Elias Canetti

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Autobiography as Reconciliation: The Literary Function of Elias Canetti's Die gerettete Zunge

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SOURCE: Burt, Raymond L. “Autobiography as Reconciliation: The Literary Function of Elias Canetti's Die gerettete Zunge.” In Modern Austrian Prose Interpretations and Insights, edited by Paul F. Dvorak, pp. 129-49. Riverside, Calif.: Ariadne Press, 2001.

[In the following essay, Burt identifies ways in which Die gerettete Zunge differs from later volumes of Canetti's autobiography—namely, the book's narrative and literary construct closely resembles the novel genre.]

In 1977 Elias Canetti published Die gerettete Zunge: Geschichte einer Jugend. Usually this work is viewed as the first installment of his autobiographical trilogy, but there are compelling reasons to examine this work separately from the later volumes. Die gerettete Zunge reads like a well-constructed fictional work, not in that it resolves various plot entanglements, but in its narrative stance, its use of motifs, the poetic power of its descriptions and the development of a thematic plot. While obviously a chronological continuation of the childhood covered by Die gerettete Zunge, the two sequels, Die Fackel in Ohr and Das Augenspiel, exhibit stronger teleological functions due perhaps to the fact that the author of these later volumes was, as of 1981, a Nobel Prize winner. Their emphasis centers on the development of the Dichter, the writer, i.e., the influences behind his literary productions, Die Blendung (1935), Masse und Macht (1960), and his play Hochzeit (1932).

In these later volumes Canetti is invested to a greater extent in presenting a traditional literary autobiography: the presentation of the intellectual and experiential influences on his literary works, the development of his philosophical view of the world, and observations of famous persons (most notably, Karl Kraus, George Grosz, Bertolt Brecht, Alma Mahler, and Hermann Broch) with whom he came into contact. Die gerettete Zunge, on the other hand, may be read and interpreted profitably by a reader who is not familiar with any of Canetti's other literary accomplishments. The uniqueness of this first work is underscored by its origin. We know from an interview with Canetti that it was composed in response to a specific situation. Faced with his brother George's serious illness, Canetti sought solace for both his brother and himself by recalling their childhood.1

This shared childhood begins in Ruschuk, a small Bulgarian town on the Danube. As the text unfolds, the reader learns that the Canettis belonged to a community of Ladino-speaking Jews of Spanish origin in a town populated by a confusing array of ethnic groups. Grandfather Canetti was a successful merchant and patriarch of the family. Canetti's father lived beneath his shadow, until he decided to move to England. The grandfather was so opposed to the move that he publicly pronounced a curse upon his son.

At age six Canetti moved to Manchester with his parents and his two younger brothers. His father began working for his brother-in-law and the young Elias entered school. A year after their arrival, Canetti's father died suddenly one morning with no satisfactory medical explanation. The widow decides to move the family to Vienna, where they are living when the First World War breaks out. Hardships and the mother's illness cause her to relocate the family to Zurich. Two years into their new life in Switzerland, she once again falls ill. At this point the family is separated for the first time. The mother is institutionalized for treatment, and the boys are split into separate living arrangements. Elias, now fourteen, spends his time between his school and his boarding arrangement in Tiefenbrunnen. The book ends when his mother returns from her convalescence with the idea that her sixteen-year-old son needs to be exposed to the hardships of the real world, and she forces him to leave school and to move with her to Germany, where the postwar situation promises to offer a vivid exposure to reality.

The basic theme of the book revolves around the young Elias's problematic relationship to his mother, which was a reverberation of the cataclysmic effect his father's death exacted on the family. His relationship to his mother prior to this event was muted at best, but now the interpersonal dynamics shift, and the two are locked in an intense bond which has ramifications for his development as a writer. Although descriptive excursions and side episodes abound, it is this problematic situation to which the narrative consistently returns.

Die gerettete Zunge differs from most of the works covered in this volume in that it is an autobiography. The question thus arises: how different should the interpretive approach to an autobiography be from that to a novel? Up until the mid-twentieth century, the question might have been answered as follows: whereas the novel is a fictional construct developed along aesthetic guidelines, the autobiography depicts historical reality, subject perhaps to the occasional lapses in the author's memory. Just as the autobiography of a famous political or military figure might shed light on historical events, so too the autobiography of a poet could aid in the understanding of the author's literary accomplishments. Decades of critical examination of the genre have radically changed our view of autobiography vis-à-vis fictional prose. An individual autobiography may still be mined for insight into history or an artistic corpus, but as a literary genre, the autobiography is considered a close relative of the novel.

