Jeppe Ilkjær (Roskilde University)

Th e Late Europe: Elias Canetti and the Ordering of Time and Space in Auto Da Fé

When Elias Canetti received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981, he held a speech in which he emphasized that Europe had been the most important source of his authorship.1 Th is is a surprising reference, not only because Ca- netti was born in a Jewish ghetto in the outskirts of the Ottoman Empire and carried a Turkish passport most of his life, but also because he constantly re- fers to this Europe as something which is delayed, something behind sched- ule or not in time. Europe is described as something that falls behind without Canetti ever stating exactly what it is trying to reach. Moreover, he relates this aged culture to four authors to whom he feels he owes his entire professional life and work: Karl Kraus, Franz Kafk a, Robert Musil, and Hermann Broch. In diff erent ways each of these authors belongs to the “World of Yesterday,” as Stefan Zweig called the declining Habsburg Empire, and it is the charac- teristic atmosphere of this type of literature that gives us an idea of what it means for Europe to be somehow ‘late.’ Kraus describes the experience of living in the eleventh hour as being the last descendant in “the old house of language,”2 and Broch makes use of terms such as “late homecoming,” “dusk before night” and “mythical style” when describing contemporary European literature.3 In this way, the meaning of the late Europe becomes, if not clear,

1 “Th is continent to which so many owe so much carries a great debt itself and it needs time to make up for its sins. We passionately wish to give it this time; a time in which one blessing aft er the other can spread itself over the earth; a time so victorious that no one in the whole world would ever have reason to curse the name of Europe again. Four men that I can’t detach myself from have in my time belonged to this delayed, this real Europe.” (Canetti, “Dank” 151). All translations from the German are the author’s unless otherwise stated. 2 “I am just one of the Epigoni / living in the old house of language. // Yet, I have my own experience / I break out and I tear down Th ebes. // Even though I come aft er the old masters, later, / I beat the fate of the fathers till the blood fl ows. // I speak of revenge, I will revenge the language. // I am an Epigon, an off spring. / Yet, you are the future Th ebans!” (Kraus 79). 3 “But what a strange development of the human expression, since, apparently, it returns to its mythical source. Is this not like a late homecoming? And if it be such – does it not portend the dusk before the night? Is it not the curve that drops back into childhood?” (Broch, “Style” 249). 224 Jeppe Ilkjær then at least less obscure: the old European culture, weak and condemned to decline, plays an important role for these Central European authors who see the destructive forces of global civilization making an end to the highly developed and advanced European culture. Th is divergence between civiliza- tion and culture is important, not only if we want to understand Central Eu- ropean literature written aft er the First World War in general and Canetti’s works in particular, but also if we want to understand more about some of the current discussions about Europe and its future. Th is essay focuses on Elias Canetti and a small but important tradition of authors writing about Europe, not in the positive and instructive terms of a European civilization, but rather in terms of a European culture that is on the brink of disappearing. If we look at the development of the ideas about Europe as they appear in this type of literature, what is remarkable is to what degree they are related to decline and destruction. Aft er the First World War the fi eld of literature was full of ideas concerning Europe.4 Typically, these notions came from the countries that had suff ered defeat or even experienced dissolution, as was the case with Austria-Hungary. Many Austrian authors and intellectuals pointed out the role of European culture as a connector between East and West, the past and the future, tradition and modernity. In their view, the Habsburg Empire had fulfi lled this connecting role before the First World War, not only because it had been crucial for the stability of the geopolitical situation in Europe, but also since it had off ered a cultural ideal that reached beyond nationalism – a challenge now being handed over to Europe. Th ere was, how- ever, a hesitant, almost sorrowful air about this assignment. When drawing a map of this kind of literature, it turns out that the geographical outline of the Habsburg Empire is considerably reduced, and it seems that nothing can prevent the liberalism and nationalism that undermined the old dynasty from destroying Europe as well. Elias Canetti expresses some of the same concerns in his works. In his autobiography, he recounts playing with a jigsaw puzzle map of Europe, which he could put together blindfolded, identifying the countries by feel- ing their shape (Tongue Set Free 47). Th is geographical game is stamped on Canetti’s memory because it was the last exchange he shared with his father.

4 For an indication of the diff erent, but almost simultaneous responses to the question of Europe, see Lützeler.