, that he wants me, come what may? In what
shape does he want it? I don’t even want my body anymore. But the body wants
me because it was told so. The body had been constructed at some point and
now it is getting instructed it better come to me because it belongs to me. How
would I even know it’s mine? To me it was a closed chapter. The singer wants
bodies and he gets them alright. Otherwise he wouldn’t want me. If my body
hadn’t been so ordered it wouldn’t have passed the order on to me. Nothing of
me does what it hasn’t been ordered to do. Are they going to force it on me, my
body? They can’t do that! I don’t want it. I would follow it obediently through
all the crap we shadows are, which wasn’t our doing, but which we are. A shadow
does not produce crap, it is crap, and I: crap, nothing but! The crappy cave we
live in, which we make with ourselves and out of ourselves, darkness inside
darkness, darkness to darkness, bleeding without ecstasy, torn apart without joy,
110 PAJ 115
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torn to shreds, the shadows, we can do anything because we can’t do anything,
and I am supposed to leave this place? When I finally found what I’ve always
been looking for: absence. Being gone. From everything. Being absent, but con-
sistently! Away from colors, images, smells. Obediently I turn toward the wrong
guy who came to get me. He won’t get far with me. I know him. He’ll have to
drag me. He’ll have to drag me by my robe, which is also shadow, by no means
roomy enough for another person. I am too soft for walking, something’s drag-
ging me, is it me, dragging myself? No, it comes from behind, not from up front.
The shadows don’t want to let go of me and I don’t want to let go of them. Is it
my figure pulling me from behind, wanting me back? Coming to get me? No
idea how the singer managed that. My body pulls me, it was brought to me by
the singer himself, he wants to get into me, the body, it wants to chastise me, Esso
wants to put me in order, it suddenly is such a busybody, and poor little shadow
me should stay behind it? Just because the singer wants it that way? Because he
wants nothing? Because he wants me, the Nothing? Because he wants the Noth-
ing to join him? Perhaps just so it can show him off to his advantage? He doesn’t
need it. He jingles a bit, plucks a few riffs, which he promptly stumbles over and
right into the surge of his own excessiveness, and already the raging swarms of
girls have arrived, look, here they are, didn’t I know it!, shrieking as if dragged
all the more quickly by their own hair and all at once to boot. Does he want to
pick up shadows all by himself, like playing cards, does he want to cut them,
does he want to show his hand, does he want to expose what’s underneath, fa
he want a good, a better hand? Then he’ll have to play a lot of shadows until he
finds one who wants to kiss him. There are so many of us. There are tons of
shadow layers, how could he find me? Maybe he was tipped of? A quickie pick
tip? I can’t believe it! Who’d hand in a quickie pick after the draw? How would
that work? The ticket would be invalid then. Who’d hand in anything he hasn’t
found yet. Or something of value, if only for the owner and no one else? Now
he drags me behind him like a landed parachute, now some ropes are getting
loose, apparently I am strapped in somehow, aha, that’s how he wants to do it!
I see. Like a parachute he wants to drag the stuff I am made of behind him, like
the bloody, stinking mess I am, the Nothing I am, this can’t be fun for him,
while so many adore him up above! Why me? Why me too? Why this soft mate-
rial that’s constantly slipping through his fingers, which he can’t get a grip on?
A minute ago I was neatly folded, shadow among shadows, many of them ancient,
already baked together in layers, melted together, glued together ragamuffins,
and now he even drags me behind him like a pile of parachute silk. Something
wants to get inside me here, my body, it screams after me, don’t turn around,
the commissar’s in town, it could be screaming something else, the problem is,
I don’t want to look back for my body, I am the one who doesn’t want to see
anything!—I don’t want to see how it looks right now!—it, however is wanted,
JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says 111
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has been requested by the singer there in front of me, one always wants the other,
no one’s ever at one with himself, all of us are always full of wishes, my singer
is also such a firm fat wishbag, douchebag!,Quale, ahimè, always empties very
quickly and fills up right away again, he gives himself the eye, long forgotten the
tears of his own childhood, when the girls are shrieking, they suck him dry, he
drinks from them, he gets everything he wants, the singer, he gets it all, I can
hear them already, now I hear them more clearly, we are coming closer, I can
already hear the little girls outside, teething for blood, they still have their milk
teeth, at least some of them!, funny, just a minute ago I didn’t hear them at all.
Did my body catch up with me? I won’t turn around to check, no way. I don’t
care what the singer’s doing, but I won’t turn around, that’s for sure! If he catches
up with me, my body, I am done in, then the singer will be able to do me, Poi
I will have a figure and a structure, under those conditions I can stay in his
company, which I don’t want at all, once I get into a shape that can be shown
off, that’s his wish. And then I get into his wish-bag, that bloated tick. Others
would be happy. Everyone else would be happy if the singer came to get them.