Friederike Eigler identified two major schools of thought in regard to autobiography: the hermeneutic, idealistic view and the deconstructionalist view. Among the points of contention between the two is the relationship of autobiography to fiction. While the hermeneutic view acknowledges the artistic nature of the genre and its close ties to the novel though maintaining at some level a boundary between the genres, the deconstructionalist view denies the existence of any boundaries between autobiography and fiction. Eigler observes that the two approaches tend to correspond to the two types of autobiographies, the “classical” and the “modern/postmodern.”2 The “classical” autobiography is one in which the author constructs a text in a chronologically linear flow. Its strong emphasis on the development of a distinct self appeals to the hermeneutic/idealistic critics, who value the genre for its “humanness.” The “postmodern” autobiographies have a fragmented structure and cast doubt on the continuity of the self, a tendency which conforms to deconstructionalist theory. Eigler seeks the middle ground between the two approaches by acknowledging both the interpretive intention of a self-reconstructing author who lays claim to truth and the culturally dependent textual function that blurs the distinction between autobiography and fiction (29).

In the interpretation of fiction, it is misleading to identify the narrator as the voice of the author. The narrator, as any student in a first-year literature class knows, is a fictional creation of the author to the same degree as the other characters involved in the plot. On the other hand, in reading an autobiography—now that this genre has been recognized as a relative of the novel in its creative use of literary components—this same identification of author with narrator is expected. This expectation has found its most quoted source in Philip Lejeune's Le Pacte autobiographique, which offers a quasi-legalistic justification for the contractual acceptance of the shared identity of subject, narrator, and author.3 Nevertheless, literary critics increasingly disavow the identification of the autobiographic narrator with the self that is portrayed in the narrative. Differences in time, life experiences, perspectives, and the vagaries of memory insure that the literary representation of one's past may reflect more on the state of the narrator than on the reality of the earlier self. In terms of literary analysis, these perspectives are expressed as two distinct planes of reality. One represents the actual life as experienced by the earlier self (the “truth,” if you will), and the other is the creatively constructed interpretation of that life (the “art”) as viewed by the author at the time of the autobiography's composition. The first plane can never be accurately or adequately recreated in literary form and thus the text will always be more art than truth. Thus the real question regarding autobiography is one of the quality of its artistic construction, not one of its veracity.

Following this line of thought, David Darby examines those points where the axis of the narrated self and that of the narrator are incongruent.4 These points expose the framework of the narrative interpretation and can be used to shed light not only on the intention of the narrator, but also on the narrative strategy. By highlighting statements of the narrator, Darby documents the fact that Canetti's text is not merely a totality of recollected episodes. The narrator indicates that material was not included, and thus that selection was a conscious act. The supporting evidence he provides comes from Die Fackel im Ohr, but a prominent example of this admission occurs in the Die gerettete Zunge during a discussion of his mother's various versions of his father's death. He remembers them all and could recount them: “Perhaps some day I can write them all down completely. They would make a book, an entire book, but now I am following other trails.”5

The inside cover of the paperback release of Die gerettete Zunge refers to Canetti's story of his childhood as primarily a poetic autobiography (“in erster Linie eine poetische Autobiographie”). This designation of “poetic” is an indication of literary quality, and yet, it is coincidentally a technical term for a subgenre which is particularly fruitful for understanding Die gerettete Zunge. In his book on autobiography, Richard Coe points to the fact that the first use of the term “poetic autobiography” in modern literary criticism was actually referring to a distinct literary form which he termed the “Childhood.”6 Coe offers a precise definition of the Childhood as:

… an extended piece of writing, a conscious, deliberately executed literary artifact, usually in prose (and thus intimately related to the novel) but not excluding occasional experiments in verse, in which the most substantial portion of the material is directly autobiographical, and whose structure reflects step by step the development of the writer's self; beginning often, but not invariably, with the first light of consciousness, and concluding, quite specifically, with the attainment of a precise degree of maturity.

(8-9)

Coe traces the rise of this genre, as it originated in the eighteenth century with the discovery of childhood and later flourished among writers of the post World War II generation.

