12 Friday, November 20, 19131
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Elias Canetti: Portrait of a Literary Genius
By DR GUY STERN
his dramas portray, in an
(Editor's note: Dr.
absurd, often grotesque
Stern is a Wayne State
universe.
University distinguished
Above that, he is, in his
professor in the Depart-
own person — and not
ment, of Romance and
only since the time of his
Germanic Languages
flight from Nazi-invaded
and Literatures. He
Austria — the exile writer
writes frequently on
par excellence.
modern literature and
"My forefathers," Canetti
the translations from the
said in a remarkable inter-
German in this article are
view almost 20 years ago,
his own.)
"had to leave Spain (for
In the past, the Nobel
Turkey) in 1492. They re-
Prize Committee, perhaps
tained this Spanish in its
for a lack of daring, has let
pure form in their new
some of the most meritori-
homeland, and it became
ous and original minds of my mother tongue as well. I
our century go unrewarded.
learned German at the age
Neither Kafka nor James
of eight and grew more and
Joyce nor Garcia Lorca ever
more into that language.
received this literary prize,
"At the age of 33 I had to
gauged by many as the
leave Vienna and took the
world's most prestigious.
German language along as
Last month, by singling
they, in their time, had
out Elias Canetti, a reclu-
taken along their Spanish.
sive Jewish universalist
Perhaps I am the only per-
writing in German, the
son in literature in which
awards committee did much
the languages of the two
to redeem past timidity. For
great expulsions are so
Canetti, despite his recent
closely allied."
popularity in Germany is,
A Jew, born in Bulgaria,
even now, less than a
educated in Austria and
household word and his
Germany, fleeing from Hit-
work — one novel, three
ler via France to England,
dramas, one compendious
now dividing his residence,
study of power and the mas-
at age 76, between Britain
ses, several volumes of and Switzerland, a native
aphorisms, essays and au-
speaker of Ladino and writ-
tobiographies — appears at
ing only in German —
first glance less massive
Canetti's very life char-
than that of many previous acterizes the Jewish exile of
recipients.
our times.
Yet Canetti's writings
Just by depicting his
make their impact not by
own life, in a pellucid
quantity but by depth and
style and in a narrative as
significance. He depicts, as
suspenseful as an adven-
did Kafka in his time, the
ture novel, Canetti may
self-isolated, self-
have set new standards
destructive intellectual at
for the modern-day auto-
hay in an irrational world,
biography. And withal he
one of the themes in his
has yet to reach in his au-
novel - Tower of Babel" also tobiographical saga the
translated as "Auto da fe").
most dramatic years,
And he shows the reason-
from Hitler's accession to
able person caught up, as power to the present.
To my mind there is no
better introduction to the
world of Elias Canetti for
the American-Jewish read-
er than the translation of
these volumes of autobiog-
raphy; one of them, "The
Tongue Set Free: Remem-
brance of a European
Childhood," is readily
available in a Farrar,
Straus and Giroux edition.
Their reading, as well as
the reading of the hundreds
of aphorisms, which impale
his throughts often with wit
and always with a stiletto-
sharp language, will inevit-
ably leave the reader with
the mosaic-like portrait of a
Jewish writer of our times.
DR. GUY STERN
Consistent within him-
self, Canetti never wavers
in his identification with
the total Jewish fate. "The
Jews are once more in
Egypt," he mourns in 1942,
"but they have been divided
into three groups: the one is
being let go, the other is dri-
ven into forced labor, the
third is being slaughtered.
Their fates, it appears, are
to be repeated all at once."
"The Jews are vit-
cims," he adds that same
year, "as survivors from
the realm of antiquity."
He fears, one year later,
that the emergence of a
Jewish homeland "will
give others the chance
once more to take land
away from the Jews."
But to define Canetti as a
Jew, beyond the obvious
identificaiton with Jewish
origins and a Jewish fate,
becomes far more difficult:
"How incomprehensibly
modest are people who are
satisfied to commit them-
selves to one religion
alone," he writes. "I have
very many religions, and
the one which predominates
over them is crystallizing
all through my life."
Often he is in quest of
faith, not of a particular
faith. Perhaps that, too, is a
part of Jewish thought.
At times, Canetti has
been troubled that he
cannot fully identify with
the Jewish religion. -His
parents had already
drifted from Orthodoxy;
he, in an interview of last
year, felt that "a wider
perspective" - than
Judaism was needed
since World War IL
Again and again he re-
proaches religions, includ-
ing his own, that they have
offered no satisfactory an-
swer when we are faced
with the inevitability of
death, a response he consid-
ers essential to all religions.
Given their failure he feels
it has become the poet's role
to find an answer; the poet
has become the heir to the
religious seeker. This over-
riding concern never left
him since his father died
suddenly at age 30.
These thoughts, perva-
sive in his writings, attest to
the deep seriousness of this,
the latest poet laureate. Un-
- --
ELIAS CANETTI
like the Sinologist Kien, the
protagonist of his novel
"Tower of Babel," who uses
esoteric scholarship as a
shield against reality,
Canetti is keenly attuned to
the travails of our times. He
inveighs against nuclear
weapons, war in general,
and the pursuit of power.
In fact, he devoted de-
cades of his life to the dissc-
tion of the anatomy of
power. For his extensive
study, "Crowds and Power"
of 1960, he canvassed virtu-
ally all nations, sought for
the symbols of power in
primitive peoples (for
example among the
Bushmen), as well as in
modern dictatorships.
