Rein Gold

Elfriede Jelinek, Gitta Honegger

• Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781913097448
• eBook ISBN: 9781913097455
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

Originally written as a libretto for the Berlin State Opera, Elfriede Jelinek's rein GOLD reconstructs the events of Wagner's epic Ring cycle and extends them into the present day. Brünnhilde diagnoses Wotan, father of the gods, to be a victim of capitalism because he, too, has fallen into the trap of wanting to own a castle he cannot afford. In a series of monologues, Brünnhilde and Wotan chart the evolution of capitalism from the Nibelungen Saga to the 2008 financial crisis. Written with her trademark 'extraordinary linguistic zeal' (Swedish Academy), rein GOLD is a playful and ferocious critique of universal greed by the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate.

7

Rein Gold

B: Brünnhilde

W: Wotan, the Wanderer

B: I am trying to state the following more precisely, that’s a somewhat delicate area, it is difficult for me. So then. Papa had this fortress built for him and now he can’t repay the credit. A situation as in any other family. The remains of tools and machines have been cleared, the giants used those backhoe arms of theirs, which surely was not in keeping with their original daydreams. And what did they get for it? What was their accomplishment? What their payment? Sure, they figured that other wanderers will be up and about there, shameless wayfarers, uhm, waylayers of the law. The giants will be last when it comes to paying. Holding out their hands they will have been first. It won’t do them any good. Why should they return what someone else stole? What’s free for the taking, the beautiful woman, why should they not have her, why shouldn’t they make the most of what they’ve got? They’ve got more weight than others, they are worth their weight in pounds, they don’t need to gain more, either the woman as commodity form or the woman inside commodity forms. No, the apples stay here for now, without the gardener no added value will sprout from them, the exchange value, does anyone happen to know it? It must be gigantic, if only because there is nothing that they could compare themselves with or relate to. For those apples can’t be eaten. Gold. Whoever has it does not return it. Possession is theft. That is the short version. And that would be the end of it. The, what’s her face, Fricka, the wife, but that’s really all she is, lambasts Papa because of the credit. The mood in the fortress is unbearable. Arguments. Papa says: But you wanted the new house! Mama says: I asked you 8before, you said, you wanted it too. We have to live somewhere, don’t we? I must admit I was glad that you wouldn’t be out-of-house so much. Big mistake. We did not consider the sacrifices it would cost us. The property lured and who came? Thousands of strange creatures, all of them making claims. Anyone making claims becomes their slave in turn and already the first one in this chain was stealing, nonetheless, to steal from a thief is also theft. Papa. And did you return what you took from the thief? You must have signed hundreds of IOUs, Papa! Do you even know, at least approximately, how much you owe and to whom? Can you still make heads or tales of it? What about the untimely coincidence of the fate of your house and your time running out like milk from a leaky bottle or latte from the paper cup of a trendy café chain, the final link of which is, as always, the end-user who pays for it all in the end? Even if he drops the cup? A new house at favourable terms and conditions, you just have to pay with a human being who isn’t one in reality or else no one would give a damn about her – who wouldn’t make a grab for her? That’s what you thought. No wonder. There are plenty of humans, but this one comes only once, this goddess, with what else could the giants be appeased? The pauperized worker, whom you did not employ, of course and if, then far below the collective contract, else he would not be a pauper, you did not want to promise him anything, no, you’d have never promised him a thing, you ordered giants right away, who save you all the other workers, spare you from them, replace them, every giant thousands of workers (even though you, in any case, right from the start, yes, I can see it: even though you made sure to write it down, you did not want to stick to any of it, no contracts, no labour contract, no loan contract, no 9marriage contract, that’s where it all begins, I’d say!), and those two were the dummies, the giants, dumb before, haven’t learned a thing inbetween, dumb thereafter; the universal worker: let’s say that one there, a worker like many, just that we got only this one in, one no one sees and hasn’t seen in many years, well, you were not about to employ that one, even though he lowered his labour power so far below value that he totally