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{{quote|La lingua del mio spirito continuerà ad essere il tedesco, e precisamente perché sono ebreo. Ciò che resta di quella terra devastata in ogni possibile modo voglio custodirlo in me, in quanto ebreo. Anche il suo destino è il mio: io però porto ancora in me un'eredità universalmente umana. Voglio restituire alla loro lingua ciò che le devo.|Elias Canetti, 1944}}
{{Premio Nobel|letteratura}}
'''Elias Canetti''' (
* '''passato remoto'''
==Biografia==
=== L'infanzia ===
Elias Canetti nacque a [[Rustschuk]] in [[Bulgaria]], primo dei tre figli di Jacques Canetti, commerciante, e di Mathilde Arditti, proveniente da una ricca famiglia [[ebrei|ebrea]] sefardita. La lingua della sua infanzia fu il [[ladino (giudeo-spagnolo)|ladino o giudeospagnolo]] parlato in famiglia, ma il piccolo Elias fece presto esperienza con la [[lingua tedesca]] usata in privato dai genitori (che la consideravano la lingua del teatro e dei loro anni di studio a [[Vienna]]). Dopo avere appreso il [[lingua_bulgara|bulgaro]], si trovò ad avere a che fare con l'[[lingua_inglese|inglese]] quando il padre decise di trasferirsi per lavoro a [[Manchester]] nel [[1911]]. La decisione fu accolta con entusiasmo da Mathilde Arditti, donna colta e liberale, che potè sottrarre Elias all'influenza del nonno paterno che lo aveva iscritto alla scuola [[Talmud|talmudica]]. Nel [[1912]], con la morte improvvisa del padre Jacques, cominciarono le peregrinazioni della famiglia, che si spostò prima a Vienna e poi a [[Zurigo]], dove Canetti trascorse, tra il [[1916]] e il [[1921]], gli anni più felici. In questo periodo, e nonostante la presenza dei fratelli più piccoli, il rapporto di Canetti con la madre (che dal [[1913]] soffriva di periodiche crisi depressive) diventò sempre più stretto, conflittuale e segnato dalla dipendenza reciproca.
=== Germania e Austria ===
La tappa seguente fu [[Francoforte_sul_Meno|Francoforte]], nella cui università Canetti si laureò in [[chimica]] nel [[1921]], e dove ebbe modo di assistere alle manifestazioni popolari a seguito dell'assassinio del ministro [[Walther Rathenau]], prima esperienza di massa che gli lasciò un'impressione indelebile. Nel [[1924]] Canetti fece ritorno con il fratello Georges a Vienna, dove rimase quasi ininterrottamente fino al [[1938]].
<!--He sought the company of Vienna’s intellectual élite and studied the works of the philosopher Otto Weininger (1880-1913), Sigmund Freud, and Arthur Schnitzler. Soon he came under the spell of Karl Kraus, the legendary editor of <I>Die Fackel </I>(The Torch, 1899-1936), and met his future wife, the twenty-seven-year-old Venetiana (Veza) Taubner-Calderon (1897-1963) at a Kraus reading. Canetti’s mother disapproved of the evolving relationship.-->
Canetti si integrò velocemente nell'élite culturale viennese, studiando con avidità le opere di [[Otto Weininger]], [[Sigmund Freud]] (che gli suscitò diffidenza sin dall'inizio) e [[Arthur Schnitzler]], e assistendo alle conferenze di [[Karl Kraus]], polemista e moralista. In uno di questi incontri culturali, conobbe la scrittrice sefardita [[Veza_Canetti|Venetiana (Veza) Taubner-Calderòn]], che sposò poi nel [[1934]], nonostante l'avversione della madre. Sotto l'influenza del ricordo delle manifestazioni viste a Francoforte, nel [[1925]] cominciò a prendere forma il progetto di un libro sulla massa, che si definì completamente con l'impressione dell'incendio del palazzo di giustizia di Vienna nel luglio [[1927]]: la rivolta culminò poi il [[15 luglio]], con l'uccisione di 85 manifestanti da parte della polizia. Mentre la madre si era stabilita a [[Parigi]], nel [[1928]] Canetti andò a lavorare a [[Berlino]] come traduttore di libri americani (soprattutto [[Upton Sinclair]]): lì conobbe [[Bertolt Brecht]] (per il quale provava una sincera repulsione), [[Isaak Babel]] e [[Georg Grosz]]. Due anni dopo, conseguì il dottorato in chimica, professione che però non praticò mai, e verso la quale non mostrò comunque alcun interesse. Tra il [[1930]] e il [[1931]] cominciò a lavorare al lungo romanzo ''Die Blendung (L'accecamento)'', pubblicato nel [[1935]], e, tornato a Vienna, continuò le frequentazioni dell'ambiente letterario: [[Hermann Broch]], [[Robert Musil]], [[Fritz Wotruba]], [[Alban Berg]], [[Anna Mahler|Anna]] e [[Alma Mahler]]. Nel [[1932]] uscì il suo primo lavoro teatrale, ''Nozze''. Due anni dopo fu la volta di ''La commedia della vanità''.
Nel [[1937]], Canetti si recò a [[Parigi]] per la morte della madre, evento che lo segnò profondamente, e che chiude emblematicamente l'ultimo volume dell'autobiografia.
