Amir Eshel - Against the Power of Time NGC S

8/10/2019 Amir Eshel - Against the Power of Time NGC S

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/amir-eshel-against-the-power-of-time-ngc-s 1/27

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

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ngc

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3211159?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ngc



Against

the Power

of

Time:

ThePoetics

of

Suspension

n

W.

G

Sebald's

Austerlitz

AmirEshel

Time

is a riverwhich

sweeps

me

along,

but

I am

the 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,

they

reach 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

prose

as a whole:

Time

...

was by

far the most artificialof all our

inventions,

and in

being

bound

to

the

planetturning

on

its own

axis was

no

less

arbitrary

than

would

be,

say,

a

calculationbased

on

the

growth

of

trees

or the

duration

required

or

a

piece

of

limestone

to

disintegrate,quite

apart

from the fact thatthe solar

day

which

we

take

as our

guideline

does

not

provide

us

any

precise

measurement,

o

that n order o reckon

ime we

have to devise an

imaginary, verage

sun which

has

an invariable

peed

of

movement and does not incline toward the

equator

n its orbit.

If

Newton

thought,

said

Austerlitz,

pointing

through

the window and

down to the

curve

of the

wateraround

he Isle

of

Dogs glistering

n

the

last

of

the

daylight,

f Newton

really

thought

hat

time was a river like

the

Thames,

then

where

is its source and into what sea does it

finally

flow?

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 are

the banks of

time? What would

be this river's qualities, qualitiesperhapscorresponding o those of

water,

which

is

fluid,

rather

heavy

and

translucent?

n

what

way

do

objects

immersed

n

time differ

from those left untouched

by

it?

Why

do we show

the

hours

of

light

and

darkness

n

the same

circle?

Why

does time standstill and motionless n one

place,

and rush

headlong

by

in

another?Could

we

not claim

...

that

time itself

has

been

nonconcur-

rent

[ungleichzeitig,

Ger.

147]

over

the centuriesand the millennia?

t

is

not

so

long ago,

after

all,

that

it

began

spreading

out over

everything.

And is not human life in

many

parts

of

the earth

governed

to

this

day

less

by

time than

by

the

weather,

and

thus

by

an

unquantifiable

imen-

sion which disregards inear regularity,does not progressconstantly

forward

but moves

in

eddies,

is

marked

by

episodes

of

congestion

and

irruption,

ecurs

in

ever-changing

orm,

and evolves

in no one knows

what

direction?1

At this

point,

albeit without

changing

the text flow in the

paragraph,

the

monologue

becomes

very personal:

In

fact...

I

have never

owned a clock

of

any

kind,

a bedside alarmor a

pocketwatch, let alone a wristwatch.A clock has always struckme as

something

ridiculous,

a

thoroughly

mendacious

object

[etwas

Lach-

haftes,

Ger.

147-48],

perhaps

because I

have

always

resisted

the

power

of

time

out of some internal

compulsion

which

I

myself

have never

understood,

keeping

myself apart

rom so-called current vents

[Zeitge-

schehen,

Ger.

148]

in the

hope,

as I now

think

..

that

time

will not

pass

away,

has not

passed

away,

that

I

can

turn

back and

go

behind

it,

and

there

I

shall

find

everything

as it once

was,

or more

precisely

I shall

find that

all

moments

of time have

co-existed

simultaneously,

n which

case

none of what

history

tells

us

would be

true,

past

events

have not

yet occurredbut arewaitingto do so at the momentwhen we thinkof

them,

although

hat,

of

course,

opens

up

the

bleak

prospect

of

everlast-

ing

misery

and

neverending

anguish.

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:Random

House,

2001),

100-01. German

original:

Sebald,

Austerlitz

Munich:

Hanser,

001).

Hereafter ited

par-

enthetically

within the

text.



Amir

Eshel 73

postmodern

mode.2 Even in

its

manner

of

dealing

with

man-made

catastrophes,most notablywith the Holocaust andthe air raidsof Ger-

man

cities

during

World War

II,

Sebald's

prose

seemed

to have con-

sciously

avoided

the

generalizing,

the

epic,

and the

quasi-

philosophical.

How, then,

should

one read

Austerlitz's

polemic

against

time,

and

how can

we

clarify

his

resistance

to

regarding

the

past

as

gone alongside

his

fear

of

letting

it dwell

eternally

in

the

present?

What

is the

natureof Austerlitz's

desire 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?

Focusing

on

Austerlitz's

monologue

in

Greenwich

and on a

variety

of

key

elements of the

book,

I

will claim

that Austerlitz's

monologue,

like

Sebald's

prose

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,

rather

than

depressive, melancholy,

as

this is

mir-

rored

in his fascination with

clocks, diaries,

and

ruins,

results

in

a

unique interweaving

of

time and narrative

n

three

varied,

yet

inter-

twined

ways:

a

multifocal

evocation

of

the recent German

past,

an alle-

gorical-critical

account of

modernity,

and,

finally,

a

latent order

of

signification

in which not the

historicalor

biographical,

but

the

effects

of

figuration

hemselves

constitute

he

referent.

This

essay

deals

with

all three of

these

modes

of the

relationship

between

time and

narrative.Even

though

the novel's

poetic figurations

consistently

suspend

finite

identifications,

hus

preventing

a

pure

refer-

ential

reading,

Austerlitz,

ike the

entirety

of

Sebald's

oeuvre,

cannot

be

abstracted rom its own place in time. In what follows, Part I analyzes

the narrative's

engagement

with the immediate

historical

past.

As Part

II

shows,

beyond

the

poetic

figuration

of

historical

ime,

Austerlitzalle-

gorizes

and

critically

comments

on

modernity's

ime consciousness. It

is

only

after

considering

these

modes,

I

will conclude in Part

III,

that

the

significance

of

the

marked effects of

figuration

n

Sebald's

prose

2. See

Susan

Sontag,

A

Mind

in

Mourning,

Where he StressFalls

(New

York:

Farrar,

traussand

Giroux,

2001)

41-48,

especially

46.

On the relationof

Sebald's

prose

to

his work on Stifter,see EvaJuhl, Die WahrheitOber as Ungllick:Zu W. G.Sebald Die

Ausgewanderten,

Reisen im

Diskurs,

ed. Anne

Fuchs and Theo Harden

Heidelberg:

C.

Winter,

1995)

640-59,

especially

651-52.

3.

See Der

melancholischeGeist der

Moderne,

ed.

Ludger

Heidbrink

Munich:

Hanser,

1997),

especially

Peter

Birger,

Der

Ursprung

er

aisthetischen

Moderneaus

dem

ennui 101-19.



74

W.

G. Sebald's Austerlitz

can be

fully grasped.

To

put

it

differently:

The

unique significance

of

Sebald'sprose lies in its formalcharacteristics, otjust in the scope of

its thematic and

semantic

domains.

Sebald's

work

stands out not

only

because,

as

is

often

noted,

it thematizes remembrance

nd

responsibil-

ity

vis-i-vis

the

German

past,4

but ratherbecause of its

poetics

of

sus-

pension:

a

poetics

that

suspends

notions

of

chronology,

succession,

comprehension,

and closure

-

a

poetics

that rather

han

depicting

and

commenting

on

the

historical event

in

time,

constitutes

an

event,

becomes

the

writing

of

a

different,

a

literary

ime.

I

In

the

hope

...

that time

will

not

pass

away,

has

not

passed

away:

Austerlitz's

polemic

against

the

ontology

of a

separablepast, present,

and future

reverberates

hroughout

he

book,

pointing

back

to

Sebald's

ongoing

interest

n

questions

of historicalremembrancen

postwar

Ger-

many

and to his

interest

n the

course of

the

modem novel. Unlike

rep-

resentative

authors

of his

own

generation

who dealt

with

the German

past

since

the 1960s

-

Peter Schneider

(1940-),

Uwe

Timm

(1940-),

Wolfgang

Hilbig

(1941-),

Peter Handke

(1942-),

F.

C. Delius

(1943-),

Botho StrauB

1944-),

Eva Demski

(1944-),

Christoph

Hein

(1944-),

Bernhard

Schlink

(1944-),

Thomas Brasch

(1945-2001),

or

Rainer

Werner

Fassbinder

(1945-1985)

-

Sebald

began

his

literary

engage-

ment

with the marked

past

only

in the

late 1980s.5

His late

develop-

ment

as a

writer,

however,

is not the

only

aspect separating

his

prose

from that

of much

of

his

generation.6

t

is

instead

his

narratives'

ack

of

interest

in

this

generation'sprevailing

topoi

-

the

anguishes

and

fragile sense perceptionof the I, the Germanstudents'revolt of the

late

1960s

and

its

aftermath,

he

crumbling

socialist

utopia,

and the

4.

A

summary

of this view

is

presented

n

Arthur

Williams,

'Das

Korsakowsche

Syndrom':

Remembrance

nd

Responsibility

n

W.

G

Sebald,

German

Culture

and the

Uncomfortable

ast,

ed. HelmutSchmitz

Aldershot:

Ashgate,

2001)

65-86.

5.

