Science Meets Literature

Dario Maestripieri

Description

Analysis and discussion of Elias Canetti’s “Auto-da-Fé”

Elias Canetti’s 1935 novel “Auto-da-Fé” (original German title, “Die Blendung”) has traditionally been difficult to interpret and the author’s intentions in writing it have remained unclear. “Science Meets Literature” argues that “Auto-da-Fé” is a novel about human nature that illustrates the workings of the human mind and some universal aspects of human behavior and human social relationships. Canetti’s insights anticipated later scientific discoveries made by cognitive, social and evolutionary psychology including the existence of “irrational” biases in human cognition (e.g., in perception, beliefs and decision-making); the strengths and limitations of human “theory-of-mind” skills (i.e., our ability to think about other people’s minds and “read” them); the establishment, maintenance and reversal of dominance in social relationships between two individuals; and the role of dehumanization in harmful behavior. Canetti intended to warn against the conviction held by some intellectuals that human nature can be denied, controlled, ignored or dismissed. His approach in “Auto-da-Fé” was an original attempt at the integration of knowledge formation in sciences and humanities. He pointed the way for future successful attempts at the integration of evolution, cognitive science and literature, as well as for the broader integration of sciences and humanities.

Preface; 1. Why Science and Literature?; 2. Elias Canetti: A Visionary Literary Genius on a Quest to Understand Human Nature; 3. The Plot of “Auto-da-Fé”; 4. “Auto-da-Fé” Is a Novel about Human Nature; 5. Major Themes Running through “Auto-da-Fé”; 6. Analysis of Part I: A Head without a World; 7. Analysis of Part II: Headless World; 8. Analysis of Part III: The World in the Head; 9. Narrative Strategies in “Auto-da-Fé”; 10. Consilience, the Canetti Way; Elias Canetti Bibliography; References; Acknowledgments; Index.

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 28 juin 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785270710
• Langue: English

