CONQUEST OF DARKNESS:
A STUDY INTO W.G. SEBALD AND THE
MYTHOLOGISING OF HISTORY
Contents
Introduction: Creating Myth
Chapter 1: Mythic Narrative in The Rings of Saturn
Chapter 2: Myth and Personal Identity in Austerlitz
Chapter 3: The Myth of Photographs
Conclusion: The Myth of Sebald
Bibliography
Note On The Title
Introduction: Creating Myth
Before I start it
would be good to repeat something that Eric L. Santer has said about W.G.
Sebald:
‘Surely one of the things that make it so difficult to write about
Sebald, to say anything genuinely new or revelatory about his work, is that he
has done so much himself to frame the discourse of his own reception, to
provide in advance the terms for critical engagement with the work; his fiction
already practices a rather efficient sort of authoexegensis that leaves the
critic feeling a certain irrelevance (the posture of awestruck adoration that
one finds in so much of the critical literature is, I think, one of the guises
such irrelevance assumes).’[1]
With this in mind
I will try not to be so ‘awestruck’ and try not to think of what I say as an
‘irrelevance’ in this critical study on Sebald and his relationship with myth.
It is interesting to apply the terms of
myth and mythmaking to a modern author who gives the impression of fact turned
narrative. This is the case with
W.G.Sebald I will be looking at his penultimate book The Rings of Saturn (and his ultimate book, Austerlitz,
later in this essay) as a source of mythic
narrative. I will look at how
Sebald mythologizes his subjects, including Thomas Browne, Jorge Luis Borges
and the Dowager Empress as just a few, and see how he weaves these different
materials into one complete account of a thirty-mile walk around Suffolk.
Reading his books one is impressed by
the number of different references to a variety of sources and it can be
difficult to track exactly how much influence each of them have on him. Kafka is a major source of inspiration
to Sebald and is sometimes used as a figure in his books. Kafka wrote mythic narratives, fable
type stories about fantastical situations. Sebald is different to the Czech writer because rather than
create an entirely new world in his books he attempts to create a mythologized
world from real events and incidents in history. It is a mythologized world because one is never completely
sure which parts are fiction, which are personally real and what is
historically accurate.
I have a theory as to why Sebald might
want to do this. I believe that
scientists of our modern age are the new mythmakers. They talk of universal things such as the cosmos, life on
earth and everything from the smallest object to the largest. There are a lot of their findings that
are difficult to imagine, to comprehend, particularly if you believe that
humans were never really meant for much more than survival on a daily
basis. There is also a lot of what
they say that is difficult to verify at an individual level due to the lack of
access to the necessary technology to do so, what the scientists say the
average person will have to believe that it is so. I would like to argue, though it is generally based on
facts, that this is a type of myth as experience by the lay reader. In this science dominated world Sebald
is trying to outdo them by providing myths of a unscientific nature, providing
an alternative which takes its cues from history and literature, from the
humanities. So in The Rings of
Saturn he goes on a short journey around near where
he lives and yet makes this walk into something much, much more involving the
herring industry, the production of silk, Thomas Browne and Algernon
Swinburne. This pattern appears in
his other books and is repeated to great effect.
Austerlitz deals with the
holocaust that took place in the Second World War and a man’s discovery of his
past along with the fortifications of certain places and other reflections on
various subjects. These literary,
historical figures that adorn his work with the geological detail all help to
create the particular kind of mythology that is Sebald’s universe. The character of Jacques Austerlitz
discovers a past that disturbs the myth of his identity. Both books use photographs to give a
documentary flavour to his writing.
With these history influenced stories
it will be interesting to see how the future generations will treat Sebald’s
semi-factual fiction. A related question that could be asked is whether it is
possible for Sebald’s fiction to be read as we read the Odyssey and the Iliad today. It’s a tricky one to say as predicting
the future can sometimes be a fool’s game but I would say that it might well be
read like the Greek epic. Only
when culture has no recent links with today’s present. Like some myths his work is a mixture
of the real and the made up. There
are real historical figures that appear in his works that can be verified to be
real and then there are characters, which are fictitious. There is also himself or his alter ego,
which is a blend of the exaggerated and the accurate. His stories do not deal with heroes or gods in the
conventional sense as his heroes would tend to be other writers such as Kafka
or Borges and as for gods there is very little real belief of any kind in his
work. A gentle scepticism pervades
in Sebald about the retelling of history or even the unity of a person of a
sane mind as things are fragmentary, elusive, yet despite this some way of
understanding, of comprehending the world that surrounds is still necessary.
Unlike the updated fairy stories of
Angela Carter Sebald is not playful.
He is earnestly serious in his endeavours but realizes that he might be
wrong, always getting hold of the wrong thread as he puts it. What Sebald shares with Carter is in
the re-telling aspect. Carter
wants to give a modern twist to the old stories, she is, as she says, in the
‘de-mythologizing business’, but Sebald almost want to introduce his modern
view on life with an antiquarian perspective. It could be that he does this because he finds modern life
difficult to deal with and finds comfort and reassurance in the connections he
makes with history with the knowledge that he is a small thing in a large
interweaving fabric and that though he bears his responsibilities he is not
responsible for the whole of life.
