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Against the Power of Time: The Poetics of Suspension in W. G. Sebald's "Austerlitz"

Author(s): Amir EshelSource: New German Critique, No. 88, Contemporary German Literature (Winter, 2003), pp.71-96Published by: New German Critique

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Againstthe Powerof Time:ThePoetics ofSuspension n W.G Sebald'sAusterlitz

AmirEshel

Timeis a riverwhichsweepsme along,butI amthe river.- Jorge Luis Borges

On a cold day, not long before Christmas 1996, the narrator of W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz and the protagonist, Jacques Austerlitz, arrive in

Greenwich, England. After climbing up through Greenwich Park, theyreach the Royal Observatory. There, while viewing different measur-

ing devices, regulators, and chronometers, Jacques Austerlitz bursts

into one of the most decisive monologues of the book - a poetic

eruption, I would argue, crucial to the understanding of Sebald's proseas a whole:

Time ... was by far the most artificialof all our inventions,and in

being boundto the planetturningon its own axis was no less arbitrarythan would be, say, a calculationbasedon the growthof trees or thedurationrequired or a piece of limestoneto disintegrate,quite apartfrom the fact thatthe solardaywhichwe takeas ourguidelinedoes not

provideus anyprecisemeasurement,o that n order o reckon ime wehave to devise an imaginary, veragesun whichhasan invariable peedof movement and does not incline toward the equator n its orbit.IfNewton thought, said Austerlitz,pointing throughthe window anddown to the curveof the wateraround he Isle of

Dogs glisteringn the

last of the daylight, f Newtonreallythought hattime was a river likethe Thames,then where is its source and into what sea does it finallyflow? Every river, as we know, must have banks on both sides, so

71



72 W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz

where, seen in those terms,where arethe banks of time? What would

be this river's qualities, qualitiesperhapscorresponding o those ofwater, which is fluid, ratherheavy and translucent? n what way do

objects immersed n time differfrom those left untouchedby it? Whydo we show the hoursof light and darkness n the same circle? Whydoes time standstill and motionless n one place,and rushheadlongbyin another?Couldwe not claim ... thattime itselfhasbeennonconcur-rent[ungleichzeitig,Ger.147]overthe centuriesand the millennia? t isnot so long ago, afterall, thatit beganspreadingout over everything.And is not human life in manypartsof the earthgovernedto this dayless by time thanby theweather,andthusby an unquantifiable imen-

sion which disregards inear regularity,does not progressconstantlyforwardbut moves in eddies, is markedby episodesof congestionand

irruption, ecursin ever-changing orm,and evolves in no one knowswhatdirection?1

At this point, albeit without changing the text flow in the paragraph,the monologue becomes very personal:

In fact... I have neverowned a clock of anykind,a bedside alarmor a

pocketwatch, let alone a wristwatch.A clock has always struckme assomething ridiculous,a thoroughlymendaciousobject [etwas Lach-

haftes,Ger. 147-48],perhapsbecause I have alwaysresistedthe powerof time out of some internalcompulsionwhich I myself have never

understood,keepingmyself apart rom so-called current vents [Zeitge-schehen,Ger.148]in thehope,as I nowthink .. thattimewill notpassaway, has not passedaway,thatI can turnback andgo behindit, andthere I shall find everythingas it once was, or more precisely I shallfind thatall momentsof time haveco-existedsimultaneously,n whichcase none of whathistorytells us would be true,pastevents have not

yet occurredbut arewaitingto do so at the momentwhen we thinkofthem,although hat,of course,opensup the bleakprospectof everlast-

ing miseryandneverendinganguish. 101)

For those acquainted with Sebald's prose, this monologue must

appear somewhat perplexing. After all, since his emergence on the

German and international literary stage in the late 1980s, Sebald was

celebrated by readers, critics, and scholars alike for giving the highest

poetic attention to the minute description of natural and human reali-

ties in the vein of Adalbert Stifter and Gottfried Keller, albeit in a

1. W. G.Sebald,Austerlitz, rans.AntheaBell (New York:RandomHouse,2001),100-01. Germanoriginal:Sebald,AusterlitzMunich:Hanser, 001). Hereafter ited par-entheticallywithin thetext.



AmirEshel 73

postmodernmode.2 Even in its manner of dealing with man-made

catastrophes,most notablywith the Holocaust andthe air raidsof Ger-man cities duringWorld WarII, Sebald's prose seemed to have con-

sciously avoided the generalizing, the epic, and the quasi-

philosophical.How, then, shouldone readAusterlitz'spolemic againsttime, and how can we clarify his resistanceto regardingthe past as

gone alongside his fear of letting it dwell eternally in the present?Whatis the natureof Austerlitz'sdesire to keep a distance from Zeit-

geschehen - from what occurs in time? And, finally, what is this

monologue'splace in the book's narrative ndin Sebald'spoetics?Focusingon Austerlitz'smonologuein Greenwichand on a varietyof

key elements of the book, I will claimthat Austerlitz'smonologue,like

Sebald'sprose as a whole, decisively exceeds the traditionof aesthetic

modernist melancholia, which tended to confine itself to elegiac

mourning, symbolist escapism, and decadent ennui.3 In Austerlitz,Sebald's reflexive, ratherthan depressive, melancholy,as this is mir-

rored in his fascination with clocks, diaries, and ruins, results in a

unique interweavingof time and narrative n three varied,

yetinter-

twinedways: a multifocalevocationof the recent Germanpast,an alle-

gorical-criticalaccount of modernity,and, finally, a latent order of

significationin which not the historicalor biographical,but the effects

of figurationhemselvesconstitute hereferent.

This essay deals with all three of these modes of the relationshipbetweentime and narrative.Even thoughthe novel's poetic figurations

consistentlysuspendfinite identifications, huspreventinga purerefer-

entialreading,Austerlitz, ike the entiretyof Sebald'soeuvre,cannotbe

abstracted rom its own place in time. In what follows, Part I analyzesthe narrative'sengagementwith the immediatehistoricalpast. As Part

II shows, beyondthe poetic figurationof historical ime, Austerlitzalle-

gorizes and criticallycommentson modernity's ime consciousness. It

is only after consideringthese modes, I will conclude in PartIII, that

the significance of the marked effects of figuration n Sebald's prose

2. See SusanSontag,"A Mindin Mourning,"Where he StressFalls (New York:

Farrar, traussandGiroux,2001)41-48, especially46. On the relationof Sebald'sproseto

his work on Stifter,see EvaJuhl,"Die WahrheitOber as Ungllick:Zu W. G.Sebald DieAusgewanderten,"Reisen im Diskurs,ed. Anne Fuchs and Theo Harden Heidelberg:C.

Winter,1995)640-59, especially651-52.3. See Der melancholischeGeist der Moderne,ed. LudgerHeidbrink Munich:

Hanser,1997),especiallyPeterBirger,"DerUrsprung eraisthetischenModerneausdemennui" 101-19.




can be fully grasped.To put it differently:The unique significanceof

Sebald'sprose lies in its formalcharacteristics, otjust in the scope ofits thematic and semanticdomains.Sebald'swork stands out not onlybecause,as is often noted, it thematizes"remembrancendresponsibil-

ity"vis-i-vis the Germanpast,4but ratherbecause of its poetics of sus-

pension: a poetics that suspends notions of chronology, succession,

comprehension,and closure- a poetics that rather handepictingand

commenting on the historical event in time, constitutes an event,becomesthe writingof a different,a literary ime.

