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Download Auto-da-fé ePub

by Elias Canetti

ISBN 0826402100
ISBN13 978-0826402103
Language English
Author Elias Canetti
Publisher Continuum; First Edition Thus edition (1982)
Pages 464
Formats txt azw doc azw
Category Fiction
Subcategory Contemporary
Size ePub 1155 kb
Size Fb2 1976 kb
Rating: 4.1
Votes: 116

Auto-da-Fé, Elias Canetti's only work of fiction, is a staggering achievement that puts him squarely in the ranks of major European writers such as Robert Musil and Hermann Broch. It is the story of Peter Kien, a scholarly recluse who lives among and for his great library. The destruction of Kien through the instrument of the illiterate, brutish housekeeper he marries constitutes the plot of the book. The best writers of our time have been concerned with the horror of the modern world--one thinks of Kafka, to whom Canetti has often been compared. But Auto-de-Fé stands as a completely original, unforgettable treatment of the modern predicament.

Auto da Fé (original title Die Blendung, "The Blinding") is a 1935 novel by Elias Canetti; the title of the English translation (by C. V. Wedgwood, 1946) refers to the burning of heretics by the Inquisition.

Auto da Fé (original title Die Blendung, "The Blinding") is a 1935 novel by Elias Canetti; the title of the English translation (by C. The book manuscript was finished in 1931, and the book was published in 1935, by Herbert Reichner in Vienna (Canetti's hometown at that time). It is Canetti's first publication.

Translation of Die Blendung. First American ed. published under title: The Tower of Babel. Father takes my books away. I'd like to go to a Chinese school. They have forty thousand letters in their alphabet. You couldn't get them all into one book. That's only what you think.

Elias Canetti is one of those strange writers that are hard to grasp, and get more complex with each book I read.

Auto-da-Fé, Elias Canetti's only work of fiction, is a staggering achievement that puts him squarely in the ranks of major European writers such as Robert Musil and Hermann Broch. It is the story of Peter Kien.

Auto-da-Fé" 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.

Auto Da Fe. by. Canetti Elias. Book Source: Digital Library of India Item 2015. author: Canetti Elias d. ate. te: 2010-10-00 d. citation: 1946 d. dentifier. origpath: 66 d. copyno: 1 d.

Auto Da Fé is the story of Peter Kien, a distinguished, reclusive sinologist living in Germany between the wars. 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

Canetti’s cornerstone text, Auto da Fe, was published in 1935 but was not translated into English until 1946 because .

Canetti’s cornerstone text, Auto da Fe, was published in 1935 but was not translated into English until 1946 because of the ban imposed by the Nazi Party. Auto da Fe tells the story of Herr Doktor Peter Kien, a self-imposed prisoner of his own apartment and private library in Vienna’s city center. Kien fears and detests any physical contact and social interaction with the outside world. Immersed in his obsessive Chinese studies, he rarely ventures outside as he is paralyzed by the fear of contamination and filth.

He had counted on this; he had no use just now for dangerous or violent people

Canetti, Elias - Auto-da-Fé (FSG, 1984). Uploaded by Luis Enrique Urtubey

Canetti, Elias - Auto-da-Fé (FSG, 1984). Uploaded by Luis Enrique Urtubey. Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd. Flag for inappropriate content. A novel by elias canetti the torch in my ear auto-da-fe the conscience of words crowds and power earwitness: fifty characters essays in honor of elias canetti the human province the plays of elias canetti the plays of the eyes the tongue set free: remembrance of a european childhood the voices of marrakesh: a record of a visit the secret heart.

Talk about Auto-da-fé

Flash_back

The story is consitent, well written, it draws a reader to follow the caracters, none of them pleasant but intriguing. It explores human desires and convoluted reasons for their actions. Canetti's prose remind me Frantz Kafka and Bertolt Brecht (all writing in German), the story also shows some affiiation with these authors. I believe that Canetti was self possessed and pompous but his prose and the narrative of this novel is of a high quality, perhaps even Clive James would agree. I recomend it to readers who are prepared to see the murky side of reality, in literature and life.

Onetarieva

I read this book years ago, but I was able to appreciate its level of sophistication only now. Canetti's power of observation and his mastery of language is delightful, reminding of Thomas Mann. The translation (from German) is top-notch.