By

Sebald's

generation,

mean writers

who

were born

1942/44-1945/47,

shortly

before the end of the

war

or

right

after,

thus

growing up

in the

GDR,

the Federal

Republic,

or

Austria.

On the

significance

of

generational ypology

in the

history

of

post-

war German

iterature ee

SigridWeigel,

'Generation'

s

a

Symbolic

Form:

On

the Gene-

alogical

Discourse

of

Memory

ince

1945,

TheGermanic

Review77.4: 264-67.

6.

It

would be

impossible

o

give

here

a shortaccount

of

the literature

f

Sebald's

generation.

I

would

like, nevertheless,

to

point

to such

representative,

lbeit

different

works such

as

PeterSchneider'sLenz:

Eine

Erzahlung

1973)

and

Vati:

Erzahlung

1987),

Wolfgang

Hilbig's

Ich

(1993),

Peter

Handke's

Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht:

Ein

Marchen

aus

den

neuen

Zeiten

(1994),

and Bernhard

chlink's TheReader

(1995).



AmirEshel

75

analysis

of the

parents'guilt.

Sebald'sprose is distinctivein its voice, in its uniquefocalization

the

sensitivity through

which we hear the narrative.This voice

reflects

a

singular

concentration,

f not a

fixation,

on

what

is

decisively

outside

the

I the

experiences

of

others,

the fear that their

story

might

van-

ish

into

oblivion.7

Following

the credos of

the

West

Germandocumen-

tary

literature

of the

1960s and 1970s

-

especially

the work

of

Alexander

Kluge,

who offered

German iterature

the

only

intellectu-

ally legitimate

way

to confront the German

past 8

his

writing

col-

laged text and visual images and sought to blur the lines between

historiography, autobiography, biography,

and fiction.

As Sebald

emphatically

noted,

My

medium

s

prose,

not the

novel. 9

Addressing

Adorno's

response

to the

challenges

of modernist

prose

and 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 the

messenger.

He wanted to set his

prose

in

opposition

to

what he called

fiction

-

that

is,

belles-lettres n the nineteenth-

century tradition,prose

in

which the

anonymous

narratorknows and

controls

everything.

The

certainties

pertinent

o the aesthetic and

his-

torical

circumstances

of the nineteenth

century,

Sebald

alleged,

have

7.

To

be

sure,

Sebald

is

not

the

only

writerof his

generation

who

has dedicated

much

attention o the

presence

and

consequences

f

the German

past.

One could

point

to

some

of the

prose

by

Peter

Schneider,

o

a

certain,

not-unproblematic

egree

o the

work

of

Bernhard chlink

(1944-),

to the

poetry

of

Anne

Duden

(1942-),

or

to

the

prose

of

Birgit

Pausch

1942-).

Yet

in

noneof these

cases do we

observe

he

same

poetic

intensity

n

regard

to

the

victims'

stories,

he same

concentration n the fate of the

survivors

and the

presence

of thepast.OnSebald's ingularityn thisrespect, eealso Ernestine chlant,TheLanguage

of

Silence:

WestGerman

Literature nd

the

Holocaust

New

York:

Routledge,

1999)

234.

8.

Mit

einem kleinen

Strandspaten

Abschied

von

Deutschland

nehmen,

nter-

view with

Uwe

Pralle,

Siiddeutsche

Zeitung

22

Dec.

2001.

9.

Wildes

Denken,

ebald

n

an interview

with

Sigrid

LOffler,

rofil

19

Apr.

1993.

On

Sebald's

collapse

of

the differencebetween ictionaland

autobiographical

arratives

n

the contextof the

dissolution

f

subjectivity

n

modem

prose

ee Oliver

Sill,

'Aus

dem

Ja*ger

ist

ein

Schmetterlingeworden.'

Textbeziehungen

wischenWerken

on

W.

G.

Sebald,

Franz

Kafka,

und Vladimir

Nabokov, Poetica

29.3-4

(1997):

596-623,

especially

596-97.

10.

TheodorW.

Adomo,

Standort

es

Erzdihlers

m

zeitgen6ssischen

Roman,

Gesa-

mmelte

Schriften

I,

Noten zur

Literatur,

d.

Rolf

Tiedemann

Frankfurt/Main:

uhrkamp

1974)41.On thefar-reachingonsequences f Adomo'sanalysisas voicedinthisessayand

in

Adomo's

laterAesthetic

Theory,

ee

KeithBullivant nd Klaus

Briegleb,

Die

Krise

des

Erziihlens

'1968'

und

danach,

Gegenwartsliteratur

eit

1968,

ed. Klaus

Briegleb

and

Sigrid

Weigel,

vol.

12,

Hanser

Sozialgeschichte

er

deutschen

Literatur

om

16.

Jahrhundert

bis

zur

Gegenwart,

d.

Rold

Grimminger

Munich:

Deutscher

Taschenbuch,

992)

302-39.

I1.

Recovered

Memories,

nterviewwith

Maya

Jaggi,

The

Guardian 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 ... and

write

accordingly. 12

Crucial

to the uncertainties

f

the modem

age

and to the

insufficien-

cies

of

nineteenth-century

ealistic

prose

is the

relation

between fact

and fiction.

Keeping

the

tension between fact and

fiction

unresolved

is

important,

Sebald

insists,

because we

largely

delude ourselves

with

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 n

a manner

hat

conveys

reassurance n our

ability

to

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 oscillation

between

a

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

bout

the tension

between

fact and

fic-

tion.

Realism,

Sebald

notes,

functions

only

if

it

goes

beyond

its own

boundaries.

.

.

. The realistic

text is

occasionally

allowed

to

risk

becoming allegorical. l14

ignificantly,

even

though

somewhat naive

in

his

understanding

f the relation between fictional and

historiographic

narrativesof

history,

Sebald locates

the difference between his

prose

and

what he

regards

as clear-cut

historiography

n what

the historical

monograph

cannot achieve:

a

metaphor

or

allegory

of a collective

his-

torical

process.

.

.

.

Only

in

metaphorizing

can

we

gain

an

empathetic

insight

into

history. 15

The

continuous

tension between

fact and

fiction,

authorial

or auto-

biographicalnarrationand fictional narrative,between the mediation

of

data

and its

metaphorical figuration,

is

constitutive

to all

of

Sebald's

works.

Like

The

Emigrants,

in

which the

lives and

deaths of

several

figures

who are

exiled

from

Nazi

Germany

both evoke

National

Socialism

and

metaphorize

he

experience

of

persecution

and

exile,

Austerlitz addresses

the

fate of

a Jew

who

struggles

to

over-

come

his own

forgetting

and

thus to

metaphorize

he tension

between

remembrance

and oblivion.

At first

sight,

the book

follows

the

story

12.

Interview

with

James

Wood

n Brick58

(Winter1998):

27.

13.

Interview

with James

Wood25-26.

14. Sven

Boedecker,

Menschen auf der

anderen

Seite,

interview

with W.

G.

Sebald,

Rheinische

Post

9

Oct.

1993.

15.

Interviewwith

Sigrid

L6ffler.



Amir

Eshel 77

of

its

sixty-plus-year-old

protagonist.16

Most

of

the novel's

some four

hundred

pages

(in the Germanedition)tell of the fictive Jew,

Jacques

Austerlitz,

born in

1934,

who was sent as a

child

in a

Kindertransport

from

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

Munich

and

was

sent with

her

twin sister

on a

Kindertransport

o

Wales,

and

elements

of

other

biographies.17

Havingarrived n the smalltown of Bala,Wales,Austerlitz s adopted

by

a

Calvinist

priest

and his

wife,

who

want

to save

Austerlitz's

soul,

innocentas

it

was

of

the

Christian aith

138).

The

couple

forces him

to

give up

all his

belongings,

thus

erasing

his entire

previous

existence.

Growing up

as

Dafydd

Elias,

the child

spends

hours

lying

in his

bed,

trying

to

conjure

up

the

faces

of those who

are left

behind,

through

his

own

fault,

as he fears.

It will

be

not until

1949,

in the

privateboarding

school

he

attends,

hat

Austerlitzdiscovershis true

name.

The

discovery

of his name does

not

help,

at

first,

to

reveal

the lost

past.

Austerlitz's own amnesia

-

a

psychological

phenomenon

not

uncommon

among

survivors

of

the Holocaust

-

makes the

past

seem

forever

gone.

He moves on

to

develop

his interests

n a

manner

repres-

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).

Repression

will

lead to neurotic

resurfacing

and

symptomatic

acting

out.

Collapse

follows. After

a 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

stubbornly

repressed

as an adult. Isolated and

alienated,

he wonders

why

it never

occurred

to him to

search

for

his

true

origins

(125).

Before his final

mental

collapse

in

the

summer

of

1992,

he roams the

streets and

the

train

stations

of

London

in

insom-

niac

obsession,

only

to discover

that the

dead are

returning

rom their

16.