<P>In 1927 Mathilde Canetti relocated to Paris. Elias stayed in Vienna, living in close vicinity of the psychiatric hospital Steinhof whose patients became a source of inspiration for his writing. The riots in the wake of the so-called “Schattendorf” murders deepened Canetti’s understanding of the destructive potential of the masses. In the second part of his autobiography, <I>Die Fackel im Ohr</I> [<I>The Torch in My Ear</I>, 1980], he describes his impressions of the street fighting between Social Democrats and reactionary forces on 15 July 1927, the day that changed the interwar republic and set the stage for Austrian fascism. Contrary to Veza’s pro-socialist and feminist fiction, Elias Canetti’s writings emphasize subjective impressions. Thus he describes the sensation of being taken up into the protesting masses during the demonstrations, their forging ahead without consideration for material losses, and, much worse, for human life. Canetti’s discussion of the rioting masses reveals his empirical method of shaping theoretical concepts. </P>
===Londra===
Nel [[1938]], a seguito dell'[[Anschluss|annessione dell'Austria]] alla [[nazismo|Germania nazista]], Canetti emigrò prima a [[Parigi]] e poi a [[Londra]]. Nei vent'anni successivi, si dedicò esclusivamente all'imponente progetto sulla psicologia della massa, il cui primo e unico volume, ''Massa e potere'', fu pubblicato nel [[1960]]. Nel [[1952]] prese la cittadinanza britannica: due anni dopo, al seguito di una troupe cinematografica, trascorse un periodo in [[Marocco]], da cui trasse il volume ''Le voci di Marrakesh''.
La prima del suo dramma ''Vite a scadenza'' si tenne a [[Oxford]] ([[1956]]). La moglie Veza morì suicida nel [[1963]]. Nel [[1971]] sposò la museologa Hera Buschor, dalla quale ebbe l'anno seguente una figlia, Johanna.
Nel [[1975]] le Università di Manchester e di Monaco gli conferirono due lauree ''honoris causa''.
Nel [[1981]] ricevette il [[premio Nobel per la letteratura]], "per opere contraddistinte dalla visione ampia, dalla ricchezza di idee e dalla potenza artistica".
Dopo la morte di Hera ([[1988]]), Elias Canetti tornò a [[Zurigo]], dove si spense nel [[1994]], e nel cui cimitero fu sepolto accanto a [[James Joyce]].
<!-- BIOGRAFIA OTTIMA
<P>Elias Canetti was born in Rustschuk, Bulgaria, on 25 July 1905, the oldest of the three sons of the Sephardic merchant Jacques Canetti and his wife, Mathilde, née Arditti, who descended from an established Bulgarian Sephardic family. His father’s relatives were immigrants from Adrianople, Turkey, and despite their success in business were considered parvenus. A member of a small European minority, Canetti grew up a polyglot with a fascination for world cultures. His identity as an author was shaped by classical world literatures, the German language, and his interest in the Jewish experience, brought to focus by the cataclysmic events of the twentieth century. One aspect of his <I>magnum opus</I> <I>Masse und Macht</I> [<I>Crowds and Power</I>, 1960] explores the perspective of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37 CE–ca. 100 CE) who entered the service of the Roman commander Titus during the Judaean uprising and became a Roman citizen. Canetti’s travel narrative <I>Die Stimmen von Marrakesch</I> [<I>The Voices of Marrakesh</I>, 1968] includes extensive descriptions of life in the Jewish quarter. Finally, Canetti’s discussion of Kafka’s relationship with his fiancée Felice Bauer in <I>Der andere Prozess. Kafkas Briefe an Felice </I>[<I>Kafka’s Other Trial: The Letters to Felice</I>, 1965] is both a commentary on the artist’s personality and on Central European Jewish culture.</P> <P>Canetti spent his childhood, described in <I>Die gerettete Zunge</I> [<I>The Tongue Set Free</I>, 1977], as a pampered child in the patriarchal home of his paternal grandparents, where Ladino was spoken, and Jewish laws and holidays were observed. Even after the birth of his brothers Nissim (1909) and Georges (1911-1971) he remained the son closest to his mother. In his autobiography he reveals his family’s bias against other Jews - marriage with an Ashkenazic Jew was out of the question. Canetti’s parents associated Viennese culture with their student years in the Austro-Hungarian capital and their dreams of becoming Burgtheater actors. They used German in private as their language of intimacy. From domestics Canetti learned Bulgarian, and outside the home he encountered Christian customs. His mother embraced cosmopolitan ideals and European high culture. She tried to minimize the influence of her religious in-laws on her son who, against her will, was enrolled by his grandfather in a Thora-Talmud school. </P> <P>In 1911, defying Grandfather Canetti’s wishes, the family moved to Manchester, England, where Jacques Canetti entered the business of his brothers-in-law. Mathilde Canetti, longing to be
Similar to his first role model, Karl Kraus, Canetti’s ideals derived from classical German and avant-garde culture. His prewar novel <I>Die Blendung</I> [<I>Auto-da-Fé</I>, 1935] uses dialect and Yiddish-accented German to characterize members of the lower classes and grotesque figures. This cosmopolitan elitism sets Canetti apart from the nostalgic attachment to Eastern Europe expressed by Ashkenazic authors such as Manès Sperber (1905-1984), Joseph Roth (1894-1939), or Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991). </P> <P>Because of the beginning of the First World War plans to attend a college preparatory school did not materialize. After visiting Bulgaria with Elias in 1915, Mathilde Canetti again sought treatment for depression. In 1916 the family went to Switzerland. From there Mathilde Canetti moved to Frankfurt. While staying at a Zurich boarding house Canetti began writing. In 1921 he joined his mother and in 1924 graduated from the Frankfurt Wöhler Realgymnasium. The crisis situation in the defeated Germany - postwar trauma, unemployment, and inflation - made a profound impression on him. In 1924 Canetti and his brother Georges moved to Vienna. Canetti studied chemistry at the University of Vienna, but his primary interests were literature and cultural criticism. He sought the company of Vienna’s intellectual élite and studied the works of the philosopher Otto Weininger (1880-1913), Sigmund Freud, and Arthur Schnitzler. Soon he came under the spell of Karl Kraus, the legendary editor of <I>Die Fackel </I>(The Torch, 1899-1936), and met his future wife, the twenty-seven-year-old Venetiana (Veza) Taubner-Calderon (1897-1963) at a Kraus reading. Canetti’s mother disapproved of the evolving relationship. In 1924 he traveled to Bulgaria one last time. </P>
