The Secret Heart of the Clock: Notes, Aphorisms, Fragments, 1973-1985

Elias Canetti

ISBN 10: 0374256942 / ISBN 13: 9780374256944

Published by Farrar Straus Giroux, 1989

About this Item

First American Edition. Translated from the German by Joel Agee. Bright, clean & tight copy, unread, in AS NEW condition. "Dealing largely with the meaning and significance of words and names in various languages, these jottings and paradoxes, by the Bulgarian-born Nobel Laureate, reflect on the indignity of life, death, reincarnation, longevity and immortality, the development of ritualism in the child, and the importance and gist of Aubrey, Dostoyevski, Kafka, Klaus Mann, Schopenhauer, Sophocles, Walser, Lear, Zola and Cezanne. There are occasional quotations from Plutarch, Soutine, Faulkner ("I never tell reporters the truth"), Wittgenstein and Wisdom of the Fathers. Canetti remarks that 'each sentence connects with another,' but 'between them lie a hundred years.'"--Publishers Weekly. Pristine hardcover w/brilliant corners & crisp edges, a square & tight binding, wrapped in an intact dust jacket.

Seller Inventory # RUB2015

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Secret Heart of the Clock: Notes, Aphorisms, Fragments, 1973-1985
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Publication Date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374256942
• ISBN 13: 9780374256944
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: As New
• Dust Jacket Condition: As New

About this title

Synopsis

From one of the preeminent intellectual figures of the twentieth century, a highly personal testimonial of what Canetti himself chooses to term "notations," bits and pieces: notes, aphorisms, fragments. Taken together, they present an awesomely tender, guiltily gloomy meditation on death and aging.

About the Author

Elias Canetti (1905-94) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981. His writings include a monumental work of social theory, Crowds and Power, and three volumes of memoirs, The Tongue Set Free, The Torch in My Ear, and The Play of the Eyes.

 


Joel Agee has translated Elias Canetti, Friedrich Dürenmatt, Gottfried Benn, and a collection of Rilke's letters, Rilke and Benvenuta: An Intimate Correspondence. He won the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize for his translation of Heinrich von Kleist's Penthesilea, a verse play. He is the author of Twelve Years: An American Boyhood in East Germany and lives in Brooklyn.