I will be looking at these and other ideas in more detail in the
following chapters.
This mythologizing aspect to Sebald
continues in Austerlitz with more of a focus on
how location and buildings influence identity in
the second chapter. Place is used
in The Rings of Saturn but it is in Austerlitz
where it becomes central to the formation and
motivation of Austelitz himself.
In this chapter I will look at how Sebald uses the holocaust as the
basis for his own myths using some ideas that Roland Barthes has articulated in
his book Mythologies.
This is
then developed by looking at how the use of photographs and images in his books
help with the making of his particularly myths in the third chapter. Here is where Sebald differs from other
mythmakers in providing what could be described as evidence for the truth of
his writing while subverting this idea of truth in subtle ways.
I
Mythic Narrative In W.G.Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn
The Rings of
Saturn could be viewed as a kind of homage to
Homer’s Odyssey. Unlike the Greek epic Sebald’s destination is not
necessarily home. We leave him at
the end in Suffolk about to be picked up and taken home but it is as almost as
if he would be quite happy to keep on walking to the ends of the earth. Again
unlike the Odyssey the narrator has not fought
some war or conquest but he has only achieved and completed some academic work,
which has given him, for reasons never quite explained, a strong
emptiness. So with all these
differences how is The Rings of Saturn homage to
The Odyssey? There are no easy cut and dry comparisons to be made but they both
deal with a journey and they both have a kind of nostalgia. The word ‘nostalgia’, sadness about
what we have lost in the past, comes from Greek word for homecoming (nostos)
and pain (algos)[2]. The Rings of Saturn has both. There is the
homecoming from a long walk by the narrator and then there is some unnamed
melancholy, some pain afflicting him and causing him to find refuge in
historical anecdotes and literary figures.
On the contents page there is a
classical style; I call it so because of its presence in many, albeit translated,
classical books, already at work with the brief mapping of each chapter so a
reader may know what to expect or find a particular chapter with relative ease
such as with the epic poetry of Dante.
I would argue that Sebald presents himself in such a manner because he
would like to be a kind of Chatterton figure writing books that seemed much,
much, older than the actual time he was recording. He is placing himself inside a tradition of great literature
and maybe, if all classifications collapse into each other sometime in the
future, he could even be considered as a classical author.
What kind of mythic narrative does
Sebald conjure up? It has nothing
to do with anything obviously supernatural, though sometimes one gets the
feeling that some malignant demon is lurking somewhere in the dark cupboards of
history, instead it is more of a secular account of transforming the distant
past into something more familiar, easier to digest. The very neutral account of Sebald’s retelling, although
cold, leaves the reader with a warm feeling of being included in a personal
story of his own ideas. It is this
re-telling of history, while blending fact and fiction together, makes Sebald
into a kind of poet of the classical era but he does not make these anecdotes
of Swinburne and Browne to make them as great as heroes but as curiosities,
things that he is interested in.
Rather than myth it may be better to
call Sebald a great cataloguer listing many various things into an eclectic
museum of a book. There are many
objects and items in his work and perhaps the point of writing so many of these
down is so that future historians can look to our time in a way that may be
understood in its own context.
Part of Sebald being a historian means that by his books he can be etched
into history himself and by fictionalizing himself become a sort of myth. There are however many interviews
conducted with Sebald where he explains various aspects of his work that reduce
the mythology of the man because many myths work best on the slenderest of
truths.
‘Is this terrible story’ Sebald says
about the biblical story of the Gardarene swine ‘the report of a credible
witness?’[3] The same could be said about him but
why should we ever doubt what he says.
We do not doubt him because of his entirely credible style that is
deeply learned and has a candidness that is regarded as honesty. Why lie about whether you saw a
creaturely couple on the beach?
Sebald makes his universe as coincidental and unusual as it is very
plausible, formed almost in one long polished sentence that needs not to be
changed and expresses exactly what needs to be said in an austere tone. This is the similar tone taken with the
myths that absolutely need the reader’s belief for the length of the
story. Whether the reader actually
believes in the story is another matter but what is important is that the
reader suspends any belief they have outside of the story and to put it to one
side.
