Auto Da F??? is the story of Peter Kien, a distinguished, reclusive sinologist living in Germany between the wars. With masterly precision, Canetti reveals Kien's character, displaying the flawed personal relationships which ultimately lead to his destruction. Manipulated by his illiterate and grasping housekeeper, Therese, who has tricked him into marriage, and Benedikt Pfaff, a brutish concierge, Kien is forced out of his apartment - which houses his great library and one true passion - and into the underworld of the ...
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Auto Da F??? is the story of Peter Kien, a distinguished, reclusive sinologist living in Germany between the wars. With masterly precision, Canetti reveals Kien's character, displaying the flawed personal relationships which ultimately lead to his destruction. Manipulated by his illiterate and grasping housekeeper, Therese, who has tricked him into marriage, and Benedikt Pfaff, a brutish concierge, Kien is forced out of his apartment - which houses his great library and one true passion - and into the underworld of the city. In this purgatory he is guided by a chess-playing dwarf of evil propensities, until he is eventually restored to his home. But on his return he is visited by his brother, an eminent psychiatrist who, by an error of diagnosis, precipitates the final crisis... Auto Da F??? was first published in Germany in 1935 as Die Blendung ( The Blinding or Bedazzlement ) and later in Britain in 1947, where the publisher noted Canetti as a 'writer of strongly individual genius, which may prove influential', an observation borne out when the author was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981. Auto Da F??? still towers as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, and Canetti's incisive vision of an insular man battling agianst the outside world is as fresh and rewarding today as when first it appeared in print.
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Seller's Description:
First edition in English of the Nobel Prize-winning author's most well-known work. Octavo, original black cloth. Signed by Elias Canetti on the front free endpaper. Fine in a near fine price-clipped dust jacket with light shelfwear. Translated by from the German by C. V. Wedgwood. Rare and desirable signed. Originally published in German as "Die Blendung" in 1935 and later banned in Nazi Germany, Auto-Da-Fe did not become widely known until the publication of Canetti's "Crowds and Power" in 1960. "In Auto-da-Fé no one is spared. Professor and furniture salesman, doctor, housekeeper, and thief all get it in the neck. The remoreseless quality of the comedy builds one of the most terrifying literary worlds of the century" (Salman Rushdie). "Savage, subtle, beautifully mysterious--one of the few great novels of the century" (Iris Murdoch). "A strange, eloquent and terrifying book" (Philip Toynbee). Auto da Fé is the story of Peter Kien, a distinguished, reclusive Sinologist living in Germany between the wars. With masterly precision, Canetti builds up the elements in Kien himself, and his personal relationships, which will lead to his destruction.
I remember when Elias Canetti (1905 -- 1994) received the 1981 Nobel Prize for Literature, and I read an article exploring his books. With the Nobel Prize, his writings became readily accessible, and I read his autobiography, his most famous work "Crowds and Power", and this book, his only novel "Auto-da-Fe". I loved the first two, but had a great deal of difficulty with the novel. I still do.
About fifteen years later, my dear late (d. 2021) lady friend saw "Auto-da-Fe" on my bookshelf, picked it up, and read it. She loved it. The mordant humor and blistering tone of the work undoubtedly appealed to her. I found endearing her willingness to read this odd book and her response.
I am in a book group with other serious readers. We are reading "Auto-da-Fe" allowing substantial extra time for the book's length and difficulty. Although I was grateful for the opportunity to revisit Canetti's novel, I still found the book a struggle.
"Auto-da-Fe", a work of Canetti's young manhood, was written in German by 1931 and published in 1935. The English translation by Cicely Wedgewood, prepared under Canetti's supervision, was first published in 1946. The book received little attention until the publication of "Crowds and Power" in 1960 and again when Canetti was awarded the Nobel Prize. The novel has since garnered substantial and, as might be expected, varied scholarly commentary.
A long, difficult, bantering work, "Auto-da-Fe" is a work of literary modernism, to use an elusive and only partially helpful term. It is set in Vienna with a relatively short scene in Paris. The book tells the story of one Peter Kine,40, a sinologist famous in his field who is devoted to his books and reading and cares for little else. Kine reads many languages and, with his inheritance, maintains a large library in his apartment, probably the largest private library in the city. He is preyed upon by his housekeeper Therese, considerably older than himself whom he marries after eight years, and by his concierge, Pfaff.
With his devotion to books and study, Kine has little knowledge of people and little in what is called "social skills". In particular, Kine is a virgin, woefully ignorant and inexperienced with sexuality. Male-female relationships form a large theme of the book and many long passages in the work are heavily misogynistic. Whether the views are the author's own is of little consequence. The book is a foil to contemporary feminism and I think should be seen as such. The novel is heavily individualistic in tone and it eschews movements of any kind.
The individualistic, non-social character of the book is shown by the three parts and their characters. The first part, "A Head Without a World" is set in Kine's apartment and covers his marriage and its failure. The second, most bizarre, and difficult part of the book, "Headless World" occurs when Kine leaves his marriage and takes up with a Jewish dwarf, Fisher, (Fischerle), a pimp and hunchback (again there is no correctness in the book), and thief who plays chess and aspires to the world championship. Fischerle is as monomaical about chess as Kine is about books. He is grasping and greedy. In general the characters in the book other than Kine with his devotion to books are also single minded in a less appealing way with their devotion to crime, money, sex. In the third part of the book, "The World in the Head" Kein returns to his apartment where he is visited by his brother, a gynecologist turned psychiatrist. This is the shortest part of the novel with many discussions about women and books. The author is not a fan of psychiatry. (I was reminded of the Joan Crawford movie "Possessed" about obsession, madness and psychiatry which I saw at a film noir festival while reading this book). His attempt to help his scholarly brother fails with an attendant conflagration indicated by the book's title. (No spoilers here).
"Auto-da-Fe" is a mad, frustrating book. (Comparisons to Kafka are easy, but trite.) The strongest parts of the book are those in which Kine does what he loves: discusses Chinese philosophy and literature, Buddha and Buddhist Scripture, and German idealism in the persons of Kant, primarily, and Hegel. Many of Kine's interests and preoccupations also are mine.
The book works a tortured path with many long sections bordering on madness. The comparisons are with the "head" and solipsism of idealism and public, shared reality. The book explores fragmentation and one-sidedness, inability to connect with others, and the line between subjectivity and reality. I am reluctant to say much more. I do not want to draw contemporary political conclusions.
I was grateful for the opportunity to think again about "Auto-da-Fe" and Canetti. This is not an easy book and not for everyone. I was glad for its iconoclasm and idiosyncrasies, for its love for Buddhism and for philosophy. I was glad to be reminded of human finitude and limitations. And, for what it is worth, for a book that does not toe to contemporary orthodoxy.
