The unveiling of author Elias Canetti’s secret archives will revolutionize his work

August 14 will mark 30 years since Elias Canetti’s death ((1905-1994) and the embargo on his confidential papers at Zentralbibliothek in Zurich will be lifted. After an initial purge by Canetti, he kept 30 boxes of letters and diaries from October 21, 1941, to December 30, 1986. What new insights will these personal documents offer?

Canetti, who wrote in German, made a distinction between notes (Aufzeichnungen), diary notes (Merkbücher) and diaries (Tagenbücher). Keeping a diary enabled him to have unfiltered conversations with an imaginary — and often harsh — inner self. He believed that to understand the darkest aspects of humanity, one should not fabricate flattering stories about oneself: “How dare you write such nonsense about yourself just because it feels good?” In his diaries, he penned “all the conversations that could never happen in real life due to their potentially explosive nature — the raw, disrespectful words that we often hold back.”

Conversely, intense self-reproach for wrongs committed by others can reveal one’s true character. Regardless of private thoughts, the actions one takes are the most crucial thing. Do away with the arrogance — you’re not that interesting, he would say. “Will you publish them?” Canetti was asked in 1965. “No, no, they are secret, very secret... A diary that is not a secret is not a diary.” But he left the door open. “When I am old and wise, I will decide whether I will make it all disappear, or whether I will hide it in a secret place where it may be discovered by chance in some innocuous future.”

The time has come, and he didn’t make it all disappear. The place wasn’t secret either. Nor was his writing as deep as he wanted people to think. It’s a simple shorthand that’s easily understood. Canetti’s biographer, Sven Hanuschek, is among the few who’ve seen his personal archives. “Of course,” he says, “in his unpublished diaries there will be much more gossip and many more notes about personal and marital crises,” such as his first wife’s suicidal delusions. Canetti called her a co-dependent terror who would often berate him for being lazy and inept — “You’re no artist.” This was a young woman with a terminal illness, angry at the whole world, and obsessed with death.

Hanuschek noted that Canetti’s archives show a clear intention (especially after his second marriage) “to write a human comedy ‘about lunatics’ — eight novels in all. He only wrote one, Auto-da-Fé. Another planned novel was The Enemy of Death, about madman who would be struck and killed by a meteorite at the end. Canetti adopted the character’s stance over the years and never wrote the novel because the enemy of death was not allowed to die, even in fiction.”

The lifting of the embargo will reveal, according to Hanuschek, “other very interesting aspects of Canetti’s legacy, such as deleted passages from autobiographical books. Not because they were bad — he just wanted to protect the people mentioned in them.” The Canetti Foundation is planning to publish new editions that include the deleted passages. The first book is set for release this autumn, followed by an annual release of one book each year commencing in 2025.

The first re-release will be The Tongue Set Free, which Hanuschek says will be dramatically different. “It will tell how the book came about and include Canetti’s initial attempts. His childhood narrative will start earlier, delving into family history with new episodes, such as his great-grandfather’s dramatic life.” Another book, The Voices of Marrakesh, will include several deleted chapters about Canetti’s friend, Aymer Maxwell, the film producer who invited him to travel around Morocco with a film crew. The libretto for Die Affen-oper (The Monkey Opera, in English) will also be published for the first time. It’s a follow-up to Kafka’s short story, A Report to an Academy, and is about the power of the masses and how populist authoritarians seduce their people, the blindness of their followers, and the manipulations of capital. In this work, a trained circus monkey absconds with two suitcases full of stolen money. Disguised as a human, he freely hands out the money to the people he meets and a new Messiah is born.

“You have to read a poet, not know him,” said Canetti. Advice he didn’t heed, as he chose to fictionalize his own life and craft a morally superior literary persona. The author’s reputation took a hit in 2003 with the publication of his London diaries, which were inexplicably omitted from the embargo. Canetti, the “guardian of metamorphoses” and herald of art’s capacity to transform us and experience empathy, revealed himself to be a jealous, cruel and resentful manipulator. It was an image corroborated in biographies and in the correspondence of his wife, Veza, his lovers (Marie-Luise von Motesiczky, Frieda Benedikt) and, above all, Iris Murdoch. Biographer Peter Conradi linked Canetti to several Murdoch characters: Mischa Fox (The Flight from the Enchanter), Julius King (A Fairly Honorable Defeat) and Charles Arrowby (The Sea, the Sea). Conradi described Canetti as a venomous, hate-filled dwarf who insulted everyone, and a fame-hungry satyr with power over countless women.

Still, Hanuschek defends the private Canetti. “In his unpublished notes, he frequently critiques himself, struggles with his behavior, and must reconcile with himself in solitude.” From this viewpoint, Canetti’s bilious diary from England, penned when he was a jobless migrant feeling humiliated and ignored by a classist society, holds special significance. “It’s a memoir that Canetti never published. In fact, he burned it and later attempted to reconstruct it from his shorthand notes. The chapter on Iris Murdoch resembles diary entries. When something bothers him, he writes it down to release the anger. It’s not about justice, but about releasing emotions, so those writings can’t be viewed as his true opinions of others.”

There is no misogyny in Canetti’s unpublished notes, says Hanuschek. “In his antisemitic and misogynistic book Sex and Character [1903], Otto Weininger portrayed women as inferior beings, morally and mentally degenerate, flawed and good for nothing. In Auto-da-Fé, Canetti humorously mocks Weininger’s degrading portrayal of women, depicting a mad housekeeper as a caricature of this monstrous image. Canetti himself, though easily offended, was not misogynistic. He even supported women authors, like his wife Veza, with whom he worked closely before her depression forced her to stop writing. When a literature scholar uncovered Veza Canetti as the author behind her pseudonyms, Canetti chose not to disclose this information so her work could stand on its own merits. As an old man, Canetti was content with this arrangement, showing no hint of insincerity in his notes on the matter.”

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