Elias Canetti (1905–1994)
Author of Auto-da-Fe
About the Author
Elias Canetti was born in Rustschuk, Bulgaria on July 25, 1905 into a Sephardic Jewish family. He was educated in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria and received a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Vienna in 1929. He wrote novels and plays in German. His works explored the emotions of show more crowds, the psychopathology of power, and the position of the individual at odds with the society around him. His novels include Auto-da- Fé and Masse und Macht. His plays include Hochzeit, Komödie der Eitelkeit, and Die Befristeten. He also published excerpts from his notebooks, a book of character sketches, and an autobiography. He received numerous awards including the Vienna Prize in 1966, the Critics Prize (Germany) in 1967, the Great Austrian State Prize in 1967, the Buchner Prize in 1972, the Sachs Prize in 1975, the Hebbel Prize in 1980, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981. He died on August 14, 1994. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Copyright ÖNB/Wien
Series
Works by Elias Canetti
The Memoirs of Elias Canetti: The Tongue Set Free, The Torch in My Ear, The Play of the Eyes (1997) 203 copies, 1 review
Welt im Kopf 4 copies
Arrebatos verbales (Obra completa Canetti 9): Dramas, ensayos, discursos y conversaciones (2013) 4 copies
Ich erwarte von Ihnen viel: Briefe. Aus dem Nachlass herausgegeben von Sven Hanuschek und Kristian Wachinger (2018) 3 copies
Fritz Wotruba 3 copies
GJUHA E SHPËTUAR 2 copies
Zwiesprache : 1931 - 1976 2 copies
Franz Kafka. 1883-1924. Katalog zu einer Ausst. d. Bundesmin. f. Auswärtige Angelegenheiten, zsgest. v. Heinz Lunzer (1983) — Contributor — 2 copies
Obra completa 2 copies
Hochzeit / Komödie der Eitelkeit / Die Befristeten / Der Ohrenzeuge. Dramen / Fünfzig Charaktere (1995) 2 copies
Rudolf Hartung. Briefe, Autobiographisches und Fotos. Aus dem Nachlaß von Elias Canetti (2011) 1 copy
Processi 1 copy
ラクダとの出会い 1 copy
PISHTARI NË VESHIN TIM 1 copy
VETËDIJA E FJALËVE 1 copy
uma luz no meu ouvido 1 copy
As Vozes de Marraqueque 1 copy
As Vozes de Marraquexe 1 copy
A semjáték 1 copy
Gespräche 1 copy
Die Berge 1 copy
Een krankzinnigengesticht 1 copy
Vadonis. Vara. Vārds 1 copy
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Canetti, Elias
- Legal name
- Canetti, Elias
- Birthdate
- 1905-07-05
- Date of death
- 1994-08-14
- Gender
- male
- Education
- University of Vienna (Ph.D | 1929)
- Occupations
- novelist
playwright
essayist
sociologist - Awards and honors
- Nobel Prize (Literature ∙ 1981)
Foreign Honorary Member, American Academy of Arts and Letters (1984)
Großes Verdienstkreuz, Verdienstorden der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (1983)
Franz Kafka Prize (1981)
Johann-Peter-Hebel-Preis (1980)
Pour le Mérite (1979) (show all 11)
Gottfried-Keller-Preis (1977)
Nelly Sachs Prize (1975)
Georg Büchner Preis (1972)
Großer Literaturpreis der Bayerischen Akademie der Schönen Künst (1969)
Literaturpreis der Stadt Wien (1966) - Relationships
- Canetti, Veza (wife)
Canetti, Jacques (brother) - Short biography
- Elias Canetti was born in Bulgaria to a Jewish family. The family moved to Britain in 1911; to Vienna the following year; to Zürich in 1916; and then (until 1924) to Frankfurt, where Canetti graduated from high school. He learned to speak Ladino (his native language), Bulgarian, English, German, and French. In 1938, a few days after Kristallnacht, Canetti and his wife Veza escaped to London, where they received British citizenship in 1952. Veza died in 1963, and for his last 20 years, Canetti mostly lived in Zürich. Nearly all his writings were in German. Canetti won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981.