The term

story

here

is

used in

its

narratological

ense:

story

s

the

sequence

of

events

involving

actors nd

actants. he term

Kindertransport

efers o the

transfer

of Jewish

children rom

Germany,

Austria,

and

Czechoslovakia

o

GreatBritainand else-

where afterthe so-calledReichskristallnacht. rganizedby Jewishgroups, he first trans-

port

arrivedon

December

2,

1938,

in

the

East

Anglian

port

of

Harwich some

sixty

miles

away

from

Norwich,

where Sebald

taught

at

the

University

of East

Anglia.

The

Kindertransport peration

was

ended at the

beginning

of the

war on

September

1,

1939.

Approximately

en

thousand

hildrencame

to GreatBritain.

17.

See

Ich

tiirchte

as

Melodramatische,

nterview

n Der

Spiegel

3 Dec. 2001 228.



78 W.G. Sebald's

Austerlitz

exile,

filling

the

twilight

aroundhim

(132).

The cyclical temporalityof return18 the return of the dead, the

return

of the

past,

which is a central

trope

in

Sebald's

work,

domi-

nates

the

remaining pages:

Austerlitz's

Ulyssian

journey

back to his

past.

His

Greenwich

dream of

getting

behind time

will

result

in

his

seeking

to

regain

the lost time and

create

a narrativeof his

past.

It

is

through

narrativization

hat Austerlitz

hopes

to find his

place

in

time;

it

is

through

the narrative's

emporal

devices

-

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 his

monologue.

Austerlitz's

discovery

and narrativization

of

his

very

own

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

through

her,

in

periscopic

narration

ia

la

Thomas

Bernhard,19

hat the reader

will now find out what

happened

before

and after

Austerlitz was sent

to Wales. Vera

Rysanovai

will tell him of

the

persecution

of

Prague's

Jews,

of

his mother's

deportation

o Ther-

esienstadt

and

then to the death

camps

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

fortress

city,

visiting

the

ghetto

museum,

it

seems

to

him

now as

if

he has

enteredthe timeless

kingdom

of the

dead,

that

the

time

of the

dead

had never

passed.

He

senses,

even

though

only

for

a

while,

that the

sixty

thousandJews

who

had been

crammed

nto

the

walls

of

the

ghetto

had

never

been

taken

away

after all

.

. .

that

they

were

incessantly going

up

and

down the stairs

.

.

.

filling

the entire

spaceoccupied by the air 200).

Austerlitz's

epiphany,

his

experience

of

simultaneous

temporality

beyond

the

ontology

of

past-present-future,

hough,

remainsshort-lived.

18.

On

the

returning

dead,

see

for

example

the narrator's omment

in Dr.

Henry

Selwyn,

he first

story

of The

Emigrants:

Andso

they

are

ever

returning

o

us,

the dead.

At times

they

come back

from the ice more than seven

decades

laterand

are found

at

the

edge

of the

moraine,

a few

polished

bones

and

a

pair

of hobnailed

boots.

W.

G.

Sebald,

The

Emigrants,

rans. Michael

Hulse

(New

York:

New

Directions,

1996)

23. See also

StephanieHarris, The Returnof the Dead:Memoryand Photographyn Sebald'sDie

Ausgewanderten,

heGerman

Quarterly

4.4:

379-91.

19.

According

to

Sebald,

he borrowedhis

technique

of

narrating

ia several

media

( um

ein,

zwei Ecken

herum )

rom

Thomas

Bernhard.

See Der

Spiegel

interview

233.

On

Sebald's

periscopic

narration,

ee also

Juhl,

Die Wahrheit

tiber

das

Ungliick

640-

59,

especially

651.



AmirEshel 79

In an ironic turn

aimed

at

suspending

all

notions

of arrival

and conclu-

sion, any projectionof metaphysicalmeaningonto the scene, Auster-

litz decides to extend

his recherche

du

temps perdu

to

finding

his

father,

who

managed

to

escape

Prague

prior

to

the

German

occupation.

After

presenting

a

complicated,

seemingly intersecting

web of

facts and

observations

hat

would

finally explain

his

fate,

Austerlitz

suspends

the

closure

of

his

recherche

with the

following

gesture:

I don't

know

...

what all

this means and

so

I

am

going

to

continue

looking

for

my

father

(my

emphasis,

292).

Since

the narrator

does 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

between

his wish to uncoverthe

past

and

his fear

of its

eternally

dwell-

ing

in

the

present

results in an

open-endedexploration

hat,

rather han

reflecting

a

hope

to

clarify

or

to recover

times

past, suggests

the

simul-

taneity

of all times

in the

realm

of

memory

and

the

existential

inability

to

mark he

past

as

gone.

Before

they part

for the

last

time,

Austerlitz

will

hand over

to the

narrator he

keys

of his London house

in

Alderney

Street.

I

could

stay

there,

the narrator

eports

Austerlitz's last

sentences,

and

study

the

black

and white

photographs

which,

one

day,

would be

all

that was left

of his life

(293).

Since the

book

is told from

a

temporal

perspective

that

succeeds

this and all other

events,

the

symbolic

order of this

key

moment

suggests

a

different

reading

of

the

plot altogether.

The black

and white

photographs

cattered

hroughout

he

book

-

indistinguish-

able

from

the narrative tself

-

were

configured

with

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

the

result of Austerlitz's

narration,

ut in

addition,

f

not much more

so,

the

20. In

his interiewwith

Sigrid

L6ffler,

Sebald

stated,

I

work

using

the

system

of

bricolage,

in

Levi-Strauss's ense.

It

is

a

form of

savage

work

[eine

Form von

wildem

Arbeiten],

of

prerational

hought,

in

which

one

nuzzles

in

findings

until

they

somehow

make sense.

In

The

Savage

Mind

(Chicago: Chicago

UP,

1966),

Levi-Strauss

defines

mythical

thought

as a mode

of

bricolage

17).

The

French verb bricoler

denotes an

activity

of

order

creation hat s not based

on

thorough hought,

but rather n

using

materi-

als and tools

that

happen

o be

around.

Whereas

he

engineer

or scientist

surpasses

he

boundaries iven by society,the bricoleur reatesstructures bymeansof events 22). In

the contextof Sebald's

poetics,

it

is

significant

hat

Levi-Strauss's ricoleur

provides

signs

denoting

he

world,

while

the

engineer

supplies

concepts:

One

way

in

which

signs

can be

opposed

to

concepts

is that

whereas

concepts

aim

to be

wholly

transparent

ith

respect

o

reality, igns

allow and even

require

he

interposing

nd

incorporation

f a certain

amount

of

humanculture

nto

reality

20).



80

W.G.

Sebald's

Austerlitz

product

of the narrator's

emplotment

-

of his

bricolage,

in

Claude

Levi-Strauss's ense: the outcome of a prerational rocess duringwhich

the narrator

smuggles

in

photographs

and

whatever

information he

excavates

until he turns

hese materials nto a narrative.

Rereading

the

plot

from

the

narrator's

perspective,

it now

seems

obvious that

the

narrative

is

a

postmodern

crypto-Bildungsroman

stretching

over

some

thirty years.

It

follows

the

story

of a

young

Ger-

man, who,

like

Sebald

himself,

decided to

live

in

Great

Britain,

a

man

who,

like

the narratorof all

Sebald's

prose,

travels

extensively

in

searchof the past, in search of an idiomthatwill addresswhathe con-

tinually

finds

along

his

way:

the stories of

victims,

survivors,

and ruins.

Sebald's

narrator n

Austerlitz ravels not

only

for

study,

but also for

reasons

which were never

entirely

clear

to

him

(3).

Like

Sebald,

he

began

his

studies in

Germany,

where he learnedalmost

nothing

from

his teachers

scholars

who

built their careers

n the

1930s

and

1940s

and

still,

that

is

after

the

war,

nurtureddelusions of

power (32-

34).21

Just

as his

experiences

with

Jewish

6migres

were essential

for

Sebald,

Austerlitz

is the

first teacher o whom the narrator s

able

to

listen since his

days

in

primary

school

(33).

Furthermore,

he narra-

tor's scarce remarks reverberate

in Austerlitz's own words.

While

describing

his visit to

the

fortressBreendonk n

1967,

the

narrator on-

templates,

in a

way

reminiscent

of

Austerlitz's

Greenwich

monologue,

how

everything

s

constantly

lapsing

into oblivion

with

every

extin-

guished

life,

how the world is ...

draining

tself,

in

that the

history

of

countless

places

and

objects

which themselves have

no

power

of

mem-

ory

is

never

heard,

never

describedor

passed

on

(24).

It is not, however,that Austerlitzis subsumed n the narrator r that

the

latter

should

be

equated

with the

writer.22

Rather han

stylizing

the

narrator s

a

German

attentive

to

the

story

of the

Jews,

Austerlitz the-

matizes

modem

uncertainties,

he difficulties

of

telling

the

past

reas-

suringly

in an era

suspicious

of all

grand

narratives.

Much

like

Sebald's

previous

prose,

Austerlitz

reflects a

poetic

stance that

sus-

pends

all

object-subject

polarities.

It is a

prose

that

is

intransitive

n

Roland

Barthes'

classic

sense.

Its

subject

is

conceived

as

immediately

contemporarywith the writing, being effected and affected by it. 23

21.

See,

for

example,

Sebald'sremarks

n

the

interview

with JamesWood

29.

