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Sabine Hollweck and Daniel Brockhaus in Sleeping Beauty, directed by André Bastian, 2005. Courtesy of Theater in der Tonne

Elfr iede Jelinek Translated by Gitta Honeg ge r

Sleeping Beaut y

princess My existence, my being is sleep, therefore life is my logical limit. But maybe my being is waiting for the kiss. Waiting for the kicks, the free kick into a different way of being. Then it’s time out for being? No, it’s overtime! Any one of you princes, step up, time to score! I would like to have an experience, but I am paralyzed by my inability to wake up. The question is: Are you even the person for whose kiss I should be waiting? I would rather not ask the question, since I don’t even know who I will be when I’ve woken up. In the meantime I will have been dead. That is, I am still dead at this time. But unlike others, I am not permitted to dissolve in death and turn into nothingness, quite the contrary, I was given the task to pull death into myself until I almost burst; he is the consultant of and

constant in my being, so to speak, so that I would overcome his chasm and work every day for the possibility TO BE. Why should I have to work so hard, only to end up as dead as before? Next question: Who is the person waking up? Whom will you kiss? I’ve never seen you before. How should I know who you were before? I have lost all connection to life. Yes, Being is incomparable, but what can one do? Anyway, there’s nothing to compare it with. You just come here and say, you are a prince. Well, I suppose you must be, since I seem to have woken up this moment, which could only be possible only because of you, as Mrs. F. predicted ages ago. No matter who you are, I have to take what I get, to be sure. I am not talking in my sleep, from which I wake up occasionally. Apparently, I really am awake now. Mrs. F. and her predictions

Copyright © 2005 by Elfriede Jelinek. English translation copyright © 2005 by Gitta Honegger. All rights reserved. No part of this play may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, and information storage and retrieval systems, without permission from the author. CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that, being fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America, the British Commonwealth, including the Dominion of Canada, and all other countries of the Copyright Union, this play is subject to royalty. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, and translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved. Particular emphasis is laid on the questions of readings, permission for which must be secured from the author’s publisher: Sabine Oswald, Berlin Verlag, Greifswalder Strasse 207, 10405 Berlin, Germany.

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that not even my soul would bear staying in my body forever! And for that fortune-tellers like her dare to charge money, incredible! How could you bear it, my dear Mr. Prince, if not even my soul could! Would you be kind enough to tell me who I am, since I am about to conclude from this kiss who you are? In that regard, I am a step ahead of you. Is Prince just your name, or are you really one? How stupid. You have to be one, see above; otherwise I’d still be asleep. But who are you really? Which country do you have in mind to rule? Mine, I bet. And for that I let myself be pricked by a thorn or whatever it was. For a while I rummaged inside myself quite senselessly to find the source of the violent pain, though I could easily see the thorn, that pointed thing, you know. And then I was gone. Out. Film torn. Finished. Who am I? Where am I? It occurred to me now that you must be a prince and I submit to this truth of your being. OK, many will envy me because of you, but also for myself, because I am also a princess. I appear on cover photos, though not even those can prove to me who I am. Maybe all people are princesses and princes. This is how priests talk, and in their struggles to survive people are stupid enough to believe them. Be that as it may, all people I know are hedges. At least, that’s a step in the right direction. And the big guys treat them mercilessly, like nature unto nature. I vaguely remember. Roses. That’s enough to make one insecure. What does it say here? A woman says, it was a form of insanity. I hoped to finally be able to live because of him. She says: I wanted to live only for him and it was as if I had found my soul only through him, as if without him I was nothing but an empty vessel and only he was to fulfill me, and only with love. Bravo. This woman has just been created and I can be the first one to congratulate her. She is looking at a man now and seems to know exactly who she has to deal with. So she is getting ready to get

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the whole thing going and lasting, instead of being content ruminating on what she already has and enjoying the juicy pasture. Now she asks her conquest: Are you the same person you were yesterday? And will you be the same tomorrow? The day after tomorrow? Now that he’s already her heart and soul, she also wants to know who he is? Unbelievable. And if he says no, everything will collapse in her. In my case, it’s only the hedge, a thorny investment, that will collapse. But since you must be Mr. Right, this hedge will rise and become human instead. Would you please take a step back now, so that you won’t get stepped on, because my royal court will most likely change right now from an overgrown hedge back to human bodies again. I hope the entrances haven’t been walled up in the meantime, otherwise people in the shape of their own bodies wouldn’t get in, poor things! Not a rosy situation, let me tell you, even though made of roses. Waking up from one condition and not yet or no longer knowing the other which one is supposed to get into. I look at your tanned face, Mr. Prince, at the gel in your dark hair and the muscles under your T-shirt, I look for the knee and the ass in your overly loose surfer pants and I ask: Can it be that it is you somewhere underneath there? Can it be that you are you? Can it be that I am I? Can it be that you mean me? It must be, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. That is: If you hadn’t come here, neither of us would be here. That is, without your coming here, I wouldn’t exist, at least not yet. Thank you. prince I was told I should come to you, kiss you, and see what happens. Then take it from there. Something will come out of it in any case. I like what I see; it was worth it — that much I can say already. I am power. Whoever goes against me, loses himself, especially if he wants to take the credit for himself. It’s a good thing you realized right away that you have to thank me and only

