From someone who also focuses on reading over video editing, I don't do any of the latter either. Have you ever read Canetti's "Crowds and Power"? I came across a copy of it many years ago at a used bookstore, but never got a chance to read it. I also have a few volumes of his autobiography laying around here somewhere. Love the channel idea! Subscribed!
Wonderful to make your acquaintance! Likewise I am now following your channel and right away I see you've read some of my favorites so I look forward to checking those out. I have not read "Crowds and Power" but am very curious to at some point, the little I know of its subject matter I can tell it relates to some of the ideas in Auto-da-Fe.
Tnx for this nice vid about one of the great novels ever made. Translations are always a trouble because many original meaning get lost. The title in German is 'Die Blendung' it refers to blindness, overexposure, chimera etc and this is indeed a crucial theme in this novel. "Blindness is a weapon against time and space; our being is one vast blindness, save only for that little circle which our mean intelligence - mean in its nature as in its scope - can illumine. The dominating principle of the universe is blindness" - End of chapter: Dazzling furniture. Almost all the actors in this novel are more or less blind (and 'deaf'..) for each other... except one woman(!) who fell in love with a 'crazy' man (the gorilla). You can compare this grotesk novel with work of Beckett, but it's much more... his life's work 'Crowds And Power' can be best understood when you dig deep in this novel and vice a versa. One important fact: while composing this novel Canetti read Kafka's Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis), it was for him a kind of revelation. For me Canetti's great work is the best door to understand the limits of reality
Awesome perspective! Next time I come to this book I will pay attention to that question of 'What is each character's blind spot'? I think one catches on intuitively to that theme...like how I said that it was like 5 hallucinating people all communicating different realities...but you said it much better and put it in perspective. I also just now remembered noting Peter Kien's fear of blindness as important right at the beginning, but then I never connected the dots to that as a main theme until now. Thank you very much for the insightful comment!
@@mikereadstheworld There's also in this brilliant novel, you could say, a kind of mental deafspot: 'I hear you but I don't understand you'. Listening is thus also limited. In Crowds and Power Canetti defined this in a brillant simple way: "Every complete unknown language is a kind of acoustic mask; as soon one learns it, it becomes a face, understandable and soon familiar" This 'acoustic mask' Canetti used as a technique in the dialogues of characters in this novel and even more in his plays. Between characters (personae in classic times was a mask) a lot of misunderstanding (misinterpretation) going on: an important mechanic for drama and comedy. Canetti grew up with a variety of languages: turkish, ladino (spanish/jewish), german, english, french... many forms of acoustic sounds and meanings. Die Blendung / Auto da Fe contains originally also dialect from Vienna. Canetti was very keen in how people talk. For him individuals have their own special kind of languages: combination of sound, vocabulary, rythm (breathe) etc are for everyone of us unique. He loved to read aloud for a audience, by this way he could observe how people react. He used this experience also for Crowds and Power. In his autobiography he tells about this, it's fascinating to read. Canetti was indeed a man with a obsession. When he studied chemistry in Vienna (1927) a revolt happen, many people sudddenly on the streets. This was a start point for his obsessive motivation to observe and think about the concequences of mass(crowds) phenomena. Novel Auto Da Fe showing this already: e.g. even books are a kind of crowd, George his vision etc. Canetti mocks himself with this theme. There's a lot of irony involved in this novel, like a David Lynch movie. 25 years later he is more real serious about the masses in his ideosyncratic study Crowds and Power. Canetti is an one of a kind thinker and writer.
