'ONE ALWAYS HAS MORE ROOTS THAN LEAVES'

CANETTI (ELIAS, 1905-1994, Austrian novelist, dramatist and essayist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981) REMARKABLE EARLY AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED ('CANETTI'), in German, to the historian C.V. Wedgwood, translator of his highly acclaimed novel Die Blendung (entitled Auto da Fé in translation), praising her translation of his book and her article in Horizon about it ('...you move in me with the same terrible sureness which you attribute to me in my characters. You have an uncanny sensitivity for what a person believes himself to be; I consider that to be the decisive talent for a historian. May you write a great deal of history!...'); commenting on the contemporaneity of the discovery of America and the expulsion of the Jews, though accepting her correction over the precise date ('...It is good to be seen historically by a historian. One feels caught out...'); offering to send a list of the minor errors he has made; expressing his reservations about the quotations in her essay ('...When you quote, you have the rest of the book in your head; the reader of your essay knows it only superficially or not at all...'), emphasising that she should paraphrase more but suggesting that the passage about Anna's daydream be quoted in full ('...I believe one could quote Anna's daydream, but only as a whole...in the mutilated form it has at present it simply appears misleading...'); offering to give her more background on other themes in the book or on the content of the 'Hochvest'; pointing out that they are his own sentences which he is attacking; and sending best wishes from himself and his wife Vera ('...You deserve peace like no other person...'), 4 pages, quarto, in pencil, with a typed translation and transcription, [Amersham: 'I feel smothered even in Amersham'], 18 June 1946

'...It is the contemporaneity of the discovery of America and our expulsion which I cannot come to terms with. My ancestors would have been part of the discovery of the world if that had not happened. What adventures, what marvels, what immense confrontations they would have been denied as a result! They took their language with them, but they were not there to experience the great period of Spanish literature. I sometimes have the feeling - and I am telling this only to you - that I have to recreate Spanish literature for myself alone, retrospectively, very belatedly, and yet looking to our own time...'

A remarkable letter between Canetti and Veronica Wedgwood in the year that her translation of his major novel was first published; it remains the standard text in English. Born in Bulgaria, Canetti's family were Sephardic Jews, his father Turkish and his mother of Spanish descent. He studied in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, obtaining his doctorate in chemistry from Vienna University. His intellectual and cultural connection was with Germany, and all his books, and the present letter, are in German.

Early letters by Canetti about Die Blendung are rare.

£2,500