Auto-da-Fé by Elias CanettiMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book starts with a huge private library: the 25,000 volumes large library of the Viennese Sinologue Kien. Kien is only interested in his books and leads a secluded life. The world is lodged in his head, and his head is not interested in the world outside. When in a moment of insanity he marries his housekeeper, he is faced with the chaos of “normal” life — with tragic consequences...
Called "Die Blendung" in German (“The Blinding”), this 550 page thick novel was published in 1935 in Vienna, Canetti’s hometown at the time. It is one of the central novels of the first half of the 20th century, with Ulysses and novels by Kafka, Proust, Musil, and Mann. The central theme of the novel is blindness to the thoughts and needs of other people – all the characters in the book are only obsessed with themselves. The two poles of idealism and materialism are opposed without any contact, so that grotesque misunderstandings occur. It is also an apt allegory for the conflict between the lonely, reflective mind and reality.
Canetti’s anti-hero, Professor Peter Kien, a “private” scholar and “the greatest Sinologist of his time” (a Sinologist is a specialist in the language, literature, history and culture of China), routinely and grotesquely misinterprets the world outside books. Kien’s retreat into his library represents a kind of blindness, a blindness to the world outside his narrowly defined interests. He lives in his giant library as in a protective shell, alienated from the world, silent and alone. His exaggerated love for books and fear of human beings drive Kien ever more into isolation.
One of his delusions is that his housekeeper, a big-boned woman named Therese Krumbholz, cares for his precious books, or is even in love with him. She gains the trust of the professor by pretending to share his love for books and deal with his collection with particular care. After Kien marries his housekeeper, Therese immediately gives up all pretense and drops his precious books to the ground. His shell will be broken. But also the housekeeper is blind (and the same is true for the brutal concierge, Benedikt Pfaff, who takes her side), she lives in her own narrowly defined, materialistic world, without really touching her environment, and is therefore just as blind to other people and their feelings as Peter Kien. Finally the reclusive scholar will be destroyed in a terrible struggle that will be fought with all means available by these two persons with blinders on. The grasping Therese teams up with the brutish Pfaff and together they force Kien out of his apartment and giant library, forcing him into the underworld of the city. Here he finds a dwarf of evil intent as his guide...
There are several plot twists I will not divulge here, and finally Kien is even briefly restored to the ownership of his library. But, as the English title already suggests, all ends in fire when that ownership is endangered again. Kien doesn’t want to leave this world without taking his precious books with him...
With reference to Canetti’s later magnum opus Crowds and Power, which Canetti exposes the delusions of politicians and leaders of society that they really have power over others, we could say that professor Kien and his housekeeper Therese suffer from the same delusion, in this novel written during the financial crisis of the 1930s, when Nazism had already taken over Germany (and soon Austria). Nazism of course would demonstrate a destructive madness that would put anything in this novel in the shadow.
Elias Canetti (1905-94) was born in the Principality of Bulgaria (in the multicultural city of Ruse, on the Donau). Although he later became a British citizen, he lived most of his life in Austria and Switzerland. His chosen language was German. Besides the present novel, his only one, Canetti is known for a trilogy of autobiographical memoirs of his childhood, and for Crowds and Power, a study of crowd behavior as it manifests itself in human activities ranging from mob violence to religious congregations. Canetti won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981, "for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power."
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