I

"Inthe hope ... that time will not pass away,has not passed away:"Austerlitz'spolemic againstthe ontology of a separablepast, present,and futurereverberateshroughouthe book, pointingback to Sebald's

ongoing interest n questionsof historicalremembrancen postwarGer-

manyand to his interest n the course of the modem novel. Unlike rep-resentativeauthorsof his own generationwho dealt with the German

pastsince the 1960s - Peter Schneider(1940-), Uwe Timm (1940-),

WolfgangHilbig (1941-), Peter Handke(1942-), F. C. Delius (1943-),Botho StrauB 1944-), Eva Demski (1944-), ChristophHein (1944-),Bernhard Schlink (1944-), Thomas Brasch (1945-2001), or Rainer

WernerFassbinder(1945-1985) - Sebald began his literaryengage-ment with the markedpast only in the late 1980s.5 His late develop-ment as a writer,however, is not the only aspect separatinghis prosefrom that of much of his generation.6 t is insteadhis narratives' ack

of interest in this generation'sprevailingtopoi - the anguishes and

fragile sense perceptionof the "I,"the Germanstudents'revolt of thelate 1960s and its aftermath, he crumblingsocialist utopia, and the

4. A summaryof this view is presented n ArthurWilliams,"'Das Korsakowsche

Syndrom':Remembrance nd Responsibility n W.G Sebald,"GermanCultureand the

Uncomfortable ast, ed. HelmutSchmitz Aldershot:Ashgate,2001) 65-86.5. By "Sebald'sgeneration," mean writerswho were born 1942/44-1945/47,

shortlybefore the end of the waror rightafter,thusgrowing up in the GDR, the Federal

Republic,or Austria.On the significanceof generational ypology in the historyof post-war German iterature ee SigridWeigel,"'Generation' s a SymbolicForm:Onthe Gene-

alogicalDiscourseof

Memoryince

1945,"TheGermanicReview77.4: 264-67.

6. Itwould be impossible o give herea shortaccountof the literature f Sebald's

generation.I would like, nevertheless,to point to such representative, lbeit differentworks suchas PeterSchneider'sLenz:EineErzahlung 1973) andVati:Erzahlung 1987),

WolfgangHilbig's Ich (1993), Peter Handke'sMein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht:EinMarchenaus denneuenZeiten(1994), and Bernhard chlink's TheReader(1995).



AmirEshel 75

analysisof theparents'guilt.

Sebald'sprose is distinctivein its voice, in its uniquefocalizationthe sensitivity throughwhich we hear the narrative.This voice reflects

a singularconcentration,f not a fixation,on what is decisively outside

the "I" the experiencesof others,the fear that theirstorymightvan-

ish into oblivion.7Followingthe credos of the WestGermandocumen-

tary literatureof the 1960s and 1970s - especially the work of

AlexanderKluge, who offered German iterature"the only intellectu-

ally legitimateway to confront the Germanpast"8 his writing col-

laged text and visual images and sought to blur the lines betweenhistoriography, autobiography, biography, and fiction. As Sebald

emphaticallynoted,"Mymedium s prose,not thenovel."9

AddressingAdorno'sresponseto the challenges of modernistproseand to those of modem history,"one can no longer tell, whereas the

novel's form demands telling,"l0 Sebald contented himself with the

role of "themessenger.""He wanted to set his prose in oppositionto

what he called "fiction"- that is, "belles-lettres" n the nineteenth-

century tradition,prosein which the

anonymousnarratorknows and

controls everything.The certaintiespertinent o the aesthetic and his-

torical circumstancesof the nineteenthcentury,Sebald alleged, "have

7. To be sure,Sebaldis not the only writerof his generationwho has dedicatedmuchattention o the presenceandconsequences f the Germanpast.One could pointtosomeof theproseby PeterSchneider,o a certain,not-unproblematicegree o theworkofBernhard chlink(1944-), to the poetryof AnneDuden(1942-), or to the proseof BirgitPausch 1942-).Yetinnoneof thesecases do we observe hesamepoeticintensity nregardto the victims'stories, he sameconcentration n the fate of thesurvivorsand thepresence

of thepast.OnSebald's ingularityn thisrespect, eealso Ernestine chlant,TheLanguageof Silence:WestGermanLiterature ndtheHolocaust New York:Routledge,1999)234.8. "Miteinem kleinen StrandspatenAbschiedvon Deutschlandnehmen," nter-

view with Uwe Pralle,SiiddeutscheZeitung22 Dec. 2001.9. "WildesDenken," ebald nan interviewwithSigridLOffler, rofil 19Apr.1993.

On Sebald'scollapseof the differencebetween ictionalandautobiographicalarrativesnthe contextof thedissolution f subjectivitynmodemprose ee OliverSill,"'AusdemJa*geristeinSchmetterlingeworden.'TextbeziehungenwischenWerkenonW.G.Sebald,Franz

Kafka,und VladimirNabokov,"Poetica29.3-4 (1997):596-623,especially596-97.10. TheodorW.Adomo,"Standortes Erzdihlersmzeitgen6ssischenRoman,"Gesa-

mmelteSchriften I,Noten zur Literatur, d. Rolf TiedemannFrankfurt/Main:uhrkamp

1974)41.On thefar-reachingonsequences f Adomo'sanalysisas voicedinthisessayandin Adomo's laterAestheticTheory,ee KeithBullivant nd KlausBriegleb,"DieKrisedes

Erziihlens '1968' unddanach,"Gegenwartsliteratureit 1968, ed. KlausBriegleband

SigridWeigel,vol. 12,HanserSozialgeschichteerdeutschenLiteraturom16.JahrhundertbiszurGegenwart, d.RoldGrimmingerMunich:DeutscherTaschenbuch,992)302-39.

I1. "RecoveredMemories,"nterviewwithMayaJaggi,TheGuardian 2 Sept.2001.



76 W.G.Sebald's Austerlitz

been taken from us by the course of history. . . . [W]e have to

acknowledgeour own sense of ignoranceand of insufficiency ... andwriteaccordingly."12

Crucialto the uncertainties f the modemage and to the "insufficien-

cies" of nineteenth-centuryealisticprose is the relationbetween "fact"

and "fiction."Keepingthe tension between fact and fiction unresolved

is important,Sebald insists, because "we largelydelude ourselveswith

the knowledge that we think we possess, that we make up as we go

along, that we make fit our desires and anxieties and that we invent a

straight ine or a trail in order to calm ourselvesdown."13Narration na manner hatconveys reassurance n ourabilityto depict accurately, o

make sense of and master time, to overcome the postmodern, post-Shoah condition, is to be mirrored n the "uncertainties"f the narra-

tor. The oscillationbetweena narrator s the authorand as a fictive fig-ure should communicate tself to the reader,who will or ought to feel

"a similar sense of irritation" boutthe tension between fact and fic-

tion. "Realism,"Sebaldnotes, "functionsonly if it goes beyondits own

boundaries. . . . The realistic text isoccasionally

allowed to risk

becoming allegorical."l14ignificantly,even thoughsomewhat naive in

his understanding f the relation between fictional and historiographicnarrativesof history, Sebald locates the difference between his proseand what he regardsas clear-cuthistoriographyn what the historical

monographcannot achieve:"ametaphoror allegoryof a collective his-

torical process. . . . Only in metaphorizing can we gain an empathetic

insightintohistory."15The continuoustension between fact and fiction, authorialor auto-

biographicalnarrationand fictional narrative,between the mediationof data and its metaphorical figuration, is constitutive to all of

Sebald's works. Like TheEmigrants,in which the lives and deaths of

several figures who are exiled from Nazi Germany both evoke

National Socialism andmetaphorize he experienceof persecutionand

exile, Austerlitz addresses the fate of a Jew who struggles to over-

come his own forgettingand thus to metaphorize he tension between

remembranceand oblivion. At first sight, the book follows the story

12. InterviewwithJamesWood n Brick58 (Winter1998):27.

13. Interviewwith JamesWood25-26.14. Sven Boedecker,"Menschen auf der anderenSeite," interview with W. G.

Sebald,RheinischePost 9 Oct. 1993.

15. Interviewwith SigridL6ffler.



AmirEshel 77

of its sixty-plus-year-oldprotagonist.16Most of the novel's some four

hundredpages (in the Germanedition)tell of the fictive Jew, JacquesAusterlitz,born in 1934, who was sent as a child in a Kindertransportfrom his hometown,Prague,to England.Faithfulto his semidocumen-

tary aesthetics, Sebald collapsed together in Austerlitz's life several

authentic biographies:the life of a colleague, who, like Austerlitz,

taught the history of architecture,hat of Susie Bechhofer,who was

born into a Jewish family in Munichandwas sent with her twin sister

on a Kindertransporto Wales,andelementsof otherbiographies.17

Havingarrived n the smalltown of Bala,Wales,Austerlitz s adoptedby a Calvinistpriestand his wife, who want to save Austerlitz'ssoul,"innocentas it was of the Christian aith" 138). The couple forces him

to give up all his belongings,thus erasinghis entirepreviousexistence.

