The Rediscovered Writings of Veza Canetti: Out of the Shadows of a Husband (review)

This publication of an extensive study on the works and life of Veza Canetti (1897–1963) is a welcome event, since the recognition of this important writer, who did not see most of her works published during her lifetime, has long been overdue. The circumstances of her late recognition are carefully explained, and the part her husband Elias Canetti played is traced in great detail. The main works by Veza Canetti, Die gelbe Strasse (The Yellow Street) 1999, Die Schildkröten (The Turtles) 1999, the play Der Oger (The Ogre) 1991, as well as the lesser-known and recently discovered texts are made accessible to students, who will find the plot summaries and the discussion of the protagonists in this monograph useful. The strength of the book lies in the inclusion of all known writings by Veza Canetti, since some of them were not found until the turn of the millennium.

The book takes a biographical and chronological approach to its subject and often interprets the works in light of Veza Canetti's life and the people and places she knew. It explains in painstaking detail which aspect of which real person contributed to which character. Much archival work went into unearthing unpublished pieces of writing and detailed circumstances surrounding texts and writer. Veza Canetti's career as a writer and her writings are discussed most of the time in relation to her husband and his work as well as in the light of the tragic life the couple had to live as Jewish refugees. Mutual encouragement and competition are outlined. And although Veza is said to have her own style, she is shown to be more influenced by her husband than the other way around.

Besides the biographical elements, intertextual references are analyzed in almost every text, and it is pointed out that due to the writer's concern for social justice she frequently reacts critically to other works such as Goethe's or Thomas Mann's, and also to Elias Canetti's writings. Often, Preece mentions other writers who have written before her on the same topics or have used similar details, although sometimes the examples he presents are obscure or beside the point. In an underhanded way this critical approach makes the writer's works appear less strong at times, and the praise expressed in other instances is somewhat taken back. Such criticism diminishes the writer's innovativeness and revisits a practice critics used in the past to trivialize women writers. Preece is very good, however, at showing subtle, clear-eyed references in Veza Canetti's work (especially in Die Schildkröten) to fascist and Nazi brutality as well as the Jewish response to it.

One chapter focuses on Veza Canetti's early writings from 1932–1933. She writes on behalf of the lower class in these publications, which mainly appeared in the leftist Viennese Arbeiter-Zeitung. The servant (especially the maid) receives her central focus, and she even uses the name Veza Magd as a pseudonym. These writings are marked by social realism, and they are contrasted by Preece appropriately with Elias Canetti's more metaphorical literary approach to the same subject. Another chapter deals with the difficult times she experienced between 1934 and 1938, when she could not publish due to her leftist leanings and her Jewish identity, and a whole chapter is dedicated to tracing the various portraits of her husband within her texts. Here, the interpretation argues that the real person of Elias Canetti has merged with the main characters of many of Veza Canetti's stories and plays. It appears prudent to be cautious about the literary and biographical information such transformations suggest. The real-life relationship of the Canettis in an unusual marriage—the wife accepted her husband's many affairs with intimate friends—can best be understood through the excellent Elias Canetti biography by Sven Hanuschek (2005), which is recommended for a clear representation...