Auto-da-Fé by Elias Canetti

German humor escapes me

Despite his Italian-sounding name, Elias Canetti was born in Bulgaria of Spanish and Sephardic Jewish ancestry. Over the course of his life he resided in Austria, Switzerland, Germany, and England and eventually became a British citizen. He won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Literature, a victory claimed by both Bulgaria and the United Kingdom. Canetti wrote his literary works, however, in the German language. His 1935 novel Die Blendung has been published in English translation as Auto-da-Fé and/or The Tower of Babel. The novel takes place in an unspecified European city, though there are a few indications that the characters are speaking German. The term “auto-da-fé” refers to a public punishment inflicted by the Spanish Inquisition, often in the form of burning victims at the stake. Both of the English titles are metaphorical, not literal.

Peter Kien is the Western world’s leading sinologist (scholar of Chinese philology) and the owner of a private library of rare and important books on the subject. He leads a reclusive and regimented life spent mostly within his apartment of four rooms, the walls of which are covered floor to ceiling with books. The first two chapters of this novel start out with great promise. Kien’s intellectual pursuits could possibly serve as the basis for an intelligent and engaging novel. Kien is also an extreme misanthrope who stoically critiques the idiocy of all the human beings he encounters. This dark outlook on mankind also intrigues the reader, who wonders if Kien is just a surly curmudgeon or a potential serial killer.

Auto-da-Fé never lives up to the promise of those first two chapters. It immediately takes a left turn into a slapstick comedy about henpecked husbands and shrewish wives. Like most Nobel laureates, Canetti has received much critical and popular praise. I read several reviews online that made it sound like Auto-da-Fé was not only Canetti’s greatest work but also one of the best novels of the last century. Imagine my surprise, therefore, to find that his novel is terrible! I’m guessing that Canetti was going for an absurdist humor somewhere along the lines of Witold Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke (1938) or Franz Kafka’s The Trial (1928), neither of which I liked, but Auto-da-Fé is not even absurdist, it’s just asinine. Nor is it the least bit fun. In fact, it is incredibly tedious to slog through insanely long chapters in which the characters grind their way through interminable conversations and capers that amount to nothing. This novel is an even more colossal waste of time than The Tin Drum by Günter Grass, another Nobel-hallowed work of German-language humor that I didn’t get. Late in the book, there is a serious chapter dealing with childhood sexual abuse. It is handled very well, which makes one think that Canetti might actually be a very good writer if he would stay away from comedy.

Perhaps one reason critics and “intellectuals” praise this book is because one of its themes is the love of books. Beyond those first two chapters, however, the books in question are not discussed in any way intelligently. Kien, contrary to his personality and his profession, values all books indiscriminately as if they were just bricks of paper whose contents are irrelevant. Another defiance of logic is the fact that Kien seems to have an unlimited supply of money at hand. If pointless silliness isn’t enough to put you off this book, Canetti also provides many derogatory comments towards women and Jews. Defenders might say, “Those are the characters speaking, not the author.” Canetti himself is of Jewish heritage, so perhaps he’s criticizing anti-Semitism instead of Semitism. However, when three of the main male characters are extreme misogynists, two others are womanizers, the only female character is portrayed very negatively, and the reader has to sit through lengthy sermons about how women are simply evil, isn’t it safe to say the novel itself is misogynistic?

Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History by Robert D. Kaplan

Eye-opening political history of Southeastern Europe

Robert D. Kaplan is an American journalist who writes on foreign affairs. In his book Balkan Ghosts, first published in 1993, Kaplan relates his experiences working and traveling in Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece, and the former Yugoslavia. Kaplan wrote Balkan Ghosts after the fall of the Berlin Wall and before the Bosnian War. The 2005 ebook contains some supplemental material that Kaplan wrote more recently, but the book is largely about the state of the Balkans circa 1990.

To fully understand the state of affairs in the 1990s, however, Kaplan looks much farther back in history, sometimes as far as the Middle Ages, and provides a quite comprehensive overview of the 19th and 20th century history of the region. This historical background goes far in explaining how the Balkans ended up at the end of the 20th century. This region didn’t just become an explosive powder keg in the 1990s. The fire of sectarian hatred and violence has been simmering for centuries. It is common knowledge that World War I started with the Balkans (a Serbian assassin). Kaplan also makes the case that the Balkans influenced the origins of Nazism and World War II. His examination of recent dictators in Serbia, Romania, Greece, and elsewhere should serve as a cautionary tale of where America might be headed if we continue to dispense with our constitutional system of checks and balances.