Opithris

Took me several months to read this book. The story crept through me and began to take over my thoughts--as schizophrenic as that appears, it's how I felt. I put the book down, and when I felt able to go on, sometimes page by page, I did so. Amazing, unforgettable, horrifying, remarkable, and beautifully translated; should be at or near the top of every must-read list of books.

Alsalar

Modern society needs a clear picture of the four corners of the box in which human engineering by social regimentation is sorting everything. On the level of literary life, political economy can divide the themes of a navel like Auto-da-Fé into the nice square:

Liberty, Equality,

Virginity, Vasectomy

The professor with no students is the virginity which destroys itself in each contact it has with the world in this novel.

A functioning society is based on "Children last" rather than on any form of equality with lesser individuals. The head without a world is in love with "Children last."

Bajinn

Auto-da-Fe is a great book and should be read by anyone interested in the best literature. But this paperback is printed by the publisher with a messy ink pen, which makes it very difficult to read. Spend the money and get the hardcover copy!!!

Lesesshe

The handling of language is magnificent but the story, with all due respect, seemed to me a bit too simplistic and a bit pathetic. I felt it was too naive and childish that most of the characters live in a self inflicted delusion and detached from reality in an exaggerated way. I know Mr. Canetti was granted the Nobel Prize so it could be that I failed, from my own ignorance, to grasp the symbolism underlying the story. On the upside, it gave me a glimpse into a probable cause os misogyny: fear.

Doomredeemer

Far inferior to his autobiographical memoir, this work of fiction is a profound disappointment. Its characters are highly unsympathetic, claustrophobic and rather uninteresting -- dull, in summary, I'm sorry to say. I am rather shocked that it has gained the reputation it has. That the author is a great admirer of Musil would never be surmised from this novel, although perhaps that admiration has worked itself out in some occult fashion by inhibiting his talent. One will never know.

Originally published in 1935, "Auto da Fe" is un unclassifiable book. It is the work of a lucid man about totally demented characters. That is, if you examine them from the point of view of our "normal" world. From their own perspective, however, all act in the most rational, coherent way. Maybe the only way to approach this book and enjoy it is with a very-dark-humor attitude, capable of digesting all of humanity's vices and weaknesses, exposed sordidly. The book admits a thousand interpretations, but possibly the most obvious ones are: humans' inability to communicate with each other; the construction of reality as a phenomenon elaborated and only occurring within every one's mind; and the will to self deception that dominates us.

The first part "A head without a world", tells us the life of Peter Kien "the greatest sinologist in the world", a 40 year old man, asexual, who lives cloistered in his apartment, wiht his 25 thousand-books library, totally isolated in his ivory tower, and alienated from people and the world around him. Trying to find symbolisms, he might represent the German intellectuals who chose not to see, in the 1930's. In fact, one's voluntary self-limitation of the visual field is the dominant theme of the book, and all the characters practice it. Self-deceived and worried about the fate of his library, Kien decides to marry his maid, Therese, who has been with him for eight years. Therese turns out to be ambitious, vulgar, also self-delusional, and above all, intrusive, which obviously makes the marriage a disaster. A tragicomic one which ends in Therese throwing Kien out of his apartment. As a satire of marriage, it's perfect.

The second part, "A world without a head", tells the crazed adventures of Kien through the unnamed Vienna. During one of his vagaries by the libraries, Kien enters a sordid brothel. There, the Quixotic Kien (tall and thin and all), finds a Sancho in the figure of the sinister criminal Fischerle, Jew, dwarf, crooked, thief, and pimp. Fischerle proceeds to manipulate and expoliate Kien, helped by a motley crew which includes a worker of the sewers, a falsely blind beggar, a peddler, and a dwarf female newspaper seller. Around the pawning shop, a crazy farce develops which ends with all the characters in the police quarters. Along the story appears another main character, the superintendent of Kien's building, Pfaff, a brutal ex cop obsessed with beating women, who has actually murdered his wife and daughter. He may be said to represent the up and coming Nazis, though Canetti never uses the word at all. The third part, "A World in the Head", wraps it all up in a crazy way.

This is a unique novel, surely appreciated only by a few people, as it is difficult to digest for people looking for a more conventional depiction of the world, or for faint-hearted or overly sensitive persons, not to speak of the politically correct, who will surely miss the point entirely, as it is a humanistic work protective of universal values and tolerance (from a paradoxical point of view). It is, at the same time, a universal work, full of brilliant, profound and provocative sentences, and a work representative of the craziest century in history: the XXth. A work of genius.

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