The torch in your ear
The torch in the ear is the second volume of the three-volume autobiography Elias Canettis (1905-1994) after Die resettete Zunge . He describes his life story from 1921 to 1931. The work was published in 1980 and was almost unanimously received by the critics with great respect and applause. In the following 1981 Canetti received the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1985 the third part of the biography, Das Augenspiel , covering the years 1931 to 1937 was published.
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The book begins by describing the years as a youth in a Frankfurt pension between 1921 and 1924, where he experienced the inflation period (→ Frankfurt am Main in literature. Elias Canetti: Inflation and powerlessness ), then the academic years 1924 to 1931 in Vienna and his literary years Discussions with Veza , his future wife. The years in Vienna were interrupted by a long stay in Berlin in 1928 at the height of the Roaring Twenties .
The relationship with his mother, who does not approve of his literary ambitions and demands that her son focus on his main discipline, namely chemistry, plays an important role.
The title of the book refers to the fact that Canetti was one of the enthusiastic listeners of the lectures by Karl Kraus in Vienna , who was then editing the magazine Die Fackel .
Footnotes
- ↑ Joachim Kalka : A loyal and tyrannical servant of the cause in which he believed: Friedrich Pfäfflin's valuable contribution to the development of the life and work of Karl Kraus . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of January 3, 2009, p. Z5.