22.

See Sebald's

own

remarks

n

his Der

Spiegel

interview

233.

23.

See Roland

Barthes,

To Write:An IntransitiveVerb?

The

Rustle

of Language

(New

York:

Hill and

Wang,

1986)

18-19.



Amir

Eshel

81

Thematizing

ime's

artificiality,

ts

non-occurrence,

he

simultaneity

of

all its modalities,Sebald'sproseis notinteriorbut anterior o the pro-

cess

of

writing: 24

All

its

subjects

are defined

by

the act

of narrat-

ing,

the act of

writing,

rather

han

by

the

objects

they

address

or

events

they

evoke. Sebald's

subjects ransgress

he border

between textual

and

transtextual

ealities,

between the writer and the

written,

between

the

events

at stake and their

presentation,

between the time of the

events and

the time of the narration.The

result is the

writing

of

life,

of

lives

-

not

only

the

lives

of the narrator

or

the

writer,

but

also the

attentive writing of those lost lives that Sebald so relentlessly

researched.

This

writing

of life

is

present

not

only

in

the semantic and

thematic

figuration

of times

past,

but

also

in Austerlitz's sense of the

nature

of

modem

time.

II

In

the

hope

... that

time will

not

pass

away,

has

not

passed

away:

To be

sure,

Austerlitz's

polemic against

time,

his

hope

o halt time's

maddeninggallop,

is

configured

o

relate to

a

traumatic

hildhood and

an

oblivious,

neurotic life as an adult. Austerlitz

s

haunted,

he narra-

tive

suggests,

by

the

paralyzingpower

of

forgetting

and

by

his fear that

oblivion

might

claim

victory

over

his

pain.

No careful

reading

of

Austerlitz's

polemic against

time could

overlook,

however,

the

scene's

marked

topography

and

thus the work's overall

allegorical

dimension.

Metonymically

read,

Greenwichdenotes

the

rapid

pace

of

technologi-

cal and industrial

progress

in

Europe

as

of the mid-nineteenth

entury

-

a

process

epitomized

by

the

transportation

evolution

and the

spread

of railwaytracksthroughouthe continent.It was the need to regulate

railway transportation

hat

in

the 1840s

brought

about

the standardiza-

tion

of

all local times

in

England.25

n

1884,

Greenwich ime

became

World

Time,

and the town

was chosen as the

world's

Prime Meridian

-

the

topographic

marker of a modem universe based on the

rapid

transportation

f

goods

and the

unprecedented

movementof

individuals.

Reflecting

on the

opening

of

the

Paris-Rouenand the

Paris-Orleans

railway

ines in

1843,

Heinrich

Heine noted:

24. Barthes19.

25. In

November

1840,

the directorof

England's

Great Western

Railway

ordered

that

London

time

be set as the

standard ime for

all

purposes

of

railway

transportation

across

the

country.

This

was

the

beginning

of the end

of

local time. See Derek

Howse,

Greenwich

Time

and the

Discovery

of

the

Longitude

Oxford:

Oxford

UP,

1980)

87.



82 W.G.Sebald's

Austerlitz

Let

us

simplysay

thatour entire

experience

s

being

rippedup

and

hurled nnewtracks;hatnewrelations,leasures,nd orments wait

us,

and

the unknown xerts ts

ghastly

ascination,

rresistible

nd,

at

the

same

ime,

fearful.

.

. Even

he

elementary

oncepts

f time and

space

have become

shaky.

The

railways

have

killed

space,

and

only

timeremains

or us. If

only

we

had

enoughmoney

o

respectfully

ill

time,

oo.26

Writing

from the

perspective

of

what

ReinhartKoselleck has illus-

trated as

the

rupture

between

the

space

of

experience

and

the hori-

zon

of

expectation

that announced

modernity,

Heine's declarationof

the

death of

space

reflected the

emergence

of a

new,

modem

con-

sciousness

of

temporality

and

space.27

Space

will

no

longer

be

a

sig-

nificant obstacle.

No

longer

will

it

propel

the

same

longings,

desires,

and

anxieties.

The death

of time that

Heine

envisioned

was 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 created

eternal,

omnipresent peed. 28Modernity,

as

reflectedin

literary

modernism,would be the first

epoch

to define itself

through

radical concentrationon the

present,

through

the Nietzschean

life

-

the desire

to unload the

weight

of the

preceding

epochs,

to

curb

all

traditions,

query metaphysical

constraints,

and delve into

the

now

and

its

promise

of

unprecedented

movement

through space.29

While

Austerlitz

is

narrated

from the

perspective

of

this

modernist,

absolute

now,

the

protagonist's

polemic against

time is

only

one

thread,

albeit a decisive

one,

in

a

web of

textual

references that

target

26.

Heinrich

Heine,

Lutezia. Zweiter

Teil,

trans. Todd

Samuel

Presner,

Schriften

iiber

Frankreich,

ed. Eberhard

Galley

(Frankfurt/Main:968)

509-10.

1 am indebted

o

Todd Samuel

Presnernot

only

for his

splendid

ranslation

f Heine's

sentences,

but

also

for his

inspiring

dissertation:

Todd

Samuel

Presner,

TrackingModernity,

Nationalizing

Mobility:

German/Jewish

ravelLiterature s a

History

of

Possibility

Ph.D

diss.,

Stan-

ford

University,Department

f

Comparative

Literature,

001).

27.

Reinhart

Koselleck,

Futures

Past,

trans. Keith

Tribe

(Cambridge:

MIT,

1985)

231-66. On

modernity's

distinctive

emporal

onsciousness,

see

Peter

Osborne,

ThePoli-

tics

of

Time.

Modernity

nd

Avant-Garde

London/New

York:Verso

1995)

5-29.

28. F. T.

Marinetti,

Let

's

Murder he Moonshine:

Selected

Writings,

d.

and

trans.

R.

W. Flint

(Los

Angeles:

Sun

and Moon

Classics,

1991)

49.

29.

See

Paul de

Man,

LiteraryHistory

and

LiteraryModernity,

Blindness

and

Insight:

Essays

in

the

Rhetoric

of

Contemporary

riticism,

2nd

ed.,

revised

(Minneapolis:

U

of Minnesota

P,

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

temporality

and

thus

modernity

and

its

perilsas thosearesymbolizedby railway ransportation.

Railway

tracks

had

previously

served

in

a

similar manner

in

Sebald's

work. In Sebald's first

major

prose

volume,

Vertigo

(1990),

the

narrator ravels

through

Germanyby

train. From this

symbolically

laden

perspective,

the

country

seems to

him full of

objects

and devoid

of

humans: it was as

if

mankindhad

already

made

way

for another

species,

or

had fallen under a

kind

of curfew

(254).30

While

his

jour-

ney through

the Rhine

region

is told

in

a manner reminiscent

of

Heine's Deutschland, ein Wintermarchen255), his arrival in the

Heidelberg

train station

is

marked

by angst.

The

crowd strikes him as

a

gathering

of

people

who are

fleeing

from

a

city

doomed

or

already

laid waste

(254).

In his

story

Paul

Bereyter,

n

The

Emigrants,

he

photo

of

railway

tracks at

the onset of the narration s

merely

the first

sign

in

a

crypto-

gram

leading

to the

protagonist's

death

as he

lays

himself down

in

front of a

train. 31

Like the life of

Austerlitz,

Paul

Bereyter's past,

the

story

of the

three-quarterAryan (50),

was

tragically shaped by

National Socialism.

Like

Austerlitz,

Bereyter

had

a

puzzling passion

for

railways,

a

symbolic

fervor that had

led his

Aryan

uncle

to

prophesy

that

the

young

Paul would

end

up

on the

railways

(62).

Railway transportation

ominates he

thoughts

and life of

Max Aurach

(Max

Ferber

n

the

English

translation),

he

protagonist

of another

story

in The

Emigrants.

Sent

by

his

parents

n

May

1939 to a safe haven in

England,

two

and

a

half

years

before

they

were to be

murdered

by

Nazis

near

Riga,

Ferber

sees no

promise

of

freedom and movement

in

the imagea train,butonly infinitethreat: sitting n the train,the coun-

try passing

by

... the

looks of fellow

passengers

all of

it

is torture

to

me

(169).

Austerlitz

further

expends

Sebald's

symbology

of

railway

transporta-

tion.

The first

scene,

also

the first

encounterbetween

the

protagonist

and

the

narrator,

akes

place

in the

Antwerp

railway

station. The

Cen-

tral

Station,

designed by

Louis

Delacenserie and

opened

in

1905 with

the

Belgian

king present,

appears

o Austerlitz's

excavating, Benjamin-

ian gaze as the incarnation f religiosity in the modem age: When we

step

into the

entrance

hall,

Austerlitz

remarks,

we are

seized

by

a

30.

Sebald,

Vertigo,

rans.

Michael

Hulse

(New

York:New

Directions,

1999)

254.

31.

Sebald,

The

Emigrants

27.



84 W.G.Sebald's

Austerlitz

sense of

being beyond

the

profane,

n a

cathedralconsecrated

o inter-

nationaltraffic and trade 10). Inspiredby the Pantheon n Rome, this

modem

construction

celebrates

the

centrality

of

movement

in

the new

epoch's

horizon

of

expectation.

