“The Faultiest Expressions Have the Greatest Attraction”: Elias Canetti's Proverbial Aphorisms

Summary

One year before his death in 1994, Elias Canetti republished his observations, reflections, thoughts, sketches, and aphorisms that he had composed over a period of more than four decades under the title Aufzeichnungen 1942–1985: Die Provinz des Menschen; Das Geheimherz der Uhr (1993). Like his two acclaimed precursors Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) and Karl Kraus (1874–1936), Canetti also took considerable delight in confronting his contemporaries with short satirical prose texts based on linguistic analyses of their speech. He did so in his important novel Die Blendung (1935), in the philosophical work Masse und Macht (1960), as well as in his plays and essays. However, he made use of this pointed and argumentative decoding of language primarily in his Aufzeichnungen, where he combines sociolinguistic awareness with a sincere commitment to what has been characterized as “radikaler Humanismus.”

The aphorisms of this hefty volume are not arranged in any particular order other than the year of their formulation. As is customary for books of aphorisms, the individual texts are presented without rhyme or reason, enabling their authors to celebrate free and spontaneous thought processes.Canetti characterized this open form of reflection in two self-analytical aphorisms that clearly show his desire to be anything but cohesive in his short texts: “Die Gedanken mit Gewalt auseinanderhalten. Sie verfilzen sich zu leicht, wie Haare” (1948; 15); and “Angst vor der Aristotelisierung meiner Gedanken; vor Einleitungen, Definitionen und ähnlichen leeren Spielereien” (1955; 207). It is, in fact, his intention to keep his thoughts apart from each other, consciously avoiding any systematization or adherence to a logical plan. Whatever enters Canetti's keen mind can become a written “Aufzeichnung” (annotation or commentary) and thus be exposed to critical scrutiny, no matter how trivial or obscure the observation might be. The broad spectrum of Canetti's aphorisms extends from everyday banalities to utopian ideals.

Quite often Canetti begins with real situations or concrete facts that subsequently lead him to expanded “Denkprozesse[n] und Assoziationsreihen.” Again and again he also confronts single words or phraseologisms in the form of idioms, proverbial expressions, and proverbs. He regards such pre-formulated and frequently repeated phrases as a linguistic mirror of human and social conditions and ills. Thus the critic of society is at the same time an interpreter of language and vice versa.