Perhaps there is a difference in mythic
narrative and a mythology. My
definition of a mythic narrative is a fictional journey partly based on real
events that involves real people amongst fabrications of characters who may or
may not interact with the real dealing with spiritual issues. This definition would encompass
historical fiction but we could not so easily class Sebald’s work as such as
his work is set in the present though involves the past. How is it even possible to write a
mythology with so few unities holding it all together? We should perhaps consider the
influence that Thomas Browne has had on Sebald as he writes essays on a number
of subjects all within one singular article and it is clear that Sebald adapts
Browne’s writing style for his own purposes. Though to single out one author that has influence Sebald
would be reductive and deceptive since the sheer range of his reference makes
it difficult to pin down any one influence over his style being the complex
writer that he is. There is the
walk that Sebald takes which lasts two or three days but that is really the
only consistent story in the book as he takes his other stories from other
cultures, other time periods, all these disparate elements that he cherry picks
to form a narrative. The stories
he takes, from memory, research, newspapers, act like ghosts haunting his
world, one critic has even called him a ‘ghost hunter’[4],
which he happily accepts.
His world seems to border that of the
dead and in his work the dead and the living easily mix with each other
sometimes blurring the difference between the two states. Though he may not create an entirely
new mythology out of the many events of history his writing is, I would argue,
a type of mythic narrative, which I will explain more of later in this essay.
Margaret Bruzelius as written that The
Rings of Saturn has more to do with the adventure
romance than with myth in her study of Sebald and Conrad: ‘He [Sebald] and
Conrad are not melancholy despite the fact that they are romances, they are
melancholy because they are romances, and they share the dismaying suspicion
that the romance, rather than leading them toward understanding, leads them
inevitably, fatally, away from any real comprehension of the world’[5]
This is an interesting point that the character of Sebald’s books comes from
the form of the genre he has chosen to write in. I do agree with Bruzelius’ statement. You can argue that perhaps the books
take a melancholic tone because of the fact that he tries hard to take comfort
in a type of secular mythology and it never is fully realized ending in an
unresolved dissatisfaction.
Placing Sebald in the quest romance genre shows that the difficulties in
classification are deeply interwoven in his text making our world a stranger
place for it.
In mythic narratives there are no
photographs because a lot of them were developed before the invention of the
camera. The inclusion of
photographs lends the stories a type of credibility that are not normally
associated with myths. But the
photographs give us no conclusive proof or evidence that they are what Sebald
explains them to be. Roland
Barthes in the essay ‘Photography and Electoral Appeal’ says that ‘The
conventions of photography…are themselves replete with signs’[6]. As the old saying goes ‘a picture is
worth a thousand words’ and the photographs of Sebald do tell us a lot and some
contain significant information.
The photographs with factual information we can already visualize
without the aid of a photograph. Others
are there to give the reader an almost reassuring gesture that the book’s
narrative is worth believing in, giving it as he calls it an ‘air of
legitimacy’[7]. He also says that the ‘other
function…is possibly that of arresting time’ of freezing it in a particular
place. As myths move in time it is
nice to contrast this movement with a still image. These still images also have a quality of a lost era, even
the contemporary ones such as the picture of Sebald standing by a tree, that I
have reproduced in this essay, having a sense of recapturing what once existed
but now, it feels, no longer does.
John Berger writes of the advantages of black and white photos is ‘that
they remind you of this search for what can’t be seen, for what’s missing’[8]
Sebald’s books are like guides to the mysteries of being in the world where the
photographs act as hints, but never conclusive, tantalizing the reader. In myth the reader is tantalized with
the possibilities of bizarre creatures and god-like figures, in Sebald it is
the real world, which is the myth he dangles in front of us. As Barthes puts it there is the
signifier, the signified and the sign and in myth we get all three that distort
the histories of what is being shown for the myth that Sebald provides.
What effect do these images have on the
mythic nature of his work? One
would think that it should dispel any question of whether it is real or
not. The picture of Sebald
standing by a tree is probably, we can say with a certain amount of certainty,
not a fake we can still dispute its validity, particularly in these days of
photoshopping and the common usage of image manipulation. The photographs turn the text into
something more like a historical document and yet to call his books as such
would not be quite right.
He speaks, at the beginning of chapter
six, of a train that ‘had originally been built for the Emperor of China’[9]
though apparently this had never been the case. One of the reasons Sebald started writing these types of
books is because he was fed up with the usual academic articles he was
producing. A book of fiction can
use real facts and is at liberty to make up facts for its benefit as well. The photographs add an extra dimension
to the writings but do not move it any more into the factual than any other
part of his work. I will be
looking more at his photographs in the third chapter of this essay.
One might like to consider if Sebald’s
journey around Suffolk can be reasonably compared to James Joyce’s Ulysses? The comparison to
Joyce seems like a good one due to his obvious mythic influences. Joyce used a definite framework from an
established mythology for his characters journey around Dublin but Sebald uses
fragments of stories from different time periods to build up a single polished
edifice. My argument is that by
piecing together different subjects under one heading he is creating a mythic
narrative for the modern world.
There is absolutely nothing special about Suffolk but Sebald makes it
special by making it a character in his highly praised book. Now Suffolk is a kind of tourist
destination for fans of the books just as Dublin is for Joyce fans and
scholars. Sebald uses the raw
materials, for his mythic journey, of history and literature to make his walk
much more than simply a walk.
