Elias Canetti
was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1981. Auto da Fé is an
interesting story, confusing, even disturbing at times. If I were asked to use
only one word to describe this writer’s only fiction work I’d probably call it
weird.
At first, it seems to be a critique of society. On the one hand, there’s the well-to-do people (represented by the sinologist Peter Kien) who exaggerate the value and importance of education and reading to such an extent that it makes them unable to understand or at least cope with real life. On the other hand, there’s the common people who fight for survival every day and who have learned to care a lot about money, so much, in fact, that they don’t shrink back even from murder.
However, I
think that the novel’s original German title – Die Blendung which is 'blinding' or 'deception' in English – hints at something else. Each one of the
protagonists of the Auto da Fé is to a certain degree obsessed by something: Kien lives
for and through his private library of 25,000 volumes stored in the four rooms
of his flat; his wife Therese – the former housekeeper, an old maid who
deceived the inexperienced and asexual Kien into marrying her after eight years
– only thinks of money and property, beauty and sex; the caretaker of the house
is wrapped up in his past as a police officer and keeps living out his violent
traits in order to press money from the tenants who he’s 'protecting' from bad
lots like beggars and door-to-door salesmen; and last, but not least, the
crippled Jewish crook Siegfried Fischer, called Fischerle, who is obsessed with
chess and with going to America in order to prove that he’s better at that game
than the current world champion, for which scope he – of course – needs a lot
of money.
The
obsessions of all those people result in an inability to see the world the way
it really is. They always give information, conversations, and events a meaning which
is consistent with their very own idea of a perfect life. So in a way, all of
them create an imaginary world within themselves which differs from reality to a certain degree.
But you
should see for yourself…
An
interesting fact about the background of the story:
Elias Canetti
wrote it in the early 1930s under the
impression of rising National Socialism in Germany and of the first auto-da-fé
of books on 10 May 1933. Even being Jewish himself he could hardly have imagined then what was
still to come … the concentration camps. Heinrich Heine's saying that 'Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings' unfortunately proved right…
According to his autobiography, Canetti wrote this book in 1931 - two years before the Nazis burnt books. It was supposed to be part of a Comedie humaine, a series of novels based on insane or obsessive characters. A direct inspiration for the book was the fire at the Vienna Palace of Justice which Canetti witnessed in 1927 (including the following shooting of more than 70 people by Austrian police on the spot). His lifelong research on Crowds and Power but also this novel seem to have been triggered by this extraordinary event. A fascinating novel and it is a pity that it remained Canetti's only one.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your instructive comment! Yes, the historical background and almost clairvoyance of this novel are amazing. I hinted at part of it by the end of my review (which was the first that I ever published, by the way!). And I agree that it's a pity that Canetti didn't write any other novels...
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