Citation

Kirsch K. Zeitschrift fur Deutsche Philologie 2004; 123(4): 549-572.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2004)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

In his novel "Die Blendung" ("Auto-da-fe"), Canetti takes up central motifs of Plato's cave parable and caricatures his prototype of the philosopher in the figure of Kien. As Kien commits suicide, Canetti lets Platonic idealism die with him. Canetti's poetics can thus be deciphered as a counterconcept to Plato's idealism and his crowd as a counterconcept to the Platonic state. - All the relations between the figures in "Auto-da-fe" follow the Oedipus pattern. But the person who is blinded is not the one who commits incest, but the one who reads forbidden 'scientific' literature, like the Anti-Oedipus Kien. In this transposition of the Oedipus material, the sphinx embodies Canetti's poetic principle of metamorphosis. With Georges there appears a second Anti-Oedipus, who does not wish to solve her riddle, but to become a sphinx himself.

Language: de