In the Cambridge Introduction To
Mythology it has this to say about spiritual
quests: ‘the journey of the hero is not, in [Joseph] Campbell’s view, a mere
story. Nor is it merely a
psychological phenomenon. Rather
it represents a spiritual reality: the hero is grappling with the place of all
humans in the universe.’[10] This, I feel, can be directly applied
to The Rings of Saturn as it is definitely a
book which is concerned with the place of human beings, bigger than herring,
smaller than planets. Through
knowledge of history and literature Sebald’s narrators are placed within this
wider context, geographically and chronologically. Sebald says of what we know, ‘it is frightening to realize
how little we know about our species, our purpose and our end’[11]
II
Myth and personal identity in Austerlitz
‘Everything, then,
can be a myth? Yes, I believe
this, for the universe is infinitely fertile in suggestions’[12]
Sebald seems to be testing out this idea from Roland Barthes by containing such
a wide variety of subjects, particularly in The Rings of Saturn. History is rich with
event and can provide a number of books dealing with them. Sebald tries to place his narrators
within the histories involved making them a part of the ongoing stories that
occur on the earth. Barthes also states in ‘Myth Today’ that ‘The overarching
theme meanwhile declares that as a mortal he must somehow unite the immense,
immensely varied world with his inborn identity’[13]
and this definition could be used to describe W.G.Sebald’s last book Austerlitz, where its main character, Jacques Austerlitz, does do as much as
‘declare he is mortal’ due to his limitations. Sebald, I would argue, does try to ‘unite the immense,
immensely varied world’ as he tries to weave together recent history, memoir
and, sometimes, literary biography, into one seamless book.
In Austerlitz the places within it are written almost like characters as they have
their own particular qualities and relationships with Austerlitz. This is part of the psychogeoraphy
genre that Sebald is writing in, which deals with person interacting with place.
It is in the
waiting room of Liverpool Street station that Jacques Austerlitz suddenly
remembers his past childhood thinking that he must have been here before. This place is forever linked with his
memories and gives us a clue about the enigmatic Austerlitz. As James Woods says in his introduction
to Austerlitz, we know about him but his self is
never apparent or obvious in his monologues, we know little of his essence of
what makes Austerlitz, Austerlitz.
When he goes to Prague his memories flood back to him as he visits his
old nanny. ‘No sooner had I
arrived in Prague that I found myself back among the scenes of my early
childhood, ever trace of which had been expunged from my memory for as long as
I could recollect’[14]. He even remembers the language he spoke
in, as a child so transformative is the visit for him. For Austerlitz Prague represents a lost
history where he can find himself.
The Liverpool Street station represents a moment in his personal history
where he can re-discover who he is.
In a sense the person of Austerlitz is
a myth. It is a historical
battleground meaning that he is linked with history. The myth comes from the reader not really knowing who
Austerlitz is. We know of his
memories and of his career, even of his breakdown, but we never know him. He is ineffable, a mystery, a man who
is deeply interested in history.
He is unlike the functional buildings he studies as his form gives
little indication of him. If he is
like a building he is like a large empty square room that could be used for
anything. As Austerlitz says about
a dome of openwork masonry he sees: ‘I could not stop wondering whether it was
a ruin or a building in the process of construction that I had entered. Both ideas were right at the time.’[15]
One or two people nearly always mediate
the stories in Austerlitz. The
unnamed narrator, who bears a resemblance to Sebald himself, is listening to
Austerlitz’s first hand account of how he rediscovered his childhood
memory. Then later in the account
he talks to his old nanny and he, in turn, listens to her first hand account,
which is not exactly a first hand account for the narrator as it is told by
Austerlitz but it almost works that way.
Austerlitz does the boldest of things and attempts to mythologize the Jewish
persecution at the hand of the Germans during the Second World War. To clarify when I say mythologize I do
not mean in the sense to deny or lie, I mean mythologize as placing this real
event in a fictional space with fictional characters who are affected by it
thereby turning it into myth. Its
inspiration is understandable since nothing in recent history truly captures
the vast horror of the Nazi regime of those times and it lends itself to both dramatic
scenes and profound reflections of the human condition. Carole Angier says about writing a
novel about the Holocaust with photographs and documents is ‘a sophisticated
undertaking, and perhaps a dangerous one, given its subject’[16]. So why would I say it is bold for
Sebald to do so also? Because I
believe Sebald is trying to do something different from the usual tales of
jackboots and frogmarching and also you have to see it in the context of
Sebald’s writing as a whole.
The holocaust has always been a subject
for him but never has he brought it as closely to the foreground as he does
now. A Kindertransport
dramatically saved Austerlitz’s life but he has never realized this until much
later in his life. This serves as
a symbol of what Sebald himself has gone through. According to him recent German history was never taught in
the schools he went to and nobody talked about the shame and destruction caused
by allied troops, he only discovered this later in his adult life in other
countries and was shocked by what he had learnt. His writing has almost, although it is nearly deceptive to
say this, a campaign against the German silence and Austerlitz presents this most clearly of all. How fitting for him that it was his final book that the
culmination of his ideas comes to something of fruition.