<P>Canetti’s first drama <I>Hochzeit </I>[<I>The Wedding</I>, 1932] shows a society propelled by unacknowledged self-destructive tendencies and progressing towards its apocalyptic conclusion. In the course of the play it becomes apparent that the union of the two protagonists is based on hate, betrayal, and aggression. The wedding celebration culminates in an orgy reminiscent of Sodom and Gomorrah. The following play, <I>Komödie der Eitelkeit</I> [<I>Comedy of Vanity</I>, 1934] introduces a grotesque instance of exploitation: human beings are used as pack animals. The extreme circumstances lend themselves to an examination of class and gender issues and of collective and individual identity. Canetti’s next project involved a cycle of novels à la Balzac entitled “Comédie Humaine an Irren” (“Human Comedy by Way of Insanity”). He completed only one novel, <I>Die Blendung</I>, which addresses the problems of isolation, fanaticism, destruction, and self-destruction. In 1928, frustrated by his studies and troubled by the impressions of 1927, Canetti went to Berlin. He stayed with the publisher of the Malik Verlag, Wieland Herzfelde, and met George Grosz (1893-1953), Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) and Isaac Babel (1894-1941). He was both attracted and repulsed by Berlin’s gaudy bohemian scene. Some of the leading intellectuals, including Brecht, he intensely disliked. In 1929 Canetti completed his doctorate in chemistry in Vienna and then returned to Berlin, where he supported himself by translating novels by the best-selling author Upton Sinclair, <I>Leidweg der Liebe</I> [1930, <I>Love’s Pilgrimage</I>, 1911], <I>Das Geld schreibt </I>[1930, <I>Money Writes</I>, 1927], and <I>Alkohol</I> [1932, <I>The Wet Parade</I>, 1931]. </P> <P>In 1932 Canetti met the novelist and mass-psychologist Hermann Broch whose novel trilogy <I>Die Schlafwandler </I>[<I>The Sleepwalkers</I>, 1931-2] he admired. He also became acquainted with Franz Werfel (1890-1945), his wife Alma Mahler (1879-1964), and her daughters Manon Gropius (1916-1935) and the sculptress Anna Mahler (1904-1988). Canetti’s ties with Anna Mahler and the sculptor Fritz Wotruba (1907-75) were especially close.
An extremely important friend during the years of 1933-4, when the National Socialists came to power in Germany, and Austria introduced a fascist regime, was Abraham Sonne (1883-1950), who, like Canetti himself, patronized the Café Museum. Under the name of “Abraham ben Yitzchak”, Sonne had published Hebrew poetry. Canetti admired his friend’s encyclopedic knowledge and his well-reasoned opinions. In <I>Das Augenspiel </I>[<I>The Play of the Eyes</I>, 1985], Canetti reveals that his fascination with Sonne was based on the fundamental difference between Sonne’s rational disposition and his own. In 1934 Canetti and Veza Taubner-Calderon married. She continued to do charitable work and published under different pen names until anti-Semitism made it impossible for her to continue her career. Except for the dedications in Elias Canetti’s books, the author Veza Canetti remained forgotten until Elias Canetti began to edit and publish her works in the late 1980s. </P> <P>Canetti enjoyed the life of a scholar of independent means. Before the fascist <I>coup d’état</I> of 1934 and the 1938 Nazi annexation, Vienna had been a melting pot of diverse forms of cultural expression and attracted many accomplished artists and thinkers. Since 1933, German exiles, including Brecht, had sought refuge in Vienna. In 1935 Canetti and his wife moved to the suburb of Grinzing. They lived next door to Ernst Benedikt, son of Moritz Benedikt, the prominent editor of the <I>Neue Freie Presse</I>, who in 1934 lost his position as editor due to the anti-Jewish climate. It is obvious from Veza Canetti’s posthumous novel <I>Die Schildkröten</I> [<I>The Tortoises</I>, 1999] that idyllic Grinzing served as a temporary refuge from the attacks on Jews and intellectuals in the city. In 1935 <I>Die Blendung </I>appeared and was translated into Czech by the prominent author H. G. Adler (1910-88), who survived the Shoah. In 1937 Canetti went on a reading tour to Prague. Soon thereafter he was called to Paris to his mother’s deathbed. After the Nazi invasion the Canettis went to Paris and then to London, where they took up residence in a modest place in the suburb of Hampstead. Canetti devoted the following decades to his life’s work on crowds and power. In 1952 he became a British citizen. </P> <P>In Canetti’s thought, tradition and modernity, occidental and oriental influences represent equally strong forces. At home in several cultures and languages, Canetti steered clear of ideologies and political causes. German was his literary medium, and he emphasized his indebtedness to German culture even after World War II and the Holocaust. Notwithstanding his fate as a refugee, he emphatically rejected the war, as his notebooks <I>Die Provinz des Menschen</I> [<I>The Human Province,</I> 1973] reveal. In <I>Masse und Macht</I> he characterizes war as the senseless atavistic business of killing the largest