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

伊莱亚斯·卡内蒂在20世纪中叶英国文学生活中的角色相对鲜为人知，特别是在英国国内，原因有三：这一主题没有得到系统的研究；关键的一手和二手文本仍未被翻译；他的日记和给他的信件至今仍处于禁运状态。然而，卡内蒂因与默多克的恋情而被铭记，这段恋情始于1953年1月。她的传记作者对卡内蒂的敌意描述无疑导致了21世纪人们对他的作品和个人的误解。默多克的丈夫约翰·贝利也在一系列回忆录中刻薄地写到了他妻子与卡内蒂的关系，这与卡内蒂一生在英国受到的积极欢迎形成了鲜明对比。例如，加文·麦克斯韦尔的传记作者将他描述为“一位才华横溢的欧洲知识分子”，“永远耐心，永远深思熟虑”。然而，康拉迪确实让他与默多克的文学伙伴关系引起了更广泛的关注，并首次描述了他与弗里德尔·贝内迪克的关系，后者在1944年至1950年间以安娜·塞巴斯蒂安的身份出版了三部英文小说。在移民、难民和政治庇护等话题仍然是整个欧洲关于国家身份的辩论的中心话题之际，一项致力于20世纪德国最重要作家之一的英国流亡经历的研究项目来得正是时候。在德国，讲德语的人对本世纪中叶流亡经历的认识日益增强，计划于2026年在柏林开设一家流亡博物馆。该机构是对成立于1993年的奥地利流亡人员协会的补充。最近，人们对卡内蒂的工作重新产生了兴趣，2019年在维也纳举行了关于卡内蒂逝世25周年的会议，并为梅茨勒准备了一部关于伊利亚斯和维扎·卡内蒂的重大参考著作。纽约斗牛士在2022年出版了一本卡内蒂阅读器。卡内蒂作品的批评版将于本世纪20年代末出版，由Sven Hanuschek和Kristian Wachinger编辑。卡内蒂在伦敦的时期最近得到了纪念：他的名字于2022年被刻在玛丽·路易斯·冯·莫特西茨基位于汉普斯特德切斯特菲尔德花园6号的家外的一块牌匾上。从学术机会的角度来看，时机也已经成熟。苏黎世中央图书馆的Canetti‘s Nachlass中的论文已经数字化，研究人员可以参考。写给卡内蒂的日记和信件将于2024年面世。默多克的日记和信件可以在金斯顿大学档案馆阅读，加文·麦克斯韦尔的论文保存在苏格兰国家图书馆。一本以贝内迪克的家庭通信为基础的书最近出版了，利用了另一个丰富的家庭档案。因此，这是第一次评估这一新的初级来源宝库的重大机会。埃利亚斯·卡内蒂是二十世纪罕见的德语规范作家之一，他们的作品被广泛翻译，并在国际上享有盛誉。例如，许多有价值的研究都是用意大利语发表的，到目前为止，他的全部作品用西班牙语翻译的编辑比用原文德文编辑的要好。该项目旨在通过在项目结束会议上进行批判性比较来统一这些接受的线索，该会议名为“英国的欧洲人”。除了为英语读者和英语文学学者解释英国文化和文学史的一段主要发生在德语中的片段外，该项目还引起了德国日耳曼斯蒂克人对英语国家卡内蒂的研究的注意。更根本的是，该项目建议改变对卡内蒂在德语国家的文学研究和英语国家文学文化中的遗产的理解，无论是在学院内外。

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.