So how does Sebald write about the
holocaust differently from other writers?
Predominately the horror of the Third Reich is heard of second or third
hand or form memories once forgotten so it is muted and not shocking in the
same way. He also has a wider
compass for scope in that his books are not only about the holocaust but they
can involve other writers who inspired him and in Austerlitz there is quite a lot about architecture.
Myth infuses in places so that they
become soaked in an aura of atmosphere and potential. The hospital where Bedlam was located is now a station but
Austerlitz says: ‘I often wondered whether the pain and suffering accumulated
on this site over the centuries had ever really ebbed away’. This links in with the beginning of The
Rings of Saturn where the narrator is in hospital
looking out of a window. For
Austerlitz the history of a certain institution will forever remain with it no
matter what form it currently takes.
Often in this book Austerlitz’s sensitivity to real life events comes
through giving the impression that he has to be in the physical place before
the he can have any feelings or memories towards life. Like in the Rings of Saturn knowledge and historical story are a form of comfort where the main
narrator seems unwilling to engage with present day life as it is, until, in
the case of Austerlitz, memory floods back from
being in a certain place. In
Sebald geographic place is vital for the construction of myth. Buildings accumulate stories, which then
become a type of mythology and for Austerlitz, who can see the weakness and
insecurity of character in a fortification, this is important for his
construction of his own character.
For Austerlitz Germany is the
‘undiscovered country’ where he says: ‘I had always avoided learning anything
at all about German topography, German history or modern German life…Germany
was probably more unfamiliar to me than any other country in the world’ but it
is not death he experiences. One
could argue that he has already died and is living an afterlife where he is
ignorant of what came before; a type of reincarnation, if that is possible in
Sebald’s world. He experiences a
rejuvenation of sorts. History for
Austerlitz has been a myth that has never been personal but now what he is
dealing with is something very intimate indeed about his own life and, as
Sebald writes it, it is a very peculiar feeling for him and for the reader, as
well as the narrator listening, who goes through the journey with him.
Even language, for Austerlitz, is a
type of place:
‘If language may be regarded as an old city full of streets and
squares, nooks and crannies, with some quarters dating from far back in time
while others have been torn down, cleaned up and rebuilt, and with suburbs reaching
further and further into the surrounding country, then I was like a man who has
been abroad a long time and cannot find his way through this urban sprawl any
more, no longer knows what a bus stop is for, or what a back yard is, or a
street junction, an avenue or a bridge.’[17]
And language is important in this
book. There is an episode where
Austerlitz is speaking to his old nanny and he starts speaking in Czech, a
language he hasn’t spoken for years and unlike the above quote he knows exactly
where he is. He also tries to
translate German books for his own benefit. Language informs our identity and so Austerlitz recovery of
his language is a recovery of his former self, which he had forgotten about.
He makes a point of deliberately not
learning anything German for most of his adult life making a conscious effort
to repress a lot of what he knew of his young life.
The man who has
not been home for a long time may be considered to be Odysseus who we can
imagine must have forgotten parts of his hometown while new buildings were
being constructed.
James Woods points out that even
Austerlitz’s name is a type of myth for he says, ‘Imagine a novel in which
almost every page featured the phrase “Waterloo said” or “Agincourt said.”’[18]
He goes on to say that when Austerlitz first learns about his real name and
asks his teacher what does it mean he replies ‘a site of a famous battle’
rather than anything about his Jewish background. Woods says that Austerlitz has to deal with his name being
both a private and a public word and has to try to figure out what his name
really means for himself. The
historical overshadows the personal and Austerlitz will become part of the
rubble of history. He also says
that Austerlitz is not too far off from that name that will forever be in the
history books, Auschwitz.
A person has to be separate from an
event and though however unfortunate it is for a name to be linked with warfare
and battles and killing it is something that must be bared. The implications of history and the
mythic legacy it leaves imprints on generations to come and it is here that
Sebald gives a vivid portrait of.
III
The Myth of Photographs
As described
earlier in the first chapter the photographs of Sebald give his work an ‘air of
legitimacy’ and it is something we will be exploring more in this chapter,
looking at how photographs add to his mythologies.
As said earlier photographs freeze
moments in time. Sebald is
interested in this frozen moment as an example of being between the living and
the dead, a state, which he investigates in his books. In Austerlitz Austerlitz says of a book by Balzac that it ‘reinforced the
suspicion I had always entertained that the border between life and death is
less impermeable than we commonly think’.
Death in life and life in death, one wonders what Austerlitz means but
in the photographs we don’t have to wonder just see that it captures that state
where we can perceive a person who may be dead despite being alive in it. It would be reasonable to argue that
Sebald would like to think that being dead is not at all a singular state but
only another type of living because he is afraid of death, however I would
argue that it is probably more reasonable to say that he is more curious than
afraid and if he is afraid than it does not translate into his books. There is a certain amount of horror
involving death but that might be the fear of dying rather than the fear of
death.
