The Book Against Death

FAIN: FT-270061-20

Peter Filkins
Bard College at Simon's Rock (Great Barrington, MA 01230-1978)

Preparation for publication of a translation with introduction and annotations of Das Buch gegen den Tod (The Book Against Death), by the Bulgarian Nobel Prize-winning author Elias Canetti (1905-1994).

Elias Canetti's Das Buch gegen den Tod (The Book Against Death) collects 47 years of his aphorisms on the meaning, nature, and consequence of death for himself and a wide variety of writers, cultures, and eras, and was first published in German in 2014. Based on the German publication, my translation will be the first in English and will be accompanied by an introduction and notes providing background on historical events, allusions to other writers, and Canetti's life and work. The result will be a volume of ca. 350 pages recording Canetti's most intimate thinking on death and life itself.

Associated Products

The Book Against Death (Book)
Title: The Book Against Death
Author: Peter Filkins
Editor: Jacques Testard
Abstract: Translation of Elias Canetti's "Das Buch gegen den Tod," a collection of aphorisms and notes written against the power of death between 1937 and 1994.
Year: 2024
Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions (London) New Directions (New York)
Type: Translation
ISBN: forthcoming
Translator: Peter Filkins
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Fifty Disquises: Selections from The Book Against Death (Article)
Title: Fifty Disquises: Selections from The Book Against Death
Author: Elias Canetti, translated by Peter Filkins
Abstract: A selection from Elias Canetti's "The Book Against Death"
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2022/01/05/fifty-disguises-selections-from-the-book-against-death/
Format: Journal
Format: Magazine
Periodical Title: The Paris Review
Publisher: The Paris Review

A Selection from Elias Canetti's "The Book Against Death" (Article)
Title: A Selection from Elias Canetti's "The Book Against Death"
Author: Elias Canetti, translated by Peter Filkins
Abstract: Begun in 1937, The Book Against Death (Das Buch gegen den Tod) is the work Elias Canetti could never bring himself to fully begin, finish, or abandon. Decidedly in 1942, and until his death in 1994, he continued to add to his many notes and aphorisms on the meaning, nature, and consequence of death, from which he hoped one day would spring a cohesive whole whose impassioned argument would somehow “defeat death.” Many of the entries appeared in the various collections of Canetti published over the years, but only in 2014 were they published in their entirety by Carl Hanser Verlag. A third of the three-hundred pages of notes collected in Das Buch gegen den Tod have appeared in English translations of Canetti’s notes and aphorisms. The following is a selection from the two thirds that have never before been translated.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://salmagundi.skidmore.edu/articles/343-a-selection-from-elias-canetti-s-_the-book-against-death_
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Salmagundi
Publisher: Salmagundi

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