disappeared in the meantime. For years no one has seen a real worker! That’s probably why you took the giants, you also promised them something, I am sure, you are constantly promising something, which you don’t have to keep. Others would have installed machines, those wouldn’t have made any demands, okay, maybe their bosses, but not they! But wherever the machine takes over the field of production, it produces chronic misery amidst the competing labour power, which has disappeared, to fight their fights elsewhere, where else would it be?, they always have to fight for collective agreements, not here, fortunately, but luckily there, in a place they can’t be seen, their work should be seen, not they, children should also be seen but not heard, they are like children themselves, it makes no sense to employ them, there are far too many, everywhere and gone, withdrawn from us, and on top of it they also have to obey the law, I know, I know, Papa. We on the top must only claim we do. Those at bottom, the Nibelosers, they actually have to. That’s why the Riesen, the giants, come in handy? Yes? Because the dwarfs are in constant quarrel with each other, you say? When could they have started to quarrel while having to work incessantly? That they can never come to an agreement and you don’t have to pay your debts? That their union reps have long been in the nuthouse? They took their favourite party right along with them, 10right! You, wanderer, wounder of the law? Well, what’s up? You’ll have plenty to wonder about, all the things they will come up with, they’ll brag about their forging skills for sure, forging is something you can’t do, only they can do that. There are so many sorts of dwarfs and they all hate each other and even small improvements in their metal processing craft – everything they are specialized in, everything for which they have tools which demand a special skill and steady hand at forging – come to nothing if they are taken away from the easily agitated and hard to restrain master craftsman to entrust all that to a special mechanism, let’s say: a machine. So finely constructed, but it hardly accomplishes anything fine, except maybe for the housewife’s sewing. Competition among the skilled workers, dwarfs as well, but somewhat bigger, you bet. And thus they specialize more and more and earn less and less. Must resort to magic hoods, rings weighing a tonne, breaking their fingers and other nonsense, must protect their hands, prone as they are to all kinds of irregularities, with all kinds of absurd arrangements, should they no longer function and thus have to be replaced by machines which, of course, make no mistakes, but break easily. Then what? Repair dwarfs? Meanwhile those processes have been so well mechanized that a child can execute them. Even Siegfried, who really is a technical idiot, can do it, but he doesn’t have to be able to do it. He works with spukhafter Fernwirkung, spooky remote effect, you only see the effect and are spooked. He went forth to learn what fear was, but never was spooked. All the dwarfs’, all your efforts will be for the birds. While his machine does its work, he talks with the birds or lets his cock do the talking, pardon my English. But what do you call someone, who doesn’t even know whom he fucks? Well, I know what I call 11him. And you are up to your neck in debts, Papa. You need gigantic sums for the giants. According to Adam Riese, that proverbial German math-giant, you can never pay them off. The machine replaces a number of adult hires with an even bigger number in dire straits, who now have nothing to do any more. They are not even the Ersatzheer, the Replacement Army, the relief army, they only recoil in horror that now they are nothing, have nothing and do not count at all. Trained craftsmen, and were they on hand only in the shape of dwarfs, or totally unhandy as giants, whose other end you can’t even see in the fog, if you look at them from the bottom up which, by the way is just like in our new house, in the fog you can no longer see its roof from the ground, in Nebelheim, the fog home, what good is a house, if you can never see it as a whole?, especially if the others don’t see it and envy us? – anyway, giants, dwarfs, machines, water, fog, rain, forest, animals, all these creatures get replaced by untrained jobbers at machines, which can’t even sing like a little woodbird. They can’t do anything, those machines. Yet people get replaced, even if there is nothing that could replace them, one by another, many by all, all by a few, the trained by the untrained and back again, from the unskilled to the skilled, as needed, none of them thinking, but someone guiding them. Telling them what to do. Many kept busy, but one does the bossing. Yes, Papa, I know, you don’t. You have more debts than there are hairs on your head. You want to bag what your humankind-machinery produced. You don’t want to pay your