possible number of human beings. He had begun his <I>Aufzeichnungen</I>, (notes or aphorisms), in 1942 to counterbalance his all-consuming anthropological studies. The <I>Aufzeichnungen</I> express his distress because of the war as well as the double bind he faced because he owed a double loyalty, both to England and to Germany. Canetti considered himself a protector of the German language unspoiled by Nazi influences. Thus he refrained from publishing during the war years and from getting involved in Allied propaganda efforts. </P> <P>After 1945, fully aware of the Holocaust, he explored the issues of death, paranoia, and the pathological mass leader, but rarely mentioned Nazi perpetrators. He did, however, express his compassion for all those who had suffered, including Germans and Japanese, e.g. his review of a Japanese survivor’s account, "Dr. Hachiyas Tagebuch aus Hiroshima" ["Dr. Hachiya's Diary of Hiroshima”, 1975].<I> </I>In 1946-49 translations of <I>Die Blendung</I> appeared as <I>Auto-da-Fé</I> (1946) in England, as<I>The Tower of Babel</I> (1947) in the United States, and as <I>La Tour de Babel</I> (1949) in France. Canetti was awarded the <I>Prix International</I>. In 1948 the Munich publisher Weismann undertook a new German edition of <I>Die Blendung</I>. Later, Canetti published with more prominent West German publishing houses such as Hanser and Fischer. As his reputation grew, international scholars and journalists including Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Idris Parry, John Patillo-Hess visited him in Hampstead. Moreover, an alleged affair with the philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch (1919-1999), later wife of Oxford professor and writer John Bayley (1925-) drew much attention. </P> <P>In 1952 Canetti traveled to Morocco in the company of a film team. The experience of North African Arab society and a prosperous Sephardic community resulted in the travel narrative <I>Die Stimmen von Marrakesch: Aufzeichnungen nach einer Reise </I>[<I>The Voices of Marrakesh</I>, 1967]. In 1955 Canetti published <I>Fritz Wotruba</I>, a biography of his friend of the interwar period. The same year <I>Die Befristeten</I> [<I>The Numbered,</I> 1964], thematizing Canetti’s radical rejection of death, was produced at the Oxford Playhouse in English translation. After Canetti’s travels to France (1957) and Italy (1959), the monumental study <I>Masse und Macht</I> appeared with Claassen publishers, Hamburg, in 1960. In 1961 Canetti went on a tour to Greece and published selections of his works with the Viennese Stiasny Verlag. In 1963, during his perhaps most productive period, Veza Canetti died and this affected Canetti deeply. </P> <P>The debates following <I>Masse und Macht</I> increased Canetti's international profile. So did his contract with Hanser, who published his works in quick succession. In 1964 a volume of Canetti’s dramas appeared, followed by <I>Aufzeichnungen 1942-1948</I>. The performance of <I>Hochzeit</I> the same year created a scandal, as did that of <I>Komödie der Eitelkeit</I>. German audiences prior to the 1968 student movement were not ready for Canetti’s explicit dramas and took exception to his provocative themes and caustic satire. Nonetheless, in 1966 Canetti received the <I>Literaturpreis der Stadt Wien</I> and the German<I> Kritikerpreis</I>. In 1967 Canetti released recordings of his readings through Deutsche Grammophongesellschaft including the disturbing chapter about domestic violence and child abuse, “Der gute Vater” (“The Good Father”) from <I>Die Blendung,</I> and excerpts from <I>Die Stimmen von Marrakesch</I>. Canetti’s travels to Vienna often included reading engagements, which drew enthusiastic audiences. In 1968 <I>Die Befristeten</I> premiered in Bonn and provoked yet another scandal. The same year Canetti received the coveted <I>Grosser Österreichischer Staatspreis</I>. </P> <P>Canetti’s intriguing edition of Kafka’s letters to Felice Bauer, <I>Der andere Prozess</I> (1969), was awarded the <I>Literaturpreis der Bayerischen Akademie der Schönen Künste</I>. In 1971, following the publication of <I>Aufzeichnungen 1949-1960</I>, Canetti began writing his autobiography. The death of his brother Georges and his own marriage to Hera Buschor were momentous events that called for a self-examination in the larger context of historical time. In 1972 Canetti’s daughter Johanna was born. In the same year, <I>Macht und Überleben </I>[<I>Power and Survival</I>], containing three major essays, and the essays and reviews in <I>Die gespaltene Zukunft </I>[<I>The Divided Future</I>] appeared, and Canetti received the Büchner Prize. Additional volumes of short prose, aphorisms, essays, and satires were published in rapid succession: <I>Die Provinz des Menschen. Aufzeichnungen 1942-1972</I> [<I>The Human Province</I>, 1973], <I>Der Ohrenzeuge </I>[<I>Earwitness: Fifty Characters</I>, 1974], <I>Das Gewissen der Worte</I> [<I>The Conscience of Words</I>, 1975], and <I>Der Beruf des Dichters</I> [<I>The Profession of the Poet</I>, 1975]. In 1975 Canetti received the prestigious Franz Nabl Prize and the Nelly Sachs Prize as well as honorary doctorates from the universities of Munich and Manchester. </P> <P>In 1977 <I>Die gerettete Zunge </I>was published, chronicling Canetti’s life until 1921. The work was awarded the Gottfried Keller Prize. From 1978 onwards productions of his plays took place in Basle, Vienna, and Stuttgart. In 1979 Canetti was invited to join the French order <I>Pour le Mérite</I>, one of the highest distinctions for an intellectual. The following year<I> Die Fackel im Ohr</I> [<I>The Torch in my Ear</I>] - his memoirs of the years 1921 to 1937 - was published, and he received the Italian Europa Prato Prize and the Johann Peter Hebel Prize, followed by the Kafka Prize in 1981. Also in 1981 Canetti’s lifetime achievements were honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature. Until this point, despite his numerous distinctions, Canetti had remained relatively unknown. His works were not part of the academic curricula, and he had influenced primarily alternative scholarship such as Klaus Theweleit’s <I>Männerphantasien </I>[<I>Male Fantasies</I>, 1977-8]. The surprise that an author from Bulgaria writing in German would receive the Nobel Prize calls to mind the reaction to Nelly Sachs’s and Isaac Bashevis Singer’s achieving the same distinction. In 1983 Canetti was honored with the <I>Grosses Verdienstkreuz der Bundesrepublik Deutschland</I>. In 1985 <I>Das Augenspiel </I>[<I>The Play of the Eyes</I>], his autobiography of 1931-1937 was published, dedicated to his second wife. In the same year followed <I>Das Geheimherz der Uhr </I>[<I>The Secret Heart of the Clock</I>, 1985], Canetti’s notebooks of 1973-1985, and in 1992 <I>Die Fliegenpein </I>[<I>The Agony of the Flies</I>], containing his most recent, most misanthropic and apocalyptic <I>Aufzeichnungen</I>, appeared. In 1988 his second wife, Hera Buschor, died. Elias Canetti died in Zurich in 1994, where he had maintained a second residence since the 1970s. He was buried near the grave of James Joyce, for whom he had felt a close affinity, and who had held a similarly exceptional position in the cultural life of his time. </P> <P>New publications by and about Canetti keep appearing, including the third part of the autobiography, <I>Party im Blitz</I> [<I>Party in the Blitz</I>, 2003] discussing Canetti’s life in England. Written in 1990, the work provides in the author’s partly sweeping, partly aphoristic style insights into his views on and encounters with British society and his reactions to global events, including his intellectual and personal aversions and predilections. Canetti bequeathed his extensive unpublished writings to the Zentralbibliothek Zürich from which it is possible further editions will emerge.</P> <P>In light of the seemingly never-ending conflicts involving nationality, ethnicity and religion, Canetti’s critical, if not misanthropic, view of the human species is of particular significance. From it derives an alternative anthropology that links human and non-human animal behavior in unexpected ways. At the centre of Canetti’s thinking is an often-misquoted and misinterpreted opposition to killing: Canetti calls for a rigorous non-violent ethics that rules out killing and suicide as an option under any circumstances, be it as a political tool (warfare), a means to discipline and punish (capital punishment) or a way of dealing with other species (hunt and slaughter). Indeed, Canetti’s ethics calls for the elimination of killing and murder even in the realm of imagination, including the arts and literature. It is the insistence that a fundamental reorientation and a monumental intellectual and educational effort are needed to delay the self-destruction of the human species that constitutes Canetti’s major contribution to the twentieth-century discourse on the human condition.</P> </P> -->
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Bulgarian-born German novelist, essayist, sociologist, and playwright, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981. Canetti's best-known works is Crowds and Power (1960), an imaginative study of mass movements, death and disordered society which drew on history, folklore, myth, and literature. The book was inspired by the burning of the Palace on Justice in Vienna in 1927. Canetti started publishing in the 1930s but it was not until the 1960s and especially after the Nobel price that his work started to gain sustained critical attention. Most of his life he was resident in London, but he did not actively associate with English writers or German language colleagues.
Elias Canetti was born in Ruse, a small port in Bulgaria on the river Danube, into a Sephardic Jewish family. The family were well-to-do merchants, who spoke old Spanish. German was the fourth language Canetti acquired - after Ladino, an archaic Spanish dialect, Bulgarian, and English. He eventually chose to write in German and retained a lasting love of German culture. When Canetti was six, his family moved to Manchester, England. After the sudden death of his father, his mother took the family to Vienna, where he learned German.
From 1916 to 1921 Canetti studied in Zürich, and produced his first literary work, JUNIUS BRUTUS, a verse play. During a visit to Berlin in 1928 he met Bertolt Brecht, Isaak Babel, and George Grosz, and started to plan a series of novels on the subject of human madness. The idea resulted in the novel DIE BLENDUNGEN, (translations into English in 1947 and 1964), which was well received after WW II among others by Thomas Mann and Iris Murdoch, and considered to have been ahead of its time.
Canetti graduated in 1929 with a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Vienna. In the early 1930s he translated works by the American writer Upton Sinclair. While in Austria he had an experience that would affect all his future work: angry protesters burned down the Palace of Justice and the author was caught up in the crowd, later describing how he felt himself becoming part of the mob. In 1934 Canetti married Veza Taubner-Calderón, who died in 1963. In the 1930s he wrote two plays, DIE HOCHZEIT (The Wedding), a comedy of manners, and DIE KOMÖDIE DER EITELKEIT, forerunners of the theater of the absurd. DIE BEFRISTETEN, produced in Vienna in 1967, asked the question what happens if one knows the exact date of ones death. To escape the systematic persecution of Jews, Canetti fled to Paris in 1938 and next year he immigrated to England, where he mostly lived for the rest of his life, also maintaining a home in Zürich from the 1970s. In 1971 he married Hera Buschor; they had one daughter. Hera Buschor died in 1988.
