Elias Canetti was born in Rustschuk, Bulgaria, on 25 July 1905, the oldest of the three sons of the Sephardic merchant Jacques Canetti and his wife, Mathilde, née Arditti, who descended from an established Bulgarian Sephardic family. His father’s relatives were immigrants from Adrianople, Turkey, and despite their success in business were considered parvenus. A member of a small European minority, Canetti grew up a polyglot with a fascination for world cultures. His identity as an author was shaped by classical world literatures, the German language, and his interest in the Jewish experience, brought to focus by the cataclysmic events of the twentieth century. One aspect of his
magnum opusMasse und Macht[
Crowds and Power, 1960] explores the perspective of the Jewish historian Flavius…
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Citation: Lorenz, Dagmar C. G.. "Elias Canetti". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 April 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=725, accessed 23 November 2024.]
