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The Rediscovered Writings of Veza Canetti. Out of the Shadows of a Husband by Julian Preece

2007; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 15; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/aus.2007.0027

2222-4262

Lisa Silverman,

German Literature and Culture Studies

AUSTRIAN STUDIES 1 5, 2OO7 201 thorough and very clearly written, and will form part of the core secondary literature on this area. Royal Holloway, University of London Robert Vilain The RediscoveredWritings ofVeza Canetti. Out of theShadows ofaHusband. By Julian Preece. Rochester, NY: Camden House. 2007. 184 pp. $75,00; ?45.00. isbn 978-1-57113-353-3? As its title indicates, this volume is concerned with the lives and works of both Elias Canetti and 'the woman who shared his life' (p. 8), his wife Veza, n?e Venetiana Taubner-Calderon. Based upon meticulous research from papers of Elias Canetti only recently made available, the book persuasively shows how the intellectual and literary exchanges between Veza and her better-known, Nobel-Prize-winning husband reveal a closer and more nuanced relationship than previously believed. The conclusion is that both authors played significant roles in each other's writing careers from their early work in the 1930s up until the 1950s, when Veza ceased writing and focussed solely on supporting her husband's career. Julian Preece's original and sensitive readings of a wide range of texts form the strong backbone of the book; he skillfullyutilizes Elias's notes, letters and published writings to grant complexity to his analyses ofVeza's texts focussing on issues ranging from maids tomoney to other social problems in early-twentieth-century Vienna. For example, noting that issues of criminality are major themes inElias's Die Blendung [Auto-da-F?], Preece shows how Veza inverts themotif of the thief to challenge bourgeois standards, tracing itsdevelopment throughout her writing career. Allusions to the influence of authors such as Robert Musil, Thomas Mann and Goethe, as well as the medium of film, on both their literary outputs are both effective and original. Preece convincingly reinterprets Veza's writings across decades, showing deep appreciation for the sensitivity and wit with which she both addressed and sympathized with the Viennese underclass, especially women. He thereby emphasizes not only her skill inwriting narrative prose, but also her ability to use genuine literary talent in the service of addressing societal ills.The book also helpfully includes some discussion of both authors' unusual positions as Sephardic Jewish writers in Vienna. The first two chapters include attempts to exonerate both authors from the recent scholarship of'feminist critics', 'academic feminists' and 'male champions' of Elias Canetti's female 'victims', who Preece feels have unjustly interpreted Veza's life and relationship to Elias according to their own political agendas. Though Preece explicitly claims that his purpose is not to exonerate Elias, the book nevertheless aims at doing just that by recasting the collaboration between Veza and Elias as one ofmutual inspiration, using as evidence the fact that Elias had productive creative relationships with other female authors such as Ibby Gordon and IrisMurdoch. In the early years of their relationship, Veza strongly criticized her husband's negative characterizations of women in his celebrated novel: 'Auto-da-F? not only prompted Veza to write, it gave her grounds for 202 Reviews wanting to get her revenge, to display her own "Geist" and creativity' (p. 128). The book suggests thatVeza, along with most other women in his life, either willingly overlooked Elias 's faults or used them to their own advantage, since above all they loved him as an inspiring master of prose, with whose cooperation they could achieve successful and mutual artistic production. Yet, even if 'Canetti was not always the dominant partner and he often benefited from his female contacts' (p. 47), this does not necessarily confirm that society's male-oriented hierarchy did not influence his relationships with Veza and other women from beginning to end. Elias's seemingly laudatory statements regarding his late wife actually convey a condescending attitude towards women in general and Veza in particular: 'But I think her greatest quality was her strength of belief and her patience. I do think thatwomen are the only people capable of showing such patience' (p. 125). His claims thatVeza remained his 'muse', and his diary entries beginning with 'the number ofweeks [...] since her death' (p. 132) do not really reveal Elias's understanding of their relationship as mutual. An enthusiastic quotation from former...