Rein Gold

✍ Scribed by Elfriede Jelinek

• Book ID: 111905744
• Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions
• Year: 2020
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 120 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9781913097455

✦ Synopsis

2004 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Elfriede Jelinek's Rein Gold reconstructs the events of Wagner's epic Ring cycle and extends them into the present day. Originally written as a libretto for the Berlin State Opera, Rein Gold is a 'buhnenessay', an essay for the stage, structured in the form of a dialogue between Wotan, father of the gods, and his favourite daughter, Brunnhilde, in the third act of The Valkyrie. The book opens with Brunnhilde diagnosing her father Wotan to be a victim of capitalism because he, too, has fallen into the trap of wanting to own a castle he cannot afford. In stream of consciousness monologues, Brunnhilde and Wotan touch on a number of events from the days of the Nibelungen Saga to the 2008 financial crisis caused by the US subprime mortgage crisis and the role of banks therein, and through Marx's ideas as developed in Das Kapital , written almost contemporaneously with Wagner's Ring cycle. While rooted in Wagner's...