Viewing Die gerettete Zunge as an example of Childhood also addresses the distinction between the narrated self and the narrator. As Coe points out: “The former self-as-child is as alien to the adult writer as to the adult reader” (1). The value of a genre designation like the Childhood is that it makes an a priori distinction between the narrator and the narrated self. The adult narrator and the world of the child are separated not only by distance, but also by insurmountable psychological and developmental differences. Canetti strives to place the reader in the realm of the child by structuring the narrative as a series of episodes and images seemingly organized purely by memory. This narrative strategy may conceal the fact that the narrator is consciously manipulating the text.

As befits the Childhood, Canetti begins not with a description of his birth or his lineage but with a chapter called “My Earliest Memory” (Meine früheste Erinnerung). The event recounted, from which the book's title is drawn, is so compelling that Waltraud Wiethölter used it as the interpretive key to the entire autobiographic trilogy. The two-year-old Elias was being carried by a young woman to a door. The door opens to reveal a smiling man who comes up to him and commands him to show him his tongue. The child obeys and the man pulls out a knife and says that he will now cut off the tongue. He moves the knife close to the tongue, then suddenly puts away the knife, saying “Not today, tomorrow” (3).7 This frightening experience is repeated every morning. The placing of this memory at the beginning instead of the traditional birth narrative or the genealogy, signals the writer's intent to present the world from the perspective of the child, and not to offer a documented reconstruction of one's life.

The Childhood also shifts the weight of the genre considerations from the boundaries between truth and fiction to that of an individual's quest to restore the myths and poetry of an earlier lost state of being. A clue to the interpretation of Die gerettete Zunge can be found in its last sentence: “It is true that I, like the earliest man, came into being only by an expulsion from Paradise” (268).8 Canetti is referring here to the idyllic Zurich period which was coming to an abrupt end; however, it also signals the end of his close, unquestioning relationship to his mother. Paradoxically, directly after his father's death Elias experienced the acceleration into adulthood at the same time that he was undergoing an extension of his childhood dependence on his mother. The end of the book documents the point in his life at which the two become increasingly estranged. In reconstructing the period of his life during which his psyche and intellectual development were inextricably bound up with his mother's strict guidance, the author may be both tracing the origins of his artistic development as well as attempting to restore his paradise lost.

In the first chapter about his life in Manchester, the narrator abruptly deviates from the chronological flow maintained throughout the work. Canetti jumps to the pivotal event in his life, the unexplained and sudden death of his father. This event immediately thrust the seven-year-old into a new role in relation to his mother. In his earliest memories, and indeed up until the death of his father, his mother played a minor role. He and his brother were under the care of nannies. He describes the regimen adhered to in Manchester, whereby the children were allowed to visit their parents on Sunday afternoons until his mother would ring the bell for the governess to fetch the children back to their room. Then suddenly, in the opening sentence of the chapter on Manchester, he states how, after the death of his father, he now sleeps in his father's bed. From the reader's point of view, this first mention of the father's death comes without warning and is a narrative strategy that transmits the shock of sudden death. This positioning at the beginning of the Manchester section also places it in direct proximity in the narrative to the grandfather's curse, which brought the Ruschuk section to a close, thus adding weight to the theory that the curse played a role in his death. It also immediately focuses on the child's new role: to prevent his mother from committing suicide during the night. At the time of his death, his father was not talking to her. The quarrel centered on her suspected infidelity. After her convalescence from an illness, she had hesitated to return to Manchester and her family. Her doctor had become infatuated with her and had declared his love. She overcame the temptation and wanted to share with her husband the story of her struggle as a sign of her love for him. He, however, did not view it that way and ceased speaking to her. He died inexplicably at the height of his anger. Canetti's memory of his father lying pale on the floor with his mother screaming “Speak to me!” assumes a deeper meaning with this revelation. His death eternalized her guilt. This is clear in her attitude toward her religion. Only two things mattered, her son being able to recite the Kaddish for his father and the Day of Atonement. Perhaps the title of the book, which should be translated “The Rescued Tongue,” reflects the fact that his assumption of his father's role, as confidant and primary companion, atones for the guilt his mother experienced.