Growing up as Dafydd Elias, the child spends hours lying in his bed,

tryingto conjureup the faces of those who are left behind,throughhis

own fault,as he fears.It will be not until 1949, in the privateboardingschoolhe attends, hatAusterlitzdiscovershis truename.

Thediscovery

of his name does nothelp,

atfirst,

to reveal the lost

past. Austerlitz's own amnesia - a psychological phenomenonnot

uncommonamong survivorsof the Holocaust- makes the past seem

forevergone. He moves on to develophis interests n a mannerrepres-sive to all that might connect to his genesis: "As far as I was con-

cerned the world ended in the late nineteenth century" (139).

Repressionwill lead to neuroticresurfacingand symptomatic"actingout."Collapsefollows. Aftera ritual act of liberation n which he bur-

ies his entire work (124), Austerlitzcomes to realize what he lost as a

child and what he so stubbornlyrepressedas an adult. Isolated and

alienated,he wonderswhy it never occurredto him to search for his

"trueorigins"(125). Before his final mentalcollapse in the summerof

1992, he roams the streets and the trainstationsof Londonin insom-niac obsession, only to discoverthat the dead are returning rom their

16. The term"story"hereis used in its narratologicalense:"story" s the sequenceof events involving"actors" nd"actants." he termKindertransportefers o thetransferof Jewishchildren romGermany,Austria,andCzechoslovakiao GreatBritainand else-

where afterthe so-calledReichskristallnacht. rganizedby Jewishgroups, he first trans-portarrivedon December2, 1938, in the EastAnglianportof Harwich some sixtymiles away fromNorwich,where Sebaldtaughtat the Universityof EastAnglia. The

Kindertransport perationwas ended at the beginningof the war on September1, 1939.

Approximatelyenthousand hildrencameto GreatBritain.17. See"Ichtiirchte asMelodramatische,"nterviewn DerSpiegel3 Dec. 2001 228.



78 W.G. Sebald'sAusterlitz

exile, fillingthetwilightaroundhim(132).

The cyclical temporalityof return18 the return of the dead, thereturnof the past, which is a central trope in Sebald's work, domi-

nates the remaining pages: Austerlitz'sUlyssian journey back to his

past. His Greenwichdream of getting behind time will result in his

seeking to regainthe lost time and createa narrativeof his past. It is

throughnarrativizationhat Austerlitzhopes to find his place in time;it is throughthe narrative's emporaldevices - telling of times past,i.e. childhood in Prague,the Kindertransport tc. - that time is ren-

dered differently than the faceless entity Austerlitz rejects in hismonologue. Austerlitz's "discovery"and narrativizationof his veryown time will bring him to Prague, where, much like Ulysses, he

encounters his childhood in the figure of his nursemaid, Vera

Rysanovi. It will be throughher, in periscopicnarrationia la Thomas

Bernhard,19hat the readerwill now find out what happenedbefore

and afterAusterlitz was sent to Wales. VeraRysanovaiwill tell him of

the persecutionof Prague'sJews, of his mother'sdeportation o Ther-

esienstadtandthen to the deathcamps

in the east.

Visiting Theresienstadt,Austerlitz will have then arrived where he

had set off for in his Greenwich monologue. Walking through the

streets of the Czech fortresscity, visiting the ghetto museum,it seems

to him now as if he has enteredthe timeless kingdomof the dead,that

the time of the deadhad neverpassed.He senses, even thoughonly for

a while, that the sixty thousandJews who had been crammed nto the

walls of the ghetto "hadneverbeen takenaway after all . . . thattheywere incessantly going up and down the stairs . . . filling the entire

spaceoccupied by the air" 200).Austerlitz's epiphany, his experience of simultaneoustemporality

beyondthe ontologyof past-present-future,hough,remainsshort-lived.

18. On the returningdead, see for examplethe narrator's ommentin "Dr.Henry

Selwyn," he firststoryof TheEmigrants: Andso theyareeverreturningo us, the dead.

At timesthey come backfrom the ice more than seven decadeslaterandare foundat the

edge of the moraine,a few polishedbonesanda pairof hobnailedboots."W.G.Sebald,The Emigrants, rans. Michael Hulse (New York:New Directions,1996) 23. See also

StephanieHarris,"The Returnof the Dead:Memoryand Photographyn Sebald'sDieAusgewanderten," heGermanQuarterly 4.4:379-91.

19. Accordingto Sebald,he borrowedhis techniqueof narrating ia severalmedia

("umein, zwei Eckenherum") romThomasBernhard.See Der Spiegel interview233.

On Sebald's periscopicnarration, ee also Juhl,"Die Wahrheittiberdas Ungliick"640-

59, especially 651.



AmirEshel 79

In an ironic turnaimedat suspendingall notionsof arrivaland conclu-

sion, any projectionof metaphysicalmeaningonto the scene, Auster-litz decides to extend his recherchedu temps perdu to finding his

father,who managedto escape Praguepriorto the Germanoccupation.Afterpresentinga complicated,seemingly intersectingweb of facts and

observations hatwould finally explainhis fate, Austerlitzsuspendsthe

closure of his recherchewith the following gesture:"I don't know ...what all this means and so I am going to continue looking for myfather"(my emphasis,292). Since the narratordoes not continue his

account of Austerlitz'ssearch, it now becomes apparent hat Auster-litz's search is not the means, but rather the end itself. The tension

betweenhis wish to uncoverthe pastandhis fearof its eternallydwell-

ing in the presentresults in an open-endedexploration hat,rather han

reflectinga hopeto clarifyor to recovertimes past, suggeststhe simul-

taneityof all times in the realmof memoryandthe existentialinabilityto mark he pastas gone.

Before they part for the last time, Austerlitzwill hand over to the

narrator hekeys

of his London house inAlderney

Street."Icouldstaythere,"the narrator eportsAusterlitz's last sentences, "andstudy the

blackand white photographswhich, one day, would be all that was left

of his life" (293). Since the book is told from a temporalperspectivethat succeeds this and all otherevents, the symbolic order of this keymoment suggests a differentreadingof the plot altogether.The black

and white photographs cattered hroughouthe book - indistinguish-able fromthe narrative tself - were configuredwith the text after the

narratorreceived the keys to Austerlitz's interior,both literally and

metaphorically.20 ow it becomes clearthat the plot is not simply theresult of Austerlitz'snarration, ut in addition, f not much more so, the

20. In his interiewwith SigridL6ffler,Sebaldstated,"Iworkusingthe systemof

bricolage, in Levi-Strauss's ense. It is a form of savage work [eine Form von wildem

Arbeiten],of prerationalhought,in which one nuzzles in findingsuntil they somehowmake sense." In TheSavage Mind (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1966), Levi-Straussdefines

mythicalthoughtas a mode of "bricolage" 17). The French verb bricoler denotes an

activityof ordercreation hat s not basedonthorough hought,but rather n usingmateri-als and tools that happen o be around.Whereas he engineeror scientist surpasses he

boundaries iven by society,the bricoleur reatesstructures bymeansof events" 22). Inthe contextof Sebald'spoetics,it is significant hatLevi-Strauss's ricoleurprovidessignsdenoting heworld,while theengineer uppliesconcepts:"Oneway inwhichsignscan be

opposedto conceptsis thatwhereasconceptsaimto be whollytransparent ith respect o

reality, igns allow and even require he interposing ndincorporationf a certainamountof humanculture ntoreality" 20).



80 W.G.Sebald'sAusterlitz

productof the narrator'semplotment- of his bricolage, in Claude

Levi-Strauss's ense: the outcome of a prerational rocess duringwhichthe narratorsmuggles in photographsand whatever information he

excavatesuntil he turns hese materials nto a narrative.

Rereading the plot from the narrator'sperspective, it now seems

obvious that the narrative is a postmodern crypto-Bildungsroman

stretchingover some thirty years. It follows the story of a young Ger-

man, who, like Sebaldhimself, decided to live in GreatBritain,a man

who, like the narratorof all Sebald's prose, travels extensively in

searchof the past, in search of an idiomthatwill addresswhathe con-tinuallyfinds alonghis way: the stories of victims, survivors,and ruins.

