The Laughter of the Madman, the Laughter of the Hyena. The Animal Side in Elias Canetti’s Work

The article examines the central role of animals in Elias Canetti’s poetics, with a focus on the concept of metamorphosis and the use of acoustic and visual masks. Canetti critiques anthropocentrism, explores the fluid boundaries between humans and animals, and employs metamorphosis to investigate identity and communication. Animals are often depicted as hybrid figures, symbolizing the capacity for transformation and the tension between the individual and the crowd. Canetti was fascinated by human voices, searching for the animal elements within them, and showed particular interest in listening to recorded animal voices from the 1920s and 1930s in Vienna, recognizing their dramatic features. The author highlights the continuity between the human and non-human animal world in laughter: it is a hyena that laughs, but also the laughter of a madman. This paper traces how animal sounds are transformed into acoustic masks, where human and animal features coexist, reflecting Canetti’s exploration of the interplay between humanity and the animal world.