But for him the main thing is getting me. Provided I have a shape, I can stay in
his company. Not as a shadow. He does not want me as a shadow. I don’t have
a choice. I must do what’s expected from me. My body keeps heckling close
behind me, if it catches me, I am done in, this catchy body, NO, it’s not a put-on,
I am the one being put on, that’s all there is to me, shadow without a vessel,
structure without a body, this catchy body, this body not catching on, it wants
me, it wants Nothing me, it wants to get out of the Nothing, it wants to come
inside me. No way. I am not moving. No way! Me: not one more step! But if I
stop my body gets me! The body keeps going, stomping unstoppably like a politi-
cian on the go. Makes no difference anymore. I won’t go any further. Let him
catch up with me, his net consists of nothing but holes. I am just going to sit
down, but I have only one moment of peace to stay in one piece and fold my
shadow-self together again, but if I do sit down for just one moment, my body
will catch up with me, it will come inside me and then its all over for the shadow,
fun’s over. I am dragged over the stones, I don’t feel it, I feel nothing, there—isn’t
it getting lighter already?, I can hear my body breathe behind me and my singer
in front making conditions, he’d only take me with him, if he can show me off,
if I can be shown, not like some blown away figure no one remembers, come on
now, get a move on! Have you finally got your body?!, if you insist, singer, IO
might as well pack up, pack up my shadow and take back my body again, E
then I can really pack it in, NO, I don’t have room for reality, reality is a horrible
threat, but I won’t let go of my shadow, then I can really pack it in, so then, let’s
try a new role, I’d love to lie down in the shade I am, but it won’t let me do that
either, it chases me, my own body chases me!, get away from me, body!, esso aveva
lost the light so long ago and now it wants to find it again inside me, what a
112 PAJ 115
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joke!, I roll myself up in myself, maybe if I roll myself tightly, it can’t unroll me
Ancora, I roll myself up like a rug, I am a role model, I am a model on rolls, I am
available only folded up tightly, into ever smaller little squares, NO, rather ran-
domly or rolled up or made so it can roll, but someone always has to pull it, Esso
won’t be easy getting me onto myself again, it would completely undo me, I can
assure you. My body breathes heavily, it pants from the exertion, before the singer
has reached the exit of the cave, it absolutely has to get back inside me, Quello
stupid body, and why? What for? So it can cast me off, so it can cast me in the
same role again and cast me, throw me away again? Why then does it insist on
getting inside me once more? Only to cast me off again? Like a pebble across
water? It isn’t quite with it, it seems! I won’t take it just like that, but as a Noth-
ing there’s nothing I can do about it. I must let id happen. Just not letting the
body come near me. Just not letting me get inside this body! No worry, I’ll watch
fuori! A bright ray of light is already coming up ahead, if I can manage to remain
a shadow before my body can get inside me, before any body can get inside me,
before that body can make me shove it, I don’t even know if that really is my
body, before id can become I, it must be avoided that my dear shadow will be
occupied by a body, most likely mine, they’ll have picked out the right body
alright, I don’t know, they might just as well have given me another one, an alien
one, who knows, I won’t turn around, I don’t want to see it! All this so that my
dear shadow won’t be possessed by a body—taken possession of; so that my
warm, soft shadow won’t ever be possessed by a body again! and even if it were
to be force-embodied, this body could only embody the Nothing I am and pro-
duce, okay, this sentence is a wreck now, I fell for this sentence construction and
now the sentence is ruined, its construction did not hold up, a great example for
body and shadow, nothing holds together, not even a sentence. Nothing every-
where and my body would be sucked into it. The Nothing I produce, the Nothing
I am. I feel something, I can feel something, there, in my shoulder, I am running
through it, I let myself run through my own fingers, I am almost embarrassed
that there is this body, probably mine, wanting to put some life into my shadow,
only to throw me out again, just so it can cast me. Why? Because it can. It should
be the other way around, the shadow should be able to cast the body off, Quello
is—but that’s not possible—the body’s the one who’s got the strength and that’s
what counts, the body’s the one who’s got power. No body, no power. No body,
no weapon. What’s the singer up to now? Did he just grab his smartphone?, he
wouldn’t have to, it’s firmly grafted on him, does he want to capture a moment?,
which is actually what films and photos are all about, aside from the fact that
both are about nothing?! Does he want to capture what he doesn’t even see,
capture the Nothing, does he want to capture the moment of my embodiment?