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Sleeping Beauty. Courtesy of Theater in der Tonne

me for your existence. How should I say it: I am I. As you know, I really am who I am. That’s the way it is. I would like to be the Eternal One, maybe that’s who I am, since I haven’t died yet; on the contrary, I even raised a dead person. With a kiss. Must be a nice awakening: huddled up and hidden away for so long, and then the first thing you see: God. Me! I! I! I am the one who raises the dead. Time says — and it is also called: I, and I am here now. No one else. Little mouse, princess dear, I am sure that earlier, when you were still asleep and no one polished your nails, you couldn’t give Being the slightest hint that you were still around. Neither could you give me the pleasure of a postcard, a letter, or a call, even though my cell phone was always turned on. That was just the point: I was not to know where you are and I found you nonetheless. I was the only one! Therefore I simply MUST be God. He who knows what no one else knows. Most probably I even created you myself. If I am God, I can do that. So there. And now I even did away with time because while you were sleeping, you were gone, as predicted, for a hundred years, which now has become the past for you, no, no, don’t worry, time didn’t go away. Since time didn’t leave any marks on you, you must have been in the hands of God, who personally stopped the hands of the clock. Yes. Because I am God, I was able to do that

too, giving Being a hint that now that I kissed you it should wind up the clock and chase after you like a wild dog, so let the aging begin! In a hundred years there won’t be any more kissing; there’ll be plenty of lifting! But of course, we don’t want to perceive time as the enemy of eternity, only as the enemy of female beauty, because I as God can assure you that our goal is not eternity, nor is it its little sister, the eternity of values. So let’s have the massacre, I mean the mascara, as long as there’s still time for it, let’s get the wrinklecover-up stick. They must have told you the wrong thing. You can’t erase time or throw fresh paint on it, once it’s there. When our time has come we suddenly regret having a body, which we dearly loved before. Because our goal is a pleasant life to be written up in magazines and shown on television. There’s nothing like that in eternity, nothing to report about. Nothing can happen after all, because it’s always now and one can never read it as the past. It certainly is pleasant for you and me that we don’t have to examine right now what eternity has in store for us, I mean that we don’t have to examine what eternity would mean to our lives. It could mean, after all, that we could drop dead this moment, or that we would have to kiss each other in all eternity, because we could never turn off this moment again, but later we wanted to go skiing to have our picture taken,

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and those beloved television cameras would want to be part of our wedding, wouldn’t they? Wouldn’t you also see it that way? princess Well . . . let’s see. Sounds good. Preserving moments. At least we finally have some in stock again. Let’s assume that while I was sleeping, I accepted the eternal as its own genuine reality, and it must be something like that, since in my sleep I moved about this timeless eternity like a fish in water. Moreover, I was prophesied eternal love by a prince who would save me; love as another one of your tacky eternal values — I beg your pardon, that’s not one of yours? That’s supposed to be one of mine? I’m just saying, just because it has shown itself to me, love, well, you still have to honor that voucher, Mr. Prince, we are in agreement on that, aren’t we? Well, then, admittedly: I was in eternity, suddenly I am thrown into temporality, by you, my dear, but how can I understand my being and the time in which I am I or, let’s say, in which I am, how then should I understand time ahead of time? I am only just starting to move within this coordinate system, according to which women are saying: I was totally fascinated by that man! Furthermore, they are saying: He radiated an inner strength, et cetera. Being isn’t just simply being there, something else is needed. I’ve been stored as a princess and stirred by a prince. Do you really think that saying: God is here, is the same as: The prince is here? A prince, after all, can be deposed by his mother, the queen, because he screwed a mean woman, but who should depose God? Well, maybe even me, because I was also eternal, at least for a while? Sleeping Beauty as the one who defeated God! Won’t that cause some stir in the news and a delicious stir-fry to go! prince I can see already, if I don’t explain it to you, you’ll never understand your Being, and who could explain it better than I! You