Set

even above the

royal

coat

of

arms,

watching

over the

symbols

of

capital

accumulation,

nd

reigning supreme

n

the divine

arrange-

ment,

is the

governor

of

a

new

omnipotence,

ime,

as

symbolized by

a

clock.

Surveying

from its central

position

all movementsof its subor-

dinates,

it

obliges

all

to

adjust

their

activities to its demands.

Austerlitz

sees in this regimethe most decisive markof the modernera: Not until

the clocks were standardized

round he

middle of the nineteenthcen-

tury,

he

emphasizes,

did time

truly

reign supreme. Only by

follow-

ing

the course that time

prescribes,

he

concludes,

can

we hasten

throughgigantic spaces

separating

s from

each

other

12).

Significantly,

t is the narrator

who,

after

Austerlitz's

peroration

t the

Antwerp

rain

station,

classifies the

protagonist's

bility

to discover

the

marks of

pain

which ... trace

countless

fine

lines

through

history

(14)

as

a

kind of historical

metaphysics 13).

The core

of

this

metaphysics

will

continue to

unfold in scenes

encircling

railway

transportation

nd

train

stations

-

spaces

of blissful

happiness

and

profound

misfor-

tune

(34)

that hold

Austerlitz

in the

grip

of

dangerous

and

entirely

incomprehensible

urrents

of emotion

33-34)

and cause him

thoughts

of the

agony

of

leave-taking

and the fear

of

foreign

places (14).

Train

stations become

for

Austerlitz

the

signifier

of his

personal

fixation on

loss

-

the moment of

leave-taking

rom

his

mother n

Prague's

Wilson

station

in

1939.

They

markthe

post-Baudelaireian

oetic

consciousness

thatall thatis present s alreadypast,already ost.

32

Austerlitz's

fixation

on

and

studies of

railway

stations

are

guided

by

his 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

Wittgenstein

called

family

resemblances, 33

y

which the

members of

the extension

of

a

certain

32.

See

Karl Heinz

Bohrer,

Der

Abschied:

Theorie

der Trauer

Frankfurt/Main:

Suhrkamp,1996)

9-10,

15.

33.

Ludwig Wittgenstein,

Philosophical

Investigations,

rans.

G E. M.

Anscombe,

revised

ranslation,

rdedition

Oxford:

Blackwell,

2001)

27.

WhileSebald

specifically

and

in an

unquestionable

eference

o

Wittgenstein

ses

the term

Familienahnlichkeiten

see

Austerlitz

[German]

48),

the

English

translation,

family

likeness

rather han

family

resemblances

33)

misses the reference

o

Philosophical

nvestigations.



Amir

Eshel

85

concept-word

may

be united

in a

system

of

similarities

33).

The

entry

to this system and to the work's allegoricaldimension is given in the

scenes

surrounding

he

Liverpool

Street Station

n

London.

Covered

by

smoky

darknesscaused

by

diesel oil and locomotive

steam,

the Liver-

pool

Street

Station

lures

and

appalls

both

narrator

nd

protagonist.

In

their

descriptions,

this locus

emerges

as the

crypt

of the modem

age,

the

symbolic

sight

of

rapid

industrial

progress

(36)

and

thus as a kind

of

entrance

o the underworld

127-28).

Like

Dante's

inferno,

this underworld

s

labyrinthine

and

layered.

Whatenables the movement from one section to another s Austerlitz's

excavating

gaze.

While

dwelling

in

the station for

hours,

Austerlitz

penetrates

ts enclosed

past,

a

past

still

engraved

n its

image

even after

the station

had

gone through

renovationat the end

of

the 1980s.

The

grounds

of

the station

served

in the

past

to house

the Orderof St.

Mary

of

Bethlehem

and

the Bedlam

hospital

for

the

insane and

other

desti-

tute

persons 129).

When

during

the

demolition

work of 1984

at

the

site

of the Broad

Street

Station,

the skeletons

of

over

four

hundred

people

are found

underneath

taxi

rank (130),

Austerlitz

s

drawn o

the site to unearth

their

story.

It is the fate

of

the discardeddead

that

will

now

point

to the

network

rganizing

his marked

space.

The modem

consciousness

of

temporality,

he

killing

of

space

and time

as

symbolized

in

railway

transportation,

s

seen

in

relation

to human life

and human remains.

Before work on the constructionof the

two

northeast

erminals

began,

poverty-stricken

uarters

were

forcibly

cleared. Vast

quantities

of

soil mixed with humanbones were

removed

from the

site to enable

the

placementof railwaylines, which on the engineers' plan looked like

muscles and sinews

in an anatomical

atlas. The

burialsite is now noth-

ing

more than a

gray-brown

morass,

a

no-man's

land where

not a

liv-

ing

soul

stirred,

nd

the

symbols

of

intact

nature the

little

river,

the

ditches and

ponds,

the elms and the

mulberry

ree

-

are all

gone

(132).

The shift in

the

symbolic

order,

in

the

nature of the

system

of

Austerlitz's

direct and

implied

historical

metaphysics,

could

hardly

be more

evident. Humans and

human remains are

removed from their

natural lace, and nature itself is crushedby the nonhuman, ndeed

inhuman

body

of

modernity

a

body

whose

threatening

muscle,

as

the

forceful

image

attachedto

the

narrative

uggests

(133),

is

that of

railwaytransportation.

What

is

left of

nature s

only railway

tracks,



86

W.

G.

Sebald'sAusterlitz

spaces

of

transition

on

which

trains

carrying

heir

material

and

human

loads are rushingback and forth. Time, standardizedime, and rail-

way transportation

re

two elements

of the

nexus of

modernity

and

bar-

barism.

They

participate

n

and

perpetuate

he

cycle

of

ruthless,

narrow

rationalism

the

narrative's

ronical

presentation

of

Newton's idea

that

time

is a river

like the

Thames

[100]),

ever-growing

demand

for

more

production,

more

consumption,

nd

more

movement.

The

consequences

of this

cycle

are

unveiled

during

Austerlitz's

visit

to Theresienstadt.

There,

facing

the

materialremainsof

persecution

and

annihilation, he railwaylike system of modernityandthe cosmic sys-

tem that

relates the

star-shaped

ortification

architecture f

the seven-

teenth

century(15),

the

octagonal

observationroom of

Greenwich

(98),

the

star-shaped

lower at the

entranceof

his childhood

house

(151),

and

the

star-shaped

orm of

Theresienstadt

s

fully

revealed:

Theresienstadt

is the

most radical

facet

of the

economic,

political,

and

symbolic

order

of

post-Enlightenmentmodernity.

The

star-shaped

Theresienstadt

is

the

model of

a

world made

by

reason and

regulated

n all

conceivable

respects

(199),

a world that

was enabled

by

standardized

time,

by

the

modem

temporal

consciousnessreflected

n

railway ransportation.

Austerlitz's

polemic

against

time

is thus

crucially

related

to

his

study

of the

architectural

tyle

of the

capitalist

era

(34)

and to his

analysis

of the

compulsive

sense

of

order

and

the

tendency

toward

monumen-

talism evident in

law courts and

penal

institutions,

railway

stations and

stock

exchanges,

opera

houses and

lunatic

asylums

and the

dwellings

built

to

rectangular rid

patterns

or the

labor

force

(33)

-

a sense

that culminated

in Theresienstadt. t

is this

system,

this

model,

at

which the narrativeallegoricallyaims. It is not that for Austerlitz time

has no real

existence,

as

J.

M.

Coetzee

remarks,

but rather that

he

questions

the

law of a certain

perception

of

time,

a

specific

mode

of

temporality.34Railway transportation

nd

railway

stations

are

decisive

elements

of the

oppressive

universeruled

by

time,

he

universe of the

Enlightenment

roject

as

viewed

by

the

Frankfurt

School

and in the

writings

of Michel Foucault.

The

railway

system

and its

time

the

governor

f

the

modem

era

-

signify

both

modernity'spromise

and

its perils, both humanity's seeming freedom from the boundariesof

nature and the

all-encompassing,

unprecedented

lienation

of

humans,

34. J. M.

Coetzee,

Heir

of a

Dark

History,

eview

of

W.

G.

Sebald's

After

Nature,

New

YorkReview

of

Books

49.16

(24

Oct.

2002):

225.



AmirEshel

87

leading

to

theirtransformationnto

human

material

n

the

death

camps.

