It is thanks to my evening reading alone that I am still more or less sane.

 

W.G. Sebald

 

W.G. Sebald (born May 18, 1944) was a German writer whose elegiac works of history and memoir explored the physical, political, and emotional fallout of World War II.

Cztery opowiadania złożone z oszczędnych, po niemiecku drobiazgowych zdań, w których właściwych znaczeń opowiadanych historii trzeba się domyślać na podstawie dyskretnych aluzji. Warto jednak przyjrzeć im się z bliska, tak jak przedrukowanym w książce rysunkom i fotografiom, bo kryją w sobie opowieści o ludzkich losach, krzywdzie i zapomnieniu. A to może być najlepszą przestrogą przed obojętnością na zło.

Źródło: http://www.literaturasautee.pl/sebald-wyjechali/

 

Sfałszowane zdjęcie z 1936 r. - palenie książek w Würzburgu (Sebald, Wyjechali)

Πρόκειται για ένα έργο που αναπτύσσεται με τη μέθοδο ροής συνείδησης, με αποτέλεσμα η αφήγηση να δομείται με σπονδυλωτό τρόπο, ενώ το ένα συμβάν ανακαλεί στη μνήμη του ήρωα ένα άλλο, προσδίδοντας, έτσι, μια αλληλουχία στα κεφάλαια, τα οποία φαινομενικά δε συνδέονται μεταξύ τους. Η πρόζα του Sebald θυμίζει όνειρο, ζαλίζει και θολώνει τα όρια μεταξύ πραγματικότητας και ψευδαίσθησης, αληθινού και πλασματικού. Παράλληλα, η χρήση εικόνων δίνει μια μοναδική ζωντάνια κι αληθοφάνεια στο κείμενο.

This particular work of art is developed by the stream of consciousness method and as a result the narration is constructed with a modular way, whilst an event brings back to the hero's mind another event, arranging, thus, the chapters, which ostensibly have no connection, in a logical sequence. The dreamlike prose of Sebald stuns and blurs the boundaries between reality and illusion, real and fictitious. In addition, the use of images alongside the passages of the book gives a unique liveliness and plausibility to the text.

I read this in translation,
so I can't say for certain
maybe there is some metric by which it is poetry.
Maybe the lines are not merely
broken because Sebald felt like it.
Perhaps in German this is not prosaic --
by which I am not calling Sebald's writing
by any means quotidian but
I saw no reason it could not be
arranged in full text lines.
It would sound just the same,
it would be easier to follow,
it would save space and the lives of trees.
Did the trees do something to you,
morbid walker of Suffolk,
moor-mournful Sebaldus?
I like your prose, I do.
The Rings of Saturn was great.
This is like Rings watered down.
It even covers several of the same
subjects (Suffolk, sadness, Edward Fitzgerald)
and reads much the same, half
travel guide half thought-piece.
But less. Less than Saturn.
And I want more.
Line breaks are not more.

I

Matthias Grünewald
last great medieval artist,
rejector of Renaissance classicism.
Married to a convert Jew,
although Sebald insists the man
was gay for Neithart.

II

No portrait is known to exist of
Georg Wilhelm Steller
botanist, zoologist, physician, explorer,
drawer of this sea-cow.
Named after him, the species outlived
him by only twenty-five years.
Except his Jay all other
creatures named for him are now
extinct or in danger of it.

III

W.G. is not a bit hubristic
to include yourself among these greats?
Well, let it slide.
The past is another country,
and anyway,
the man is dead.

This is a strange and melancholy journey, not really through Suffolk but through Sebald's mind. With poetry and pathos he narrates a wandering, but not random, series of extended meditations inspired by history and memory, local geography and phenomena, people he meets or sees on television, books he's read. We begin and end with Thomas Browne, moving in between from translation to experimentation, from Roger Casement to Dutch Elm Disease to the Troubles. We also return at times to the hospital room in which the narrator lies suffering from a vaguely described inertia, medical or mental.


St Sebald, from whom the author's family name comes


There is a documentary called "Patience" based on or inspired by this book, I'll have to track it down. I'll also definitely be reading more Sebald. Perhaps After Nature as a paired reading with Against Nature? I'd also be interested in After Nature because it was translated by Hamburger, who was a personal friend with whom Sebald seems to have felt he had much in common (he visits him in The Rings of Saturn and discusses this). I'm also interested in reading his poetry, as I very much liked Kay Ryan's poem inspired by this book.

 

For W.G. Sebald, 1944-2001

This was the work
of St. Sebolt, one
of his miracles:
he lit a fire with
icicles. He struck
them like a steel
to flint, did St.
Sebolt. It
makes sense
only at a certain
body heat. How
cold he had
to get to learn
that ice would
burn. How cold
he had to stay.
When he could
feel his feet
he had to
back away.

 

Shrine of St Sebald with his relics, Sankt Sebalduskirche, Nuremberg.

(I've been there!)