The Tongue Set Free, page 36
This time, her derision didn’t break off suddenly, it kept intensifying with every sentence. Never before had she treated me as a parasite, never before had there been any talk about my having to earn my own keep. The word “apprentice,” which she threw at me, was something I associated with practical or mechanical activity, the last thing in the world she had ever impressed on me. I was smitten with letters and words, and if that was arrogance, then she had stubbornly raised me in that way. Now she was suddenly carrying on about “reality,” by which she meant everything that I hadn’t as yet experienced and couldn’t know anything about. It was as though she were trying to roll a tremendous burden off on me and crush me underneath. When she said “You’re nothing,” I really felt as if I had become nothing.
These leaps, these raging contradictions in her character, were not alien to me, I had often witnessed them with amazement and admiration, those very things stood for the reality which she reproached me for not knowing. Perhaps I had banked on that too strongly. Even in the period of our separation, I had always referred to her in everything. I was never certain how she would react to my accounts, all initiative remained with her, I desired her contradicting me and I wanted it to be fierce; it was only in regard to acknowledged weaknesses of hers that I could deceive her with inventions like the dancing mice in the moonlight. But even then I always had the feeling that it was up to her, that she wanted to be deceived. She was a marvelously lively ultimate authority, her verdicts were so unexpected, so fantastic, and yet so detailed that they inevitably triggered counter-emotions giving one the strength to appeal them. She was a higher and higher ultimate authority, and although she seemed to lay a claim to it, it was never the final authority.
But this time I had the feeling that she wanted to annihilate me. She said things that couldn’t be quibbled with. I agreed with some of them on the spot and my defense was lamed. If some objection did occur to me, she jumped over to something entirely different. She raged through the life of the past two years as though she had only just learned about all the events, and things she had once apparently accepted with either approval or bored silence now suddenly turned out to be crimes. She had forgotten nothing, she had her own way of remembering, as though she had concealed from herself and from me the things she was now condemning me for.
It lasted a good long time. I was filled with terror. I began fearing her. I no longer wondered why she was saying all those things. So long as I had sought her presumable motives and retorted to them, I had felt less disconcerted, as though we were facing each other as equals, each leaning on his reason, two free people. Gradually, this self-assurance crumbled, I found nothing more within me to use with sufficient strength, I consisted only of ruins now and I admitted defeat.
She wasn’t the least bit exhausted after this conversation, as she normally was following conversations about her illnesses, her bodily weakness, her physical despair. On the contrary, she seemed strong and wild and as implacable as I liked her best on other occasions. From that moment on, she never let go. She busied herself with the move to Germany, a country that, she said, was marked by the war. She had the notion that I would enter a harder school there, among men who had been in the war and knew the worst.
I fought against this move in any way I could, but she wouldn’t listen and she took me away. The only perfectly happy years, the paradise in Zurich, were over. Perhaps I would have remained happy if she hadn’t torn me away. But it is true that I experienced different things from the ones I knew in paradise. It is true that I, like the earliest man, came into being only by an expulsion from Paradise.
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. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Part One: Ruschuk, 1905–1911
My Earliest Memory
Family Pride
Kako la Gallinica; Wolves and Werewolves
The Armenian’s Ax; The Gypsies
My Brother’s Birth
The Turk’s House; The Two Grandfathers
Purim; The Comet
The Magic Language; The Fire
Adders and Letters
The Murder Attempt
A Curse on the Voyage
Part Two: Manchester, 1911–1913
Wallpaper and Books; Strolls along the Mersey
Little Mary; The Sinking of the Titanic; Captain Scott
Napoleon; Cannibal Guests; Sunday Fun
Father’s Death; The Final Version
The Heavenly Jerusalem
German on Lake Geneva
Part Three: Vienna, 1913–1916
The Earthquake of Messina; Burgtheater at Home
The Indefatigable Man
Outbreak of the War
Medea and Odysseus
A Trip to Bulgaria
The Discovery of Evil; Fortress Vienna
Alice Asriel
The Meadow near Neuwaldwegg
Mother’s Illness; Herr Professor
The Beard in Lake Constance
Part Four: Zurich—Scheuchzerstrasse, 1916–1919
The Oath
A Roomful of Presents
Espionage
Seduction by the Greeks; The School of Sophistication
The Skull; Dispute with an Officer
Reading Day and Night; The Life of Gifts
Hypnosis and Jealousy; The Seriously Wounded
The Gottfried Keller Celebration
Vienna in Trouble; The Slave from Milan
Part Five: Zurich—Tiefenbrunnen, 1919–1921
The Nice Old Maids of the Yalta Villa; Dr. Wedekind
Phylogeny of Spinach; Junius Brutus
Among Great Men
Shackling the Ogre
Making Oneself Hated
The Petition
Getting Prepared for Prohibitions
The Mouse Cure
The Marked Man
The Arrival of Animals
Kannitverstan; The Canary
The Enthusiast
History and Melancholy
The Collection
The Appearance of the Sorcerer
The Black Spider
Michelangelo
Paradise Rejected
About the Author
Copyright
English translation copyright © 1979 by The Continuum Publishing Corporation
Originally published as Die gerettete Zunge: Geschichte einer Jugend by Carl Hanser Verlag © 1977 Carl Hanser Verlag München Wien
This edition is published by arrangement with The Continuum Publishing Corporation, 575 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10022. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of The Continuum Publishing Corporation.
First Farrar, Straus and Giroux printing, 1983
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eISBN 9780374607807
First eBook edition: 2021
Elias Canetti, The Tongue Set Free