Although Sebald is careful not to identify either the narratoror the

protagonist

with

himself,

Austerlitz's historical

metaphysics,

his

cul-

ture-critical aments

echoing

the

rhetoric

of

Marx,

Adorno,

and

Fou-

cault,

unquestionably

esult

in a

dark

allegorical philosophy

of

history

in

the vein

of

the Frankfurt

School,

in what

Andreas

Huyssen

has

described

as

Sebald's

conceptual

ramework

writing

in the

frame

of a natural

history

of

destruction,

metaphysics

of nature

-

writ-

ing

that

is indeed too

closely

tied to

metaphysics

and to the

apocalyp-

tic philosophyof historyso prominent n the Germantradition. 35 o

be

sure,

Sebald

himself

voiced more than

once concerns

about

the

lib-

eral dreams

of the nineteenth

century,

n which

humanity

was

to

con-

sist

of

emancipated,

autonomous

individuals. 36

Humanity

however,

Sebald

countered,

is instead

a

mass

that,

once

brought

to a

boil

throughpressure

from

outside,

becomes

fluid,

and then

gaslike [gas-

formig].37

Although

mobility

may

have seemed

from an economical

standpoint

a

positive

development,

in

Germany,

t

was

nevertheless

the

subject

of a

dialectics

hat

led to

catastrophe.38

Sebald's

affinity

with

Benjaminian

kulturkritische

metaphysics,39

his

pessimistic

view of

modernity,

combines

laments over the

decline

of

nature,

of

educational

institutions,

and

of

culture

with discontent

over the fact

that

many

in

his

sleepy

German hometown now

drive

BMWs: He is

convinced

that most

subjects

of

the

modern culture

of

consumption

suffer

under the

conditions

of

the

present

and that the

35. Andreas

Huyssen, Rewritings

nd

New

Beginnings:

W.

G.

Sebaldand

the

Lit-

erature

of

the

Airwar,

PresentPasts

(Stanford:

Stanford

UP,

2003).

On

Sebald's

implied

philosophy

of

history,

see also Michael

Rutschky,

Das

geschenkte Vergessen:

W.

G.

Sebald's Austerlitz und die

Epik

der

schwarzen

Geschichtsphilosophie,

rankfurter

Rundschau

1

Mar.2001.

36. See Wie

kriegen

die Deutschen

das auf

die Reihe?

W.

G. Sebald

in

interview

with

Wochenpost

7

June 1993.

37.

Wie

kriegen

die

Deutschendas auf die Reihe?

38. Wie

kriegen

die

Deutschendas auf

die Reihe?

39.

On

Sebald's

Benjaminian

kulturkritische

etaphysics

ee his

telling

commen-

tary

on Walter

Benjamin'sallegorical

angel

of

history

n

Luftkrieg

ndLiteratur

Munich:

Hanser,

1999)

79-80.

In

a

later nterview

with TheNew

Yorker ebald

noted:

I've

always

thought

it

very regrettable,and,

in

a

sense,

also

foolish,

that the

philosophers

decided

somewhere

n

the

nineteenth

entury

hat

metaphysics

wasn't a

respectablediscipline

and

had

to

be thrown

overboard,

nd reduced

hemselves

o

becoming

ogisticians

and

statisti-

cians

....

So

metaphysics,

think,

shows a

legitimate

concern. Joe

Cuomo,

The Mean-

ing

of

Coincidence An

Interview

with

the WriterW.

G.

Sebald,

The New

Yorker

Sept.

2001.



88

W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz

mountains

of

painkillers

used

in

a

country

like

Germany

deliver

the

proof of collective mentalpains- painswhose causes lie ultimately n

the

beliefs

and

practices

of the

enlightened apitalist

world.40Nature

is the context in

which

humans

originally

belonged,

and out

of

which

they

are

being

driven

at

a

rapidpace.41

In

light

of

the narrator's

ourney through

he

threatened,

partly

mori-

bund nature

of the eastern

coast

of

England

n

The

Rings

of

Saturn,

as

well as the author'sown

scattered

remarks,

Sebald's

literary

archaeolo-

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 historical

phenomena:

how the individual

psyche

is

determined

y

family history,

how

family

history

in

Ger-

many

was determined

by

the conditions

of the

Germanmiddle class

in

the 1920s and

1930s,

how

these conditionswere determined

by

the

his-

tory

of

industrialization

n

Europe

and

in

end

by

the natural

history

of

the human

species.43

Sebald's

tendency

to

draw

the

big

picture,

at least

implicitly,

led

him

to

view the extinction

of

certain

species

or the execution

of three

million cows

because

of

Mad

Cow Disease

in

relation

to other

catas-

trophes

and to view

the German

atastrophe

s a

European

atas-

trophe.

The

questionable

universalization

hrough

Europeanization

of

the

Holocaust

-

I

do not see the

catastrophe

aused

by

Germans,

hor-

rible as

it

was,

as

unique....

It

developed

from

Europeanhistory,

from

the

dream,

at

latest since

Napoleon,

to

turn

this

very

'unorderly'

conti-

nent into

something 'orderly,

arranged,

powerful '44

is not least

reflected

in

Austerlitz's

name.

Like his

pedantic

critique

of the

new

ParisBibliothequeNationale(275-86) and otherelementsof the book,

Sebald's

kulturkritische

otions

amount at

times to

a

questionable

ele-

ology

in

which

modernity

is

all too

clearly

configured

as

necessarily

leading

to Theresienstadt.

The reader

is

expected

to

find inscribed

in

Austerlitz's

name

the

40. Wie

kriegen

die Deutschen

das

auf

die

Reihe?

41. Wie

kriegen

die Deutschen

das auf

die Reihe?

42.

Interviewwith Uwe Pralle.

43.

Interviewwith Uwe

Pralle.

44.

Interviewwith Uwe

Pralle.

On

Sebald's

view of

ethnic

cleansing

in

conjunction

with

the

extinction

of

certain

species

as a

result of human

action,

see

Thomas

Kastura,

Geheimnisvolle

FRhigkeit

ur

Transmigration:

W.

G.

Sebalds

interkulturelleWallfahrten

in

die

Leere,

Arcadia

31.1-2

(1996):

200.



Amir

Eshel 89

modemrn,

apoleonic

historical

paradigm, 45

he

idea

of

a

forcefully

unitedEuropeunderone economic,political,and symbolic hegemony.

It

is

precisely

this

paradigm

f

organizing,aggressive

rationality

as

the

root of

all

evil that

is echoed

in

Austerlitz's

Greenwich

mono-

logue, especially

in

the

ironic

invocation

of Newton's view

of time as

a

masterable,

definable

entity. Modernity's

deification

of

standardized,

controlled time

is

challenged

in

the

monologue by

the voice of

a

fig-

ure whose entire

appearance ignifies

the

longing

for a

different,

unda-

mentally

romanticist

paradigm, y

a

temporal

consciousness

that

can

apparentlystill be found in many partsof the earthgovernedto this

day

less

by

time than

by

the weather

101).

Read

in

this

light,

Auster-

litz's

polemic

is not

only

the

poetic challenge

to

the

temporal

con-

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

ostulation

of

an

ultimate

ogic

of

modernity,

a

logic

that

removes us humans

from

the

natural,

true

and authentic and

is reflected in mechanized

mass

agriculture

s much

as

in

inhuman, ndeed,

fascist

cataclysms.46

III

In

the

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

interweaving

of

time

and

narrative

n

the

larger andscape

of

postwar

and

contemporary

German

literature.Peter

Weiss,

Heiner

Miller,

and Botho

Straul3,

o

name

only

a

few,

emplotted

in

various forms

aspects

of National

Socialism

as

expressionsof modernity'scapitalist,annihilation-destinedhrust.What

distinguishes

the

book,

and

Sebald's

work as a

whole,

however,

is

that

this

allegory,

at

times

all

too

implicated

in

the

Enlightenmentproject

that it

criticizes,

is

relativized

n

a

manner hat

dismisses,

indeed defers

finite

insights

or

conclusions. Even

if

the

narrative'sconcentrationon

45. Sebald

uses the term

historisches

Paradigma

n

his

Der

Spiegel

interview.

46. In

an

unpublished

manuscript

f

the

1949

lecture hat was laterto

be known as

The

QuestionConcerningTechnology,Heidegger amouslystated hat Agricultures now

motorizedfood

industry

in

essence the same

as the

manufacturing

f

corpses

in

gas

chambers

and

extermination

amps,

the

same as

blockading

and

starving

of

nations,

the

same as the

manufacture f

hydrogen

bombs. This

remarkwas

dropped

rom the final

version of

the

manuscript.

See

Richard

Bernstein,

The

New Constellation:The Ethical-

Political Horizons

of

Modernity/Postmodernity

Cambridge:

MIT,

1992)

130.



90

W.

G. Sebald's

Austerlitz

the

catastrophic

eems

occasionally

to be

subsumed

by

all-encompass-

ing conceptualframes,one is still confrontedwith moments in which

this

tendency

is

ironically

inverted: I don't

know

.

.

.

what all this

means...

(my emphasis,

292).

From their

beginnings

in

After

Nature

through

Vertigo,

The

Rings of

Saturn,

and

The

Emigrants,

Sebald's narrativesmaintained he

tension

between masterable

progression

and

the

catastrophic,

he moment

in

which

mere succession

is shattered

by

a

seemingly meaning-generating

event

-

by

the instant

n

which

chronos,

the

successive,

the

repetition

of the same, is succeededby kairos,the event of what FrankKermode

calls

intemporal significance. 47

Sebald's kairoi

however,

remain

remote

from

any

form of

transcendence,

heir

meaning

ndefinitely

deferred.