Sebald'snarrator n Austerlitz ravels not only for "study,"but also for

reasons"which were never entirelyclear"to him (3). Like Sebald, he

beganhis studies in Germany,where he "learnedalmostnothing"from

his teachers scholarswho built their careers n the 1930s and 1940s

"and still," that is after the war, "nurtureddelusions of power" (32-

34).21 Just as his experienceswith Jewish 6migreswere essential for

Sebald,Austerlitzis the "first teacher" o whom the narrator s able to

listen since his days in primaryschool (33). Furthermore,he narra-

tor's scarce remarks reverberatein Austerlitz's own words. While

describinghis visit to the fortressBreendonk n 1967, the narrator on-

templates,in a way reminiscentof Austerlitz'sGreenwichmonologue,how "everything s constantlylapsing into oblivion with every extin-

guished life, how the world is ... draining tself, in that the historyof

countless places andobjectswhich themselves have no power of mem-

ory is neverheard,neverdescribedorpassedon"(24).

It is not, however,that Austerlitzis subsumed n the narrator r thatthe lattershouldbe equatedwith the writer.22Rather han stylizing the

narrator s a Germanattentiveto the storyof the Jews, Austerlitz the-

matizes modem "uncertainties,"he difficultiesof telling the past reas-

suringly in an era suspicious of all grand narratives. Much like

Sebald's previous prose, Austerlitzreflects a poetic stance that sus-

pends all object-subjectpolarities.It is a prose that is "intransitive"n

RolandBarthes'classic sense. Its subjectis conceived"as immediately

contemporarywith the writing, being effected and affected by it."2321. See, forexample,Sebald'sremarksnthe interviewwith JamesWood29.22. See Sebald'sown remarksnhis Der Spiegelinterview233.23. See RolandBarthes,"To Write:An IntransitiveVerb?"TheRustleof Language

(New York:Hill andWang,1986) 18-19.



AmirEshel 81

Thematizing ime's artificiality, ts non-occurrence,he simultaneityof

all its modalities,Sebald'sproseis "notinteriorbut anterior o the pro-cess of writing:"24All its "subjects"are defined by the act of narrat-

ing, the act of writing,rather hanby the objectsthey addressor events

they evoke. Sebald's "subjects" ransgress he borderbetween textual

and transtextual ealities,between the writer and the written,between

the events at stake and their presentation,between the time of the

events andthe time of the narration.The result is the writingof life, of

lives - not only the lives of the narratoror the writer,but also the

attentive writing of those lost lives that Sebald so relentlesslyresearched.This writingof life is presentnot only in the semantic and

thematicfigurationof times past, but also in Austerlitz's sense of the

natureof modemtime.

II

"Inthe hope ... thattime will not pass away,has not passed away:"To be sure, Austerlitz'spolemic againsttime, his "hope" o halt time's

maddeninggallop,is

configuredo relate to a traumatic hildhood and

an oblivious, neurotic life as an adult. Austerlitz s haunted, he narra-

tive suggests,by the paralyzingpowerof forgettingandby his fear that

oblivion might claim victory over his pain. No careful reading of

Austerlitz'spolemic againsttime could overlook,however,the scene's

markedtopographyand thus the work's overall allegoricaldimension.

Metonymicallyread, Greenwichdenotes the rapidpace of technologi-cal and industrialprogressin Europeas of the mid-nineteenth entury- a processepitomizedby the transportationevolutionand the spread

of railwaytracksthroughouthe continent.It was the need to regulate

railway transportationhat in the 1840s broughtaboutthe standardiza-

tion of all local times in England.25n 1884, Greenwich ime became

WorldTime, and the town was chosen as the world's Prime Meridian- the topographicmarker of a modem universe based on the rapid

transportationf goodsand theunprecedentedmovementof individuals.

Reflecting on the opening of the Paris-Rouenand the Paris-Orleans

railway ines in 1843,HeinrichHeine noted:

24. Barthes19.25. In November 1840, the directorof England'sGreat WesternRailwayordered

that Londontime be set as the standard ime for all purposesof railwaytransportationacrossthe country.This was the beginningof the end of local time. See DerekHowse,GreenwichTimeand theDiscoveryof theLongitudeOxford:OxfordUP,1980)87.




Letus simplysay thatour entireexperiences beingrippedup and

hurled nnewtracks;hatnewrelations,leasures,nd orments waitus, andthe unknown xerts ts ghastly ascination,rresistiblend,atthesame ime,fearful. . . Even heelementaryoncepts f time and

spacehave becomeshaky.Therailwayshavekilledspace,andonlytimeremainsor us. If onlywe hadenoughmoney o respectfullyilltime, oo.26

Writingfrom the perspectiveof what ReinhartKoselleck has illus-

trated as the rupturebetween "thespace of experience"and "the hori-

zon ofexpectation"

that announcedmodernity,

Heine's declarationof

the death of space reflected the emergence of a new, modem con-

sciousness of temporalityand space.27Space will no longer be a sig-nificant obstacle. No longer will it propel the same longings, desires,andanxieties.

The "deathof time" that Heine envisionedwas soon to become one

of the characteristics f the modem era:"Time and space died yester-

day," wrote Marinetti in 1909, "We already live in the absolute,because we have createdeternal,omnipresent peed."28Modernity,as

reflectedin literarymodernism,would be the firstepochto define itself

throughradical concentrationon the present,throughthe Nietzschean

"life" - the desire to unload the weight of the precedingepochs, to

curb all traditions,query metaphysicalconstraints,and delve into the

now and its promise of unprecedentedmovement through space.29While Austerlitz is narratedfrom the perspective of this modernist,absolute now, the protagonist'spolemic against "time" is only one

thread,albeit a decisive one, in a web of textualreferences that target

26. HeinrichHeine, Lutezia. ZweiterTeil, trans. Todd Samuel Presner,Schriften

iiberFrankreich,ed. EberhardGalley (Frankfurt/Main:968) 509-10. 1 am indebted o

Todd SamuelPresnernot only for his splendid ranslation f Heine'ssentences,butalso

for his inspiringdissertation:ToddSamuelPresner,"TrackingModernity,Nationalizing

Mobility:German/Jewish ravelLiterature s a Historyof Possibility" Ph.Ddiss., Stan-

fordUniversity,Department f ComparativeLiterature,001).27. ReinhartKoselleck,FuturesPast, trans. KeithTribe(Cambridge:MIT, 1985)

231-66. On modernity'sdistinctive emporal onsciousness,see PeterOsborne,ThePoli-

tics of Time.Modernity ndAvant-GardeLondon/NewYork:Verso1995)5-29.

28. F. T.Marinetti,

Let's

Murder he Moonshine:SelectedWritings,

d. andtrans.R.

W. Flint(Los Angeles:Sunand MoonClassics,1991)49.29. See Paul de Man, "LiteraryHistoryand LiteraryModernity,"Blindnessand

Insight:Essaysin theRhetoricof Contemporary riticism,2nded., revised(Minneapolis:U of MinnesotaP, 1983) 142-65, and Karl Heinz Bohrer,Das absolute Prdsens: Die

Semantik sthetischerZeit(Frankfurt/Main:uhrkamp 994) 143-83.



AmirEshel 83

the modem consciousness of temporalityand thus modernityand its

perilsas thosearesymbolizedby railway ransportation.Railway tracks had previously served in a similar manner in

Sebald's work. In Sebald's first majorprose volume, Vertigo(1990),the narrator ravels throughGermanyby train. From this symbolicallyladenperspective,the countryseems to him full of objects and devoid

of humans: "it was as if mankindhad alreadymade way for another

species, or had fallen under a kindof curfew"(254).30While his jour-

ney through the Rhine region is told in a manner reminiscent of

Heine's Deutschland, ein Wintermarchen255), his arrival in theHeidelbergtrain station is markedby angst. The crowd strikes him as

a gatheringof people who are "fleeing froma city doomedor alreadylaid waste"(254).

In his story "PaulBereyter,"n TheEmigrants, he photo of railwaytracks at the onset of the narration s merelythe first sign in a crypto-

gram leading to the protagonist'sdeath as he lays himself down "in

front of a train."31Like the life of Austerlitz,Paul Bereyter's past, the

storyof the

"three-quarterAryan" (50),was

tragically shaped byNational Socialism. Like Austerlitz,Bereyterhad a puzzling "passionfor railways,"a symbolic fervor that had led his "Aryan"uncle to

prophesythat the young Paul "would end up on the railways"(62).