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got it from me, after all! So then, I, your creator, am telling you: your Being happens now that I have delivered it to you. But if you want to own it, as your stock-in-trade, something else will have to happen, which I will show you right now. He puts on some sort of plush costume featuring a very big penis. princess But nothing else has to happen! It has happened already! During my lifetime, I, as a princess, could save up life as an asset which I will now invest in my relationship to you, Mr. Prince. I hope for good returns. You are in the right place with me, I am not a replica of someone else. Quite the contrary, the others, on television, are replicas of myself. They don’t know that every one of them is the only thing, which, as an I, is not another; no, they all want to be me. Imagine. Before I fell asleep, they impressed upon me that the best experience is supposed to be experienced by a body, which, if possible, should not be one’s own. But when they told me that, they certainly didn’t have in mind the kind of thing you are getting into right now. That’s disgusting. However, I can sense that it would be a mistake to look at life only from my point of view. You might like your body. Even so, princes like you come a dime a dozen. Animals! I admit you succeeded in becoming someone else. You don’t look like you at all anymore! Either I am crazy, or I am unable to free myself of the incorrigible and incorrect assumption that your body was connected to your identity, but I guess I’ll have to. You — an other. And this other has not been in you all this time, I hope, or I wouldn’t have kissed you. What am I talking about? There was nothing I could have done. It was you who kissed me, after all! I am sure you were bought by Mrs. F. Is this why you wished to be another? So you wouldn’t have to be here? You put on a costume. I watched you carefully. Did you do that to become another?

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Or to be even more of what you already are, that is, to highlight your individuality? I’m just saying. Because now you are even showing me your soul, which apparently stuck inside you like the caterpillar in the butterfly or vice versa. That really wasn’t necessary. You’re an animal, Mr. Prince! I, on the other hand, believe that I am an event, because I occur, not because I get into that sort of thing. Even though my clothes always used to be described in great detail, as if they had been the most important aspect of myself. I am always the same, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to occur, otherwise I would always only just become, and I wouldn’t be recognized in my photographs. You, however, Mr. Prince, are another just now. I would have preferred that you stay who you were. In any case, I don’t need to put on God knows what, to be somebody, that’s for sure. prince But you can only take place here, because you are my property now, by way of a kiss. Like any newborn, I could have easily tricked you with a fake beard or a stiff blue collar. A baby doesn’t care what Daddy is wearing, it even finds him handsome in the hospital smock. The one I am now only has to prove to you, that I, who am God, have the choice of who else I’d want to be. That wasn’t yet necessary when I came to you. I could be who I was. Simple, of course. I could easily have come as I was, as a prince. I awakened you with the revitalizing freshness of Tic Tacs; with my mouth, so to speak, I painted the model of you which was presented to me. However, I only found what I expected to find. I only created what I wanted to create anyway. Nothing happened to me, nothing happened to you. As an afterthought, I could say I found you accidentally. But rather I say, I discovered you, recovered and made you, and I am presenting you to the press. First something is made up and then it is shown. That’s the essence of creation, my specialty. If you had been dead, I, like any creator, who

didn’t foresee such a thing, would have had to ask myself: Was this really necessary? What did I do wrong? Is this the princess or is she not? Would you have remained dead, I would have asked myself in view of your corpse, now what, can I bring the dead body back to life again? Why can’t I do it? Is this object human at all or not? Can’t remember if I made it. Is it a corpse I am facing? Or what? Well, we’ll see right now. He hands sleeping beauty a white rabbit’s costume made of plush, with a vulva sticking out, signaling her to put it on, which she does. As soon as she is in her costume, the two start going at each other like crazy. The hedge collapses on top of them and buries them underneath. All kinds of animals come up from underneath, mostly chickens behaving very animally — please mimic very precisely the behavior of animals! Two chickens elegantly unfold a banner with the inscription: “Come to Austria! Fuck them all!” prince and princess (together, somewhat breathlessly) Well, at least we are not a financially drained poultry empire. Corpses on the conveyor belt, sticking together even there. But to understand what happens to the dead, we would have to go a step further, we would have to be dead ourselves. It’s not enough to talk about death. One would have to live to be talking about it. But what are the many poor dead doing? They don’t know that they are dead, but they are, nonetheless. We know that we will be dead someday and still we go on living. But now we at least managed to separate ourselves from our bodies and not be dead after all. That’s great progress, for which you can congratulate us. We are not yet going so far as to correct the assumption that we must die. But we do say that we have been dead and that we are living now. Tried both — no comparison! Go ahead, try it too! The comparison will make you feel very safe in city traffic when you get here. End of play.

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