Elias was forced by his mother to fill the void left by her husband's death. Custom and circumstance would naturally demand increased familial responsibilities from him as the eldest son. However, the massive attention and demands his mother places on him effectively ended his childhood. This is demonstrated symbolically in her first words to him: “My son, you're playing, and your father is dead! You're playing, you're playing, and your father is dead! Your father is dead! Your father is dead! You're playing, and your father is dead!” (56).9 The repetition is an indication that these words are most likely burned into his memory, and it is a testament of the violence done to his development. As the narrator has indicated, Elias remained unaware of his mother's feelings of guilt and indeed this initial reprimand, which she screamed from the window into the neighborhood until she was pulled back into the house, instills some measure of guilt in the child. From this moment on, he underwent an enforced transformation into adulthood. His mother put him through an intensive (and harsh) training in German, ostensibly to prepare him for school in Vienna, but German had been the private language of the parents, the language of their early courtship and of their discussions of literature and the theater. Now the young boy had to become her husband's replacement in the nightly discussions about literature.

The medium of the relationship was language and literature. The “rescued tongue” (Elias now speaking for his silent father) manifested itself in the emphasis on German, the language of his parents' courtship and of their artistic dreams. The language was imbued with so much power that Elias viewed it originally as a magical language, a secret cabal into which he wished to be admitted. A more detailed account of the mother's guilt in bringing about her husband's death is recounted in the third segment of the autobiography, Das Augenspiel. Canetti recognizes that his mother's actual transgression, of which she was unaware, was that she engaged her doctor/suitor in literary discussions in German. By doing so she had already violated the private intimacy of their marriage, regardless of any sexual infidelity on her part.

Elias's painful rebirth into his new relationship with his mother occurred during his three-month stay in Lausanne, where she subjected him to intense German instruction. After mastering the language, he embraced it as his mother tongue. It supplanted his Ladino origins to the point that his memory of his life in Ruschuk is in German, the language he then chose to express himself artistically.

In terms of his Childhood, the consequences of the child being propelled into a premature adulthood are felt in the development of his identity. The young Elias was not only subjected to her force-fed German instruction, but also to an intensive schooling in her artistic tastes. Through his evening discussions of literature, he accepted his mother's views uncritically and to such an extent that he became dependent upon her for his self-understanding. This is evident in a commentary by the narrator. “When we were alone, everything she thought, said, or did entered into me like the most natural thing in the world. I came into being from the sentences she uttered to me at such times” (125).10 Canetti places great weight on the effect these discussions of literature had on his own development: “a good portion of me consists of them” (89).11 When she was not talking directly to him, he eavesdropped, wanting to capture everything she said.

The intensity of his subjugation to her opinions continued even during the two years he spent apart from her at the pension in Tiefbrunnen. Although at this time in his life Elias began to exhibit signs of independence from her, such as corrupting their shared language by learning Swiss dialect and discovering authors she does not esteem, he nevertheless maintained contact by writing her all of his thoughts and composing a play dedicated to her.

The narrator recounts how grateful he was to his mother who seemingly allowed him intellectual freedom. She encouraged him to pursue all fields of knowledge equally. If we return to the image of Eden, the fruit of all trees was allowed with one exception. This intensely intimate relationship had to shun all sexuality, which it stifled with the authority of a biblical commandment. “She obstinately kept all eroticism from me, the taboo … remained as powerful in me as though it had been proclaimed by God himself on Mount Sinai” (163).12 He had to follow his mother's lead and show disdain for sexuality.

In a particularly revealing incident, which is termed in the chapter heading as “The Discovery of Evil,” (Die Auffindung des Bösen) a schoolmate told the ten-year-old Elias the facts of life in a less than delicate manner. He vehemently rejected what he heard and turned to his mother for clarification. “She, who had a clear and perfect answer for everything, she, who always made me feel that I shared the responsibility of raising the little brothers, she fell silent, silent for the first time, and remained silent so long that I grew scared” (107).13 She asked for his trust, then she stated that the boy was lying. She explained that children come into the world “in a different way, a beautiful way.”

For his part, Elias followed his mother's lead and showed disdain for the erotic awakenings of his peers and, in sharp contrast to his propensity to pursue all realms of knowledge, avoided all sexual subjects. During his years of puberty, he was the only male in a convent which had been converted into a boarding house for female students; he, nevertheless, remained ambivalent toward his enviable situation, keeping his living arrangements secret from his classmates. The power of this taboo was such that his disinterest continued throughout the years covered by Die gerettete Zunge and beyond his seventeenth year.