He came to realize that
the power drive is often a
vain and vicious attempt
to conquer death, which
results all too often in the
domination and suppres-
sion of others. There is
hope, he writes, as long as
one can encounter a
single person utterly
without power — and
seeking none.
As with Kafka, Canetti's
fame, now perceivable by
all, has grown subterrane-
ously for many decades.
When I first introduced him
to students, in a graduate
seminar in 1965, through
his novel "Tower of Babel,"
the students were both fas-
cinated and repelled by
Canetti's hero. In his ivory-
tower blindness he has mar-
ried his housekeeper for no
apparent sound reason, and
is then subjugated by her
and her Proto-Fascist lover.
But the work left an inde-
lible impression on these
early readers as well as on
all subsequent ones: when
Kien sets fire to his library
and perishes in the conflag-
ration, the symbol becomes
unmistakable: Unless the
learned person is also alert
to his environment, his
cerebral preoccupations
will lead to the destruction
of his world and himself.
Canetti, in a conversation
with Horst Bienek, himself
a renowned German
novelist (and a friend of my
wife and me) expressed the
hope that his works might
still be read a hundred years
from now. With his entering -
the ranks of the Nobel Prize
recipients this wish may
well be granted to him.
But there may be a still
more substantial reason
for such lasting fame: A
young German writer,
Urs Widmer, said of
Canetti a few years ago:
"He belongs to the young
generation of German lit-
erature; it might even be
that the young writers of
today appear older than
he does."
At 76, some of Canetti's
most innovative works may
already be in his desk draw-
ers — there are intimations
of this — or will be written
in the years ahead.
Exodus 47 Personified the Search for Freedom
By JANET
MENDELSOHN
From World Zionist
Press Service
In both Latin and Greek
exodus means "departure,"
and the second book of the
Bible, Exodus, describes the
journey of the Israelites out
of Egypt. The story of
Exodus 47 in modern Israeli
history reaffirms a new
nuance — expressing a de-
parture made in search of
freedom.
Although glamorized by
author Leon Uris, as well as
the silver screen of Hol-
•lywood, the truly harrowing
story of the ship of 4,500 il-
legal immigrants to Pales-
tine has been buried in his-
tory archives.
Sixty-year-old Michael
Pertzog remembers the de-
tails of his voyage to pre-
Israel Palestine with amaz-
ing clarity, despite the
passage of 34 years. "We
were the cinders left from
the large fire which almost
totally engulfed the Jews of
Europe," he recalls. "I came
to Poland in 1946 after
being discharged from the
Russian army. We had de-
stroyed the Nazi monster,
but after the war had wiped
out so many Jewish
families, what was left in
Europe?
"I found the strength to
continue so I might come
to Israel and make a
memorial to what had
been lost," he affirms,
while sitting in his Ramat
Hasharon home on Is-
rael's coastal plain.
Pertzog, his pregnant
wife Pessiah, and her
brother were among 4,500
passengers crowded onto an
old Chesapeake Bay
steamer bound for Palestine
in July 1947. The ship,
President Garfield, ac-
quired by the Hagana, Is-
rael's underground defense
organization, was renamed
Exodus 47 and set out to
bypass strict British immi-
gration limitations and
smuggle Jews into pre-
Israel Palestine.
Overcrowded illegal im-
migration boats had crossed
the sea to pre-state Israel
since 1934, occasionally
breaking the British block-
ade and slipping close
enough to a deserted beach
so that the passengers could
be transferred to shore on
lifeboats.
More than 100,000 Jews
made their way to Israel
this way, but more often
than not ships were ap-
prehended by the watchful
British, and passengers
were detained in displaced
persons camps (Ma'abarot)
in Palestine and Cyprus.
The explosive issue came to
a climax in the summer of
1947 with the ship Exodus.
Bad luck accompanied
the ship from the minute
it set sail from Port de
Bouc, in France, with
many German and Polish
refugees on board. A re-
ception committee of
British destroyers
awaited the ship and
after a skirmish, in which
three Jews were killed,
the fleet escorted- the
Exodus into Haifa. Sadly
Pertzog relates that his
24-year-old brother-in-
law was one of the three
victims killed in the at-
tack.
It was at this point that
Pertzog was blessed with
one of life's most beautiful
gifts — the birth of his first
child, Hannah. The British
captain of their ship visited
the two parents, con-
gratulating them and ask-
ing what he could give them
to make things more com-
fortable. "Three visas to
Palestine," was their only
reply.
Early the following day,
the passengers were once
again at high sea, but this
time behind wire cages:
men, women and children
were forcibly taken off to
prison ships, locked in cages
below decks and sent out of
Mediterranean waters,
back to Nazi Europe. The
British hoped this stern
measure would set an
example to deter further "il-
legals."
When the passengers
once again reached Port
de Bouc, they refused to
disembark. The British,
in a rage, ordered them to
••
be transferred to Ham-
burg and forcibly re-
moved in a British occu-
pied zone of Germany.
Returned to the country
which they had hoped never
to lay eyes on again, the
passengers of Exodus 47
were once again behind
bars. Six months later,
however, in January 1948,
the Pertzogs finally made it
to pre-Israel Palestine, a
country that was on the
verge of a war of survival,
and within a year, the rest
of the survivors followed
suit.
•
Pictured above is the Hagana ship Exodus 47 shown
on its arrival in Haifa in 1947.