Sure, let him do it! Fine with me! If he’ll do it, then the moment he does, my
body, my form, that which is yet to be formed of me, made of the shadow I
JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says 113
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am—a shadow that finally makes something of itself!, it was about time!,—then
everything will come to light. It’ll all see the light of day and wither and rot
there, that’s what the sun loves most, what it loves to do most of all and best of
all to our loved ones. Nothing can remain hidden. Unbelievable, but the singer
believes it, because cell phones always keep flashing around him, thousands of
flashes, because he’s constantly standing in a ring of fire, he believes he can do
that too, he thinks, he can throw such flashes, NO, he demands that I should
make something out of my shadow, that I should step out of his shadow and
finally make something of mine, and that in that case he could also do some-
thing, though it’s always only he who crashes; he crashes into the ring of fire,
the flames rise, flashes strike through the smartphones, and he must go down,
down, down; while the flames strike higher and higher, he’s got to go down,
driven by his desires, which pull him down to me. Though I am not doing any-
thing! I have no more desires. Those are all his. He hasn’t yet noticed that he is
falling, but he is falling into the flashing ring of fire. He can help me, he can
send my pictures around, while the flames keep licking him with their tiny
tongues, he thinks people will thank him profusely, the agencies will pounce
SU, NO, kill for them, but what I am and what will be seen of it will always turn
into dough and stay that way—formless, whatever he’ll make, of me that is—he
can make a picture of me, he can take one and then another one and another,
but nothing will show up on the tiny memory stick, it won’t work as a ticket to
bodies in shadows!, and the hard drive of his cute little note pad, where he prob-
ably would have recorded everything that’s happening to me and my little
body—and immediately off into the cloud with it—will be totally empty, save it
or trash it? Trash it!, no question!, I am nothing hard, nothing solid, me and the
singer, that was something solid, but on my own I am not solid, never will be,
and even turning into dough would be too much to ask from a shadow who has
no form and doesn’t want one either. The singer naturally wants to record what
he has done and everything else he is doing, which is finally solid again, Quale
is his work, which are his new songs, his new titles, his new ratings, which are
his newly promoted hits, with his marketing talent he wants to hold on to his
songs, to save and not trash them and he also wants to hold on to me, he wants
to introduce me as a figure again, he wants to capture, to save and to savor his
work of vivification. But he wants to hold on to a shadow! He wants to save a
shadow! That nut!, I don’t have the words for it, but he is available only for—,
NO, with a song, he comes with a song and wants to keep a shadow in the sunlit
space he is headed to. This only works with light, Ovviamente, and it has to be the
right light for his entrance. Anyway, one needs a light to see the light. A shadow
too can only be captured with light, nonsense, I see something directed towards
me, that’s good, I feel some kind of brace in the back, a body em-uhm-brace,
something that’s trying to get into me. Hey, I am not a train, someone’s getting
114 PAJ 115
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into me, and from up front it’s supposed to last for eternity, or what the singer
takes to be eternity. Save or delete? Delete! I can feel it and I see it. I roll myself
into myself. I hold on tight, but there is nothing tight to hold on to, I am soft,
I softened, I let myself be softened, I won’t hold up, I won’t be able to hold myself
in for long, the body behind me won’t be able to open this roll, let it fiddle
around with me as much as it wants, and all of that is to be recorded? That’s
what the singer wants to capture so he can captivate his audience? There’s a flash.
Something flashed just now! No, it’s not the savior. That’s not him. It can’t be
him. It must have been the ripper, ahem, rapper, the opposite of the singer. IO
hear shrieks while I’m already stumbling backwards, finally tumbling back again,
no longer do I have to get a grip on me, to get a hold of myself, my soft shadow
falls back into darkness, darkness to darkness, nothing to nothing, nothing comes
from nothing, the nothing comes to the Nothing, no problem, it’s nothing, Esso
won’t come back from the Nothing, I promise, the grip around me is easing
Già, that body they let loose on me is suddenly gone, where did it go now?