Side note: Canetti's mentioned 'acoustic mask' only once(!) in his life work Crowds and Power. It has all to do with responsibility and suggestion. He described it in the context of metamorphosis, it's a crucial lid, hiding answers for many (e.g. philosophical, political, psychological etc) issues. Acoustic mask has also a blindspot because it's has an invisible shape. Of course words on paper or screen are visible but our inner voice and speech are not. Reading quiet feeds our invisible inner voice. Canetti issues in Crowds and Power the meaning of commands (and it's stings) it's closely related to this. It's far more subtle and organic than we think, e.g: commands are older than speech. If you read close you will discover it in Auto Da Fe already. Canetti's first line in Crowds and Power is about the fear of being touched by something strange. A sudden sound in the dark can be very fearful, that's also a kind of an invisible acoustic mask. It can hit you like a command. People, specially those who search for power, longing for invulnerability (being untouchable), they don't want to be hit (by commands, words, crowds, boms etc), they use anything to hide themselves. For Canetti power is often close to paranoia. That's also, in his special grotesk way, the trouble with Kien. You see there's something eternal human going on in work of Canetti. He saw things other thinkers didn't see. Canetti did avoid jargon which many thinkers tend to do, but his 'clear understatements' has a disadvantage: he is often underestimated, common words don't make curious enough. So don't read Canetti too fast. Canetti didn't write for academics alone, he wrote for everyone.
Great discussion of one of my favorite books. I read it, probably, about twenty-five to thirty years ago and it's one of those books that still sticks in my head. It's nice to hear someone else's thoughts about it.
Thanks for tuning in! By the way I love your channel, it has been very helpful for me in choosing a book by some profilic authors for different countries in this project - Ismail Kadare and Selma Lagerlof come to mind but there might be one or two more. Thank you for your great work!
@@mikereadstheworld Thank you for your kind remarks. Yes, both Ismail Kadare and Selma Lagerlof were great writers. I'm interested in your project of writers from various countries. I've been looking at the names of the writers you've read and many are new to me so I'm excited to start reading some of them.
Excellent review of a complex novel Mike! I had the same feeling of frustration for many parts of the story, I just couldn't get the meaning, but overall I enjoyed this existential surrealism that haunts the novel. Sometimes I caught myself identified with Kien: "his world was his library.... after all, this was what made the learned man: being alone so as to be with as many things as possible simultaneously". Despite its flaws, this is a magnificent read!
That is a great quote to encapsulate what gives the novel its impact. Kien's superhuman intellect and learning, while respected among his contemporaries, transforms from detatched isolation in Part 1, to a helpless futility when confronted with the real world of the working class and merchants in Part 2, and finally in a consuming self destruction and hatred in part 3. In his lifetime Canetti would see the intellectual take this course many times, I imagine. And as a reader collecting books, reading the world, I can identify with that sentiment as well. Auto-da-Fe is a horror novel for the ego which bases itself on the intellect. I could have called it a "cautionary tale," but it seems like such an understatement.
I thought it was a pretty difficult and dense book, but rewarding. And funny! I read it in Swedish and sometimes I felt like the translation was a bit clumsy or awkward. I could tell the sentences were written in German originally if that makes sense, it still had a German ”feel”. Maybe its an issue with the Swedish translation or just part of Canetti’s style. The only plot point I didnt understand was why did Fischerle send the telegram to Georg? He wanted ”revenge” against the police somehow? Because they had stolen the money from Kien (that Fischerle wanted for himself)? And somehow Georg would deal with this? Did anyone else understand this? Also, I started reading ”Flights” by Olga Tokarczuk. Two early chapters are called ”The world in the head” and ”The head in the world”. And there she even has a metaphor about watching legs and feet go by through a hole in the wall. I thought this has to be a reference to Canetti so I googled it and found some interview where she says Auto-da-fe is one of her favourite novels! Thanks for the vid about this interesting book.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment! Believe me that it was all the things you described in the English translation as well. Difficult, dense, at times virtually incoherent. I don't even remember the telegram and didn't note its significance, what I most recall about the book are particular images of the struggle over dominance of the house, and the conversations between George and his brother. Also that bit about "Flights" is amazing. I read it very early on in this read around the world project and have a video discussing it, but I didn't recall that there were chapter titles coming straight from Auto da Fe! Very cool. I really enjoyed Flights and plan to go back to it as well as read more of Tokarczuk eventually.
