AUTHOR CANETTI WINS NOBEL FOR GERMAN-LANGUAGE WORKS

Author: Associated Press

Date: Friday, October 16, 1981
Page: ?????
Section: RUN OF PAPER

The 76-year-old author of plays, novels and memoirs written in German was cited by the Swedish Academy "for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power."

Canetti, who lives in England, has been widely known for five decades in European literary circles but his translated works have sold only about 100,000 copies in the United States since the 1940s, according to his New York publisher, the Crossroad Publishing Co.

Publishers in London and West Germany said the soft-spoken, bespectacled author who "looks like Einstein with a great mane of white hair" shuns the limelight. He was notified of the award by his agent in London, John Wolfers. One report said he was at a Bavarian resort in West Germany with his wife, but he couldn't be reached there.

"I have contacted him and he asked me to keep my mouth shut, so I'm keeping my mouth shut," Wolfers said. "He is a very private man."

Canetti plans to attend the award ceremonies Dec. 10 to pick up his $180,000 prize, his German publisher said.

Michael Samuel of the BBC's Bulgarian section said Canetti was so shy he refused to be interviewed. He described the author as "really more of a philosopher than a writer" who was strongly influenced by Franz Kafka. Samuel said Canetti was a prolific writer "at one time" but has not written anything in recent years.

Canetti, who is a naturalized British subject, has spent time in Switzerland and Austria, where he learned German. His literary background was formed in Vienna when the capital city was a cultural haven of the dying Austro-Hungarian empire.

Canetti's breakthrough came in 1935 with the novel, "Die Blendung" ("Auto- da-Fe or The Tower of Babel"). One of his best known works is a memoir of his youth - "Die Gerettete Zunge," translated into English as "The Tongue Set Free: Remembrance of a European Childhood," - which received special mention by the Swedish Academy.

A spokesman for one of his London publishing companies, Victor Gollancz, said Canetti's works dramatically reflected early experiences. "After the Anschluss he stayed in Vienna for eight months to see Nazi activities."

Critics say Canetti's recurrent themes of power and its influence on the masses reflect his concern for humanity as revealed against a backdrop of the brutal power politics of the Nazis.

"What Canetti wants to expose and attack . . . down behind every command, every exercise of power, is the threat of death . . . At the last, the mortal enemy is death itself," the academy said in its analysis.

"The exiled and cosmopolitan author Canetti has but one native land, and that is the German language. He has never abandoned it," the 18-member Swedish Academy said in a statement.

Canetti's works have been published in English, French, Italian and Swedish, but his admirers say the translations often fail to convey his style.

Translated into from the German into English are: "The Tongue Set Free," "The Conscience of Words," "Earwitness: Fifty Characters," "The Human Province," "The Voices of Marrakesh," "Crowds and Power," and "Auto-da-Fe"

Canetti was born in the port city Ruse on the lower Danube in Bulgaria.

In 1911, when Canetti was 6, he moved with his parents to England. After his father's sudden death two years later the family moved to Vienna.

Canetti attended schools in Vienna, Zurich and Frankfurt, Germany. He received his doctorate in chemistry in 1929.

The author and his family fled during the Nazi German annexation of Austria and moved back to England.Excerpt from novel by winner of Nobel

It was his custom on his morning walk, between seven and eight o'clock, to look into the windows of every book shop which he passed. He was thus able to assure himself, with a kind of pleasure, that smut and trash were daily gaining ground. He himself was the owner of the most important private library in the whole of this great city. He carried a minute portion of it with him wherever he went. His passion for it, the only one which he had permitted
himself during a life of austere and exacting study, moved him to take special precautions. Books, even bad ones, tempted him easily into making a purchase. Fortunately the greater number of the book shops did not open until after eight o'clock. Sometimes an apprentice, anxious to earn his chief's approbation, would come earlier and wait on the doorstep for the first employee whom he would ceremoniously relieve of the latch key. I've been waiting since seven o'clock,' he would exclaim, or I can't get in!' So much zeal communicated itself all too easily to Kien; with an effort he would master the impulse to follow the apprentice immediately into the shop. Among the proprietors of smaller shops there were one or two early risers, who might be seen busying themselves behind their open doors from half past seven onwards. Defying these temptations, Kien tapped his own well-filled briefcase. He clasped it tightly to him, in a very particular manner which he had himself thought out, so that the greatest possible area of his body was always in contact with it. Even his ribs could feel its presence through his cheap, thin suit. His upper arm covered the whole side elevation; it fitted exactly. The lower portion of his arm supported the case from below. His outstretched fingers splayed out over every part of the flat surface to which they yearned. He privately excused himself for this exaggerated care because of the value of the contents. Should the briefcase by any mischance fall to the ground, or should the lock, which he tested every morning before setting out, spring open at precisely that perilous moment, ruin would come to his priceless volumes. There was nothing he loathed more intensely than battered books . . . .

Punctually at eight his work began, his service for truth. Knowledge and truth were for him identical terms. You draw closer to truth by shutting yourself off from mankind. Daily life was a superficial clatter of lies. Every passerby was a liar. For that reason he never looked at them. Who among all these bad actors, who made up the mob, had a face to arrest his attention. They changed their faces with every moment; not for one single day did they stick to the same part. He had always known this, experience was superfluous. His ambition was to persist stubbornly in the same manner of existence. Not for a mere month, not for a year, but for the whole of his life, he would be true to himself. Character, if you had a character, determined your outward appearance. Ever since he had been able to think, he had been tall and too thin. He knew his face only casually, from its reflection in book-shop
windows. He had no mirror in his house, there was no room for it among the books. But he knew that his face was narrow, stern and bony; that was enough.

(From "Auto-da-Fe," translated from the German by C.V. Wedgwood under the supervision of the author. New York: Stein and Day Publishers. COPYRIGHT 1946 Elias Canetti and Jonathan Cape Ltd., London.)

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