Railway transportation ominates he thoughtsand life of Max Aurach

(Max Ferber n the Englishtranslation),he protagonistof anotherstoryin TheEmigrants.Sent by his parents n May 1939 to a safe haven in

England,two and a half years before they were to be murderedbyNazis nearRiga, Ferbersees no promiseof freedom and movementin

the imagea train,butonly infinitethreat:"sitting n the train,the coun-try passingby ... the looks of fellow passengers all of it is torture

to me"(169).AusterlitzfurtherexpendsSebald'ssymbologyof railwaytransporta-

tion. The first scene, also the first encounterbetween the protagonistand the narrator,akes place in the Antwerprailwaystation. The Cen-

tral Station,designed by Louis Delacenserie and opened in 1905 withthe Belgian king present,appears o Austerlitz'sexcavating, Benjamin-

ian gaze as the incarnation f religiosity in the modem age: When westep into the entrancehall, Austerlitzremarks,we are "seized by a

30. Sebald,Vertigo,rans.MichaelHulse(New York:New Directions,1999)254.31. Sebald, TheEmigrants 27.




sense of being beyondthe profane, n a cathedralconsecrated o inter-

nationaltraffic and trade" 10). Inspiredby the Pantheon n Rome, thismodem constructioncelebratesthe centralityof movementin the new

epoch's"horizonof expectation."Set "even above the royal coat of arms,"watchingover the symbols

of "capitalaccumulation," nd reigning supreme n the divine arrange-ment, is the "governorof a new omnipotence,"ime, as symbolized bya clock. Surveyingfrom its centralpositionall movementsof its subor-

dinates,it obliges all to adjusttheiractivities to its demands.Austerlitz

sees in this regimethe most decisive markof the modernera: Not untilthe clocks were standardized round he middle of the nineteenthcen-

tury,he emphasizes,did "timetruly reign supreme."Only by follow-

ing the course that time prescribes,he concludes, can we "hasten

throughgigantic spacesseparating s fromeachother" 12).

Significantly, t is the narratorwho, afterAusterlitz'speroration t the

Antwerp rainstation,classifies the protagonist's bilityto discover"the

marks of pain which ... trace countless fine lines through history" (14)as "akind of historical

metaphysics"13).The core of this

metaphysicswill continue to unfold in scenes encirclingrailwaytransportationnd

train stations - spaces of "blissful happinessand profoundmisfor-

tune"(34) that hold Austerlitz"in the grip of dangerousand entirely

incomprehensibleurrentsof emotion" 33-34) and cause him "thoughtsof the agony of leave-takingand the fearof foreignplaces" (14). Train

stations become for Austerlitzthe signifierof his personalfixation on

loss - the moment of leave-taking romhis mother n Prague'sWilson

stationin 1939. They markthe post-Baudelaireianoetic consciousness

thatall thatis present s alreadypast,already ost.32

Austerlitz'sfixationon and studies of railwaystationsare guidedbyhis conviction that railway transportation olds the key to understand-

ing the modern age, that "the entire railway system" embodies "the

idea of a network" hat is based on what Wittgensteincalled "familyresemblances,"33 y which the members of the extension of a certain

32. See Karl Heinz Bohrer,Der Abschied:Theorieder Trauer Frankfurt/Main:

Suhrkamp,1996)9-10, 15.

33. Ludwig Wittgenstein,PhilosophicalInvestigations,rans.G E. M. Anscombe,revised ranslation, rdedition Oxford:Blackwell,2001)27. WhileSebaldspecificallyand

in an unquestionable eference o Wittgenstein ses the termFamilienahnlichkeitensee

Austerlitz[German]48), the Englishtranslation,"family likeness"rather han "familyresemblances"33) misses the referenceo Philosophical nvestigations.



AmirEshel 85

concept-wordmay be unitedin a systemof similarities 33). The entry

to this system and to the work's allegoricaldimension is given in thescenes surroundinghe LiverpoolStreet Station n London.Coveredby

smoky darknesscausedby diesel oil and locomotivesteam,the Liver-

pool Street Stationlures and appallsboth narrator nd protagonist.In

their descriptions,this locus emergesas the crypt of the modem age,the symbolic sight of rapidindustrialprogress(36) andthus as "a kind

of entrance o the underworld"127-28).Like Dante's inferno, this underworld s labyrinthineand layered.

Whatenables the movement from one section to another s Austerlitz'sexcavating gaze. While dwelling in the station for hours, Austerlitz

penetrates ts enclosedpast,a past still engraved n its imageeven after

the stationhad gone throughrenovationat the end of the 1980s. The

groundsof the stationservedin the pastto house the Orderof St. Maryof Bethlehemand the Bedlamhospitalfor "theinsane and otherdesti-

tutepersons" 129).When duringthe demolitionwork of 1984 at the site of the Broad

Street Station, the skeletons of over four hundredpeople

are found

"underneath taxi rank"(130),Austerlitz s drawn o the site to unearth

theirstory.It is the fate of the discardeddeadthatwill now pointto the

"network" rganizing his markedspace. The modem consciousnessof

temporality, he killing of space and time as symbolized in railway

transportation,s seen in relationto human life and human remains.

Before work on the constructionof the two northeast erminalsbegan,

"poverty-stricken uarterswere forcibly cleared.""Vastquantities"of

soil mixed with humanbones were removedfrom the site to enablethe

placementof railwaylines, which "on the engineers' plan looked likemuscles and sinews in an anatomicalatlas."The burialsite is now noth-

ing more than a "gray-brownmorass,a no-man'sland wherenot a liv-

ing soul stirred," ndthe symbolsof intactnature the little river,the

ditches andponds,the elms and themulberryree- are all gone (132).The shift in the symbolic order, in the nature of the "system"of

Austerlitz'sdirect and implied "historicalmetaphysics,"could hardlybe more evident. Humans and human remains are removed from their

"natural" lace, and nature itself is crushedby the nonhuman, ndeedinhumanbody of modernity a body whose threateningmuscle, asthe forceful image attachedto the narrative uggests (133), is that of

railwaytransportation.What is left of "nature" s only railwaytracks,




spaces of transitionon which trainscarrying heirmaterialand human

loads are rushingback and forth."Time,"standardizedime, and rail-way transportationretwo elementsof the nexus of modernityandbar-barism.They participaten andperpetuatehe cycle of ruthless,narrowrationalism the narrative's ronicalpresentationof Newton's idea thattime is a river like the Thames[100]), ever-growingdemandfor more

production,moreconsumption, ndmoremovement.

The consequencesof this cycle are unveiledduringAusterlitz'svisitto Theresienstadt.There,facingthe materialremainsof persecutionand

annihilation, he railwaylike"system"of modernityandthe cosmic sys-tem thatrelates the "star-shaped"ortificationarchitecture f the seven-teenthcentury(15), the octagonalobservationroom of Greenwich(98),the star-shapedlower at the entranceof his childhoodhouse (151), andthe star-shaped orm of Theresienstadts fully revealed:Theresienstadtis the most radicalfacet of the economic,political,and symbolic order

of post-Enlightenmentmodernity.The star-shapedTheresienstadtis

"themodel of a world madeby reason and regulated n all conceivable

respects"(199), a world that was enabledby standardized"time,"bythe modemtemporalconsciousnessreflected n railway ransportation.

Austerlitz'spolemic againsttime is thus cruciallyrelatedto his studyof "thearchitecturaltyle of the capitalistera"(34) and to his analysisof "thecompulsivesense of orderandthe tendencytowardmonumen-

talism evident in law courts andpenal institutions,railwaystations and

stock exchanges, opera houses and lunaticasylums and the dwellingsbuilt to rectangular rid patterns or the laborforce"(33) - a "sense"

that culminatedin Theresienstadt. t is this system, this "model,"at

which the narrativeallegoricallyaims. It is not that for Austerlitz"timehas no real existence," as J. M. Coetzee remarks,but rather that he

questionsthe law of a certainperceptionof time, a specific mode of

temporality.34Railway transportationnd railwaystationsare decisive

elementsof the oppressiveuniverseruledby "time," he universe of the

"Enlightenment roject"as viewed by the FrankfurtSchool and in the

writingsof Michel Foucault.The railwaysystem and its "time" the

"governor" f the modem era- signify bothmodernity'spromiseand

its perils, both humanity's seeming freedom from the boundariesofnature and the all-encompassing,unprecedented lienationof humans,

34. J. M. Coetzee,"Heirof a DarkHistory," eviewof W.G.Sebald'sAfterNature,New YorkReviewof Books49.16 (24 Oct.2002): 225.



