Elias Canetti-Auto Da Fé

Have many of you read this?

Really made an impact on me. Never read someone make narrow minds seem so broad and complex. Plus it's sort of funny and insane too.

I read this last year. Rough going I thought but yeah, the sort of virtuosic teasing-out of every character was remarkable.

How did you mean "rough going"? In the sense that it was bleak or just that reading it was boring?

Just read over a 1/3 of this at the mo, and yeah its pretty funny (the learning to write zeros in the Kien's will) as everyone (to crudely sum up) is like a grown up child in this.

Wiki (never the most reliable I know) says that Crowds and Power was 'very successful' and so Auto-da-Fe got a re-print as a result. Now its the only thing by him you could hope to find if you'd browse 2nd hand shops right? Crowds and Power does sound like pop Frankfurt school stuff tho', not too promising.

Just wanted to retract the above: been reading his essay collection (Conscience of Words) and Crowds and Power sounds more interesting now, probably one of those that appeals to a particular 60s mindset, but when you read about his how those interests arose in his youth, as sketched in those essays, you come away with the feeling there is much more to it.

Also includes an essay on the writing of Auto da Fe: Therese was based on his landlady.

Good stuff on Herman Broch, Confucius (ancient Chinese philosophy has a part in ADF) and at times you also get a feel for the Vienese cafe society that was destroyed by War.

Sorry I should check ILB more often, that sounds really good. My copy of "Sleepwalkers" by Broch got thieved last year with the bag it was in, but I was enjoying it quite a bit beforehand.

Will check out the essay collection.

Broch's Death of Virgil is really good on a first read (and a miracle of translation), never been able to track down a copy of Sleepwalkers but I do look out for it.

I've read the 1st and 2nd books of Sleepwalkers--the 2nd especially is great, about a man who becomes a promoter for a female wrestling outfit in 1903 Berlin. Weird and wonderful.

I got Sleepwalkers in Waterstones in Piccadilly, Julio, was v surprised as I remember when I worked in W'stones in Dublin it was hard to get or out of print or something. Double annoyance it was in the bag that got stolen on that front, prob dumped in a bin :(

ok Ronan I've never seen a copy in Waterstones at CX or Gower street (not that I've specifically looked for it, kinda assume it was out of print). I'll have a look at Piccadilly one sometime.

Browsing 2nd hand and found a copy of Milan Kundera's Art of the Novel, turned straightaway to an essay on the sleepwalkers that turns out to be a key work for him.

the 3rd section of Sleepwalkers is the best, and i think that without it - the book wouldnt be praised as the masterpiece it is.
the first section is written in the classic realism genre(joseph roth style)
the 2nd part is more modernist,and reminding of kafka and canetti
but the 3rd is the most original,complex,and philosophical,aiming towards post-modern writing,and brings back the characters of the previous books to their final conclusion.doblin will later on use some elemnts of this in "berlin,alexanderplaz"

xpost to james morrison

Cool--makes me want to find my copy of vol3 (I know I have it SOMEWHERE)!

it's weird, Kundera is constantly on the record as being a massive fan of Musil/Broch etc which I really love but I didn't like the Unbearable Lightness of Being much at all...

Read The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Having read Musil I guess that if he is describing the old world as its about to fall then Kundera dramatizes that abyss of the new, even with all the sex in it.

However this is way too facile...

All I've read tho'.

Conscience of Words seconded, esp the version I got which has Earwitness as well, a weirdly excellent book. Also I think Del Tha Funkee Homospapien got his album's name from a line from Auto-Da-Fe