The intensity of the relationship evoked in him a jealousy toward any possible usurper of his position. His greatest nemesis in this regard entered his mother's life during her “breakdown” in Vienna. Her doctor, a university professor, began to court her affections. This temptation parallels the situation she faced shortly before the death of her husband. Uncharacteristically, his rival is not named, an unusual occurrence considering the importance young Elias places on names. This reticence might be due to discretion on Canetti's part since the doctor was married, but this event occurred over sixty years prior to its publication and would probably not stir up a scandal. A more likely explanation is that by not naming him, Canetti denies his foe the immortality of fame.

Within the narrative, the ten-year-old expressed such hatred for his rival that he reduced him to a single characteristic, his beard. “I was afraid he might someday graze me with his beard, and I would then be instantly transformed into a slave, who would have to fetch and carry for him” (119).14 The emphasis on the beard, which is also an emphasis on manhood, could reflect the anxiety of a preadolescent competing in a realm in which he was not yet capable of understanding. In the chapter “The Beard in Lake Constance” (Der Bart im Bodensee), in which he triumphed over his foe, the narrator mimics the visual perception of the child watching the hated figure on the increasingly distant shore gradually shrink into nothingness.

This scene is an excellent example of the poetic quality of Die gerettete Zunge. In a few decisive sentences, the narrator depicts a moment of transition and transcendence in the mother/son relationship and the wife/husband relationship for which it substitutes. The mother had decided to move the family from Vienna to Switzerland due to the hardships of the war. They were aided in their departure by the professor, who accompanied them to Lindau. The departure on the boat to Switzerland represents the end of his rival's hold over his mother. After the boy watched the beard and the threat it represented fade in the distance, he turned to his mother for her reaction. In a rare gesture of physical affection, which symbolically could be meant for her husband, she stroked his hair and repeated softly over and over again the phrase: “Now, everything's fine. Now, everything's fine” (130).15 These lines form a counterpoint to her repeated plea at the death of her husband. In the repetition of her situation, her guilt has been atoned. That this transition is linked to the death of the father may also be seen in the identification of the bearded Herr Professor with the “bane (or curse) of our life.” Thus, in this scene, all three theories about the cause of the father's death; the grandfather's curse, jealousy and the rejection of war, are united.

An important characteristic of the Childhood is solitude, since the sense of aloneness and a sense of individual identity are related (Coe, 52). This, however, is not the case for Elias. His identity was violated in the attempts to fulfill the role of his father. The murderous rage Elias felt towards his rival was prompted by his fear of losing his mother, of being alone. In the chapter prior to the appearance of the professor, a man in the neighborhood leaped to his death from a window. This suicide was identical to the one he threatened to commit should his mother ever remarry, and its motivation may also have been related, for the man “had been alone and had no kin. Maybe that, she said, was why he hadn't wanted to go on living” (118).16 His fear of solitude, of life without his special relationship to his mother, delayed him from fully developing his identity.

The next chapter, which opens the fourth section of the book, is “The Oath” (Der Schwur) in which Elias elicited from his mother an oath that she would never remarry. He compelled her to take this step by threatening suicide, which the narrator confirms is no idle threat. This oath was only accepted after she swore by the memory of her husband. At a later point in the narrative he refers to this as the time in which “I had virtually fought for my mother's hand and won it” (198).17 He successfully claimed the place of his father.

The narrative structure of the book is divided into five sections corresponding to the different cities in which he spent his youth. Coe points out that the change of location in one's life is conducive to memory (17). The more defining structure, however, are the short chapters, which often carry dual or multiple titles. The titles are more than an indication of the random pairing of topics within the chapters, as the narrator ties the two remembered events into a unity of theme, motif, intensification, or simply as a contrast of forces acting upon his development. Even chapters with one title generally have two related episodes. The pairing is a form of primitive metaphor. Placing together two events, or memories, implies a relationship. The technique mimics the action of memory, which also is known to connect two seemingly unrelated events. In the chapter “Purim. The Comet” (Purim. Der Komet) the narrator reflects openly on the connection between the two episodes: “… and since I have never thought about one event without the other, there must be some connection between them” (20).18

