Elias
Canetti ( Ruse , 25 July 1905 - Zurich , 14 August 1994 ) was a writer ,
essayist and aphorist Bulgarian naturalized British of German , winner of the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981 . It is considered the last great figure of
culture central Europe , as his work appears quite eccentric with respect to the
same tradition that culture has formed between the beginning of '900 and the end
of World War II . Apart from Karl Kraus , the dominant figure until 1960 and
later Hermann Broch , it's difficult to find specific references without seeing
influences Taoist and Buddhist thought in canettiano.
Elias Canetti was born in Rusčuk (now Ruse, Bulgaria ), the first of three sons
of Jacques Canetti, merchant jew remote origins of Spanish (paternal ancestors
were born with the surname of Cañete , but following the expulsion of the Jews
from the Iberian Peninsula occurred in 1492, changed his name and took refuge
first in Anatolia ), and Mathilde Arditti, born to a wealthy family Sephardic
Jewish Bulgarian remote origins of Italian (maternal ancestors were Sephardic
Jews from Leghorn that around the seventeenth century settled in Bulgaria ). The
language of his childhood was the Ladino or giudeospagnolo spoken in the family,
but the little Elias was soon experience with the German language used in
private by the parents (who saw it as the language of theater and their years of
study in Vienna ).
After learning the Bulgarian , he found himself having to deal with the '
English when his father decided to move to work in Manchester in 1911 . The
decision was greeted with enthusiasm by Mathilde Arditti, educated woman and
liberal, he could subtract Elias influence of his grandfather, who had entered
the school Talmudic . In 1912 , with the sudden death of his father Jacques,
began the wanderings of the family, who moved first to Vienna and then to Zurich
, where Canetti spent between 1916 and 1921 , the happiest years.
During this period, despite the presence of younger siblings, the relationship
with the mother of Canetti (since 1913 suffered from periodic bouts of
depression) became ever more closely, marked by conflict and mutual dependence.
The next stop was Frankfurt , where he was able to attend the demonstrations
following the assassination of the Minister Walther Rathenau , the first mass
experience which left an indelible impression. In 1924 he returned with his
brother Canetti Georges in Vienna, where he majored in chemistry and was almost
without interruption until 1938 . Canetti was integrated quickly in ' elite
cultural Vienna, studying with avidity the works of Otto Weininger , Sigmund
Freud (who aroused suspicion from the beginning) and Arthur Schnitzler , and
attending conferences Karl Kraus , polemicist and moralist. In one of these
meetings he met the writer Sephardic cultural Venetiana (Veza) Taubner-Calderón
, nice but since birth with no left forearm, and in 1934 he married her, despite
the aversion of the mother.
Under the influence of the memory of events seen in Frankfurt in 1925 began to
take shape on a book project on the ground. In 1928 he went to work in Berlin as
a translator for American books (especially Upton Sinclair ), and here he met
Bertolt Brecht , Isaak Babel ' and George Grosz . Two years later he received
his doctorate in chemistry, but did not practice the profession ever and to
which, however, did not show any interest. Between 1930 and 1931 he began to
work on the long novel Die Blendung (literally The blindness , translated into
Italian as Autodafé ), published in 1935 , and returned to Vienna, he continued
the literary circle of contacts: Robert Musil , Fritz Wotruba , Alban Berg ,
Anna and Alma Mahler .
In 1932 she released her first play, Wedding . Two years later it was the turn
of The comedy of vanity . In 1937 Canetti went to Paris for his mother's death,
an event that marked him deeply and symbolically closes the last volume of
autobiography.
In 1938 , following the ' annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany , Canetti
emigrated first to Paris and then to London . The next two decades, he devoted
himself exclusively to the impressive project on the psychology of the masses,
whose first and only volume, mass and power , was published in 1960 . In 1952
took British citizenship: two years later, in the wake of a film crew, spent
some time in Morocco , from which he drew the volume Voices of Marrakesh .
The
first of his drama Screw deadline was held in Oxford ( 1956 ). Veza his wife,
married in 1934 and with whom he shared the enthusiasm and reverence for
socialist Karl Kraus, committed suicide in 1963 after the failure of their
marriage, perhaps also due to the frequent betrayals of Elias. In 1971 he
married the Canetti museologist Buschor Hera, who bore him the following year a
daughter, Johanna. In 1975 the University of Manchester and the Monaco gave him
two degrees honoris causa . In 1981 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature
"for works characterized by broad view, from the wealth of ideas and artistic
power". After the death of Hera ( 1988 ), Elias Canetti returned to Zurich ,
where he died in 1994 , and the cemetery where he was buried next to James
Joyce.
Major works
Komödie der Eitelkeit (1934)
Blendung Die (1935, novel )
Befristeten Die (1956, premiere of the drama at Oxford)
Masse und Macht 1960 ( essay )
Aufzeichnungen 1942 - 1948 (1965)
Die Stimmen von Marrakesch (1968 Published by Hanser in Muñico, Travelogue )
Der andere Prozess , Kafkas Briefe an Felice (1969).
Hitler nach Speer (Essay)
Die Menschen des Provinz Aufzeichnungen 1942 - 1972
Der Ohrenzeuge. Fünfzig Charaktere (1974).
Das Gewissen der Worte Essays (1975, essay)
Gerettete Zunge Die (1977, memoir )
Die Fackel im Ohr , Lebensgeschichte 1921 - 1931 (1980, memoir)
Das Augenspiel , Lebensgeschichte 1931 - 1937 (1985, memoir)
Das Geheimherz der Uhr: Aufzeichnungen (1987)
Die Fliegenpein (1992)
Nachträge aus Hampstead (1994)
Aufzeichnungen 1992-1993 (1996)
Aufzeichnungen 1973-1984 (1999)
Party im Blitz; englischen Die Jahre (2003, memoir, published posthumously)
Aufzeichnungen für Marie-Louise (written in 1942, published posthumously, 2005)