debts, and then you say, others are at fault. Not you. Always others. You make debts but punish others for their most grievous default. You do what you want. You want to pocket the profit of everything after the ones have been replaced by the others, men by women, 12women by men, children by devices, through which their voices resound, whatever, in any case until no one knows any more where he belongs but doesn’t worry about it, because he’ll be told anyway. And you think that no one will know to whom you owe what! The gigantic pile of money, the ring, the sister-in-law, the profit from the apple plantation, whatever! The storm march you owe humankind so that it doesn’t have to do it! Donner will produce the thunder for it and Froh the jolly good time. But no one talks about what jerks they are. However, something like the debt, the guilt, the Schuld one has cannot be easily packed in a suitcase and carried off like the money one needs to square it up. One never comes square with anything and neither with oneself. Absurd agreements, even contradicting each other, who can figure it all out! I see lawyers! I see three women coming beneath the earth, I could have done with one, I would have immediately left the construction work in a way that it would rain in – oh no, not those three – yes, exactly, those with their crochet work, and what will come of it? Not even a scarf, not even a potholder! They murmur darkly, goaded, of course, by their mama, the good Earth, I visited her too, no idea what her problem is, always in a huff, just for the heck of it, and I still visit the earth, her daughters in the background, they carry their detail tools in their throats and put them to use. They can hang themselves on their yarn for all I care. I don’t give a damn about whatever they say. I used to have this sword, it must still be somewhere, I’d gladly cut their rope right through with it and then them too, I’d hack through all of them, makes no difference any more. I’ve already done everything else. Others do more, but does it do them any good? The worker is there, but the worker will be unsellable, his product, however, 13anyone can have. So why contracts? Let me answer for you: because you don’t have to honour them. You could have really said that sooner. It isn’t so complicated. The work is there, but the worker becomes unsellable like paper money taken out of circulation, and your contracts become invalid, Papa, just because you want it that way. There is no one left above you, at your command fires burn, giants toil, dwarfs smash in each other’s faces. But this won’t end well, Papa. All of us know that the loan which, by the way, never was paid out, but rather only promised, you will never be able to pay off. You will have to let your wealthy friends help you. Lower interest rates. But throwing such a left hook and risking such a thick lip, Papa, I never thought you would do that. That you’d get into the credit crunch just because you got involved with the wrong guys and in the meantime can’t even tell who they actually are. Doesn’t matter, you don’t intend to pay and you can’t be confronted as a debtor, as you must always wander, you are travelling, gone fishing, first you built the house and now you are never there. Besides, the right ones don’t interest you anyway. Don’t talk nonsense! Whoever deserves something, doesn’t get it. The one who is to wed the bride doesn’t get her either, even though he is entitled to. Light elves, black elves, shadow elves, Dobby, those dwarfs come in more races than dogs! And you owe all of them, money or something else or Schuld, yes, guilt itself! I can only congratulate you, Papa. You did it, owing everyone, even yourself and still no sense of Schuld. You simply have no feel for debt! You might still be downgraded, I just don’t know by whom! The grade would be far too steep for anyone, well, maybe not for you, you’ll flat out deny the grade and by a hair you’ll make the grade. Where you are not, there’s nothing but death. 14And where you are ditto. Plenty of death for all of us at the end, or it wouldn’t be called the end. You are the dream, the comfort and the hope of all sufferers, but once I am asleep behind your fire not even you’d manage to come through to me, it won’t matter to me any more. If you weren’t our President, you couldn’t indulge in any of this. If you weren’t God, you could at least walk through a fire you didn’t start yourself. Now a sea of embittered helplessness, acquired recklessness. You always believed – back when you commissioned the construction of this monumental one-family home in that dump, the name of which I have forgotten – a name one would think can’t really be for real, Mr President, only when all of this will go under, will I remember again – so you believed that you can do whatever you please, Papa, just because you are God, a destroyer tearing down the law he made himself! I had not