Elias Canetti in Wales and London: Meeting Dylan Thomas in Fitzrovia

A Dramatic Bilingual Reading from the Unpublished Diaries and Notebooks

The writer and thinker Elias Canetti (Nobel Laureate, 1981) arrived in the UK as a refugee from the Nazis in 1939 and dedicated the next twenty years to a study of mass psychology which was published as Crowds and Power in 1960. While writing in German, he established himself in the London literary landscape and recorded impressions of many leading figures. As a Sephardic Jew born in the multi-ethnic Balkan state of Bulgaria in 1905, he professed an affinity with 'minority peoples' such as the Welsh. The evening's performance, a world premiere, features his account of meeting Dylan Thomas in 1951 and attending his memorial three years later, his notes on a visit to North Wales in 1966, as well as other character sketches and observations on British life.

Over the Christmas and New Year period, Down by Here will also be hosting the exhibition Elias Canetti :A Jewish Émigré in Britain: People, Places, Impressions 1939-1988 / Alltud Iddewig ym Mhrydain: Pobl, Llefydd ac Argraffiadau 1939-1988.

The exhibition and performance by staff and students from Swansea University's German Department are brought to you by the project Elias Canetti and the British in a European Context: Exile, Reception, Appropriation, a collaboration between researchers at Swansea and the Ludwig Maximillians Universität Munich, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the German Research Agency (DFG).