ABSTRACT
Born in Bulgaria into a family of Sephardic Jews, Canetti’s first language was Ladino. At the age of six he was brought to Manchester; the family moved to Vienna after the father’s death in 1913. Canetti’s first book (and only novel) is Die Blendung (1935), a somewhat prolix study of idées fixes and manic encapsulation. The sinologist Peter Kien, obsessed by his own private library, and retreating ever further into a state of solipsism, is ultimately destroyed by fire, ancient symbol of transformation. (The other characters, Pfaff, Theresa Krumbholz and Fischerle, are also utterly self-centred and convinced of their own importance.) The idea for the novel came to Canetti in 1927 when he witnessed the burning of the Palace of Justice by a mob in Vienna. Canetti moved to Paris in 1938 and to London in the following year. In 1960 he published Masse und Macht, a sociological, anthropological study of crowds and power: here fire is interpreted as a symbol for the crowd. In 1964 Canetti’s plays were published (Hochzeit (1932); Komödie der Eitelkeit (1950); Die Befristeten (1956)): they are the weakest part of his œuvre, combining pseudo-expressionism, copulative merry-go-rounds and an existentialist preoccupation with freedom. A collection of aphorisms made between 1942 and 1944, Aufzeichnungen, appeared in 1965. Die Stimmen von Marakesh (1967) is a personal account of a journey to North Africa; Der andere Prozeβ (1969) is a study of Franz Kafka’s letters to Felice Bauer and suggests yet another interpretation of Kafka’s novel. (Canetti also holds that Kafka is the greatest expert on power; he also attempts to see Kafka as a ‘Chinese’ writer, that is, one who avoids the pretentious and concentrates upon the apparently insignificant and the peripheral.) Der Ohrenzeuge-fünfzehn Charaktere appeared in 1974. The first part of Canetti’s autobiography, Die gerettete Zunge, was published in 1977; the second part, Die Fackel im Ohr, in 1980; the third part, Das Augenspiel, in 1985. Das Geheimnis der Uhr. Aufzeichnungen 1973-1985 appeared in 1987. In 1981 Canetti was awarded the Nobel prize for literature. Further Aufzeichnungen (Die Fliegenpein (1992), Nachträge aus Hampstead (1994)) have followed.