This

deference

is well

in

line with

Sebald's

overall

poetics

of

suspension

-

the mode

in which

this

emblematic

postmodern

prose

follows

and outdoes what

Fredric

Jameson described

as the

elegiac

mysteries

of duree and

memory

prevalent

n

high

modernism.48To

put

it

differently:

Sebald's

prose

is

significant

not

simply

as a case

study

in

postmodern

historiographic

metafiction,

hat

is,

because

of

the

ways

it thematizes

memory,

he

manner

n

which it is

concerned

with

histori-

cal

figures

and

events

while

blurring

he

distinction

between

fiction and

history.49

Rather,

his

work

is

remarkable

s

poetic

chronoschism,

hat

is,

because

of

the

ways

in

which

the narrative

organizes

and recon-

ceives

temporality,

egardless

of its

references

o

history,

he

manner

n

which

it

manages

to

escape

altogether

he

danger

of leftist

Weltschmerz

and didactic

pedantry

n its

suspension

of

time as

a

category

of

per-

ception

and

progression.50

Sebald's catastrophe is not epiphanic. Informed by Hans Blum-

berg's

notion of

catastrophe

as

a

topos

of the human

imagination,51

47.

See Frank

Kermode,

The Sense

of

an

Ending:

Studies

n the

Theory

of

Fiction

(Oxford:

Oxford

UP,

1967)

46-47.

48. Fredric

Jameson,

Postmodernism;

or;

the

Cultural

Logic

of

Late

Capitalism

(Durham:

Duke

UP,

1991)

16.

49. On

historiographic

metafiction,

ee Linda

Hutcheon,

A

Poetics

of

Postmod-

ernism:

History,Theory,

Fiction

(New

York:

Routledge,

1988),

especially

chs.

6

and

7.

50. On chronoschism

s a

typological

device

in

addressingpostmodern

iterature,

see Ursula

Heise,

Chronoschism:

Time,Narrative,

and Postmodernism

Cambridge:

Cam-

bridge

UP,

1997)

1-74.

51.

See the interview

with

Andrea

Ko6hler,

Katastrophe

mit

Zuschauer,

Neue

Ziurcher

eitung

22 Nov.

1997

Also,

Hans

Blumenberg,

hipweck

with

Spectator:

Para-

digm

of

a

Metaphoror

Existence,

rans.

Steven Rendall

Cambridge:

MIT,

1997).



AmirEshel

91

his

catastrophe

s

no

longer

a

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

attempt

to distill

sense

from them

would result

in

questionable

mythological

narratives.52

The

appearance

of

mythological images

such

as

those of

burning

cities

and Lot's wife

in The

Rings

of

Saturn

is

not the result

of a

mythicizing

interpretative

ndeavor,

but rather

the

attempt

to

present images

of and in relation to

the

catastrophic

images

that

only

mirror

the narrator's

nability

to deliver a

cohesive,

meaning-generatingaccount of the radicalcontingency inherentin

the

catastrophic,

ndeed,

in

history.53

What

we

grapple

with,

Sebald's

narratives

seem to

suggest,

is not

only

the

catastrophic,

the marked

historical

event,

the

kairos,

but also

their

distance,

their

presentness

n

the

form

of inheritedand

produced

images,

their senselessness.

Writ-

ing

is the

measuring

of this

distance,

and

photography

can

only

the-

matize

the absence

of the

real,

of

the

event as such.

If

clocks

tell

time,

Sebald's

narratives

ell what

wanes,

what tran-

spires

in time.54

Just

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

accounting

for,

its own time.

What

marks Sebald's

poetics

of

suspension

is

the

ways

in which

the

effects

of

figuration

hemselves constitute

he work's

ultimate

referent,

hat

is,

its

unique

time

effects,

the

ways

in

which

the

text

forms time

and

conditions

the

readingexperience.55

Let us consider

the

following pas-

sage

that describes

Austerlitz's

ourney

from

Prague through

Pilsen

in

52. Das ist sicher eine Gefahr

in

der

Beschreibung

von

Katastrophen:

ass die

Katastrophe

as

paradigmatisch

innlose

ist und

dass

deshalb

die

Versuchung

esonders

akut

st,

irgendeinen

inn

aus

diesen

kataklysmischen reignissen

u destilieren.Das halte

ich im

Prinzip

f'ir

illegitim,

sinnlos,

vergeblich

den Versuch

also,

das in

mythische

Dimensionen

inzuordnen,

anz gleich

welcher

Art. Interview

with

Andrea

K6hler.

53. Der

Erzaihler

n meinen Texten

entschlaigt

ich

aber

eder Deutung.

Er

macht

sich die

M6glichkeit

der

Erklkrung

er

Katstrophe

icht

zunutze,

er

verweist

darauf,

dass

die Leute

friiher

n

dieser oder

jener

Weise

daruiber

achgedacht

haben. Was

ihn

selber

betrifft,

glaube

ich

sagen

zu

k6nnen,

dass

er keine

Antwort

aufdiese

Formradikaler

Kon-

tingenz

hat. Interviewwith Andrea

K6hler.

54. 1

am

indebted n this

very

short

discussion

of

the

etymology

of

counting

n

rela-

tion

to

both

time

and narrative o

Stuart

Sherman,

Telling

Time:

Clocks, Diaries,

and

English

Diurnal

Form,

1660-1785

(Chicago:

Chicago

UP,

1996)

ix-xi.

55. 1 am

borrowing

he

term timeeffects from

MalcolmBowie's

study

of

Proust,

Proust

among

the

Stars

(New

York:

Columbia

UP,

1998)

35.



92

W.G.Sebald's Austerlitz

western

Bohemiato the West:

All I

remember

f

Pilsen,

wherewe

stopped

or

some

ime,

aidAuster-

litz,

is thatI went out on the

platform

o

photograph

he

capital

of

a

cast-iron olumnwhichhad ouched omechordof

recognition

n

me.

Whatmade

me

uneasy

at the

sight

of

it,

however,

was not the

question

whether he

complex

ormof the

capital,

now

coveredwith

a

puce-

tinged

encrustation,

ad

really mpressed

tself on

my

mind

when

I

passed

hrough

Pilsenwith the children's

ransport

n

the

summer

f

1939,

but he

dea,

ridiculousn

itself,

hat hiscast-iron

olumn,

which

with

ts

scaly

surface eemed lmost

o

approach

he nature f

a

living

being,might emember e andwas, f Imaysoput t,saidAusterlitz,

witness o what couldno

longer

ecollect

myself.

221)

Like this

paragraph,56

much

of

Sebald's work

is marked

by

poetic

verbosity, by

the

elasticity

of

the

syntax,

the avoidance

of

clear

para-

graph

structure,

by

the slowness it

practices

and

imposes

on

the reader.

His

writing

demands

a

wide-ranging

attention to

all

details,

to the

development

of

continuing

associative

chains,

and

obliges

the reader

o

follow the

careful movement of the

labyrinthineplot.

Beyond

the

the-

matic

evocation

of

the traumatic

n this

particular xample,

beyond

the

presence

of the

all-encompassing metaphorics

of remembrance

and

oblivion,

here,

as in the entire

book,

the

syntax

and tense

pattern

con-

stitute

time

-

modes of

temporal

procession

and

temporal experi-

ence.

The tense structure

maintains a constant

oscillation

between

different

temporal

forms,

between

I

remember nd we

stopped,

I

went out

and that

had

touched,

What made

me and

might

remember,

between

the

object's being

a witness and

the I that

could no longer recollect. The result is an unstabletemporality hat

shifts

between different

layers

of the

past

and different

aspects

of the

present.

Diversions

such as

ridiculous

n

itself,

seemed

almost

to,

and

if I

may

so

put

it

and

the muddled

rhythm

created

by

the narra-

tive's

gesture

of

quotation

the

repetitive

said

Austerlitz

further

enhance

he

sense

of a

seemingly

endless

temporal

elasticity.

56. Andreas

Huyssen

notes

on

Austerlitz:

What makes this

deeply

inconsolable

text such

a

pleasure

o read is that

processes

of

memory

and

experience

of

space

and time

are

dissected

with

consummate

poetic

skill and

imagination.

The narrationtself

puts

time

into slow

motion,

and it

stops

time

entirely

n momentsof

panic

and

horror

r,

alternately,

in the much less

frequent

moment

of a

transcendent

ightness

of

being.

Andreas

Huyssen,

The

Grey

Zones of

Remembrance,

orthcoming

n The

New

History

of

German

Litera-

ture,

eds.

David

Wellbery,

t al

(Cambridge:

Harvard

UP).



AmirEshel 93

In The Sense

of

an

Ending,

Frank

Kermode

suggests

that

the clock's

tick-tock might be seen not only as a way to humanizea certain

device,

but also as

the

projection

of

plot

onto what

is,

after

all,

tick-

tick.