The photographs can occasionally be
used to shock or get the reader off guard as is with the case of the photograph
of the dead bodies in the woods on page 60-61 of The Rings of Saturn. It is unexpected and
how it relates to the other photographs is uncertain but somehow Sebald has
made a connection through his web weaving ways.
The photographs are usually there to
supplement the writing, to give the reader evidence of what the narrator is
talking about, to coerce a feeling of factual information being imparted. But sometimes the photographs take up
the whole double page and replace the words entirely. It is a technique borrowed from history books as they
normally have photographs to give the reader a literal picture of what they are
describing.
However Sebald’s relationship with this
‘factual’ evidence is not a simple one for there are times when the pictures
misguide the reader and do not give the pure truth. Take the iconic photo of what we are told to be Austerlitz,
which I have reproduced earlier in this essay. It is a picture of a young boy in a clown’s outfit looking at
the camera with a hint of skepticism and determination. James Woods writes that although we are
told that this is a picture of the young Austerlitz we know that this cannot be
the case as Austerlitz is a fictional creation and not a real historical figure
despite being based on ‘a real architectural historian, a friend whose boyhood
photograph is on the cover’[19]. Who the boy is remains a mystery and is
only obscured by what we are told, which is not true. This, I would argue, is an example of mythologizing a
character with the aid of photographs.
It is all about context and the context we see his photographs in is one
of part real life part made up novel and we may naturally believe, because of
the photos, that what Sebald writes is mostly true but on further inspection we
find that this truth is a tricky composition of slight smudged truths that is
difficult to unpick for the average reader.
According to Barthes the photographs
have to be read like text as they contain signs that convey meaning. He is talking about photographs that
appear in newspapers but I think that Sebald’s photos are similar to those
picked to be in a newspaper as it has been carefully chosen to perform a
message creating function. The
graphic is in collusion with the text and when used well they both support each
other.
Sebald got a lot of his photographs
from postcards and it may well be worth mentioning that the postcard is a very
apt choice of visual source considering his emphasis and importance of travel
in his books.
Only once does Sebald actually place
himself visually in his own book, which was in The Rings of Saturn with him standing by a large tree, that I have reproduced earlier in
the essay. Unlike Austerlitz we
know that Sebald is a real person, his name is on the cover of the book he
wrote, but it raises questions about his mythologizing process and himself as a
mythic person. When he uses
himself as a narrator in his story it is never entirely ‘himself’ but a version
of himself. Sebald was a elusive
man who sometimes gave contradictory advice to his creative writing students,
such as ‘when dealing with horrific events stick absolutely to the facts’[20],
and so it is to be expected that ‘him’ in his books can never be fully trusted
to be a accurate portrait of himself.
He has never been treated in psychiatric hospital for a mental illness
despite what the beginning of The Rings of Saturn says and that is one example that I do know about him, but having
never spent any time with Sebald it is difficult for me, and for the reader in
general, to decide what is real about him and what is exaggerated or straight
up false. This is a good example
of how he turns concrete evidence into something less tangible, more mythic. As there is a impermanence between life
and death for Sebald there also seems to be an impermanence between fact and
myth where one can cross over into the over quite easily. But as Ruth Franklin says ‘This is not
an “unreliable narrator,” it is an unreliable narrative.’[21]
A question we might like to consider is
whether the photos would work on their own without the aid of a text. Instinctively, if you were trying to
convey a narrative, then I would say that they would not as it is the text that
connects and explains the photographs.
A more interesting question might be if the text really needs the photos
at all. To this I would say that
the text stands up perfectly well on its own and the photos are unnecessary to
move the story along. However the
photographs give his books a different feel from other novels. They have an extra dimension to them, a
visual aspect that perhaps makes the book more interesting to engage with. It is multimedia or dual media and relies
on different types of reading to get the most out of it. The photos are there to help in the
creation of this semi-fictitious world and helps in turning the real into the
mythic.
The photograph also tries to counteract
the destruction of memory, something Sebald was aware of particularly in German
culture where the recent past was not to be discussed or written about. They bridge a gap between knowing and
forgetting, while, in his words, ‘slowing down the speed of reading,’[22]
and it maybe that it is his hope that the photos he puts alongside the text
will help him to remember the state he was in when he was writing and the
various memories that went along with it.
Memory can be a misleading and unreliable in its function but with the
aid of photographs, images that cannot change, it helps to stem the details
that fade from the mind over time.
Photographs can also shape memory as well once the event is forgotten
new, possible false, narratives can emerge. This is sometimes the case with Sebald. The photos can be dubious and the
narrative that they are pared with might not be the correct one.
Photographs can be a source of
inspiration, sometimes necessarily so.