In the chapter “The Marked Man” (Der Gezeichnete) Canetti explicitly attributes the connection of two unrelated events to the mystery of memory. In the side garden of the house, one could escape the attention of others and enter a location of silence. In the quiet twilight one was open to “any mute event,” an interesting concept for one so oriented to language. In this reclusion he spotted along the river one summer evening a ship, which appeared to him “as though I had never seen a ship, it was the only one, there was nothing outside it. Near it, there was twilight and gradual darkness” (222).19 The ship was a vision of silent, drifting lights, reflected in the dark waters. The image resounded silently in his soul. “It … took possession of me, as though I had come into the orchard for the sake of that ship. I had never seen it before, but I recognized it” (222).20 The power of this image was one which transcends the power of speech, calling forth feelings of a mystical recognition of an experience beyond the capacity of language to grasp. “I went into the house and talked to nobody; what could I have talked about?” (222).21

The second event in the chapter follows with a description of “a sinister figure” among his Zurich teachers. This teacher, as it turned out, bore the physical and psychological scars of a terrible tragedy. A school excursion in the mountains was ended by an avalanche, which killed many students and the only other teacher. The effects of this catastrophe on the teacher are evident in the manner in which Canetti presents him. He wore a hat to cover the “mark of Cain” of his injury. His demeanor was that of one pursued by the furies. He did not seem to exist for the present, but was internally distanced. It was an unspeakable guilt, silently respected by observers, and so he was the only teacher whom no one mimicked.

This haunting portrait is then directly tied to the image of the ship in the last statement of the chapter: “I forgot him and never thought about him again; his image resurfaced before me only with the illuminated ship” (223).22 Memory connects the two and thus in the unspoken subconscious, the two “unspeakable” images find expression in one another. Be that as it may, the author does find the means to relate the power of the unspeakable, in his poetic tableau as well as in the fact that he offers the juxtaposition as memory provided it.

Duality occurs in symbolism as well. Notable among these is the color red. The symbolic importance of this color is immediately established in the first sentence of the book: “My earliest memory is dipped in red” (3).23 The scene in which his tongue is threatened has red doors, floors and stairs. Rarely are other colors mentioned in the novel, so that its recurrence is striking. Red becomes the color of threat and danger. The young Elias is captivated by his mother's story of her sledding party being attacked one winter by wolves: “… she described the red tongues of the wolves, which had come so close that she still dreamt about them in later years” (9).24 These wolves invaded her son's dreams after the father's wolf mask with its long, red tongue had frightened him. The mouth of hell in the Tunnel of Fun in Vienna opened red and huge, and in this instance the color evoked not only fear but also fascination with the forbidden. Red is strongly associated with eroticism, first with his infatuation with little Mary during his years in Manchester. He was so stricken by her red cheeks that he became obsessed with kissing them. In these and other examples, the color carries the dual symbolism of danger and eroticism. It should be mentioned that the importance of this color continues in his life beyond the period covered by Die gerettete Zunge, most notably his “revelation” which led to his work on Masse und Macht (as recounted in Die Fackel im Ohr) occurred under the red skies of Vienna.

Strings of association are the used by the narrator to show how the young Elias connected the chaotic forces around him. Like the pairing of episodes, these associations mimic in literary form the workings of the subconscious by weaving experiences and impressions into a pattern. In terms of the narrative, these associations bridge the episodic chapters and draw connections throughout the text. For example, he associated the death of his father with war. One explanation of his father's death was that he died of shock having read about the outbreak of war between Montenegro and Turkey. This rather unlikely explanation was the first one provided the young Elias and thus carried more weight than it would otherwise. The narrator states that for years he was convinced that the news of the war killed his father and from that time on he took all war “personally.” Added to this image is the figure of Napoleon. The last book his father had given him was on Napoleon, a book he did not finish after his father's death. In his mind the youth had defined his disdain for his uncle by connecting him to Napoleon. Napoleon was the bringer of war and thus a murderer (80) and his Uncle Napoleon now represented the forces that killed his father. Because his uncle also represented the utilitarian world of business, Elias's hatred of death, war, and his uncle flowed into his general aversion to the world of business.