Canetti's breakthrough work Die Blendung (Auto-da-Fé) apperared in 1935. It was banned by the Nazis, but beside this acknowledgment Canetti did not gain much attention as a writer before the 1960s when the book was reprinted. The protagonist is Peter Klein, a forty-year-old philologist and sinologist. He knows much of ancient languages but is unable to decipher contemporary voices. "He himself was the owner of the most important private library in the whole of this great city. He carried a minute portion of it with him wherever he went. His passion for it, the only one which he had permitted himself during a life of austere and exacting study, moved him to take special precautions. Books, even bad ones, tempted him easily into making a purchase. Fortunately the great number of the book shops did not open until after eight o'clock." Klein feels safe with his 40 000 characters of the Chinese alphabet and 25 000 books. He fears social and physical contacts, and his inhumane view of the world contradicts his learning. However, he allows himself to get into the clutches of his ignorant and grasping housekeeper Therese Krummholz, nearing 60, whom he marries, and who robs him of everything. In this she is helped by Benedikt Pfaff, the proto-fascist caretaker of the apartment block. Klein descends to the lower, surrealistic depths of society. His brother Georges, who is a psychiatrist, tries in vain to cure him. Doomed Klein dies in apocalyptic self-destruction amidst his books.
Nel monumentale saggio Canetti fece confluire materiale da diverse discipline, antropologia, psicologia, storia delle religioni, evitando programmaticamente nomi come [[Karl Marx|Marx]] o [[Sigmund Freud|Freud]] (menzionato solo una volta in una nota).
L'argomentazione prende le mosse dall'assunto che l'istinto della massa è basilare come l'istinto di sopravvivenza. "La forma più bassa della sopravvivenza è l'uccisione". La prima parte analizza la dinamica dei diversi tipi di massa e della "muta". La seconda parte si concentra sulla questione del come e del perché le masse obbediscono ai capi. [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] viene presentato come il capo paranoico, affascinato dalle dimensioni della massa che egli stesso comanda. La persecuzione degli ebrei viene poi messa in relazione con l'enorme [[inflazione]] del primo dopoguerra.
Crowds and Power (1960), brought together material from many disciples, and avoided such names as Marx or Freud, who is mentioned once in a note. It started from the assumption that crowd instinct is as fundamental as the passion to survive. "The lowest form of survival is killing." The first half analyses the dynamics of different types of crowds and of 'packs'. The second part focuses on the question how and why crowds obey rulers. Canetti presented Hitler as the paranoiac ruler of crowds, fascinated by the size of the crowds he commands. The persecution of the Jews he connects with the German experience of inflation - they needed to pass this humiliation on to something else which would be reduced to worthlessness. "Our most pressing need, as Canetti very movingly and convincingly argues at the end, is to control the 'survivor mania' of our rulers, and the key to this is 'the humanisation of command'. But how is command to be humanised? Canetti has not given us a psychology with which to picture the humanisation of command." (Iris Murdoch in The Spectator, September 1962)
Kafka's Other Trial: The Letters to Felice (1969) examined Kafka's struggle between comfortable middle-class life and individual isolation. As an essayist Canetti became known with The Conscience of Words (1976). With one exception, these essays date from the 1960s and 1970s and deal mostly with literary topics. Canetti sees that writers are responsible of the preservation, revivification, and invention of the life-sustaining myths and their meaning. Tolstoy is rejected as a model for having "struck a kind of pact with death" in his late turn to religion, and Kafka emerges "among all writers as the greatest expert on power". "Canetti has a very acute ear for colloquialisms and the banalities of everyday speech, creating what he term as "acoustic mask" for each figure, a core vocabulary of a few hundred words that marks out a character's habits of thoughts and behavior. Canetti's penetration of his various social representative's linguistic habits is quite remarkably sustained, creating a world of complete self-absorption, vanity, and personal and public insanity." (Anna.Marie Taylor in Contemporary World Writers, ed. by Tracy Chevalier, 1993)
Before the Nobel Prize made Canetti world- famous, he lived modestly in Hampstead. The German literature critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki met him for the first time in the mid-1960s and already noted his charisma and his greats skills as a conversationalist (see Mein Leben, 1999). Canetti admitted that he did not have patience to listen to others. He had written most of his diary in cipher so that intrusive critics would not understand it. When Reich-Ranicki asked him to write a short essay on Heinrich Böll, the writer refused. Reich-Ranicki's impression was that Canetti did not place much value much on Böll's books.
Among Canetti's several awards were Foreign Book Prize (1949, France), Vienna Prize (1966), Critics Prize (1967, Germany), Great Austrian State Prize (1967), Bavarien Academy of Fine Arts Prize (1969), Bühner Prize (1972), Nelly Sachs Prize (1975), Order of Merit (1979, Germany), Europa Prato Prize (1980, Italy), Hebbel Prize (1980), Kafka Prize (1981), Great Service Cross (1983, Germany). He had also honorary degrees from two universities. Canetti died on August 13, 1994 in Zürich. His autobiographical works include DIE GERETTETE ZUNGE (1980), in which the author returned to the traumatic experience of his father's death, DIE FACKEL IM OHR (1982), and DAS AUGENSPIEL (1985). DIE STIMMEN VON MARRAKESCH (1967), a travel book, dealt also with death.