When Sebald was young he saw photos of his father sitting around in a
campsite during the Polish campaign with the Nazis and he thought that what his
father got up too was like the boy scouts. He looks at them now and thinks ‘Good Lord, what is all this?’[23] For photos to make sense there has to
be a contextual story behind them but if you are never told about a certain
picture’s context than what is one to do but to make up a story for it or at
least have some ideas as to where it had come from. This is how, according to Barthes, photographs can become
myths. In this way Nazis can become
boy scouts. Being indebted to the
nineteenth-centaury writers, a time when the photograph was being born, it is
interesting to see how Sebald uses his photographs while having no model or
tradition to base it on. His books
are sometimes reminiscent of scientific textbooks, particularly in biology,
that are there to impart a particular type of information to the reader.
For Sebald the photograph was a type of
riddle that the text would allude but not explain. It is up to the reader to be able to track down his sources
and find out exactly what a photo represents and what it signifies. Solving this riddle would not be
necessary for the enjoyment of the book but it gives it extra depth that allows
dedicated readers and scholars to follow up on what is already there. Though it is important to understand
that not all of the photographs are the work of Sebald, some have been found
from postcards and other sources so despite the fact that they are not in
themselves original they have been used in an original way. It is in this way that he produces myth
so effectively leaving the reader unsure of what is his and what is not,
blurring the line between his and other people’s art.
Like I said at the beginning science
can be it own form of mythology and it is here that Sebald introduces an
alternative, or a synthesis, to this science. It is an educational experience reading Sebald as he
introduces one to people and events that one may not have been aware of. It is original work. A picture can give rise to a story
making a brand new context for it.
Nobody owns the context of a photo and any one singular photo can have a
thousand stories attached to it, that is partly how newspapers operate.
Lise Patt says that ‘Through image and
word he “develops” images that are between seeing
and saying, pictures that are bound to the ontological possibility that once
nourished the photograph’s (and photography’s) creation.’[24]
He develops a connection between the said and the unsaid like he develops a
connection between the living and the dead. Roland Barthes called photographs the ‘agents of
death’ and said that ‘Whether or not the subject is already dead, every
photograph is this catastrophe’[25]
The words support the images and in turn the images give credibility to the
words and between them they are able to create a plausible myth whose truth
might be difficult to ascertain.
In his novels Sebald plays with this with
the ‘catastrophe’ in mind as the destruction of knowledge, of memory and of
natural resources are real and present.
Conclusion:
The Myth of Sebald
We have seen that
through photographs and place Sebald creates his a new mythological world from
reality and imagination. The
psychogeographic techniques he applies to prose writing help him to create
these myths and provide links to unlikely subjects. It is finally in his library where we shall end, as it is
here he is most indebted. He is
referred to by Marcel Atze as an ‘unermüdlicher Bücherdurchwanderer’
(literately a ‘tireless wanderer through (or among) books.)[26] It should be added that he was a
wanderer of the world as well as books and it is the intersection of the real
world and of the book world where he is placed. It could be argued that he had more of a foot in the world
of the book consider that it is by books he can construct and understand the
world around him, often becoming disturbed by what he finds in the real world
away from the comforts of his scholarly pursuits. By traveling he makes use of his knowledge that can help
place him in a framework of which he is a part of.
Traveling for Sebald is not done so
much as to find new things out about the world but to reaffirm what he already
knows. There are no dissenting
voices to his authority in his books.
The listener of Austerlitz accepts all
that Austerlitz has to say at face value without inquiring further for proof. His work has to be accepted and
believed whole in its entirety for the book to be a transforming
experience. Literary criticism may
take the charm away from reading a book but with Sebald there is so much to
learn from him and his wise words.
Reading Sebald leads on to other books,
short stories by post-modern masters, nineteenth centenary German novels,
modern history and theorists. Not
only does his work lead to books but to pictures and paintings, which we can
see in galleries and on postcards.
His is a whole, mostly real, world to explore and discover. In studying Sebald one can learn the
relationship between the truth and the story, the place and the person, the
memoir and the travel diary.
Myth is not something, I believe, that
can be outgrown easily. It may
become more sophisticated and modernized but never done away with. The difference today is that we can
keep track of the myths that do come about and keep a better record of what has
been written thanks to organized libraries and better technology. But there is no technology that will
explain the essence of Sebald to us, the work of trying to discover who he is,
and who we are, is an ongoing process that is documented and passed down to future
generations. The myth of Sebald
had already begun when he was alive and now that he has died his myth will only
grow with new books coming out on him all the time.
Myth is a potent way of creating
identity and place without ignoring the psychology and the geography of both
and through The Rings of Saturn and Austerlitz
Sebald shows how this can be done using
fiction. The best of fiction is
being a witness to life and here he witnesses scholarly life in the aftermath
of war and persecution. He is not
only a witness to present life but to history and how history is constructed by
our present status. From this come
myth and a mythological construction of the world.
