RE: ADSactly Writing: Elias Canetti: Memory And Power

[hlezama]

Very interesting piece. I thought for a while that Canetti was Argentinean. For some reason his name sounded argentinean to me (I should have thought italian, but there are so many italian last names in argentina). I read some of his essays and I felt he was closer to us (latin americans; maybe latin american writers had been too europeanized and we were perceiving as ours what in reality was a european mentality)
I am not sure about this:

"Power is greater, but it is also more fleeting than ever"

We have seen in the examples of Russian, North Korea, Cuba, Siria and some other gems how power, especially of the oppressive kind, can actually outlive those who fight it

Comments

[josemalavem]

Hello, @hlezama. I don't know if you can be confusing yourself with Cappelletti, who was an Argentine author.
The phrase you allude to is very interesting. Canetti writes it in the epilogue of the book. Of course, it is decontextualized, being extracted from the paragraph. He refers to the figure of that power (tyrannical, totalitarian) as a survivor. I will quote a little more:

The survivor himself is afraid. He was always afraid. But with his means he has grown disproportionately and unbearably (...) But the earth is nowhere safe, not even for him. (...) His greatness and his vulnerability are in conflict with each other (...) the conservation of the leader at the expense of all others, he has taken ad absurdum, he is in ruins. The power is greater, but it is also more fugacious than ever.

This Canetti book was finished in 1959; the fall of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin was already past... He never experienced the collapse of (in what a way!) Ceaușescu, Gaddafi and Hussein, among others, in which what he thought would also be fulfilled.
Thank you for your comment.