AmirEshel 87

leadingto theirtransformationntohumanmaterialn the deathcamps.

Although Sebald is careful not to identify either the narratoror theprotagonistwith himself, Austerlitz's"historicalmetaphysics,"his cul-

ture-critical amentsechoing the rhetoricof Marx,Adorno, and Fou-

cault, unquestionably esult in a darkallegorical philosophyof historyin the vein of the FrankfurtSchool, in what Andreas Huyssen has

describedas Sebald's"conceptual ramework" writing in the frame

of a "naturalhistoryof destruction," metaphysicsof nature- writ-

ing thatis indeed "tooclosely tied to metaphysicsand to the apocalyp-

tic philosophyof historyso prominent n the Germantradition."35 obe sure, Sebaldhimselfvoiced more thanonce concernsabout"thelib-

eral dreams"of the nineteenthcentury, n which humanitywas to con-

sist of "emancipated,autonomousindividuals."36Humanityhowever,Sebald countered, is instead "a mass" that, once broughtto a boil

throughpressurefromoutside,"becomesfluid, and then gaslike" [gas-

formig].37Although mobility may have seemed "from an economical

standpoint"a positive development,in Germany, t was nevertheless

the subjectof a "dialectics"hatled to catastrophe.38Sebald's affinity with Benjaminian"kulturkritische"metaphysics,39

his pessimistic view of modernity,combines laments over the decline

of nature, of educationalinstitutions,and of culture with discontent

over the fact that many in his sleepy German hometown now drive

BMWs: He is convinced that most subjectsof the modern cultureof

consumptionsuffer under "the conditionsof the present"and that the

35. AndreasHuyssen,"Rewritings ndNew Beginnings:W.G.Sebaldandthe Lit-eratureof the Airwar,"PresentPasts (Stanford:StanfordUP,2003). On Sebald's

impliedphilosophyof history,see also Michael Rutschky,"Das geschenkte Vergessen:W. G.Sebald's Austerlitz und die Epik der schwarzenGeschichtsphilosophie," rankfurterRundschau 1 Mar.2001.

36. See "Wiekriegendie Deutschendas aufdie Reihe?"W.G. Sebaldin interviewwith Wochenpost 7June 1993.

37. "Wiekriegendie Deutschendas auf die Reihe?"38. "Wiekriegendie Deutschendas aufdie Reihe?"39. OnSebald'sBenjaminian kulturkritische"etaphysics ee his tellingcommen-

taryon WalterBenjamin'sallegoricalangelof history nLuftkrieg ndLiteraturMunich:Hanser,1999)79-80. Ina later nterviewwith TheNew Yorker ebaldnoted:"I'vealways

thoughtit

very regrettable,and,in a

sense,also

foolish,that the

philosophersdecided

somewhere n the nineteenth entury hatmetaphysicswasn't a respectabledisciplineandhadto be thrownoverboard, nd reduced hemselves o becoming ogisticiansandstatisti-cians .... So metaphysics, think,shows a legitimateconcern."JoeCuomo,"The Mean-

ing of Coincidence An Interviewwith the WriterW. G. Sebald,"The New Yorker

Sept.2001.




mountainsof painkillersused in a countrylike Germanydeliver the

proof of collective mentalpains- painswhose causes lie ultimately nthe beliefs andpracticesof the "enlightened" apitalistworld.40Nature

is "the context" in which humans"originally"belonged, and out of

whichthey arebeingdrivenata rapidpace.41In light of the narrator'sourney through he threatened,partlymori-

bund natureof the easterncoast of England n TheRings of Saturn,as

well as the author'sown scatteredremarks,Sebald'sliteraryarchaeolo-

gies amount to chapters in a universal history of catastrophe.They

seem to trace the "aberration"f the humanspecies42via an investiga-tion into the genealogy of historicalphenomena:how the individual

psyche is "determined" y family history,how family history in Ger-

many was determinedby the conditionsof the Germanmiddle class in

the 1920s and 1930s, how these conditionswere determinedby the his-

tory of industrializationn Europeand in end by the naturalhistoryof

the humanspecies.43Sebald's tendency to drawthe "big picture,"at least implicitly, led

him to view the extinctionof certainspecies or the "execution"of three

million cows because of Mad Cow Disease in relationto other"catas-

trophes"and to view the "German atastrophe" s a "European"atas-

trophe. The questionableuniversalization hroughEuropeanizationof

the Holocaust "I do not see the catastrophe ausedby Germans,hor-

rible as it was, as unique.... It developedfromEuropeanhistory,from

the dream,at latest since Napoleon,to turnthis very 'unorderly'conti-

nent into something 'orderly,arranged,powerful"'44 is not least

reflected in Austerlitz'sname. Like his pedantic critique of the new

ParisBibliothequeNationale(275-86) and otherelementsof the book,Sebald'skulturkritische otionsamount at times to a questionable ele-

ology in which modernityis all too clearly configuredas necessarily

leadingto Theresienstadt.

The reader is expected to find inscribed in Austerlitz's name the

40. "Wiekriegendie Deutschendasaufdie Reihe?"41. "Wiekriegendie Deutschendas aufdie Reihe?"42. Interviewwith Uwe Pralle.43. Interviewwith Uwe Pralle.44. Interviewwith Uwe Pralle.OnSebald'sview of ethniccleansinginconjunction

with the extinctionof certainspecies as a result of humanaction, see ThomasKastura,"GeheimnisvolleFRhigkeiturTransmigration:W.G.SebaldsinterkulturelleWallfahrtenindie Leere,"Arcadia31.1-2 (1996):200.



AmirEshel 89

modemrn,apoleonic "historicalparadigm,"45he idea of a forcefully

unitedEuropeunderone economic,political,and symbolic hegemony.It is precisely this "paradigm" f organizing,aggressiverationalityas

the root of all evil that is echoed in Austerlitz'sGreenwichmono-

logue, especially in the ironicinvocationof Newton's view of time as a

masterable,definable entity. Modernity'sdeification of standardized,controlled time is challengedin the monologue by the voice of a fig-ure whose entireappearance ignifiesthe longingfor a different, unda-

mentallyromanticist"paradigm," y a temporalconsciousnessthatcan

apparentlystill be found "in many partsof the earthgovernedto thisday less by time thanby the weather" 101). Readin this light, Auster-

litz's polemic is not only the poetic challenge to the temporalcon-

sciousness of the modem age, to the practices of accelerated

production, consumption, and movement. It is also the somewhat

rushed, obsolete, and strangely Heideggerian-sounding ostulationof

an "ultimate"ogic of modernity,a logic thatremoves us humansfrom

the "natural,""true"and "authentic"and is reflected in mechanized

massagriculture

s muchas in inhuman, ndeed,fascistcataclysms.46

III

"Inthe hope ... that time will not pass away,has not passed away:"Viewed from the perspective of its allegorical ("kulturkritische")dimension,Austerlitz s hardly unique in its interweavingof time and

narrative n the larger andscapeof postwarand contemporaryGerman

literature.PeterWeiss, HeinerMiller, and Botho Straul3,o name onlya few, emplotted in various forms aspects of National Socialism as

expressionsof modernity'scapitalist,annihilation-destinedhrust.Whatdistinguishesthe book, and Sebald'swork as a whole, however,is that

this allegory,at times all too implicatedin the Enlightenmentprojectthat it criticizes, is relativized n a manner hatdismisses, indeed defers

finite insights or conclusions. Even if the narrative'sconcentrationon

45. Sebalduses the termhistorischesParadigma nhisDerSpiegel interview.46. Inan unpublishedmanuscript f the 1949lecture hat was laterto be known as

TheQuestionConcerningTechnology,Heidegger amouslystated hat"Agricultures nowmotorizedfood industry in essence the same as the manufacturingf corpses in gas

chambersandextermination amps,the same as blockadingandstarvingof nations,thesame as the manufacture f hydrogenbombs."This remarkwas dropped rom the finalversion of the manuscript.See RichardBernstein,TheNew Constellation:The Ethical-Political Horizonsof Modernity/PostmodernityCambridge:MIT,1992) 130.