considered that you would kill all the people you owe, at least ensure it will be done, death, after all, is the only thing you always make sure of. Not a bad method, except that it will end some time when no one will be left. The supply of workers is inexhaustible, at least it seems so because we don’t see any any more, the unskilled don’t die out, there are just two pieces of giants. They are rare. Soon only one, though he will be broken too, by the hero, no, by himself, by the other giant, herewith we declare the line extinct, broken, for once not by the law. You can handle them, they are already weakened anyway! Been given the count. You didn’t pay out. It won’t pay off for us. Just take a look how they are crawling around like worms, hauling, piling, mortaring, water logging, water-looing. And you’ll surely find some sucker for any home improvement work! It’s always like that. The president in his office: one singular mafia! The god at his walking 15staff: one singular absurdity. So he’s got his new house and for what? His own will as master of man, his lust his only law? Ridiculous! His own power his only property? Well, we’ve seen where that leads to. Nations, listen, listen for once!, so, okay, they’ve heard it already, so what? I finally can go to sleep. No wonder you don’t want to go home, Papa, to the newly constructed home you own! And you will own up to it, no question. If man, der Mensch, gets destroyed together with his active, creating power, his schaffende Kraft, good god, I am actually writing this down!, but if I just say it you don’t listen to me, Papa, so then, if the Mensch gets destroyed, he must first smash the violence of his owners. He absolutely must do that, don’t forget! But this is something only the giants can do. And only one of those is left. You, however, a god, whom should you smash? What good would it do? Well, you’ll do it to me, I can see it coming. And a man, a hero of course, we don’t do it below that, this man is to get me, a free man, a saint, then bring your shit to the station or deposit it right on the loo-and-behold-spot, Papa, a Saviour! Come to me, move it now!, our salvation work is already in process, but man’s work is and remains lifeless. You can destroy his order, take everything away from him, spur him on to anything, but death will come, to the slave as to the master all the same, equal in death, but not in terms of who was who, fundamentally unequal is what they are, he comes for me and the lord and master, the saviour who knows no fear, even though he’d like to get to know it, he is very sociable, the more the merrier: he who will come, oh, I don’t know either, and then death will come. All this for what? I don’t even know what for. I don’t know either, is it any wonder? The Saviour, the Redeemer will know: where and what he will be able to redeem. And that’s no 16wonder. There are no miracles. Oh, and the coup of employing giants because they don’t need machines, I don’t know if that was smart. At the moment, certainly, but then? Machines quiet down at some point, humans never. The dwarfs, of course, were pissed off, because they did not meet the requirements, you know which ones, and because whatever they forged was always taken away from them. How they’d have loved to keep it, but it’s not the purpose of labour, doing it all for oneself only. Then nothing would get done! Poor munchkins! You would have had to put a hundred of them on top of each other to mortar a single stone. No, that wouldn’t have worked, though you could have also invested in ladders or fire engines, they are listed on the stock market and not badly at all. Grand-scale gold-smithing much smarter. Gold’s always needed. Hold it, how is it doing right now, well it dropped some, but still bullish. No shit! You bet. Gold trumps. You know what? We simply kidnap it! But that’s not so simple, so let others do it, as usual. They all were pure and guiltless, at least that’s what they claim, before the gold was forged. What everyone needed, they got, what harms the other is what they are doing now. Slaying each other, the giants are not the first in that, they stand on a pile of slain bodies, though they really wouldn’t have to make themselves bigger than they are. They should make gold, if stealing is so dangerous, it weighs on the conscience, with which you can’t pay for your one-family home either, Papa! Who’ll buy something for your conscience, Papa! And from that spear, where you foolishly wrote down everything – I’ve been telling you again and again, never anything in writing! – no one could copy anything from it if he’s planning a decent fraud. To each his own crime! Rich auntie Freya whose estate no one will inherit 17because she’ll never die, you can bank on that, she might pay. Would be unwise to kill her, as she can’t die, but it would be generally unwise to let her go, since you would thus forego your most important