13

This land is you, no, that’s a bit too much, the land allows you to introduce your ideas any time, but only you, well, not quite the only one, but you as well, and especially you, the land allows us nothing, we are nothing and it allows us nothing, even though we would like to participate, it’s better than watching, no?, so that the law also comes from us, so that the law also goes for the people, which we will be then too, but the law does not come and go, and when it goes out, it dresses up, it gets all decked out, but we may not come along, we can’t even get into the restaurant, that’s not justice, even though justice would also come to us, at least it would if it could get some time off for once, and our dream act, unfortunately, passed far away, no, it’s been shot here, the dream pass, by a soccer hero, local off-shoot of foreign parentage, he passed with flying colors, but now its [sic] no longer here, I mean the dream pass, it’s been shot, and the hero does his dream act in Munich now with his passport of our dreams, but justice, which could also come to us, if we belonged to this dream-Volk, the people who shoot dream passes and have the passports we want so much, but don’t get.

Elfriede Jelinek, Charges (The Supplicants) [2013], trans. Gitta Honegger (London: Seagull, 2016), 41–42. Original emphasis.

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