… moving on – or maybe not … because honestly; isn’t this poem, like so many exquisite works of art, just another variation of the troublesome Sebaldian story? Maged Zaher “Untitled” I’m few déjà-vus from repeating my whole lifeI need to study the shapes of things before deathBefore declaring myself a better failure: waiting mostly…
Tag: Sebald
True – but not the whole truth
And so I’ve finished The Rings of Saturn, and I ask myself: Was this a good way to start 2019? To tell the truth — I’m not entirely sure. The text is without doubt a masterpiece; written in a beautiful prose, based on vast knowledge, connecting us, contemporary life, to history in a highly original…
Becoming lost
The Rings of Saturn follows a Sebald-like narrator as he walks along England’s eastern coast, letting his mind wander along with his feet. The prose follows the narrator’s digressions from each place and idea to the next, moving freely in time and space. Here is a good example of Sebald at work: … for Diderot there…
W.G. Sebald – short biobibliographical notes
W.G. Sebald, in full Winfried Georg Sebald, (born May 18, 1944, Wertach, Allgäu, Germany—died December 14, 2001, Norwich, England), German-English novelist and scholar who was known for his haunting, non-chronologically constructed stories. Sebald’s work imaginatively explored themes of memory, especially as they related to the Holocaust. His novels include Schwindel, Gefühle (1990; Vertigo), Die Ausgewanderten (1992; The Emigrants), Die Ringe des Saturn (1995; The Rings of Saturn), Logis…
Why Read Sebald?
He is utterly despairing, particularly in The Rings of Saturn. It’s terrible, beautiful, and there’s no hope. — Ali Smith I’ve been here before, at my desk, with all the books by W.G Sebald (which unfortunately isn’t that many) in front of me. My plan is to (re)read The Rings of Saturn. Did I read it…
Open City
Sometimes I’m reluctant to read books that are highly praised. Almost as if praise is in itself – dubious; a warning sign. Teju Cole’s Open City has been such a book for me. A book everyone seemed to like, a novel I was sure I would find wanting. I did not – Here is what i found:…
Locus amoenus
Reading The Rings of Saturn is an adventurous journey. Today it led me to have a look at the concept: Locus amoenus latin for “pleasant place”, locus amoenus is a literary term which generally refers to an idealized place of safety or comfort. A locus amoenus is usually a beautiful, shady lawn or open woodland,…
sinking into sand
reading The Rings of Saturn (1) In the opening of The Rings of Saturn the narrator tells us about Janine Dakyns, an unmarried lecturer in Roman languages. Janine is doing research on Flaubert, and is especially interested in his scruples – Flaubert, according to Janine -was convinced that everything he had written was a string…
Meandering Narratives
I call his books novels, partly, I think, because I want to claim him for fiction, and partly because that seems the most inclusive term for their mélange of fictionalized memoir, travel journals, inventories of natural and man-made curiosities, impressionistic musings on painting, entomology, architecture, military fortifications, riffs on the lives of Kafka, Stendhal, Casanova,…
from Across the Land and the Water
If you knew every cranny of my heart you would yet be ignorant of the pain my happy memories bring W. G. Sebald
sub rosa 