Quixotic Struggles: New Books by and about Elias Canetti

Abstract

Quixotic Struggles: New Books by and about Elias Canetti ULRICH PLASS Wesleyan University Elias Canetti, Aufzeichnungen f?r Marie-Louise. Ed. by Jeremy Adler. Munich and Vienna: Hanser. 2005. 119 pp. 12,90. isbn 3-446 20594-2. Elias Canetti, Gesammelte Werke, Band 10: Aufs?tze, Reden, Gespr?che. Munich and Vienna: Hanser. 2005. 395 pp. 27,90. isbn 3-446 18520-8. Elias Canetti, Party im Blitz. Die englischen Jahre. Ed. by Kristian Wachinger. Munich and Vienna: Hanser. 2003. 247 pp. 17,90. isbn 3-446-20350-8. Elias Canetti. Biographie. By Sven Hanuschek. Munich and Vienna: Hanser. 2005. 799 pp. 29,90. isbn 3-446-20584-5. Elias Canetti. Bilder aus seinem Leben. Ed. by Kristian Wachinger. Munich and Vienna: Hanser. 2005. 175 pp. 24,90. isbn 3-446-20599-3. Elias Canett?s Counter-Image of Society. Crowds, Power, Transformation. By Johann P. Arnason and David Roberts. Rochester, NY: Camden House. 2004. 166 pp. $65.00, ?45.00. isbn 1-571-13160-4. In der Provinz des Lehrers. Rollenbilder und Selbstentw?rfe in Leben und Werk von Elias Canetti. By Bertram Kazmirowski. Frankfurt a. M.: Lang. 2004. 357 pp. 52,80 (excl. VAT), ?37.00. isbn 3-631-53314-4. A Companion to theWorks ofElias Canetti. Ed. by Dagmar e. G. Lorenz. Rochester, NY: Camden House. 2004. xiv + 350 pp. $90.00, ?65.00. isbn 1-571-13234-1. Has the reception of Elias Canetti entered a new phase? Predictably, Hanser, his publisher of many decades, has responded to the centenary of his birth with an onslaught of new titles. But other houses have also published new scholarship on Canetti's work. Most notably, Camden House is trying to secure the author a more central place in the English-speaking world with a new study on Canetti's magnum opus, Masse und Macht [Crowds and Power, 1960], and with an excellent and wide-ranging collection of articles in its prestigious Companion series. In his contribution to the latter volume, William Donahue proposes ULRICH PLASS 235 that 'Canetti's death [in 1994] inaugurates a more independent and, I believe, a more fruitful phase of criticism' (p. 26). I would like to emphasize the word independent, since much of Canetti scholarship tends to be heavily influenced by the author's own interpretations. Donahue, then a graduate student, had been on his way to visit the author to talk about his dissertation on Canetti's seminal novel Die Blendung [Auto-da F?, 1935], when the writer's death was first reported in the news, shortly after his clandestine funeral. This anecdote is typical not only for the extent to which Canetti scholars engaged in the practice of seeking the master's approval of their research; it also reiterates another habit of Canetti scholarship: to include biographical reference. Even authors with no anecdotes of their own like to dwell on the fascinating complexity of Canetti's multicultural, multilingual and truly European life. One of the measures of a more independent investigation of Canetti's work will be the degree towhich scholars are able to question the biographical model and to develop categories that are adequate both to the works themselves and to their intellectual and historical context. Since Canetti's global fame was and still ismostly due to his best-selling memoirs, the popular reception of his work has been inseparable from his life.The challenge inwriting thefirstbiography of Canetti lies in reading his autobiographies against the grain, trying to disentangle fiction and fact, Dichtung and Wahrheit. Sven Hanuschek masters this daunting challenge with mixed results. At the Zentralbibliothek in Zurich, he diligently went through some 130 boxes of unpublished papers, including a large number of notes from Canetti's decades of research for Masse und Macht (the more personal documents, diaries and cor respondence, have been sealed off until 2024). However, anyone expecting to find the 'true' Canetti revealed will be disappointed. In his methodological reflections at the beginning of the book, Hanuschek concedes the enormous difficulties of narrating the life and uvre of a mythomaniac and protean poet obsessed with the phenomenon of metamorphosis. Hanuschek embraces Canetti's obsession by declaring the author's innumerable notes to be the...