The Play of the Eyes

by Elias Canetti

Overview

The Play of the Eyes is the third volume in Nobel Prize winning author Elias Canetti's trilogy of memoirs.

Here, Canetti describes his young adult life as he tries to make it as a writer in Vienna during the 1930s, and provides vivid accounts of the remarkable figures he meets along the way, usually in cafes, from Robert Musil, Thomas Mann, and Herman Broch, among others.

"Canetti uses a dramatist's gifts here to achieve emotional depth; his mother's death, sketched simply against the backdrop of a crumbling Europe, takes on a tragic dignity." - Publishers Weekly

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374530617
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	12/26/2005
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Elias Canetti was born in 1905 into a Sephardi Jewish family in Ruse, Bulgaria. He moved to Vienna in 1924, where he became involved in literary circles while studying for a degree in chemistry. He remained in Vienna until the Anschluss, when he emigrated to England and later to Switzerland, where he died in 1994. In 1981, Canetti was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for “writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas, and artistic power.” His books include Crowds and Powers, Auto-da-Fe, and a trilogy of memoirs.

Editorial Reviews

From the late 1920s through the mid-'30s, Canetti lived and wrote in Vienna, ``an imperial capital which was no longer imperial,'' while ``the great madness spread like wildfire'' in Germany as the Nazis consolidated their grip. The third volume of his acclaimed autobiographical memoirs, The Play of the Eyes ambles along unpredictably, mingling character sketches, cafe conversations, dramatic readings of his plays, trips to Prague and Strasbourg, musings on the power of crowds and what makes the good man. Canetti offers uncanny insights into his combative friend, novelist Robert Musil, a slightly tipsy, widowed Alma Mahler, conductor Hermann Scherchen and others in his circle. He charts the influence of his mentor, Dr. Sonne, and of Karl Kraus whose writings nearly held Canetti in ``psychic enslavement.'' Canetti uses a dramatist's gifts here to achieve emotional depth; his mother's death, sketched simply against the backdrop of a crumbling Europe, takes on a tragic dignity. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Canetti, recipient in 1981 of the Nobel Prize for Literature, counts among the central thinkers of this century; his oeuvre is acclaimed for both richness of ideas and artistic sophistication. The Play of the Eyes (originally published in German in 1985) is the third volume of Canetti's wonderfully readable memoirs and covers his years in Vienna from the late 1920s to the mid-1930s. With satiric flair and touching honesty Canetti depicts his development as a writer and his relationship with figures such as Broch, Musil, Dr. Sonne (his intellectual mentor), Wotruba, and Alma Mahler and her daughter Annawho inspired the book's title. What emerges is a compelling tableau of the artistic and literary life of Vienna before the Anschluss. The translation aptly conveys the energy and humor of the original text. Essential for academic libraries. Ulrike S. Rettig, German Dept., Harvard Univ.

Library Journal