Sun / Air

The sun resounds in brotherly spheres singing competitively alike to ancient ways and fights its perpetual battle of ember and splendour. All the tears it wants to shed evaporate into smoke and dust. And thus she laughs into the baffled and restless faces of the burning forests and withering lands. And yet, even if it is the last thing she does, she wants to share what opens up to her gaze - at least on one side of the sphere - under the golden glow of the day, the beginning and end of which she alone determines. A kite soars into the abysses of the sky, meandering between the clouds as the wind whispers. Who lets the winds blow, who bears the weight of the plane and drives the lightness of the sail in raving speed and dull sorrow? Earth, fire, water, what? The sanctimonious domination of humanity over the elements is seemingly assured. Suddenly two windows opened - poof! A fine, well-aimed push - "breathe deeply at last", says the air, and off fly the pieces of the desk across the office, gone it is, the tax return.
Elfriede Jelinek examines, through the eyes of sun and air, the aberration of humankind in its relationship with its environment, without the word climate change reaching anywhere near her polyphonic textual range. Ruthlessly serene and warmly hard, the text narrates the story of humankind and the monster in the earthly microcosm between sunshine and breeze.