- Nationality
- UK (naturalized 1952)
Bulgaria (birth) - Birthplace
- Ruse, Bulgaria
Roetsjoek/Rustschuk, Bulgaria - Places of residence
- Vienna, Austria
Hampstead, London, England, UK
Manchester, England, UK
Berlin, Germany
Zürich, Switzerland - Place of death
- Zürich, Switzerland
- Burial location
- Fluntern Cemetery, Zurich, Switzerland
- Map Location
- UK
Members
Reviews
Notes from Hampstead is an amalgam of notes, thoughts, and aphorisms. Elias Canetti shares his thoughts on topics ranging from ancient mythology to the violent nature of the twentieth century. Most interesting to me are his musings on authors whom he loves, including Cervantes, Stendahl, Gogol, Musil and Kafka. His readings inspire thoughtful observations as this commentary on Herzen's life:
"Invention's quality of surprise, its advantage, can also be arbitrary. Later, in the context of our show more own lives, this arbitrariness is no longer possible. We must stay with that which our best understanding tells is is the truth. This truth is what matters, and it is on its account that we set down our life in writing." (p. 181)
His comments are sometimes inscrutable, but often delectable and definitely worth considering, especially if you have read and wondered over his novel, Auto da Fe. It is in this light that I find his thoughts about other writers fascinating. He speaks with humility and sincerity in moments like this:
"Kafka: I grovel in the dust before him; Proust: my fulfillment; Musil: my intellectual exercise." (p. 156)
As I am currently exercising my intellect with the writing of Robert Musil I can fully appreciate at least some of the spirit in which Elias Canetti shared his notes on writing and reading. show less
"Invention's quality of surprise, its advantage, can also be arbitrary. Later, in the context of our show more own lives, this arbitrariness is no longer possible. We must stay with that which our best understanding tells is is the truth. This truth is what matters, and it is on its account that we set down our life in writing." (p. 181)
His comments are sometimes inscrutable, but often delectable and definitely worth considering, especially if you have read and wondered over his novel, Auto da Fe. It is in this light that I find his thoughts about other writers fascinating. He speaks with humility and sincerity in moments like this:
"Kafka: I grovel in the dust before him; Proust: my fulfillment; Musil: my intellectual exercise." (p. 156)
As I am currently exercising my intellect with the writing of Robert Musil I can fully appreciate at least some of the spirit in which Elias Canetti shared his notes on writing and reading. show less
The second part of Canetti’s memoirs opens in 1921 with him as a sixteen-year-old who has just been transplanted, on his mother’s whim, from the school and friends he loved in Zürich to an anonymous boarding-house in Frankfurt. We follow him through his last years in school and his time as a chemistry(!) student in Vienna up to the moment in 1931 when the structure of his great novel Die Blendung/Auto-da-fé became clear in his mind.
As the title implies, the big intellectual figure show more dominating Canetti’s Vienna years was the satirist Karl Kraus, although it’s clear by the end of the book that Canetti was starting to break with his hegemony. In his personal life, there is a bitter duel being fought over him between his mother and his future wife, Veza Taubner-Calderon. But there’s also a more picaresque female figure playing a prominent part in the latter part of the book, the Hungarian poet Ibby Gordon, who introduced Canetti to Brecht, Georg Grosz, Isaac Babel, and a host of other big names in Berlin after she moved there from Vienna in 1927. Canetti spends rather too much energy on persuading us that he wasn’t in love with Ibby, all the while talking about her in a way that people normally only use for talking about those they are in love with…
The great turning point at the centre of the book is the moment when he finally asserts himself as an independent adult and moves out of the apartment he’s been sharing with his mother and brothers — in the most Austrian way possible, the symbolic moment of rupture comes when he goes off with a friend for a summer climbing holiday. But the book has another, more literary and political turning-point too: the Vienna workers’ rising of 15 July 1927, which culminated in the burning of the Palace of Justice and the shooting of 90 workers by the police. The young Canetti was in the middle of all the action, and it turned into a key scene of Die Blendung as well as being an important part of the inspiration for Masse und Macht.
An engaging and often witty and chatty stream of reminiscence, which also turns from time to time into serious reflection about the way we see the world as we grow up into it, the tension between the family pressure to find a useful career and make money and the individual desire to explore deep ideas and find artistic expression. There’s oddly little in the way of direct reaction to the political and economic events of the time, except for things he experienced at first hand — perhaps Canetti felt that a memoir should keep the focus on individual development, or perhaps he just thought that his understanding of wider politics at the time was simply too naive to be worth discussing? show less
As the title implies, the big intellectual figure show more dominating Canetti’s Vienna years was the satirist Karl Kraus, although it’s clear by the end of the book that Canetti was starting to break with his hegemony. In his personal life, there is a bitter duel being fought over him between his mother and his future wife, Veza Taubner-Calderon. But there’s also a more picaresque female figure playing a prominent part in the latter part of the book, the Hungarian poet Ibby Gordon, who introduced Canetti to Brecht, Georg Grosz, Isaac Babel, and a host of other big names in Berlin after she moved there from Vienna in 1927. Canetti spends rather too much energy on persuading us that he wasn’t in love with Ibby, all the while talking about her in a way that people normally only use for talking about those they are in love with…
The great turning point at the centre of the book is the moment when he finally asserts himself as an independent adult and moves out of the apartment he’s been sharing with his mother and brothers — in the most Austrian way possible, the symbolic moment of rupture comes when he goes off with a friend for a summer climbing holiday. But the book has another, more literary and political turning-point too: the Vienna workers’ rising of 15 July 1927, which culminated in the burning of the Palace of Justice and the shooting of 90 workers by the police. The young Canetti was in the middle of all the action, and it turned into a key scene of Die Blendung as well as being an important part of the inspiration for Masse und Macht.