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I viaggi, le relazioni e le numerose lingue praticate, costituiscono il corposo patrimonio culturale di Canetti. Le peculiarità delle sue opere scaturiscono dalla sua concezione del sapere, visto come propedeutico alla possibilità di essere liberi.
Riga 16 ⟶ 73:
Scrive anche una autobiografia, divisa in più volumi ("La lingua salvata", "Il frutto del fuoco" e "Il gioco degli occhi"), che viene pubblicata fra il 1977 e il 1985. E’ proprio quest’opera, una delle più intense della letteratura contemporanea, che fa di lui uno degli scrittori più importanti del Novecento.
==
L'opera di Canetti, oltre ad essere incentrata ''sulla'' metamorfosi, è essa stessa una metamorfosi continua: un solo romanzo, un solo libro di "antropologia", pochi testi teatrali, alcuni saggi, degli aforismi, un diario di viaggio e un'autobiografia, ma si tratta quasi sempre di capolavori.
The exiled and cosmopolitian author, Canetti has one native land, and that is the German language. He has never abandoned it, and he has often avowed his love of the highest manifestations of the classical German culture. He has warmly emphasized what Goethe, for instance, has meant to him as medicina mentis.
His foremost purely fictional achievement is the great novel, Die Blendung, (Auto da Fé ) published in 1935 and praised then by Thomas Mann and Hermann Broch. But it can be said to have attained its full effect during the last decades: against the background of national socialism's brutal power politics, resulting in a world conflagration, the novel acquires a deepened perspective.
Die Blendung was part of an originally planned series of novels which was to take the shape of a "comédie humaine of the madmen". The book has such fantastic and demoniacal elements that associations to Russian 19th century writers like Gogol and Dostoievsky - to whom, by the way, Canetti himself has declared he owes a debt of gratitude - are apparent. The main scene of the macabre and grotesque events that the novel discloses is an apartment house in Vienna. It is an aspect of key importance when Die Blendung is regarded by several critics as a single fundamental metaphor for the threat exercised by the "mass man" within ourselves. Close at hand is the viewpoint from which the novel stands out as a study of a type of man who isolates himself in self-sufficient specialization - here, the sinologist Peter Kien surrounded by his many books - only to succumb helplessly in a world of ruthlessly harsh realities.
Die Blendung leads over to the big examination of the origin, composition and reaction patterns of the mass movements which Canetti, after decades of research and study, published with Masse und Macht (Crowds and Power, 1960). It is a magisterial work by a polyhistor who knows how to reveal an overwhelmingly large number of viewpoints of men's behaviour as mass beings. By going in particular to the primitive peoples, their myths and fairytales, Canetti tries to pinpoint the character of the mass movements. In his field of research he introduces not only the actual masses but also the imaginary ones: the masses of "the spirits", "the angels" and "the devils", which are such important elements in many religions. He explores the nature and significance of the national mass symbols; with acumen he illustrates the psychological problems of commands and obedience. Like Gustave Le Bon, he sees the archaic components in the mass movements of the new age. In his basically ahistorical analysis, what he wants to expose and attack by scrutinizing the origin and nature of the mass is, in the end, the religion of power. According to Canetti, deep down behind every command, every exercise of power, is the threat of death. Survival itself becomes the nucleus of power. At the last, the mortal enemy is death itself: this is a principal theme, held to with an oddly pathetic strength, in Elias Canetti's literary works.
Apart from the intensive work on Masse und Macht, Canetti has written strongly concentrated, aphoristic notes, issued in several volumes. They usually emanate from concrete situations which can be regarded as metaphors for something generic. A satirical bite in the observations of people's behaviour, a loathing of wars and devastation, bitterness at the thought of life's brevity are characteristic features of the continuous notes. By virtue of his abundant wit and stylistic pithiness, Canetti stands out as one of the foremost aphorists of our time, a man who, in his phrasing of life's ironies, is sometimes reminiscent of great predecessors like La Bruyère and Lichtenberg.
The plays Canetti has written are all of a more or less absurd kind: Hochzeit (Wedding), 1932, Komödie der Eitelkeit (The Comedy of Vanity), 1950, Die Befristeten (The Deadlined), 1956. In their portrayal of extreme situations, often depicting human vulgarity, these "acoustic masks", as Canetti calls the plays, are of decided interest.
With Die Stimmen von Marrakesch (The Voices of Marrakesh ), 1967, Canetti published a travel book which shows his keen eye for life in the poor outskirts of existence; with Der Ohrenzeuge (Earwitness) , 1974, he presented a collection of "characters" in the spirit of Theophrastus. Among his literary portrait studies, special mention can be made of Der andere Prozess (Kafka's Other Trial) , 1969, in which, with intense involvement, he examines Kafka's complicated relationship to Felice Bauer. The study forms itself into a picture of a man whose life and work meant the relinquishing of power.
Finally, standing out as a peak in Elias Canetti's writings are his memoirs, so far in two large volumes: Die gerettete Zunge (The Tongue Set Free), 1977, and Die Fackel im Ohr (The Torch in the Ear), 1980. In these recollections of his childhood and youth, he reveals his vigorous epic power of description to its full extent. A great deal of the political and cultural life in Central Europe in the early 1900s - especially the form it took in Vienna - is reflected in the memoirs. The peculiar environments, the many remarkable human destinies with which Canetti was confronted, and his unique educational path - always aiming at universal knowledge - are seen here in a style and with a lucidity that have very few qualitative equivalents in the memoirs written in the German language this century.
