The Rediscovered Writings of Veza Canetti: Out of the Shadows of a Husband by Julian Preece
2008; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 103; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/mlr.2008.0095
ISSN2222-4319
Autores Resumo902 Reviews Early in thebook, Binder adds toour knowledge of the air show thatKafka described in 'Die Aeroplane inBrescia' by reproducing many illustrations, including a plan of its settingwhich enables him towork out thepoint fromwhich Kafka and theBrods must have watched the display. A Salvation Army gathering thatKafka attended in Zurich (and ofwhich Binder has tracked down an account in theKriegsruf) helped suggest the quasi-religious razzmatazz surrounding the 'Teater von Oklahama' in Der Verschollene,while theHotel Metropole in Milan inspired theHotel Occidental. Kafka's creative imagination worked by gathering, fusing, and transmuting scraps of his experience. Altogether, thisbook, based on dedicated and labour-intensive research, and beau tifullyproduced, succeeds in recapturing Kafka's experience in a unique way. It deserves a place in any collection ofKafka studies. ST JOHN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD RITCHIE ROBERTSON The Rediscovered Writings of Veza Canetti: Out of theShadows of a Husband. By JULIANPREECE. (Studies inGerman Literature, Linguistics, and Culture) Ro chester,NY: Camden House. 2007. xii+ I84 pp. $75; /45. ISBN 978-1-57I I3 353-3. The conditions for amonograph on Veza Canetti's lifeand ceuvre have never been better. The comprehensive biography of Elias Canetti by Sven Hanuschek (Munich: Hanser, 200s) also of course covered a great deal ofVeza's lifeand work. And Briefe an Georges (Munich: Hanser, 2oo6) made the hitherto hidden correspondence between Elias, George, and Veza Canetti accessible for the first time. Both books are based on the full archival legacy with the exception of twenty boxes, which will remain unavailable to scholars until 2024. Julian Preece now makes the very best use of all available materials, published aswell as unpublished. Preece' sbook isbased on detailed detective work. It isa combination of a biography and an account of theworks, which did not appear under thename ofVeza Canetti be fore the i990S. Only thendid theNobel Prizewinner reluctantly agree to release some of his wife's prose texts and dramas fromoblivion: Die gelbe StraJ3e (I990), Der Oger (i 99 i), Geduld bringtRosen (I 992), Die Schildkroten (i 999), Der Fund (200 I).Much earlier, in the I930S, some of these textshad occasionally been published under various pseudonyms innewspapers and an anthology. Canetti never gave clear or satisfactory reasons forhiding Veza's artistic genius for such a long time. Instead, his veiled or even contradictory hints, partly in introductions to her books and partly in autobio graphical accounts, misled the reading public and fuelledmanifold speculations. Preece starts to question previously unchallenged feminist opinions ofVeza as a victim ofmisogynistic leanings, male suppression, chauvinistic exploitation, and a disrespectful marriage. Avoiding any kind of ideology, he carefully assesses Elias's and Veza's immensely difficult,but very unconventional, relationship in depth. He suggests that a simple condemnation of Elias's constant affairs underestimates the differentunderstanding of relationships on which thispartnership was based. Such a condemnation would seem rather tobackfire against those criticswho appear unable to tolerate 'politically incorrect' social contracts (such as those of Sacher-Masoch, Brecht, de Beauvoir, theCanettis). Furthermore, Preece painstakingly discusses an enormous number ofmisread or half-digested factsand rumours, always drawing on the evidence of unpublished notebooks, enlightening drafts for the autobiography, or simply the logical connection between various statements. The reading of the literary work focuses on all possible traces of reality in the fiction, such as veiled portraits of friends and contemporaries, allusions tonames, sites, and historical events, and espe cially possible similarities to and telling differences from figures, motifs, and themes MLR, I03.3, 2oo8 903 inCanetti's works. Preece also observes areas of contention in the fields of politics, gender, or world literature.He generally remains a very factual reader; judgements about style, literaryquality, or aesthetic innovations are extremely rare. Overall, this book provides at least three important insights: itclarifies the com plexity of a very intricatepersonal relationship and productive literarycollaboration as well as rivalry; itdiscusses extensively and in an exemplary manner the difficult position of a Jewish, socialist woman writer during the I930S and the London ex ile; and itpresents the hitherto widest-ranging thematic analysis ofVeza's literary production with a strong emphasis on biographical, historical, and factual evidence. None of the quotations or titles remains inGerman; Preece forces us to return to the archive...
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