Islam as a Religion of War

DEVOUT MOHAMMEDANS assemble in four different ways.
They assemble several times daily for prayer, summoned by a
voice from on high. The small rhythmic groups formed on these
occasions may be called prayer packs. Each movement is exactly
prescribed and orientated in one direction-towards Mecca.
Once a week, at the Friday prayer, these packs grow to crowds.
2) They assemble for the Holy War against unbelievers.
3) They assemble in Mecca, during the great Pilgrimage.
4) They assemble at the Last Judgement.
As in all religions, invisible crowds are of the greatest importance,
but in Islam, more strongly than in any of the other world religions,
these are invisible double crowds, standing in opposition to each other.
When the trumpet of the Last Judgement sounds the dead all rise
from their graves and rush to the Field of Judgement "like men rallying
to a Standard" . There they take up their station before God, in
two mighty crowds separated from each other, the faithful on one side
and the unbelieving on the other; and each individual is judged by God.
All the generations of men are thus assembled and to each man
it seems as though he had only been buried the day before. None has
any notion of the immeasurable spaces of time he may have lain in his
grave; his death has been without dream or remembrance. But the
sound of the Trumpet is heard by all. "On that day men will come in
scattered bands." " On that day We will let them come in tumultuous
t hr ongs. " Th e "ba nd s " an d "t h r ongs " 0 f th Io S great moment recur
repeatedly in the Koran; it is the most comprehensive idea of a crowd
the Mohammedan can imagine. No one can conceive of a larger number
of human beings than that of all those who have ever lived; and
here they are pressed closely together on one spot. This is the only
crowd which cannot grow, and it is also the densest, for each single
man stands face to face with his Judge.
But, notwithstanding its size and density, it remains, from beginning
to end, divided into two. Each man knows what he may expect; there
is hope for some and terror for the others. " On that day there shall be
beaming faces, smiling and joyful. On that day there shall be faces
veiled with darkness, covered with dust. These shall be the faces of the
wicked and the unbelieving." Since the justice of the sentence is
absolute-for each deed has been recorded and can be proved in
writing-no one can escape from that half of the crowd to which he
rightfully belongs.
The bi-partition of the crowd in Islam is unconditional. The faithful
and the unbelieving are fated to be separate for ever and to fight each
other. The War of Religion is a sacred duty and thus, though in a less
comprehensive form, the double crowd of the Last Judgement is
prefigured in every earthly battle.
The Mohammedan has a very different image in mind when he
thinks of another no less sacred duty : the pilgrimage to Mecca. This
is a slow crowd, formed gradually by tributaries from many different
countries. Depending on the distance of the faithful from Mecca, it
can stretch over weeks, months and even years. The obligation to
perform this journey at least once in a lifetime colours a man's whole
earthly existence. Anyone who has not been on this pilgrimage has not
really lived. The experience of it draws together, so to speak, the whole
territory over which the Faith has spread, and assembles it in the
place where it originated. The crowd of pilgrims is peaceful and
wholly devoted to the attainment of its goal. Its task is not to subjugate
infidels, but simply to reach the appointed place : to have been there.
It is regarded as a quite especial miracle that a city the size of Mecca
should be able to contain the multitudes of the pilgrims. Ibn Jubayr,
the Spanish Moor who was in Mecca as a pilgrim at the end of the 1 2th
century, and who left a detailed description of it, was of the opinion
that not even the largest city in the world could hold so many people;
but Mecca, he thought, was endowed with a special faculty of expansion
and should be compared to the womb which grows smaller or
larger according to the size of the foetus it contains.
The greatest moment of the pilgrimage is the day on the Plain of
Arafat. 700,000 people are supposed to assemble there. If the number
falls short of this, it is made up by angels, who stand invisible among
the people.
But when the days of peace are over, the Holy War comes into its
own again. "Mohammed" says one of the greatest experts on Islam
"is the prophet of jighting and of war . . . . What he first achieved in
his Arabian sphere he leaves as a testament for the future of his community
: the fight against the infidels, the expansion, not so much of
the faith as of its sphere of power, which is the sphere of power of
Allah. What matters to the fighters for Islam is not so much the conversion
as the subjection of infidels. " The Koran, the book of the prophet
inspired by God, leaves no doubt of this.
"When the sacred months are over, slay the idolaters
wherever you fmd them.
Arrest them, besiege them and lie in ambush for them."

The other way of punishing is collective killing. The condemned
man is taken out to a field and stoned. Everyone has a share in his death ;
everyone throws a stone and it is under their joint impact that the
transgressor collapses. No-one has been appointed executioner ; the
community as a whole does the killing. The stones stand for the community ;
they are the monument both to its decision and to its deed.
Even where stoning is no longer customary, the inclination for collective
killing persists. Death by fire can be compared to it ; fire represents
the multitude which desires the condemned person's death. The victim
is assailed from all sides by the flames, which set on him simultaneously
and kill him. The religions of hell go further. Collective killing by fire
-fire stands as a symbol for the crowd-is associated with the idea of
expulsion, namely, expulsion to hell, and surrender to diabolic enemies.
The flames of hell reach up to the earth and fetch down the heretic
who is forfeit to them. The studding of a victim with arrows and the
shooting of a condemned man by a detachment of soldiers both present
the executing group as the delegates of the whole community.
With the burying of men in ant-heaps, as practised in Africa and elsewhere,
the ants stand for the multitude and do its painful business.