90 W.G. Sebald'sAusterlitz

the catastrophic eems occasionallyto be subsumedby all-encompass-

ing conceptualframes,one is still confrontedwith moments in whichthis tendency is ironically inverted:"I don't know . . . what all this

means... "(my emphasis,292).From their beginningsin AfterNaturethroughVertigo,TheRings of

Saturn,and TheEmigrants,Sebald's narrativesmaintained he tension

between masterableprogressionand the catastrophic, he moment in

which mere succession is shatteredby a seemingly meaning-generatingevent - by the instant n which chronos,the successive, the repetition

of the same, is succeededby kairos,the event of what FrankKermodecalls "intemporal significance."47Sebald's kairoi however, remain

remote from any form of transcendence, heir "meaning" ndefinitelydeferred.This deferenceis well in line with Sebald'soverallpoetics of

suspension- the mode in which this emblematicpostmodernprosefollows and outdoes what FredricJameson describedas "the elegiac

mysteriesof duree andmemory"prevalent n high modernism.48To putit differently:Sebald'sprose is significantnot simplyas a case studyin

postmodern"historiographicmetafiction," hat is, because of the waysit thematizesmemory, he manner n which it is concernedwith histori-

cal figuresandevents while blurring he distinctionbetweenfiction and

history.49Rather,his workis remarkable s poetic "chronoschism,"hat

is, because of the ways in which the narrativeorganizes and recon-

ceives temporality, egardlessof its references o history, he manner n

which it managesto escape altogether he dangerof leftist Weltschmerz

and didacticpedantry n its suspensionof "time"as a categoryof per-

ceptionandprogression.50

Sebald's catastrophe is not epiphanic. Informed by Hans Blum-berg's notion of catastropheas a topos of the human imagination,51

47. See FrankKermode,The Sense of an Ending:Studies n the Theoryof Fiction

(Oxford:OxfordUP, 1967)46-47.48. FredricJameson,Postmodernism;or; the CulturalLogic of Late Capitalism

(Durham:DukeUP,1991) 16.49. On "historiographicmetafiction," ee LindaHutcheon,A Poetics of Postmod-

ernism:History,Theory,Fiction(New York:Routledge,1988),especiallychs. 6 and7.

50. On "chronoschism"s atypological

device inaddressingpostmodern

iterature,see UrsulaHeise,Chronoschism:Time,Narrative,and PostmodernismCambridge:Cam-

bridgeUP,1997) 1-74.51. See the interview with Andrea Ko6hler, Katastrophemit Zuschauer,"Neue

Ziurcher eitung22 Nov. 1997 Also, HansBlumenberg, hipweckwithSpectator:Para-

digmof a Metaphoror Existence, rans.Steven Rendall Cambridge:MIT,1997).



AmirEshel 91

his catastrophe s no longera sign of the eschatological,of divine ful-

fillment. Sebald's interest is focused on modem, man-made catastro-phes marked by their "paradigmatic enselessness," by the fact that

any attemptto distill sense from them would result in questionable

mythological narratives.52The appearanceof mythological imagessuch as those of burningcities and Lot's wife in TheRings of Saturn

is not the result of a mythicizing interpretative ndeavor,but rather

the attemptto present images of and in relation to the catastrophic

images that only mirrorthe narrator'snabilityto deliver a cohesive,

meaning-generatingaccount of the "radicalcontingency"inherentinthe catastrophic, ndeed, in history.53Whatwe grapplewith, Sebald's

narrativesseem to suggest, is not only the catastrophic, he marked

historicalevent, the kairos,but also theirdistance,theirpresentness n

the form of inheritedand producedimages, their senselessness. Writ-

ing is the measuringof this distance, and photographycan only the-

matizethe absenceof the "real,"of the event as such.

If clocks tell time, Sebald's narratives ell what wanes, what tran-

spiresin time.54Just as clocks count time - in English, "to count"

denotes "to tell," "to account," "to reckon" [in German zahlen/

erzihlen] - his work does not simply count off times gone, but cre-

ates its own mode of counting,of accountingfor, its own time. What

marks Sebald'spoetics of suspensionis the ways in which the effects

of figuration hemselves constitute he work'sultimatereferent, hat is,its unique "time effects," the ways in which the text forms time and

conditionsthe readingexperience.55Let us considerthe following pas-

sage that describesAusterlitz's ourney from Prague throughPilsen in

52. "Das ist sicher eine Gefahrin der Beschreibungvon Katastrophen: ass die

Katastrophe as paradigmatisch innloseist unddass deshalbdie Versuchung esonders

akut st, irgendeinen innausdiesenkataklysmischen reignissen u destilieren.Das halteich im Prinzipf'ir illegitim, sinnlos, vergeblich den Versuchalso, das in mythischeDimensionen inzuordnen, anz gleichwelcherArt."InterviewwithAndreaK6hler.

53. "DerErzaihlern meinen Textenentschlaigtich aber eder Deutung.Er machtsich die M6glichkeitderErklkrungerKatstrophe ichtzunutze,er verweistdarauf,dassdie Leutefriiher n dieser oderjener Weisedaruiberachgedachthaben. Wasihn selber

betrifft,glaubeich sagenzu k6nnen,dasser keineAntwortaufdiese FormradikalerKon-

tingenzhat."Interviewwith Andrea

K6hler.54. 1am indebted n thisveryshortdiscussionof the etymologyof counting n rela-tion to both time and narrative o StuartSherman,TellingTime:Clocks, Diaries, and

EnglishDiurnalForm,1660-1785(Chicago:ChicagoUP,1996)ix-xi.55. 1 am borrowing heterm"timeeffects" fromMalcolmBowie's studyof Proust,

ProustamongtheStars(New York:ColumbiaUP,1998)35.




westernBohemiato the West:

All IrememberfPilsen,wherewestoppedorsome ime, aidAuster-litz, is thatI went out on theplatformo photographhecapitalof acast-iron olumnwhichhad ouched omechordof recognitionnme.Whatmademeuneasy t thesightof it,however,was not thequestionwhether he complex ormof thecapital,nowcoveredwitha puce-tingedencrustation,adreally mpressedtself on my mindwhenI

passed hroughPilsenwith the children'sransportn the summer f1939,but he dea,ridiculousnitself, hat hiscast-ironolumn,whichwith tsscalysurface eemed lmosto approachhe nature f a livingbeing,might emember e andwas, f Imaysoput t,saidAusterlitz,witness o what couldnolonger ecollectmyself. 221)

Like this paragraph,56much of Sebald's work is markedby poetic

verbosity, by the elasticity of the syntax,the avoidanceof clear para-

graphstructure,by the slowness it practicesandimposeson the reader.

His writing demands a wide-rangingattention to all details, to the

developmentof continuingassociativechains,andobliges the reader o

follow the careful movement of the labyrinthineplot. Beyond the the-

matic evocationof the traumaticn this particular xample,beyondthe

presence of the all-encompassing metaphoricsof remembranceand

oblivion, here, as in the entirebook, the syntaxand tense patterncon-

stitute "time"- modes of temporalprocessionand temporal experi-ence. The tense structuremaintains a constant oscillation between

differenttemporalforms,between "I remember" nd "we stopped,""I

went out" and "that had touched," "What made me" and "mightremember,"between the object's being "a witness" and the "I" that

could no longer "recollect."The result is an unstabletemporality hatshifts between differentlayers of the past and differentaspects of the

present.Diversions such as "ridiculous n itself," "seemedalmost to,"and "if I may so put it" andthe muddledrhythmcreatedby the narra-

tive's gestureof quotation the repetitive"saidAusterlitz" further

enhance he senseof a seeminglyendlesstemporalelasticity.

56. AndreasHuyssennotes on Austerlitz:"What makes this deeply inconsolable

text suchapleasure

o read is thatprocesses

ofmemory

andexperience

ofspace

and time

aredissectedwithconsummatepoeticskill andimagination.The narrationtself putstime

into slow motion,and it stopstimeentirely n momentsof panicandhorror r,alternately,in the much less frequentmomentof a transcendentightnessof being."AndreasHuyssen,"TheGreyZones of Remembrance,"orthcomingn TheNew Historyof GermanLitera-

ture,eds. DavidWellbery, t al (Cambridge:HarvardUP).



