# Elias Canetti

Elias Canetti (Bulgarian: Елиас Канети; 25 July 1905 – 14 August 1994; /kəˈnɛti, kɑː-/; German pronunciation:) was a German-language writer, known as a modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and nonfiction writer. Born in Ruse, Bulgaria, to a Sephardic Jewish family, he later lived in England, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. He won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Literature, "for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power". He is noted for his nonfiction book Crowds and Power, among other works.

## Early life

Born in 1905 to businessman Jacques Canetti and Mathilde née Arditti in Ruse, a city on the Danube in Bulgaria, Canetti was the eldest of three sons. His ancestors were Sephardic Jews. His paternal ancestors settled in Ruse from Ottoman Adrianople. The original family name was Cañete, named after Cañete, Cuenca, a village in Spain.
In Ruse, Canetti's father and grandfather were successful merchants who operated out of a commercial building, which they had built in 1898. Canetti's mother descended from the Arditti family, one of the oldest Sephardic families in Bulgaria, who were among the founders of the Ruse Jewish colony in the late 18th century. The Ardittis can be traced to the 14th century, when they were court physicians and astronomers to the Aragonese royal court of Alfonso IV and Pedro IV. Before settling in Ruse, they had migrated to Italy and lived in Livorno in the 17th century.
Canetti spent his childhood years, from 1905 to 1911, in Ruse until the family moved to Manchester, England, where Canetti's father joined a business established by his wife's brothers. In 1912, his father suddenly died, and his mother moved with their children first to Lausanne, and later in the same year, when Canetti was seven, to Vienna. His mother insisted that he learn and speak German. By this time, Canetti already spoke Ladino (his native language), Bulgarian, English, and some French; the last two he studied in the year he spent in Britain. Subsequently, the family moved first (from 1916 to 1921) to Zürich and then (until 1924) to Frankfurt, where Canetti graduated from high school.
Canetti went back to Vienna in 1924 in order to study chemistry. However, his primary interests during his years in Vienna became philosophy and literature.

## Career

Introduced into the literary circles of First Republic Vienna, he started writing. Politically leaning towards the left, he was present at the July Revolt of 1927, came near to the action accidentally, was most impressed by the burning of books (recalled frequently in his writings) and left the place quickly with his bicycle. He received a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Vienna in 1929 but never worked as a chemist.
He published two works in Vienna, Komödie der Eitelkeit 1934 (The Comedy of Vanity) and Die Blendung 1935 (Auto-da-Fé, 1935), before escaping to Great Britain. He reflected on the experiences of Nazi Germany and political chaos in his works, especially exploring mob action and group thinking in the novel Die Blendung and in the non-fiction Crowds and Power (1960). He wrote several volumes of memoirs, contemplating the influence of his multi-lingual background and childhood.

## Personal life

In 1934 in Vienna he married Veza (Venetiana) Taubner-Calderon (1897–1963), who acted as his muse and devoted literary assistant. Canetti remained open to relationships with other women. He had a short affair with the sculptor Anna Mahler, the daughter of the composer Gustav Mahler. In 1938, after the Anschluss with Germany, the Canettis moved to London. He became closely involved with the painter Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, who was to remain a close companion for many years. He was one of Iris Murdoch's lovers. Her husband John Bayley's memoir refers to him variously as 'the Dichter', 'sage', and 'the monster of Hampstead'. Canetti, who demanded submission from women, later mercilessly skewered Murdoch in his posthumous memoir Party im Blitz (2003).
After Veza died in 1963, Canetti married Hera Buschor (1933–1988), with whom he had a daughter, Johanna, in 1972. Canetti's brother Jacques Canetti settled in Paris, where he championed a revival of French chanson. Despite being a German-language writer, Canetti settled in Britain until the 1970s, receiving British citizenship in 1952. For his last 20 years, Canetti lived mostly in Zürich.