An engaging and often witty and chatty stream of reminiscence, which also turns from time to time into serious reflection about the way we see the world as we grow up into it, the tension between the family pressure to find a useful career and make money and the individual desire to explore deep ideas and find artistic expression. There’s oddly little in the way of direct reaction to the political and economic events of the time, except for things he experienced at first hand — perhaps Canetti felt that a memoir should keep the focus on individual development, or perhaps he just thought that his understanding of wider politics at the time was simply too naive to be worth discussing? show less
The first part of Canetti’s memoirs takes him up to the age of sixteen, in 1921, when he left Zürich. We read about his early childhood in Ruse (Bulgaria) and Manchester, and about the wartime years as a schoolboy in Vienna and Zürich. He has a wonderfully clear-sighted way of digging out his childhood memories, but sometimes seems to forget that he is writing about a small child who deserves a little bit of leeway when we are judging his moral attitudes and literary preferences.
At the show more heart of the story is the young Canetti’s relationship with his mother, initially often absent or at least eclipsed by servants and by his father, but at the centre of his life after the father’s early death. As eldest son he is projected into the “little father“ role at the age of six, feeling a responsibility to look after his mother but also jealously asserting a privileged relationship with her that shuts out potential new men in her life. (She gets her own back by imposing a taboo on any thoughts of erotic love on his part, which he claims he respected throughout his teens.)
This is a writer’s memoir as well, of course, so it’s also the chronicle of his discovery of writers and ideas, turning during the Zürich years into a rather detailed catalogue of his experiences of the men who taught him at the Cantonal Grammar School. And even more interesting, it’s a chronicle of his complicated relationship with languages: Spanish (Ladino) was the normal language within his Sephardic family, but as a small child in Ruse he was also speaking Bulgarian with the servants. Then, when he was six, the family moved to Manchester and there was an English nursery-maid and an English primary school, but within two years he was going to school in Vienna and speaking German. That lasted three years, and then they were in Zürich and he had to deal with an entirely different (spoken) version of German.
A wonderful, sharp, critical account of bourgeois Mitteleuropa a hundred years go from a very particular perspective, fascinating both in itself and for what it tells us about Canetti’s development and his way of seeing the world. show less
At the show more heart of the story is the young Canetti’s relationship with his mother, initially often absent or at least eclipsed by servants and by his father, but at the centre of his life after the father’s early death. As eldest son he is projected into the “little father“ role at the age of six, feeling a responsibility to look after his mother but also jealously asserting a privileged relationship with her that shuts out potential new men in her life. (She gets her own back by imposing a taboo on any thoughts of erotic love on his part, which he claims he respected throughout his teens.)
This is a writer’s memoir as well, of course, so it’s also the chronicle of his discovery of writers and ideas, turning during the Zürich years into a rather detailed catalogue of his experiences of the men who taught him at the Cantonal Grammar School. And even more interesting, it’s a chronicle of his complicated relationship with languages: Spanish (Ladino) was the normal language within his Sephardic family, but as a small child in Ruse he was also speaking Bulgarian with the servants. Then, when he was six, the family moved to Manchester and there was an English nursery-maid and an English primary school, but within two years he was going to school in Vienna and speaking German. That lasted three years, and then they were in Zürich and he had to deal with an entirely different (spoken) version of German.
A wonderful, sharp, critical account of bourgeois Mitteleuropa a hundred years go from a very particular perspective, fascinating both in itself and for what it tells us about Canetti’s development and his way of seeing the world. show less
The Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti all his life declared himself a “mortal enemy” of death―and here, in English at last, is his landmark book on the subject
The Book Against Death is the work of a lifetime: a collection of Elias Canetti’s powerful, disarming, and often bleakly comic observations, diatribes, musings, and commentaries on and against death. Evoking despair, melancholy, and fury, Canetti examines the inevitable demise of all beings―from the ant, the fish, and the worm show more to an executioner, a court painter, and a Greek god―while fiercely protesting the mass deaths incurred during war and the willingness of the despot to wield death as power. Interspersed with material from philosophers and writers such as Goethe, Walter Benjamin, and Robert Walser, The Book Against Death is ultimately a moving affirmation of the value of life itself.
Canetti famously refused to die before he’d read all his obituaries and corrected them.
“I accept no death.”―Elias Canetti (1905–1994) show less
The Book Against Death is the work of a lifetime: a collection of Elias Canetti’s powerful, disarming, and often bleakly comic observations, diatribes, musings, and commentaries on and against death. Evoking despair, melancholy, and fury, Canetti examines the inevitable demise of all beings―from the ant, the fish, and the worm show more to an executioner, a court painter, and a Greek god―while fiercely protesting the mass deaths incurred during war and the willingness of the despot to wield death as power. Interspersed with material from philosophers and writers such as Goethe, Walter Benjamin, and Robert Walser, The Book Against Death is ultimately a moving affirmation of the value of life itself.
Canetti famously refused to die before he’d read all his obituaries and corrected them.
“I accept no death.”―Elias Canetti (1905–1994) show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 98
- Also by
- 8
- Members
- 10,432
- Popularity
- #2,278
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 100
- ISBNs
- 667
- Languages
- 28
- Favorited
- 47