AmirEshel 93

In The Sense of an Ending,FrankKermodesuggeststhatthe clock's

"tick-tock"might be seen not only as a way to humanizea certaindevice, but also as the projectionof plot onto what is, afterall, "tick-

tick."In the projectionof a fictional differencebetween two sounds-

"tick"being a word for the beginning,"tock"a word for the end, it is

the "tock," he end, thatconfersorganization nd form on the temporalstructure f "tick-tock,"ndeed of all plots.57If the projectionof "tock"

onto the clock's tick-tick is a model of a plot, as Kermodesuggests,Sebald's"time effects" model a modempostcatastrophicemporalcon-

sciousness,one thatreflectsthe loss of a sense of successivity,chronol-ogy, andcoherence.If Kermode s rightthatthe purposeof plotting s to

resist the threatof empty time, to "defer the tendencyof the interval

betweentick andtock to emptyitself,"58Sebald'sproseextends the gapbetween"tick"and "tock"ad infinitum.Bewilderedby the catastropheof its time, it echoes WalterBenjamin'snotion that the concept of

progress"mustbe groundedn the ideaof catastrophe,"ts slowness fol-

lowingBenjamin'soutcry"Thathingsare 'statusquo' is catastrophe."59In its

temporal open-endedness,Sebald's

prose suggestsan

open-endedreadingprocess:the wordspile up, the sentencesandparagraphsseem infinite. When the narrationarrives at its abruptend, it is clear

that the book has none. The elemental "tick-tock" hat suggests the

existence of an end, a horizon,a telos, is replaced by the archetypal

postmodernist tance:Every comma, every word and sentence, seems

gearedat extendingthe distancebetween"tick"and "tock,"beginningand end. Austerlitz'sclaim never to have possessed a clock, never to

have been exposed to the sound of "tick-tock,"his resistance to the

arbitrarinessof calculatingtime in relation to the movement of theplanets, is addressedby the poetic creation of a different time alto-

gether,by poetic devices thatquestionthe very existenceof a "tock"by

avoidingit altogether.Like Proust's Recherche, Broch's The Death of Virgil,or Claude

Simon's La route des Flandres, Sebald'sAusterlitz is markedby the

ways in which chronological, ndeed,temporalprocessionis poetically

suspended.Reading the paragraphquoted above involves a constant

returnto other partsof the plot, trying to reconstructwhat happened57. Kermode,TheSenseof an Ending44-45.58. Kermode,TheSenseof an Ending46.59. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin

McLaughlinCambridge:Belknap,1999)473.




before, what is it that could explainAusterlitz'snotion thata cast-iron

column might rememberhim, indeed rememberat all. The placementof a visual image- a photoof a steel andglass constructionakenin a

train stationin proximityto the scene (220) in a way presumablyrelatedto it, defers any immediateprogression n the text: The atten-

tive readerwill stop, tryto decode the image,to connect it to what was

just told, to detect its details and relate it to otherimages in the book.

This photograph, ike all others,as Sebaldnoted, elicits from the text

and takes the spectators into an unreal world unknown to them.60

Sebald'sphotographicmagesare thushardlyan artfulornament o tex-tual images, hardlya means to enhance aesthetic pleasure,but rather

"genuineimages" in WalterBenjamin'ssense, devices that relate the

reader o what is andwill remainabsent- the events andthe protago-nists of the past. Sebald'sphotosare indeedBenjaminian mages, "dia-

lectics at a standstill,"or, in Benjamin'swords:"what comes togetherin the flash withthenow to form a constellation."61

Sebald's images relate the spectator o temporality they make one

awareof boththe now that is frozenin the image and the now of spec-

tatorship,of the reading process. His dramaticeffect originatesfrom

visual andtemporalpropositions hat structure nd mark ime. Oncethe

book has caughtthe reader n its paragraph-longentences, in the nar-

rative'stendencyto dissolve in detoursand distractions, n the myster-ies of the never to be fully depicted or understoodpast, the time of

reading itself becomes an element of the narrative's emporalfabric.

The polemic againsttime becomespoetic deceleration, he actualrever-

sal of time's gallop, and the productionof a differenttemporality,one

that suspends,at the metasemantic evel, the ontology of past, present,and future.The result is a text that in its nonsemanticelement ques-tionsthe reignof timeas thiswas understoodnthemid-19thcentury.

In their introductionto the recently published volume Time and

the Literary,KarenNewman, Jay Clayton,and MarianneHirsch note

that while informationtechnology is said to have annihilated both

time and the literary,the literaryis still not gone. On the contrary, t

structures our thinking about time.62 They argue that "the literary

60. "Aberdas Geschriebene st kein wahresDokument,"ChristianScholz, inter-

view withW.G.Sebald,Neue ZircherZeitung26 Feb.2000.61. Benjamin,TheArcadesProject462.62. KarenNewman,Jay Clayton,and MarianneHirsch,eds., Timeand theLiterary

(New York:Routledge,2002) 1.



AmirEshel 95

joins immediacy and the instantaneouswith their opposite, duration

andcritique," hus marking ense, period,andmillennium.63While it isnot certainif all literatureachieves this, if all literature"prolongsthe

moment for reflection" and enables a "rereadingof the present,"as

theseauthors uggest,Sebald'sprose certainlydoes.

Lackingmanyof the certaintiespertinent o the aesthetic and histori-

cal circumstances of the nineteenth century, Austerlitz's polemic

againsttime, like Sebald'swork as a whole, is melancholic,but not in

that it passively bemoans the dead or "lives fromthem,"in a kind of

poetic necrophilia,as some criticshave suggested.64The suspensionoftemporalprocessionand succession, the concentrationon catastropheand the dead, is merelya poetic point of departure,he "birthplace" f

writing, to quote H6lne Cixous's formulation,of a differentexperi-ence of the world. We need "to lose the world,"writes Cixous,65"andto discover that there is more than one world and that the world isn't

whatwe think it is."

Sebald's work is more concernedwith reflecting on life after the

catastrophe,with

livingin the face of destruction,than with death

itself. Like authors such as IngeborgBachmann,Thomas Bernhard,and Alexander Kluge, but also like Claude Simone, if one were to

expandthe view into the perspectiveof contemporaryEuropean itera-

ture, Sebald's significance lies precisely in the mannerin which his

work continuallyfaces the dead throughan opening up of the literaryas a space of reflectingthe present,as a space for reflection:"Melan-

choly," Sebald noted," is somethingdifferentfrom depression.While

depressionmakes it impossibleto conceive or to mediate,melancholy

- in itself not necessarily a pleasantcondition- allows one to bereflective ... to developthingsone wouldnever have anticipated."66

Sebald's melancholy is thus not sui generis, but rather an integral

part of the labor of mourning [Trauerarbeit],as Ernestine Schlanthas noted.67Melancholy,Sebald emphasized,has nothing to do with

the will to die [Todessucht]. It is rather "a form of resistance"

63. Newman,ClaytonandHirsch,TimeandtheLiterary.64. See Thomas

Wirtz,"SchwarzeZuckerwatte:

Anmerkungenu W.

G. Sebald,"Merkur .55 (June2001):530-34.65. HWlkneixous,ThreeStepson the Ladderof WritingNew York:ColumbiaUP,

1993) 10.66. Interview nDer Spiegel.67. Schlant,TheLanguageof Silence 233.




[Wiederstand].68The function of melancholy in art is by no means

reactive or reactionary:"The depiction of calamity encompasses thepossibility of its overcoming."69The irritationcaused by the melan-

cholic tone of Sebald'sprose, by its insistenceon keeping the tension

betweenthe historicalevent and its poetic figurationunresolvedandbyits unique temporality,broadensour sense of the very act of telling.Sebald's antiquarianmanner,his uncompromised, onscious slowness,halt the rapid pace of time and set limits to modernity'sobliviousness,even if only in the realm of the text, even if only for the brief moment

of reading.

68. W. G Sebald,Die Beschreibungdes Unglicks: Zur OsterreichischenLiteraturvonStifterbis Handke Salzburg:Residenz,1985) 12.

69. Sebald, Die Beschreibungdes Ungliicks:Zur OsterreichischenLiteraturvon

Stifterbis Handke.

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