Extrait

Science Meets Literature
Science Meets Literature
What Elias Canetti’s Auto-Da-Fé Tells Us about the Human Mind and Human Behavior
Dario Maestripieri
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
First published in Italian as: La scienza incontra la letteratura: cosa ci rivela Auto da fé di Elias Canetti sulla mente e sul comportamento umani. Roma: Giovanni Fioriti Editore, 2019.
This edition first published in UK and USA 2019
by ANTHEM PRESS
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or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
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Copyright © Dario Maestripieri 2019
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Maestripieri, Dario, author.
Title: Science meets literature : what Elias Canetti’s Auto-da-fé tells us about the human mind and human behavior / Dario Maestripieri.
Description: New York: Anthem Press : London, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019020676 | ISBN 9781785270697 (hardback) | ISBN 1785270699 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Canetti, Elias, 1905–1994. Blendung. | Mind and body in literature. | Human behavior in literature.
Classification: LCC PT2605.A58 B5585 2019 | DDC 833/.912–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019020676
ISBN-13: 978-1-78527-069-7 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78527-069-9 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an e-book.
CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter One Why Science and Literature?
Chapter Two Elias Canetti: A Visionary Literary Genius on a Quest to Understand Human Nature
Chapter Three The Plot of Auto-da-Fé
Chapter Four Auto-da-Fé Is a Novel about Human Nature
Chapter Five Major Themes Running Through Auto-da-Fé
Chapter Six Analysis of Part I: A Head Without a World
Chapter Seven Analysis of Part II: Headless World
Chapter Eight Analysis of Part III: The World in the Head
Chapter Nine Narrative Strategies in Auto-da-Fé
Chapter Ten Consilience, the Canetti Way
Elias Canetti: Chronology
References
Index
PREFACE
Happiness is … to be able to pursue all of your interests simultaneously, according to a Seinfeld episode in which George Costanza wishes he could do his favorite activities—eat, watch TV, and have sex—all at the same time. My search for happiness is what prompted me to write a book in which I simultaneously pursue my interest in the science of human behavior and my passion for literature.
The first time I read Elias Canetti’s novel Auto-da-Fé I was a college student in Italy. I can’t tell how good or bad the Italian translation was relative to the German original, but it must have been good enough for me to be struck by the extraordinary quality of Canetti’s prose. It’s stylistically rigorous and sophisticated, original, witty, energetic, playful, erudite, and a lot more. The way Auto-da-Fé is written is so striking and unique that a literary scholar, Harriet Murphy, had developed a theory and written a whole book about it (Murphy 1997 ). Canetti’s prose is particularly congenial to my taste for writing. If I were a writer of literary fiction, my goal would be to write like Canetti. But my interest in Auto-da-Fé is not just a matter of literary taste. For me, reading a piece of literary fiction (or admiring any work of art) is always about making a connection with the mind of the person who created it. If I recognize that I have some affinities with the writer, it’s likely that I will find his work interesting (but having affinities with writers is neither necessary nor sufficient for me to like their work). With my first reading of Auto-da-Fé , there was definitely the perception on my part of some deep affinities with the author. Here is a writer, I thought, who values intelligence, knowledge, culture, literary craftsmanship, clear rational thinking, ambition, and commitment but who is also playful, witty, has a great sense of humor, and knows how to use irony. Although I suspected that Canetti had something new and important to say with Auto-da-Fé , at the time of my first reading I wasn’t sure what that was. Clearly, the novel resonated with me in many different ways but it wasn’t clear to me exactly how or why.
I read Auto-da-Fé a second time years later, this time the English translation, and still liked it (unlike what has happened with many other novels, which grabbed my interest at a young age, but greatly disappointed me when I read them again as a mature adult). By this time, I had become a behavioral scientist and was familiar with theories and empirical research on the human mind and human behavior in psychology, biology, and anthropology. I realized that part of the reason why Auto-da-Fé resonated with me so much was that it was a novel about human nature and that the ideas and concepts expressed in the novel were well aligned with my scientific knowledge and understanding of human nature. However, I knew virtually nothing about Elias Canetti, hadn’t read anything else written by him, and hadn’t read any essays about Auto-da-Fé written by literary scholars. I can’t say that after my second reading I understood the novel the way I think I understand it now, but I already appreciated that it was an interesting combination of good science and good literature.
I have been interested in human nature and in literary fiction since I was a child, but until recently I always kept these interests separate. Back in high school, I briefly considered pursuing a college education in the humanities and then an academic career as a literature professor but eventually decided to study biology and from there work my way toward the scientific understanding of the human mind and human behavior. I continued reading literary fiction but kept this as a parallel activity, with no direct connection with my academic interests. Some recent developments in my work have led me to the current state of affairs and the present efforts toward the integration of science and literature. First, I have expanded my horizons of inquiry from biology to other scientific disciplines including psychology, economics, and anthropology, and shifted my behavioral research from nonhuman primates to humans. Second, my interests have increasingly concentrated on universal psychological and behavioral processes that all human beings share as members of the species Homo sapiens : in other words, human nature. Third, I have become increasingly frustrated by the extreme reductionism in contemporary science and the growing tendency for research in the biological sciences to be driven by technology rather than by important questions about life, including human life.
My desire for getting a “big picture” view of human nature has prompted me to look outside of science and take into consideration the perspectives offered by other intellectual and artistic endeavors. Going to literature was a natural move for me, and reinterpreting Auto-da-Fé as a novel about human nature was the event that precipitated this move. So, I set out to read Auto-da-Fé for the third time armed with a yellow highlighter and ready to take notes. To make a better connection with the mind that created Auto-da-Fé , I also read Canetti’s autobiography and almost everything else he had written. Auto-da-Fé is such a rich text that every successive reading reveals something new about it. As Canetti himself recognized in his autobiography, Auto-da-Fé releases its secrets slowly and gradually, and only to people who have the persistence to look for them and the willingness to dig deep beneath the surface of the text.
From his autobiography, I learned that Elias Canetti was someone who liked to engage with other people—whether real people in his life or the readers of his work—but always did it on his own terms. Canetti was a deep thinker with serious intellectual ambitions who was unwilling to dumb down his literary work simply to reach a larger audience. Moreover, he was not interested in engaging with readers as passive recipients of his ideas or knowledge. He expected his readers to make as much effort in understanding his work as he did in creating it. He was selective in the release of information about himself, his life, and his ideas, and rarely made his intentions or his intellectual strategies explicit (and, in some cases, he actively concealed them). In part, this attitude came from the strong commitment to his principles regarding the autonomy of the artist: he was unwilling to play by any well-established rules unless he was fully convinced of the validity of these rules (more often than not, he made his own rules). In part, his attitude toward others served as a “filter” to ensure that he engaged intellectually with the “right people” and to protect himself from unwanted attention.
Canetti had no patience for ignorance or stupidity, or for peop