The way you describe your conception of the book seems quite similar to what Canetti expressed in his essay “The First Book: Auto-da-Fé", included in "The Conscience of the Words": 5 schizophrenics experiencing the world in their own manner. Have you read this essay? It makes the reading of the book way better.
@@jb38894 Awesome! I haven't read that essay but I appreciate you bringing it to my attention for when I return to this book. I am amazed how much insight I've gained just from the comments on this video!
Thre are two works by women you NEED to review. Alexa Wright's Praiseworthy and Olga Tokarczuk's Flights. Period! Theybare amazing. Perios! When you feel very brave you should take on Tokarczuk's, Books of Jacob.
Do you know why Canetti won the Nobel Prize? Well, he was a great writer. But how he won the Nobel Prize. Well, that's a fun story. Auto-da-Fe is one of the books that most influenced Umberto Eco when he was writing his novel The Name of the Rose. Members of the Nobel Committee noticed this, and guess what, Canetti won the Nobel Prize the following year. So if you haven't read The Name of the Rose, I recommend that you read it. You'll have fun, trust me. There is also another excellent novel inspired by Auto-da-Fe. It is The Elegance of the Hedgehog (L'Élégance du hérisson) by Muriel Barbery. It is an optimistic reinterpretation of Canetti's novel. Of course, I'm not the first to notice this, but it's like a secret only for those familiar with literature, and no one openly talks about it. For example, in the novel Angosta by the Colombian writer Héctor Abad Faciolince, you can find an allusion to the connection between those two novels.
@@milfredcummings717 Thanks for sharing. I have a huge tbr at the moment but will keep those works in mind. I've been pleasantly surprised by all the things I've learned in the comments here, and all the behind the scenes influence Canetti and this book have had in the literary world.
From someone who also focuses on reading over video editing, I don't do any of the latter either. Have you ever read Canetti's "Crowds and Power"? I came across a copy of it many years ago at a used bookstore, but never got a chance to read it. I also have a few volumes of his autobiography laying around here somewhere. Love the channel idea! Subscribed!
Wonderful to make your acquaintance! Likewise I am now following your channel and right away I see you've read some of my favorites so I look forward to checking those out. I have not read "Crowds and Power" but am very curious to at some point, the little I know of its subject matter I can tell it relates to some of the ideas in Auto-da-Fe.
Tnx for this nice vid about one of the great novels ever made.
Translations are always a trouble because many original meaning get lost. The title in German is 'Die Blendung' it refers to blindness, overexposure, chimera etc and this is indeed a crucial theme in this novel.
"Blindness is a weapon against time and space; our being is one vast blindness, save only for that little circle which our mean intelligence - mean in its nature as in its scope - can illumine. The dominating principle of the universe is blindness" -
End of chapter: Dazzling furniture.
Almost all the actors in this novel are more or less blind (and 'deaf'..) for each other... except one woman(!) who fell in love with a 'crazy' man (the gorilla).
You can compare this grotesk novel with work of Beckett, but it's much more... his life's work 'Crowds And Power' can be best understood when you dig deep in this novel and vice a versa. One important fact: while composing this novel Canetti read Kafka's Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis), it was for him a kind of revelation.
For me Canetti's great work is the best door to understand the limits of reality
Awesome perspective! Next time I come to this book I will pay attention to that question of 'What is each character's blind spot'? I think one catches on intuitively to that theme...like how I said that it was like 5 hallucinating people all communicating different realities...but you said it much better and put it in perspective. I also just now remembered noting Peter Kien's fear of blindness as important right at the beginning, but then I never connected the dots to that as a main theme until now.
Thank you very much for the insightful comment!