In the

projection

of

a

fictional difference

between two

sounds

-

tick

being

a word

for the

beginning,

tock a

word for the

end,

it is

the

tock,

he

end,

that

confers

organization

nd

form on

the

temporal

structure

f

tick-tock,

ndeed of

all

plots.57

If the

projection

of tock

onto

the

clock's

tick-tick is a model

of

a

plot,

as Kermode

suggests,

Sebald's

time effects model

a

modem

postcatastrophic

emporal

con-

sciousness,one thatreflectsthe loss of a sense of successivity,chronol-

ogy,

and

coherence.If Kermode s

right

that

the

purpose

of

plotting

s to

resist the threat

of

empty

time,

to defer the

tendency

of the interval

between

tick and

tock

to

empty

itself, 58

Sebald's

prose

extends the

gap

between

tick

and

tock

ad

infinitum.

Bewildered

by

the

catastrophe

of its

time,

it echoes Walter

Benjamin's

notion that

the

concept

of

progress

mustbe

grounded

n the

idea

of

catastrophe,

ts

slowness

fol-

lowing

Benjamin's

outcry

That

hings

are 'status

quo'

is

catastrophe. 59

In

its

temporal open-endedness,

Sebald's

prose suggests

an

open-

ended

reading

process:

the

words

pile up,

the

sentences

and

paragraphs

seem

infinite. When the

narrationarrives at

its

abrupt

end,

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

geared

at

extending

the

distance

between

tick and

tock,

beginning

and end.

Austerlitz's

claim

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 the

planets,

is

addressed

by

the

poetic

creation of a different time alto-

gether,by

poetic

devices that

question

the

very

existence

of a tock

by

avoiding

it

altogether.

Like

Proust's

Recherche,

Broch's The Death

of Virgil,

or

Claude

Simon's

La route des

Flandres,

Sebald's

Austerlitz is marked

by

the

ways

in

which

chronological,

ndeed,

temporal

procession

is

poetically

suspended.

Reading

the

paragraphquoted

above involves a

constant

returnto other partsof the plot, trying to reconstructwhat happened

57.

Kermode,

The

Sense

of

an

Ending

44-45.

58.

Kermode,

TheSense

of

an

Ending

46.

59.

Walter

Benjamin,

The Arcades

Project,

trans.

Howard

Eiland

and

Kevin

McLaughlin

Cambridge:Belknap,

1999)

473.



94 W.G.Sebald's

Austerlitz

before,

what

is

it

that could

explain

Austerlitz'snotion that

a

cast-iron

column might rememberhim, indeed rememberat all. The placement

of

a visual

image

-

a

photo

of

a

steel and

glass

construction

aken

in

a

train station

-

in

proximity

to

the scene

(220)

in

a

way presumably

related

to

it,

defers

any

immediate

progression

n

the text: The atten-

tive reader

will

stop,

try

to

decode the

image,

to connect

it to

what was

just

told,

to detect its details and relate it

to

other

images

in the

book.

This

photograph,

ike all

others,

as Sebald

noted,

elicits from the

text

and

takes the

spectators

into

an

unreal world unknown to them.60

Sebald'sphotographicmagesare thushardlyan artfulornament o tex-

tual

images,

hardly

a means

to

enhance aesthetic

pleasure,

but rather

genuine

images

in

Walter

Benjamin's

sense,

devices that relate the

reader

o what is and

will

remain

absent

-

the

events

and

the

protago-

nists

of

the

past.

Sebald's

photos

are

indeed

Benjaminian mages,

dia-

lectics

at

a

standstill, or,

in

Benjamin's

words:

what comes

together

in

the

flash with

the

now

to form a

constellation. 61

Sebald's

images

relate the

spectator

o

temporality they

make

one

aware

of

both

the now that is frozen

in

the

image

and the

now of

spec-

tatorship,

of

the

reading process.

His dramaticeffect

originates

from

visual

and

temporalpropositions

hat structure

nd mark ime. Once

the

book

has

caught

the

reader n its

paragraph-long

entences,

in

the

nar-

rative's

tendency

to dissolve

in

detours

and

distractions,

n the

myster-

ies

of the

never to be

fully

depicted

or

understood

past,

the time

of

reading

itself

becomes

an element

of

the narrative's

emporal

fabric.

The

polemic

against

time becomes

poetic

deceleration,

he actual

rever-

sal of time's

gallop,

and

the

production

of

a different

temporality,

one

that suspends,at the metasemantic evel, the ontology of past, present,

and future.

The result

is a text

that in its nonsemantic

element

ques-

tions

the

reign

of

time

as this

was understood

n

the

mid-

19th

century.

In

their

introduction

to the

recently

published

volume

Time

and

the

Literary,

Karen

Newman,

Jay

Clayton,

and

Marianne

Hirsch

note

that

while information

technology

is said to have

annihilated

both

time

and the

literary,

the

literary

is

still

not

gone.

On

the

contrary,

t

structures

our

thinking

about

time.62

They argue

that

the

literary

60.

Aber

das

Geschriebene

st

kein

wahres

Dokument,

Christian

Scholz,

inter-

view

with

W.

G.

Sebald,

Neue Zircher

Zeitung

26 Feb.

2000.

61.

Benjamin,

TheArcades

Project

462.

62. Karen

Newman,

Jay Clayton,

and Marianne

Hirsch,

eds.,

Time

and the

Literary

(New

York:

Routledge,

2002)

1.



AmirEshel

95

joins

immediacy

and

the

instantaneous

with

their

opposite,

duration

andcritique, hus marking ense, period,andmillennium.63While it is

not certain

if

all

literature

achieves

this,

if

all literature

prolongs

the

moment for reflection and enables a

rereading

of the

present,

as

these

authors

uggest,

Sebald's

prose certainly

does.

Lacking

many

of

the certainties

pertinent

o

the aesthetic and histori-

cal

circumstances

of

the

nineteenth

century,

Austerlitz's

polemic

against

time,

like

Sebald's

work as a

whole,

is

melancholic,

but not

in

that

it

passively

bemoans the dead or

lives

from

them,

in

a

kind of

poetic necrophilia,as some criticshave suggested.64The suspensionof

temporal

procession

and

succession,

the concentrationon

catastrophe

and

the

dead,

is

merely

a

poetic

point

of

departure,

he

birthplace

f

writing,

to

quote

H6lne

Cixous's

formulation,

of a

different

experi-

ence

of the world. We

need to lose the

world,

writes

Cixous,65

and

to

discover

that there is

more than one world and that the world isn't

what

we think it

is.

Sebald's

work is more concernedwith

reflecting

on life after

the

catastrophe,

with

living

in the

face of

destruction,

than with

death

itself.

Like authors such as

Ingeborg

Bachmann,

Thomas

Bernhard,

and

Alexander

Kluge,

but also

like

Claude

Simone,

if one

were

to

expand

the view into the

perspective

of

contemporary

European

itera-

ture,

Sebald's

significance

lies

precisely

in

the manner

in

which his

work

continually

faces

the

dead

through

an

opening

up

of the

literary

as

a

space

of

reflecting

the

present,

as

a

space

for

reflection:

Melan-

choly,

Sebald

noted,

is

something

different

from

depression.

While

depression

makes it

impossible

to

conceive

or to

mediate,

melancholy

- in itself not necessarily a pleasantcondition- allows one to be

reflective

...

to

develop

things

one would

never have

anticipated. 66

Sebald's

melancholy

is thus not

sui

generis,

but rather an

integral

part

of

the

labor

of

mourning

[Trauerarbeit],

as

Ernestine Schlant

has

noted.67

Melancholy,

Sebald

emphasized,

has

nothing

to

do with

the

will

to

die

[Todessucht].

It is

rather

a

form of resistance

63.

Newman,

Clayton

and

Hirsch,

Timeand

the

Literary.

64.

See Thomas

Wirtz,

Schwarze

Zuckerwatte:

Anmerkungen

u W.

G. Sebald,

Merkur

.55

(June

2001):

530-34.

65.

HWlkne

ixous,

Three

Steps

on

the Ladder

of

Writing

New

York:Columbia

UP,

1993)

10.

66.

Interview

n

Der

Spiegel.

67.

Schlant,

The

Language

of

Silence 233.



96

W.G.

Sebald's Austerlitz

[Wiederstand].68

The

function

of

melancholy

in

art

is

by

no

means

reactive or reactionary: The depiction of calamity encompasses the

possibility

of

its

overcoming. 69

The irritationcaused

by

the

melan-

cholic tone

of

Sebald's

prose, by

its

insistence

on

keeping

the

tension

between

the historicalevent and

its

poetic figuration

unresolved

and

by

its

unique

temporality,

broadens

our

sense

of the

very

act of

telling.

Sebald's

antiquarian

manner,

his

uncompromised,

onscious

slowness,

halt the

rapid pace

of time and set limits to

modernity's

obliviousness,

even

if

only

in the

realm of the

text,

even if

only

for the

brief moment

of reading.

68. W. G

Sebald,

Die

Beschreibung

des

Unglicks:

Zur Osterreichischen

Literatur

von

Stifter

bis Handke

Salzburg:

Residenz,

1985)

12.

69.

Sebald,

Die

Beschreibung

des

Ungliicks:

Zur OsterreichischenLiteratur

von

Stifter

bis

Handke.

Amir Eshel - Against the Power of Time NGC S

Documents

Transcript of Amir Eshel - Against the Power of Time NGC S