Elias Canetti and the British in a European Context: Reception, Exile, Appropriation

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Elias Canetti's role in British literary life in the mid-twentieth century is relatively unknown, especially in the UK itself, for three reasons: the subject has not been systematically researched; key primary and secondary texts remain untranslated; his diaries and the letters written to him have remained up to now under embargo. Canetti is remembered, however, for his love affair with Murdoch, which began in January 1953. Her biographer's hostile portrait of Canetti has undoubtedly contributed to twenty-first century misunderstandings about his work and person. Murdoch's widower John Bayley also wrote caustically about his wife's relationship with Canetti in a series of memoirs, which contrast with Canetti's positive British reception in his lifetime. Gavin Maxwell's biographer, for example, describes him 'a formidably talented European intellectual' and 'ever patient, ever thoughtful'. Conradi did bring his literary partnership with Murdoch to wider attention, however, and provided the first account of the relationship with Friedl Benedikt, who as Anna Sebastian published three novels in English between 1944 and 1950. At a moment when the topics of migration, refugees, and political asylum remain central to debates about national identities across Europe, a research project dedicated to the British exile experiences of one of the foremost twentieth-century writers of German is timely. In Germany growing awareness of the mid-century exile experience of German speakers is indicated by the planned opening of an Exilmuseum in Berlin scheduled for 2026. This institution complements the Austrian Exilbibliothek which was established in 1993. There has recently been a resurgence of interest in Canetti's work, with a conference on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death held in Vienna in 2019 and a major reference work on Elias and Veza Canetti in preparation for Metzler. Picador New York published a Canetti Reader in 2022. A critical edition of Canetti's works is due for publication in the late 2020s, edited by Sven Hanuschek and Kristian Wachinger. Canetti's period in London was recently commemorated: his name was included in 2022 on a plaque outside Marie Louise von Motesiczky's home at 6 Chesterfield Gardens, Hampstead. From the perspective of scholarly opportunities, the moment is also ripe. Papers in Canetti's Nachlass in the Zurich Central Library have been digitized and can be consulted by researchers. Diaries and letters to Canetti become available in 2024. Murdoch's journals and letters can be read at the Kingston University Archive, Gavin Maxwell's papers are held in the National Library of Scotland. A book based on Benedikt's family correspondence has recently been published, exploiting another rich family archive. There is thus a major opportunity to evaluate this new trove of primary sources for the first time. Elias Canetti belongs to that rare group of twentieth-century German-language canonical authors whose works are widely translated and whose reputation is international. For example, much valuable research is published in Italian and his oeuvre has so far been better edited in Spanish translation than in their original German. The project aims to unite these strands of reception through critical comparison at the end-of-project conference, 'Canetti, a British European'. As well as interpreting an episode of British cultural and literary history which largely took place in German for readers of English and scholars in English literature, the project brings Anglophone research on Canetti to the attention of German Germanistik. More fundamentally, the project proposes to shift understanding of Canetti's legacy in Literary Studies as practised in the German-speaking countries and in Anglophone literary culture, both in the academy and beyond it.