@@mikereadstheworld
There's also in this brilliant novel, you could say, a kind of mental deafspot: 'I hear you but I don't understand you'. Listening is thus also limited. In Crowds and Power Canetti defined this in a brillant simple way:
"Every complete unknown language is a kind of acoustic mask; as soon one learns it, it becomes a face, understandable and soon familiar"
This 'acoustic mask' Canetti used as a technique in the dialogues of characters in this novel and even more in his plays. Between characters (personae in classic times was a mask) a lot of misunderstanding (misinterpretation) going on: an important mechanic for drama and comedy.
Canetti grew up with a variety of languages: turkish, ladino (spanish/jewish), german, english, french... many forms of acoustic sounds and meanings.
Die Blendung / Auto da Fe contains originally also dialect from Vienna. Canetti was very keen in how people talk. For him individuals have their own special kind of languages: combination of sound, vocabulary, rythm (breathe) etc are for everyone of us unique. He loved to read aloud for a audience, by this way he could observe how people react. He used this experience also for Crowds and Power. In his autobiography he tells about this, it's fascinating to read.
Canetti was indeed a man with a obsession. When he studied chemistry in Vienna (1927) a revolt happen, many people sudddenly on the streets. This was a start point for his obsessive motivation to observe and think about the concequences of mass(crowds) phenomena. Novel Auto Da Fe showing this already: e.g. even books are a kind of crowd, George his vision etc. Canetti mocks himself with this theme. There's a lot of irony involved in this novel, like a David Lynch movie.
25 years later he is more real serious about the masses in his ideosyncratic study Crowds and Power. Canetti is an one of a kind thinker and writer.
Side note:
Canetti's mentioned 'acoustic mask' only once(!) in his life work Crowds and Power. It has all to do with responsibility and suggestion. He described it in the context of metamorphosis, it's a crucial lid, hiding answers for many (e.g. philosophical, political, psychological etc) issues. Acoustic mask has also a blindspot because it's has an invisible shape. Of course words on paper or screen are visible but our inner voice and speech are not. Reading quiet feeds our invisible inner voice. Canetti issues in Crowds and Power the meaning of commands (and it's stings) it's closely related to this. It's far more subtle and organic than we think, e.g: commands are older than speech. If you read close you will discover it in Auto Da Fe already.
Canetti's first line in Crowds and Power is about the fear of being touched by something strange. A sudden sound in the dark can be very fearful, that's also a kind of an invisible acoustic mask. It can hit you like a command.
People, specially those who search for power, longing for invulnerability (being untouchable), they don't want to be hit (by commands, words, crowds, boms etc), they use anything to hide themselves. For Canetti power is often close to paranoia. That's also, in his special grotesk way, the trouble with Kien.
You see there's something eternal human going on in work of Canetti. He saw things other thinkers didn't see. Canetti did avoid jargon which many thinkers tend to do, but his 'clear understatements' has a disadvantage: he is often underestimated, common words don't make curious enough.
So don't read Canetti too fast. Canetti didn't write for academics alone, he wrote for everyone.
Great discussion of one of my favorite books. I read it, probably, about twenty-five to thirty years ago and it's one of those books that still sticks in my head. It's nice to hear someone else's thoughts about it.
Thanks for tuning in! By the way I love your channel, it has been very helpful for me in choosing a book by some profilic authors for different countries in this project - Ismail Kadare and Selma Lagerlof come to mind but there might be one or two more. Thank you for your great work!
@@mikereadstheworld Thank you for your kind remarks. Yes, both Ismail Kadare and Selma Lagerlof were great writers. I'm interested in your project of writers from various countries. I've been looking at the names of the writers you've read and many are new to me so I'm excited to start reading some of them.
Excellent review of a complex novel Mike! I had the same feeling of frustration for many parts of the story, I just couldn't get the meaning, but overall I enjoyed this existential surrealism that haunts the novel. Sometimes I caught myself identified with Kien: "his world was his library.... after all, this was what made the learned man: being alone so as to be with as many things as possible simultaneously". Despite its flaws, this is a magnificent read!