The major theme of the book itself exhibits a duality. The mother's atonement for her guilt in the death of her husband was accomplished at the expense of her son's childhood. Elias was to be the “rescued tongue” of her husband. Inevitably, this intensified relationship set into motion the dynamics that led to the alienation of mother and son. Thus the book is centered thematically around dual reconciliation: first that of the wife/husband, then of the mother/son. The former occurs on the time-plane of the narrated self, i.e., within the plot of the narration. The latter is evident in the time-plane of the narrator. The structuring of this poetic autobiography reveals its functional role: through the interpretive art of autobiography, Canetti finds his own individual voice (his “rescued tongue”) and thus makes peace with his mother.

How is this reconciliation manifested? At the beginning of the book, the narrator ends a chapter with the pronouncement that the only thing he truly hates is death, the enemy of humankind. Canetti's view of literature as a weapon against death has been the object of critical discussion,25 yet within the pages of Die gerettete Zunge, the theme of the writer as an opponent of death is undeveloped. Nevertheless, this disclosure, appearing so early in the text and reverberating at the close of a chapter, carries thematic weight, and one would expect his hatred of death to unfold within the text. It does appear to do so in his reaction to his father's death: “My father's death was at the center of every world I found myself in” (58).26 Yet both prior to this event and following it, he exhibited murderous intentions. In Ruschuk his fury against his older cousin, Laurica, let him to pursue her with an ax. During his struggles with the professor, Elias fantasized about the collapse of the balcony on which the professor was sitting. Later he threatened his mother with his own suicidal jump from the balcony if she remarries. It does not appear that Elias was engaged in the struggle against death, but the pronouncement was not from Elias, but from the narrator. As Hans Reiss stated: “He can create a world by way of language which will survive his own personal death. Thus, writing entails conquering death.”27

An autobiography, written at the time long past his mother's death and when his brother George is threatened by illness, may serve the purpose of preserving family through literature. Gerald Stieg quotes from a Le Monde interview with Canetti in which the author expressly touches on this point:

The people whom I love, my parents, my brother George, but also those whom I don't care for, will live once again, as long as my books are read. I have an unspeakable joy, whenever I consider that they will move, speak and live independent of me.28

Given Canetti's view of literature as a means of combating death, the omission of his hated rival's name may be his final revenge.

From Das Augenspiel we know that the reconciliation with his mother as presented in Die gerettete Zunge did not hold, but perhaps the autobiography serves as his final recognition of his debt to his mother and his repayment of that debt. In an episode one summer, Elias became angry at his mother's obsession with having her portrait painted by a well-known artist: “He's going to paint me! I'm going to be immortal!” (173).29 He understood this desire, but resented the fact that another person would be the one to immortalize her. She misunderstood his objections and accused him of being envious of her. “This accusation was so low and so wrong that I couldn't retort. It lamed my tongue but not my brain” (175).30 She never sat for the painting, and Canetti, no longer with lamed tongue, achieved a more enduring and immortalizing portrait.

Notes

  1. Gerald Stieg. “Betrachtungen zu Elias Canettis Autobiographie.” Zu Elias Canetti. Ed. Manfred Durzak (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1983) 160.

  2. Friederike Eigler. Das autobiographische Werk von Elias Canetti. (Tübingen: Stauffenberg-Verlag, 1988) 15.

  3. Philippe Lejeune, Le Pacte autobiographique (Paris: Seuil, 1975).

  4. David Darby. “A Literary Life: Textuality of Elias Canetti's Autobiography.” Modern Austrian Literature 25.2 (1992) 37-48.

  5. From the English translation by Joachim Neugroschel. Elias Canetti. The Tongue Set Free: Remembrance of a European Childhood. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1979), 58. All quotes from this text will be indicated by the page number in parentheses. The German citations provided in the endnotes are from Elias Canetti. Die gerettete : Geschichte einer Jugend. (München: Carl Hanser, 1994).

    Vielleicht kann ich sie einmal komplett niederschreiben. Es würde ein Buch daraus werden, ein ganzes Buch, und jetzt sind es andere Spuren, denen ich folge” (75).

  6. Richard N. Coe. When the Grass Was Taller: Autobiography and the Experience of Childhood. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985) 2.

