A comprehensive compendium of works written by the Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti.

Many years ago, I read his novel, Auto-de-fe, which I remember in a dreamlike fashion. I also have the two volumes of his trilogy autobiography, still unread. All of these are excerpted in this book as edited by the novelist Joshua Cohen.

Canetti grew up in an extended Sephardic Jewish family in Bulgaria and then Manchester, England where his father died when Elias was 7 years old. He went on to lead a life among the great Eastern European writers: Kafka, Kraus, Broch, Musil, and an affair with Iris Murdoch. He is also best known for a mammoth treatise entitled, Crowds and Power, which is excerpted and still quite relevant to the times we live in.

I especially liked the essay, the Profession of the Poet", which is included in its entirety. A sample from this piece follows:

“the actual task of the poet… to keep open the doors between people-himself and others. He must be capable of becoming everyone: the smallest, the most naïve, the most powerless. But this desire to experience others from within can never be determined by the goals that compose what we call normal or official lives. This desire would have to be completely free from any hope of success or achievement; it would have to constitute its own desire; the desire for metamorphosis.” (from the essay “The Profession of the Poet”)

This is an excellent sourcebook for anyone interested in learning more about this unique writer. ( )