That is a great quote to encapsulate what gives the novel its impact. Kien's superhuman intellect and learning, while respected among his contemporaries, transforms from detatched isolation in Part 1, to a helpless futility when confronted with the real world of the working class and merchants in Part 2, and finally in a consuming self destruction and hatred in part 3. In his lifetime Canetti would see the intellectual take this course many times, I imagine. And as a reader collecting books, reading the world, I can identify with that sentiment as well. Auto-da-Fe is a horror novel for the ego which bases itself on the intellect. I could have called it a "cautionary tale," but it seems like such an understatement.
I thought it was a pretty difficult and dense book, but rewarding. And funny! I read it in Swedish and sometimes I felt like the translation was a bit clumsy or awkward. I could tell the sentences were written in German originally if that makes sense, it still had a German ”feel”. Maybe its an issue with the Swedish translation or just part of Canetti’s style.
The only plot point I didnt understand was why did Fischerle send the telegram to Georg? He wanted ”revenge” against the police somehow? Because they had stolen the money from Kien (that Fischerle wanted for himself)? And somehow Georg would deal with this? Did anyone else understand this?
Also, I started reading ”Flights” by Olga Tokarczuk. Two early chapters are called ”The world in the head” and ”The head in the world”. And there she even has a metaphor about watching legs and feet go by through a hole in the wall. I thought this has to be a reference to Canetti so I googled it and found some interview where she says Auto-da-fe is one of her favourite novels!
Thanks for the vid about this interesting book.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment! Believe me that it was all the things you described in the English translation as well. Difficult, dense, at times virtually incoherent. I don't even remember the telegram and didn't note its significance, what I most recall about the book are particular images of the struggle over dominance of the house, and the conversations between George and his brother.
Also that bit about "Flights" is amazing. I read it very early on in this read around the world project and have a video discussing it, but I didn't recall that there were chapter titles coming straight from Auto da Fe! Very cool. I really enjoyed Flights and plan to go back to it as well as read more of Tokarczuk eventually.
The way you describe your conception of the book seems quite similar to what Canetti expressed in his essay “The First Book: Auto-da-Fé", included in "The Conscience of the Words": 5 schizophrenics experiencing the world in their own manner. Have you read this essay? It makes the reading of the book way better.
@@jb38894 Awesome! I haven't read that essay but I appreciate you bringing it to my attention for when I return to this book. I am amazed how much insight I've gained just from the comments on this video!
Thre are two works by women you NEED to review. Alexa Wright's Praiseworthy and Olga Tokarczuk's Flights. Period! Theybare amazing. Perios! When you feel very brave you should take on Tokarczuk's, Books of Jacob.
@@johncoffman1841 Thanks, I have a video on Flights that I did early on in the project! Great book that I need to revisit.
Do you know why Canetti won the Nobel Prize? Well, he was a great writer. But how he won the Nobel Prize. Well, that's a fun story. Auto-da-Fe is one of the books that most influenced Umberto Eco when he was writing his novel The Name of the Rose. Members of the Nobel Committee noticed this, and guess what, Canetti won the Nobel Prize the following year. So if you haven't read The Name of the Rose, I recommend that you read it. You'll have fun, trust me. There is also another excellent novel inspired by Auto-da-Fe. It is The Elegance of the Hedgehog (L'Élégance du hérisson) by Muriel Barbery. It is an optimistic reinterpretation of Canetti's novel. Of course, I'm not the first to notice this, but it's like a secret only for those familiar with literature, and no one openly talks about it. For example, in the novel Angosta by the Colombian writer Héctor Abad Faciolince, you can find an allusion to the connection between those two novels.
@@milfredcummings717 Thanks for sharing. I have a huge tbr at the moment but will keep those works in mind. I've been pleasantly surprised by all the things I've learned in the comments here, and all the behind the scenes influence Canetti and this book have had in the literary world.