Though Balkan Ghosts is advertised as a travel memoir, the bulk of the book is really history rather than travel writing. A travel writer would try to convince you to visit these places. As a journalist, Kaplan seems set on convincing you to stay away from them. He does want you to understand them, however, and does a very good job of helping you do so. Kaplan is a journalist and a war correspondent with the knowledge base of a geographer in Balkan Studies. His look at these Balkan nations is deeper than what you’d get in say, National Geographic, which would give you an inkling of the political climate, war trauma, and societal woes interspersed with scenes of hopeful resilience like a wedding ceremony or a newly opened museum. Kaplan, on the other hand, takes a more journalistic “if it bleeds, it leads” view that writing about anything other than politics and war would be frivolous. With the exception of visits to a few medieval monasteries, the text focuses almost entirely on ethnic violence, fascism, anti-Semitism, genocide, torture, and other atrocities. His perspective on the Balkans is more real and visceral than what you’d get in any popular media venue. Kaplan has almost nothing good to say about Romania, which from his account sounds like a horror show. He expresses a bit more warmth for Bulgaria and Greece.

In addition to his own observations and research, Kaplan gives the reader a literature review into the Western writers who traveled the region before him. In particular, he frequently makes reference to John Reed’s The War in Eastern Europe (1916) and Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), and even delves as far back as Byzantine historians Procopius (AD 500-565) and Michael Psellus (c. 1018-c. 1096). While you feel like you’re getting a pretty thorough study of the Balkans from Kaplan, he also makes you want to seek out some of these earlier writings on the region.

This region of the world is not covered much in the American news media or our modern history books. Understanding the Balkans, however, is necessary to forming a compete picture of European history in recent centuries. Those looking for a travel memoir of the region might be disappointed in Kaplan’s approach to the subject, but those looking for an education in world history and politics will find Balkan Ghosts to be an eye-opening and rewarding read.  

Under the Yoke by Ivan Vazov

Bulgaria’s Victor Hugo

Ivan Vazov (1850-1921) is considered the godfather of modern Bulgarian literature. Under the Yoke, his best-known work, is widely regarded as the greatest classic novel in that nation’s literature. It was originally serialized in a Bulgarian magazine from 1889 to 1890 before being published in book form in 1894. It has since been translated into over 30 languages, including an English edition published in 1894 as part of the Heinemann’s International Library series. Vazov’s novel calls to mind the writings of romantic historical novelists like Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and Henryk Sienkiewicz, but with a perspective and subject matter that are uniquely Bulgarian.

The plot of the novel centers around an important event in Bulgarian history known as the April Uprising of 1876. Since the late 14th century, Bulgaria had been occupied by the conquering Ottoman Empire. It wasn’t until 1878 that Bulgaria, with the help of Russia, achieved autonomous rule. At times Under the Yoke calls to mind Victor Hugo’s patriotic novel of the French Revolution, Ninety-Three, except that Hugo’s novel was written 80 years after the fact while Vazov’s was written for a Bulgarian reading audience who would vividly remember the violent events that took place a little over a decade before. Both novels are highly romanticized in tone but still manage to satisfyingly enlighten the reader on historical events. In both cases, the author goes into a level of detail that presupposes a native knowledge of historical events, which can be disorienting to foreign readers (Despite occasional footnotes, the translator of the Heinemann edition isn’t much help.) Amid the patriotic fervor, both novels also display a negative side to jingoism, though I’m not sure it’s intentional in Vazov’s case. Bulgarians who show the least bit of cowardice or don’t wholeheartedly toe the revolutionary line or are threatened with the death penalty. The odd thing about Under the Yoke is that the April Uprising of 1876 was unsuccessful. Just a couple years later, Bulgaria would be free from Turkish rule, but Vazov’s story ends before that happens. Under the Yoke is a novel of martyrs, not of victors.

Vazov is not quite the writer that Hugo is (again, the translator might be partially to blame). Stylistically, his writing bears some resemblance to Henryk Sienkiewicz, the Nobel-winning author of Polish war epics like With Fire and Sword. Like Sienkiewicz, Vazov fills supporting roles with amusing larger-than-life characters, like a burly, boisterous fellow named Ivan Kill-the-Bear. Vazov also devotes much of the plot to a romance that is every bit as chaste and idyllic as one might find in one of Sienkiewicz’s epics. The narrative is driven just as much by the love story between the hero and his soulmate as it is by the historical events of the conflict. To prolong the amorous anticipation, Vazov throws some emotional turmoil in the way of the lovers’ union that feels contrived and unrealistic. He deserves some major credit, however, for not succumbing to a formulaic ending. As mentioned earlier, the rebellion in question was quashed by the Turks, so the story takes a refreshingly darker turn towards the end.

As a historical novel, Under the Yoke is not as well-written as the best efforts of Hugo or Sienkiewicz. It is an intriguing read, however, for the insight it gives the reader into the history of Bulgaria and the Bulgarian national spirit. Lovers of classic European literature will enjoy reading the national epic of a nation whose literature doesn’t often make it into English translation.
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