‘What good is literature?’ Sebald once
asked and answered with ‘“There are many forms of writing; only in literature,
however, can there be an attempt at restitution over and above the mere recital
of facts, and over and above scholarship” Ruth Franklin notes ‘By preserving
the “memory of those to whom the greatest injustice was done,” he said, the
writer can restore to them something of what was stolen.’[27] We can imagine Sebald having, like the
animals of the Nocturama in Austerlitz, large
eyes piercing into the darkness of the world remembering injustices for the
benefit of others.
To return to a question I posed in the
Introduction will Sebald’s books be read as we read Homer’s works today? Knowing that most works of literature
by the ancient Greeks and Romans have been destroyed I would say that
destruction is a likely outcome and considering how destruction of knowledge and
nature is prevalent in Sebald’s books I would think that he would probably
agree.
Bibliography
Baer,
Elizabeth, ‘W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz: Adaptation
as Restitution’ in Reworking The German Past ed.
by Susan G. Figge and Jenifer K. Ward (Suffolk: Camden House, 2010)
Barthes, Roland, Camera
Lucida, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1981)
Barthes, Roland,
Mythologies, (London:Paladin, 1973)
Berger, John,
preface to Timothy O’Grady and Steve Pyke, I Could Read the Sky (London: Harvil, 1997) unpaginated.
Borges, Jorge
Luis, Labyrinths, (USA: Penguin Books) I am indebted to his short story ‘Töln,
Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’ which provided me with the basic concept for this
dissertation.
Bruzelius,
Margaret, ‘Adventure, Imprisonment, and Melancholy’ in The Undiscover’d
Country ed. by Markus Zisselsberger (Suffolk: Camden House, 2010)
Catling, Jo, et
al, Saturn’s Moons ed. by Jo Catling and Richard
Hibbitt( United Kingdom: Legenda, 2011)
Finley, Jr., John
H., Homer’s Odyssey(Harvard: Cambridge, 1978)
Franklin, Ruth, A
Thousand Darknesses, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011)
Sebald, W.G., Austerlitz, (London: Penguin, 2001)
Sebald, W.G.,
The Rings of Saturn, (London: Harvill Press,1999)
Santer, Eric L.,
On Creaturely Life, (Chicargo:University of
Chicargo Press, 2006)
Thury, Eva
M. et al, Introduction To Mythology (New
York: Oxford University Press,
2009)
Patt,
Lise,‘Introduction Searching For Sebald: What I Know For Sure’from Searching
For Sebald: Photography After W.G.Sebald ed. by
Christel Dillbohner, (New York: ICI Press, 2007)
Wachtel, Eleanor
et al, The Emergence of Memory ed. by Lynne
Sharon Schwartz, (USA: Seven Stories Press,2010)
Woods,
James, Introduction to Austerlitz,(London:
Penguin Books,2011)
Note On The Title
The title comes from page 59 of The Rings of Saturn:
‘The failure of this eccentric undertaking, as I read
some time ago in a history of artificial light, constituted no more than a
negligible setback in the relentless conquest of darkness.’
[2] Introduction To Mythology by Eva M.
Thury and Margaret K. Devinney (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) p10
[5] ‘Adventure, Imprisonment, and Melancholy’ by Margaret Bruzelius in The
Undiscover’d Country ed. by Markus Zisselsberger (Suffolk: Camden House, 2010),
p249
[8] John Berger, preface to Timothy O’Grady and Steve Pyke, I Could
Read the Sky (London: Harvil, 1997) unpaginated.
[10] Introduction To Mythology by Eva M.
Thury and Margaret K. Devinney (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) p165
[16] ‘Who Is W.G. Sebald?’ by Carol Angier from The Emergence of
Memory ed. by Lynne Sharon Schwartz, (USA: Seven
Stories Press,2010) p73
[19] ‘W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz:
Adaptation as Restitution’ by Elizabeth Baer in Reworking The German Past ed. by Susan G. Figge and Jenifer K. Ward (Suffolk: Camden House, 2010), p187
[20]‘A Watch On Each Wrist’ by Luke Williams from Saturn’s Moon, ed. by Jo Catling and Richard Hibbitt( United Kingdom: Legenda,
2011), p148
[21] ‘Rings of Smoke’ by Ruth Franklin from The Emergence of Memory ed. by Lynne Sharon Schwartz, (USA: Seven Stories Press,2010) p125
[22] ‘Ghost Hunter’ by Eleanor Wachtel from The Emergence of Memory ed. by Lynne Sharon Schwartz, p42
[23] ‘Who is W.G.Sebald?’ by Carole Angier from The Emergence of
Memory ed. by Lynne Sharon Schwartz, p67
[24] ‘Introduction Searching For Sebald: What I Know For Sure’ by Lise
Patt from Searching For Sebald: Photography After W.G.Sebald ed. by Christel Dillbohner, (New York: ICI Press, 2007) p92
I had to get rid of the photographs that I mention in the essay due to copyright but they can be found in Sebald's books.
ReplyDelete