## Awards

A writer in German, Canetti won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981, "for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power". He is known chiefly for his celebrated trilogy of autobiographical memoirs of his childhood and of pre-Anschluss Vienna: Die Gerettete Zunge (The Tongue Set Free); Die Fackel im Ohr (The Torch in My Ear), and Das Augenspiel (The Play of the Eyes); for his modernist novel Auto-da-Fé (Die Blendung); and for Crowds and Power, a psychological study of crowd behaviour as it manifests itself in human activities ranging from mob violence to religious congregations.

## Death

In the 1970s, Canetti began to travel more frequently to Zurich, where he settled and lived for his last 20 years. He died in Zürich in 1994.

## Honours and awards

* Grand Austrian State Prize for Literature (1967)
* Literature Award of the Bavarian Academy of the Fine Arts (1969)
* Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (1972)
* Georg Büchner Prize (German Academy for Language and Literature, 1972)
* German recording prize, for reading "Ohrenzeuge" (Deutscher Schallplattenpreis) (1975)
* Nelly Sachs Prize (1975)
* Gottfried-Keller-Preis (1977)
* Pour le Mérite (1979)
* Johann-Peter-Hebel-Preis (Baden-Württemberg, 1980)
* Franz Kafka Prize of the city of Klosterneuburg (1981)
* Nobel Prize in Literature (1981)
* Grand Merit Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1983)
* In 1975, Canetti was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Manchester and another from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, in 1976.
* Canetti Peak on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica, is named after him.

## Works

* Komödie der Eitelkeit 1934 (The Comedy of Vanity)
* Die Blendung 1935 (Auto-da-Fé, novel, tr. by Cicely Wedgwood (Jonathan Cape, Ltd., 1946). The first American edition of Wedgwood's translation was titled The Tower of Babel (Alfred A. Knopf, 1947).
* Die Befristeten 1956 (1956 premiere of the play in Oxford) (Their Days are Numbered)
* Masse und Macht 1960 (Crowds and Power, study, tr. 1962 by Carol Stewart, published in Hamburg)
* Aufzeichnungen 1942 – 1948 (1965) (Sketches)
* Die Stimmen von Marrakesch 1968 published by Hanser in Munich (The Voices of Marrakesh, travelogue, tr. 1978 by J. A. Underwood)
* Der andere Prozess 1969 Kafkas Briefe an Felice (Kafka's Other Trial, tr. 1974 by Christopher Middleton)
* Hitler nach Speer (Essay)
* Die Provinz des Menschen Aufzeichnungen 1942 – 1972 (The Human Province, tr. 1978)
* Der Ohrenzeuge. Fünfzig Charaktere 1974 ("Ear Witness: Fifty Characters", tr. 1979).
* Das Gewissen der Worte 1975. Essays (The Conscience of Words)
* Die Gerettete Zunge 1977 (The Tongue Set Free, memoir, tr. 1979 by Joachim Neugroschel)
* Die Fackel im Ohr 1980 Lebensgeschichte 1921 – 1931 (The Torch in My Ear, memoir, tr. 1982 by Joachim Neugroschel)
* Das Augenspiel 1985 Lebensgeschichte 1931 – 1937 (The Play of the Eyes, memoir, tr. 1990 by Ralph Mannheim)
* The Memoirs of Elias Canetti 1999, consisting of The Tongue Set Free, The Torch in My Ear, and The Play of the Eyes
* Das Geheimherz der Uhr: Aufzeichnungen 1987 (The Secret Heart of the Clock, tr. 1989)
* Die Fliegenpein (The Agony of Flies, 1992)
* Nachträge aus Hampstead (Notes from Hampstead, 1994)
* The Voices of Marrakesh (published posthumously, Arion Press, 2001, with photographs by Karl Bissinger and etchings by William T. Wiley )
* Party im Blitz; Die englischen Jahre 2003 (Party in the Blitz, memoir, published posthumously, tr. 2005)
* Aufzeichnungen für Marie-Louise (written 1942, compiled and published posthumously, 2005)
* Das Buch gegen den Tod (The Book Against Death; published posthumously, 2014; tr. 2024)

## Reviews

* Stevenson, Randall (1982), The Privacy Industry of Franz Kafka, a review of Kafka's Other Trial: The Letters to Felice, in Cencrastus No. 9, Summer 1982, pp. 45 & 46, ISSN 0264-0856