«Ognuno vuole amici potenti. Ma loro ne vogliono di più potenti.»
«I veri scrittori incontrano i loro personaggi solo dopo averli creati.»
«Chi è veramente intelligente nasconde di avere ragione.»
«Il successo ascolta solo l'applauso. È sordo a tutto il resto.»
«Il comportamento degli uomini è così equivoco che basta mostrarsi come si è per vivere completamente occultati e sconosciuti.»
«Il progresso ha i suoi svantaggi: di tanto in tanto esplode.»
«Un elemento pericoloso dei divieti è che ci si fida di essi e non si riflette su quando sarebbero da cambiare.»
«L'uomo ha raccolto tutta la saggezza dei suoi predecessori, e guardate quanto è stupido.»
«Gli uomini non hanno più misura, per nulla, da quando la vita umana non è più la misura.»
Un elemento pericoloso dei divieti è che ci si fida di essi e non si riflette su quando sarebbero da cambiare.
Il progresso ha i suoi svantaggi: di tanto in tanto esplode.
Nei libri che ricordiamo c'è tutta la sostanza di quelli che abbiamo dimenticato.
Ognuno vuole amici potenti. Ma loro ne vogliono di più potenti.
Ha gli occhi spietati di chi ha amato sopra ogni cosa.
Leggendo i grandi autori di aforismi si ha l'impressione che si conoscano tutti bene fra loro.
L'uomo ha raccolto tutta la saggezza dei suoi predecessori, e guardate quanto è stupido.
I veri scrittori incontrano i loro personaggi solo dopo averli creati.
Chi è veramente intelligente nasconde di avere ragione.
Non esiste massacro che protegga dal prossimo massacro.
Gli uomini non hanno più misura, per nulla, da quando la vita umana non è più la misura.
Una noia mortale emana da quelli che hanno ragione e lo sanno.
Il successo ascolta solo l'applauso. È sordo a tutto il resto.
===La giovinezza===
===Massa e potere===
===Saggi e aforismi===
{{quote|Leggendo i grandi autori di aforismi si ha l'impressione che si conoscano tutti bene fra loro.|Elias Canetti, La rapidità dello spirito, XXXX}}
===L'autobiografia===
{{quote|Il comportamento degli uomini è così equivoco che basta mostrarsi come si è per vivere completamente occultati e sconosciuti.|Elias Canetti, XXXX}}
NOTE: Irish Murdoch dedicated her novel The Flight From the Enchanter (1956) to Canetti
==Bibliografia==
Le opere complete di Elias Canetti sono pubblicate in 10 volumi dall'editore tedesco Hanser. Tutti i titoli usciti singolarmente sono disponibili in edizione italiana.
===Narrativa e teatro===
{{de}} ''Die Blendung. Roman'' - Vienna: Reichner ([[1935]])
:{{it}} ''Auto da fé'' Milano: [[Adelphi]] ([[1981]])
{{de}} ''Dramen (Hochzeit. Komoedie der Eitelkeit. Die Befristeten)'' - Monaco: Hanser ([[1964]])
===Autobiografia e diari===
:{{it}} ''La lingua salvata'' - Milano: [[Adelphi]] ([[1980]])
:{{it}} ''Il frutto del fuoco. Storia di una vita (1921-1931)'' - Milano: [[Adelphi]] ([[1982]])
:{{it}} ''Il gioco degli occhi. Storia di una vita (1931-1937)'' Milano: [[Adelphi]] ([[1985]])
:{{it}} ''Le voci di Marrakech. Note di un viaggio'' - Milano: [[Adelphi]] ([[1983]])
:{{it}} ''Party sotto le bombe'' - Milano: [[Adelphi]] ([[2005]])
===Saggi e aforismi===
:{{it}} ''Massa e potere'' - Milano: [[Adelphi]] ([[1981]])
:{{it}} ''La provincia dell'uomo. Quaderni di appunti 1942-1972'' - Milano: [[Adelphi]] ([[1978]])
{{de}} ''Das Gewissen der Worte. Essays'' - Monaco: Hanser ([[1976]])
{{de}} ''Das Geheimherz der Uhr. Aufzeichnungen 1973-1985'' - Monaco: Hanser ([[1987]])
:{{it}} ''La tortura delle mosche'' - Milano: [[Adelphi]] ([[1993]])
{{de}} ''Nachtraege aus Hampstead. Aus den Aufzeichnungen 1954-1971'' - Monaco: Hanser ([[1994]])
:{{it}} ''La rapidità dello spirito. Appunti da Hampstead'' - Milano: [[Adelphi]] ([[1996]])
:{{it}} ''Un regno di matite. Appunti 1992-1993'' - Milano: [[Adelphi]] ([[2003]])
{{de}} ''Der Ohrenzeuge; Fünfzig Charaktere''
:{{it}} ''Il testimone auricolare'' Milano: [[Adelphi]] ([[197X]])
===Libri su Elias Canetti===
La bibliografia critica su Elias Canetti è vasta e in continua evoluzione. Tuttavia, in italiano esiste una sola monografia critica, tradotta con quindici anni di riatardo:
{{it}} Youssef Ishaghpour, ''Elias Canetti'' - Torino: [[Bollati Boringhieri]] ([[2005]])
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