The Voices of Marrakesh by Elias Canetti, with an afterword by Ferdinand Protzman, six etchings by William T. Wiley, and 29 photographs by Karl Bissinger, 2001.
The only work of travel writing by Elias Canetti, The Voices of Marrakesh was first published in German in 1968. It is a record of a visit to Morocco by the author best known for his sociological work, Crowds and Power, an ambitious study of the roots of Fascism, and Auto-da-Fé, a novel set in Vienna on the eve of World War II. Canetti won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981. He was born in 1905 in Bulgaria, lived in Zurich and Vienna as a young man and settled in England in 1938, and died in 1994. The Voices of Marrakesh became a classic of literary travel writing and redefined the genre. Canetti provides no historical overview of the city or the country. His description of places and things is vivid, yet economical to the point of minimalism. The events Canetti describes could have taken place 100 years ago or yesterday or tomorrow.
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Excerpt from the Afterword
"In 'The Voices of Marrakesh,' the reader doesn’t know exactly what Canetti is doing in the city, beyond visiting an unnamed English friend who is making a film there. Canetti provides no historical overview of the city or the country. His description of places and things is vivid, yet economical to the point of minimalism. He mentions place names, but leaves the unknowing or the curious to look them up on a map. In some instances, he conflates time and place, writing about his experiences in Marrakesh as he looks back on them from England. Even while he’s in Marrakesh time is amorphous. The events Canetti describes could have taken place 100 years ago or yesterday or tomorrow.
Yet the book provides a visceral sense of the people and place. You feel like you’re right there, standing next to Canetti as he explores the camel market, the souks and the Jewish quarter. It’s often an uncomfortable place to be, beginning with the book’s very first sentence: “I came into contact with camels on three occasions, and each occasion ended tragically.” As always, Canetti is drawn to the themes that typify his work: death, crowds, transformation, survival, the smells, and, above all, the sounds of life in the city.
The book rings with sound. You hear the voices of Marrakesh’s people, its Arab, European and Jewish residents. Even when Canetti cannot understand a word of what is being said, he revels in the words’ musicality and sociological function. He listens just as closely to his own thoughts and describes them with relentless precision even when they are petty or uncharitable.
In many places the city’s sounds and Canetti’s musings are woven together so seamlessly that they become one. “The Voices of Marrakesh,” ends with neither bang, nor whimper but with Canetti contemplating a beggar, unseen beneath a pile of rags in a large square, making one, unceasing sound. Only Canetti could turn that haunting image into a metaphor for survival, for resisting death, for eternity."
