THE BALKANS – THE IMAGINED HOMELAND OF ELIAS CANETTI
THE BALKANS – THE IMAGINED HOMELAND OF ELIAS CANETTI

Summary/Abstract: Elias Canetti's perception of his birthplace and the first years of his childhood and their representation in his works has prompted us to investigate this socially-constructed reality in the text of Canetti's autobiographical works. We shall trace the history of Canetti's birthplace, Roustchouk, Bulgaria, where he spent his childhood years from 1905 until 1911, and explore how the memory of Roustchouk is represented in his autobiographical, writings in an effort to outline the way these early experiences in his native city inspired major themes in his work. Canetti's social thoughts and ideas gravitate around mass movements, mass destruction, the paranoid leader, and power, and although he did not identify specific events, his worldview was shaped by the trauma inflicted on Eastern European Jewry by the National Socialists. Even though he took the path of exile in England, the fate of his family and friends in Central and Eastern Europe concerned him deeply. All of these thoughts and concerns are descriptively presenting his entire work and it is the aim of the present study to identify them.

• Details
• Contents