Elias Canetti

Elias Canetti (1905-1994), Bulgarian-born novelist, dramatist, and essayist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981. Canetti published exclusively in German. The dominant theme of his works is the powerful effect of mass behavior in the modern world.

Born to a multilingual family of Sephardic Jews in Ruse, Bulgaria, Canetti emigrated to England with his family in 1911. After the death of his father in 1912, Canetti's mother moved the family to Vienna, Austria, where her sons were educated. In 1929 Canetti earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from Vienna University, but he never worked as a chemist. Instead, he turned notes he had made on linguistic patterns into his only novel, Die Blendung (1936; translated as Auto-da-Fé, 1946), in which he described a society plagued by expressions of mass consciousness. At the time of its publication, the novel was hailed as a masterpiece by critics but was censored by the Nazi government of Austria (see National Socialism).

Canetti wrote two of his three plays in the 1930s: Hochzeit (The Wedding, written 1931-1932; first performed in 1965) and Komödie der Eitelkeit (Comedy of Vanity, written 1933-1934; first performed 1965). His third play, Die Befristeten (1952; The Numbered; 1984), depicts a society in which everyone's date of death is decided at one's birth. His masterwork, Masse und Macht (1960; translated as Crowds and Power, 1962, 1978), is a general study of mass psychology. Canetti's subsequent works, which include studies in literature, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and anthropology, expand on the ideas of both Masse und Macht and Die Blendung.

Canetti received several awards throughout his career, including the Nobel Prize for Literature.