Elias Canetti Austrian writer and playwright, Nobel Prize in Literature, 1981 Date of Birth: 25.07.1905 Country: Austria

Biography of Elias Canetti

Elias Canetti, an Austrian writer and playwright of Bulgarian origin, was born into a Sephardic Jewish family in Ruse, Bulgaria. He was the eldest of three sons in a prosperous merchant family, whose native language was Ladino, a dialect of Spanish spoken by Sephardic Jews. Canetti's paternal grandfather knew seventeen languages, and his parents, Matilda (Arditti) and Jacques Canetti, who received their education in Vienna, spoke only German at home. Elias also began writing in German, which became his mother tongue.

At the age of 6, Canetti's family moved to Manchester, where he attended school, learned English, and began reading the classics, as his father insisted. Less than a year later, Canetti's father passed away, and his mother returned with the children to the continent, where she taught Canetti German in order to prepare him for school in Vienna. It was through his mother's influence that Canetti developed his love for the German language. Later, he wrote that without his mother and the German language, his "future life would have been meaningless and incomprehensible." After three years of education at a Viennese school, Canetti studied in Zurich from 1916 to 1921, which he later referred to as "the paradise of his youth." During this time, he wrote his first literary work, the verse play "Junius Brutus."

In 1921, Canetti's mother, concerned that he was leading too carefree a life in Zurich, took him to Frankfurt in the hope that the harsh conditions of post-war Germany would bring him a sense of reality. Here, Canetti completed his school education in three years and then returned to Vienna, where he reluctantly enrolled at the Vienna University's Faculty of Chemistry at his mother's insistence. However, due to his long-standing desire to become a writer and his complete lack of interest in chemistry, Canetti devoted himself entirely to literature. During this time, he visited the famous Austrian satirist Karl Kraus, whose influence, according to Canetti, lay in his desire to "combine language and personality." Canetti later stated that Kraus taught him the art of listening: "Listening to him, I could not help but listen to myself."

In 1928, Canetti traveled to Berlin, where he met Bertolt Brecht, Isaac Babel, and Georg Grosz. Inspired by these encounters, the young writer conceived a series of novels about human madness, each featuring a different type of maniac. In 1935, he published the novel "Auto-da-Fe" (or "The Tower of Babel" in some translations) - the first and only work in the planned series about madmen. The novel's protagonist, Peter Kien, a reclusive scholar, lives in an apartment in Vienna filled with his vast library. Kien's descent into madness begins when he hastily marries his housekeeper, who introduces him to the debauched world outside, ultimately driving him to insanity and suicide.

The novel, which critics claim anticipates fascism and exposes its dangers, received high praise from Thomas Mann and other prominent writers of the pre-war era. However, a few years after its publication, the book was officially banned in Nazi Germany. Later, the English writer Iris Murdoch dedicated her novel "The Unicorn" to Canetti, possibly using him as a model for her "wizard," a powerful philosopher and the protagonist of the novel. In the 1930s, Canetti wrote two plays - "The Wedding" (1932) and "The Comedy of Vanity" (1934) - which satirize human weaknesses and serve as precursors to the Theatre of the Absurd. His later play, "The Numbered" (1952), staged in England in 1956, is a philosophical drama about a society in which everyone knows the exact moment of their death; like his earlier plays, "The Numbered" employs techniques of the Theatre of the Absurd.

The rise of Nazism and the systematic persecution of Jews in Germany forced Canetti to leave Vienna and settle in Paris. As the Nazi threat grew, he moved to London, where he has lived ever since. In London, Canetti embarked on years of research, resulting in his masterpiece, "Crowds and Power" (1960), a multidimensional study of mass movements incorporating folklore, mythology, literature, and history. The idea for this work came to Canetti after witnessing a fire at the Palace of Justice in Vienna on July 15, 1927, set by a group of protesting workers. Deeply affected by what he saw, Canetti decided to study the psychology of crowds.

In 1981, Canetti was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for works marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas, and artistic power." In his welcome speech, Johannes Edfeld, a member of the Swedish Academy, praised "Crowds and Power" as Canetti's most outstanding work, adding that "the book contains so much that is fantastic and demonic that associations with Russian writers of the 19th century, such as Gogol and Dostoevsky, are inevitable." Edfeld also called "Crowds and Power" an "authoritative work whose aim is to explain and denounce... the religion of power." Although Canetti attended the award ceremony, he did not deliver a Nobel lecture.

Following the publication of his monumental work, Canetti continued to write books on the psychology of literary creation. Examples include "Kafka's Other Trial: The Letters to Felice" (1969), in which he attempts to establish a connection between Kafka's life and his work. Canetti also released two autobiographical works: "The Tongue Set Free" (1980) and "The Torch in My Ear" (1982). By the time he received the Nobel Prize, Canetti was best known to Western European readers who were fluent in German and could appreciate his clear and economical writing style in the tradition of Goethe. One of Canetti's translators, Joachim Neugroschel, believed that Canetti's style varied throughout his career: "His early works featured complex syntax, while his memoirs are transparent and immediate. Although he writes in German, the language is learned for him, which is why his later works exhibit greater precision, diversity, and richness."

Like many writers of his generation, Canetti experienced exile, a fate his ancestors had endured multiple times. "As a Jew, the language of my intellect remains German," Canetti said, "but I carry within me the heritage of all nations." "For Canetti, an exile," as noted in the Swedish Academy's report, "there is only one homeland, and that homeland is the German language."

Thanks to "Auto-da-Fe," Canetti earned a prominent place in the tradition of European literature represented by Kafka. After the novel was translated into other languages, Canetti gained recognition from both the wider Western audience and academic circles, where his reputation continued to grow. His works, with their universal qualities, earned him the title of a "18th-century writer living in the 20th century." According to the critic George Steiner, "the mere fact of the existence of a writer like Canetti is an honor for literature." Iris Murdoch remarked that "Canetti has done what philosophers ought to have done and once did... He has also shown the interaction of the 'mythical' and the everyday in human life." American critic Susan Sontag spoke of Canetti as a person "keenly aware of the responsibility of words; in his works, he seeks to share what he has learned through his attentive approach to the world. And it is not dogma but a mixture of pain, fervor, sorrow, and ecstasy. Passionate consciousness breeds passion."

In 1934, Canetti married Veza Taubner-Calderon, whom he had first met at one of Karl Kraus's lectures in 1924. After her death in 1963, Canetti married Hera Buschor and lived with her and their son in Zurich and London. Canetti became a British citizen in 1952.

In addition to the Nobel Prize (Canetti was the first Bulgarian Nobel laureate), the writer received numerous other literary awards, including the International Paris Prize (1949), the Vienna Writer's Award (1966), the Georg Büchner Prize in Munich (1972), the Nelly Sachs Prize in Dortmund (1976), and the Kafka Prize (1981), one of Austria's most prestigious literary awards.