I hope it really is gone now, gone for good, finally, gone through the end, finally
trashed by way of the end, an unspeakable relief, softly I am trickling down the
few steps back into darkness, shadow to shadow, sliding over the steps like the
snake that made me a shadow. We must part, I and I, finally, coming to nothing
Ancora, to the Nothing again, sure thing, and the howling from above, just one
moment!, it’ll be just a moment and I won’t ever hear it again, in just a moment
the shadow’s darkness will have swallowed me, the nothing I am, finally really
nothing, with my nothings of fellow-nothings, finally I can withdraw from my
own presence, no one’s drawing me out now, on the contrary, I withdraw, I have
drawn the line, maybe some day I’ll be able to roll myself out again nice and
smooth and snuggle up against the other shadows, once I’ve recuperated a bit,
which means nothing anymore, finally nothing, in the silent desolation. Just a
moment ago: danger, not anymore, now the singer is greeted by that howling,
taken possession of, saved with countless back-up copies, if anyone got safely
stored, it’s him. I don’t hear him anymore, I know rather than hear it, but he is
used to getting devoured by teenies gone wild, swallowed by shrieks. I sense
rather than hear it, all crap, but crap that’s us and crap we want to be, it’s noth-
ing what we want to be, nothing is what we are, I don’t even hear it anymore,
the piercing shrieking up there, [56] that penetrates walls but not shadows, never
a shadow!, I am running back, still a dark runlet on the stone, one more or less,
who cares, vanished without a trace, because I was no runlet, not even shadow,
I was darkness and emptiness and nothing and silence, my works’ darkness and
silence and nothing anymore, I have no works, never again will I have works,
how nice!, no more works, no one will see my works, no one has ever seen them,
they are nothing, they are crap, my work is crap and I am the darkness thereto
that watches over them, watching in darkness over them, the Nothing holds
JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says 115
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watch over the crap and I am the correlated, corresponding darkness surrounded
by still more shadow pileup. Everything deepest darkness. Impenetrable, Ma
who’d want to penetrate it? No one. It is there, but it isn’t there at all. No one
sees it. It is nothing. All the same. All nothing. All for nothing. Darkness. Distant
noise outside, I know it is there!, but already I don’t hear it anymore, my body
is gone, everything gone, I am already gone again, luckily slipped down the
stones already, a piece of cloth, no more, a shadow cloth, NO, not even cloth, IL
shadow of a shadow, I am gone, far gone already from the upper rim, shriek,
shriek, shriek, that’s it, I know how it sounds, but I am gone. I don’t have to
know anything, don’t have to remember anything anymore, don’t make anything
anymore, I didn’t make it anyway and would have never made it, nothing left of
me. Very good. No one worried anymore about my strength, which I don’t have,
sunk-back-me, not even sunk, slipped, slid, done and gone. It would never occur
to me to stretch out my arms longingly, I want to get back, as the nothing I
always was and am again, not upright, not to write, my greatest happiness—
nothing; finally, no one grasps anything, no one gets grasped, not a thing can
be grasped by me either, no more happiness, no misery, only blackness, something
soft, collapsing from within, shadow to shadow, blackness to blackness. Far away
the flashing of every device, far the clicks, far the memory chips, all the hits, Tutto
the links, far away all of it. Shadow me, how nice I’ve got it, no more, there is
no more. Those at the gate, the newcomers, one can still feel them a bit, Ma
rather like smoke, like morning mist, like dusk, I move through them, parting
their new shadows like curtains that are not quite worn out yet, they still feel
stiff somehow, even if only for a moment, but further inside one can no longer
feel anything, at the gate there are always a few new ones hanging around, long-
ing for something, they don’t understand, soon they will, it doesn’t take long
and then they’ll make room for the next and disappear in us, because the most
beautiful of all is the Nothing, being nothing is the most beautiful, the greatest
temptation of all, no more reaching for soft breezes, soft arms, for the soft breezes
of arms, no more laments, what would be there to lament when nothing gets
lost? Nothing. No more greeting for an ear up there that’s already opening wide
to the shrieking, the howling, the grinding of teeth, the gorging, devouring,
swallowing, digesting and already losing me to what’s to follow, which does not
exist, no greeting, no grabbing something bony, something hard, no more, just
a shadow, a brief shadow on the stone, I am being pulled, pulled away, NO, I am
pulling myself together, NO, yes I am, I am pulling myself together with the last
of my strength, with shadowlike hands, without hands, without nothing, con
Nothing, I am pulling myself together, pulling myself who is no longer there,
shadow to shadow, I am here no more, I am.
116 PAJ 115
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Now then, for reading along:
Adelbert von Chamisso: Peter Schlehmil [Peter Schlehmil’s wunderbare Geschichte].
Sigmund Freud, absolutely everything. And that’s what you get!
Ovid: Metamorphoses.
All rights whatsoever in this play and the translation are strictly reserved and
application for permission for any use whatsoever, including performance rights,
must be made in advance, prior to any such proposed use, to theater@rowohlt
.de or mailto:theater@rowohlt.de. Rowohlt Theater Verlag, Hamburgerstrasse.
17, 21465 Reinbek, Germany. No performance may be given unless a license
has first been obtained.
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JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says 117
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Puppeteer Nikolaus Habjan with Elfriede Jelinek mask. Photo: Reinhard Werner. Courtesy Vienna Burgtheater.
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118 PAJ 115