  7. Heute noch nicht, morgen” (9).

  8. Es ist wahr, daß ich, wie der früheste Mensch, durch die Vertreibung aus dem Paradies erst entstand” (330).

  9. Mein Sohn, du spielst, und dein Vater ist tot! Du spielst, du spielst, und dein Vater ist tot! Dein Vater ist tot! Dein Vater ist tot! Du spielst, dein Vater ist tot!” (72-73).

  10. Wenn wir nur allein waren, ging alles, was sie dachte, sagte oder tat, wie die natürlichste Sache in mich ein. Aus den Sätzen, die sie mir zu solchen Zeiten sagte, bin ich entstanden” (155).

  11. “… ich bestehe zum guten Teil aus ihnen” (111).

  12. Alles Erotische enthielt sie mir hartnäckig vor, das Tabu … blieb so wirksam in mir, als wäre es am Berg Sinai von Gott selbst verkündigt worden” (202).

  13. Sie, die auf alles eine runde und klare Antwort wußte, sie, die mir immer das Gefühl gab, daß auch ich Verantwortung für die Erziehung der Kleinen hätte, sie schwieg, zum erstenmal schwieg sie, sie schwieg so lang, daß mir angst und bange wurde” (132).

  14. Ich fürchtete, er könne mich einmal mit dem Bart streifen und dann würde ich mich auf der Stelle in einen Sklaven verwandeln, der ihm alles zutragen müßte” (147).

  15. Jetzt ist alles gut. Jetzt ist alles gut” (161).

  16. “… sei allein gewesen und habe keine Angehörigen gehabt. Vielleicht deswegen hat er nicht mehr leben wollen” (146).

  17. “… in der ich sozusagen um die Hand meiner Mutter kämpfte und sie gewann” (244).

  18. “… da ich seither nie an das eine ohne das andere gedacht habe, muß ein Zusammenhang bestehen” (30).

  19. “… als hätte ich nie ein Schiff gesehen, es war das einzige, außer ihm war nichts. Neben ihm war Dämmerung und allmähliches Dunkel” (274).

  20. Es … nahm Besitz von mir, als wäre ich um seinetwillen in den Obstgarten gekommen. Ich hatte es nie zuvor gesehen, aber ich erkannte es wieder” (274).

  21. Ich ging ins Haus und sprach zu niemand, worüber hätte ich sprechen können” (274).

  22. Ich vergaß ihn und habe nie wieder an ihn gedacht, erst mit dem beleuchteten Schiff ist sein Bild wieder vor mir erschienen” (276).

  23. Meine früheste Erinnerung ist in Rot getaucht” (9).

  24. “… sie schilderte die roten Zungen der Wölfe, die so nahe gekommen waren, daß sie noch in späteren Jahren von ihnen träumte” (16).

  25. See in particular the analysis by Hans Reiss and Dagmar Barnouw's Elias Canetti: Zur Einführung. Hamburg: Julius, 1996.

  26. In Zentrum jeder Welt, in der ich mich fand, stand der Tod des Vaters” (71).

  27. Hans Reiss. “The Writer's Task: Some Reflections on Elias Canetti's Autobiography.” Elias Canetti: Londoner Symposium. Ed. Andrian Stevens and Fred Wagner. (Stuttgart: Akademischer Verlag, 1991), 55.

  28. Translated from Stieg, 159. “Die Menschen, die ich liebte, meine Eltern, den Bruder Georg, aber auch jene, die ich nicht mochte, werden noch einmal leben, solange man mich lesen wird. Ich habe eine unsagbare Freude, wenn ich denke, dass sie sich außer mir bewegen, sprechen, leben.

  29. Er wird mich malen! Ich werde unsterblich!” (213).

  30. Es verschlug mir noch die Rede, aber keinen Gedanken” (216).

Additional coverage of Canetti's life and career is contained in the following sources published by the Thomson Gale: Concise Dictionary of World Literary Biography, Vol. 2; Contemporary Authors, Vols. 21-24R, 146; Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, Vols. 23, 61, 79; Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vols. 3, 14, 25, 75, 86; Contemporary World Writers, Ed. 2; Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vols. 85, 124; DISCovering Authors 3.0; Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, Ed. 3; European Writers, Vol. 12; Literature Resource Center; Major 20th-Century Writers, Eds. 1, 2; Reference Guide to World Literature, Eds. 2, 3; and Twayne's World Authors.

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‘Fissures in the Monument’: Reassessing Elias Canetti's Autobiographical Works