capital and need cosmetic surgery to gloss over your age, you made-up corpses! What goes out, must also come in again. Youth goes away, old age is coming. Freya is free again and joins Thor in the Land of the Freer and the wrinkles creep back up on all of you again. Whatever. You don’t have to pay anyway and you won’t pay. The dwarfs produce the money and more meanies, I mean peewees, holding it for them. Until it gets taken from them, like everything. You beget heroes, so what! You exhale so much breath from your chest, the heroes couldn’t even inhale all of it! Beautiful stuff, jewels, rare pieces among them, no argument there. This ring alone! Yes. This ring alone. One of a kind. But they won’t be allowed to keep it, even though they deserve it, those wretched Alberichies. What worker would have ever been allowed to keep what he earned. They learned quickly, the alps, no, the Alben, those elves, the dwarfs, they bunched up, in the Alben-album they were bunched up like alpinists’ photos of radiant heights, which would have been okay, but then they instantly battered each other again. Forged swords, which kept falling apart, mechanically, they might not have been quite up to speed, the others, however, were even worse. Not even you, Papa, paid close enough attention when you learned how to forge. You did not master the craft. Others had to do it. A god doesn’t have to learn anything, he is and that’s enough. For him, at least. The rest of them: everyone against everyone! Always! Instead of being united against you. They sensed that only one will get it right with the sword and that one, unfortunately, will be an idiot. And where 18will he end up? With me, of course, typical! I am the dumping ground for heroes. Having one dwarf even just toppling over for this one – which wouldn’t make much difference to the dwarf, he is very short anyway – not necessary! Doesn’t pay. He’ll off that dwarf. As if that were a feat. And you don’t pay either. Your luck, Papa, that they are always at each other’s throats or don’t even yet exist, because you first have to produce them! They always took something from someone, which in turn will be taken from the new owners and so on and so on: theft at the start, theft at the end, in-between deceit. Property – theft. An endless chain of expropriation, just so we can get our new house. I couldn’t care less! I prefer being at home in nature. Be in the stable with my horse, like all girls. I don’t care how you’ll cough up the payments for the house, Papa, you cough and you cough, lots of mucus, lots of slime, though all that ails you is a missing eye, which now shines in the sky, where you really can’t use it. No need for more injuries to a god who’d rather be ingested or get consumed by flames. No, the other eye does not tell anything either. No, sadly, it does not speak to me. It just looks. I don’t see what you gave it away for, the eye, by the well, gave it away no, not for a decision, for a forgiveness of debts, a forgiving of deeds against all the dead, you wouldn’t even dream of it, at the well outside the gate, am Brunnen vor dem Tore, an eye for nothing, nothing at all; I cannot call your decisions wise. Your ravens don’t even bother to comment. I don’t blame them. No, the wolves don’t either, they have no part in this. Instead, Fricka talks, non-stop. Her ramblings segue into shrill shrieking. A strong woman, as is so often required now. Do you have to constantly cheat on her? You once were so hot for her, you sacrificed your eye! Now everyone’s got hell on earth instead of the new 19home. Was that necessary? Submit to the wayward subterrenean brood, which doesn’t know breeding and subordination, no, not even they! Do you really have to put up with this? You are the President after all, or whatever you want to call it. Or a few floors above that, whatever, you can’t be seen in the fog anyway, way up there, you with the magic wand for the law; it doesn’t mean though that you have to wander constantly and thus drive your wife up the wall! The gods were always shapeshifters, no one keeps his shape, though that goes only for old age, but you gods have always been others and become others for those who wanted to adore you. Or call you to account, except: you always could count better than anyone else. Couldn’t you have stayed yourselves, so that the blue-eyed, the believers, but not the creditors find you? Better get her a ring, you know which one! In whose face do you throw guilt like hay to an animal? Dominating the world, but not even able to forge a proper ring, you can really be proud of that, Papa! A ring, it’s so simple. You take a piece of gold, make a hole in it and done. Then you throw it into the water, so that it gets value added, with little effort and then you get it out of there ag...

Table of contents

• Praise
• Title Page
• Contents
• Rein Gold
• Notes from the translator
• About the Author
• Copyright