Memory as Ash in W. G. Sebald: An itinerary

FACULTY OF FINE ARTES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LISBON

MEMORY AS ASH IN W. G. SEBALD: An itinerary Maysa Macedo de Aquino

Dissertation Masters in Art Criticism, Curation and Theory

Dissertation guided by Prof. Doutor José Carlos Pereira 2019

DECLARAÇÃO DE AUTORIA Eu, Maysa Macedo de Aquino, declaro que a presente dissertação intitulada “A memória como cinza em W. G. Sebald: Um itinerário”, é o resultado da minha investigação pessoal e independente. O conteúdo é original e todas as fontes consultadas estão devidamente mencionadas na bibliografia ou outras listagens de fontes documentais, tal como todas as citações diretas ou indiretas têm devida indicação ao longo do trabalho segundo as normas académicas.

A Candidata

Lisboa, 31 de outubro de 2019.

RESUMO Este trabalho procura investigar as nuances da memória como cinza na obra do escritor W. G. Sebald. Centrada nos efeitos da destruição, a escrita de Sebald atesta, continuadamente, a ideia de retenção. Tendo Os Anéis de Saturno como arcabouço central, pelo forte tom de compêndio e amplitude dos temas examinados no livro, o itinerário que se segue registra o fluxo de resgate da cinza – compreendida enquanto resíduo, reminiscência – por meio de três pontos essenciais de convergência: Espaço, Imagem e Literatura.

No que diz respeito às três categorias mencionadas, serão levados em conta aspectos recorrentes na obra do autor, vistos sob o viés do recorte apresentado. Dentre eles, destacamse: o tema da peregrinação – estratégia fundamental nas narrativas de Sebald, em que a noção de mobilização do espaço está intrinsecamente ligada à mobilização da memória; o forte interesse em torno da obra de arte e da fotografia – em especial, o entendimento do registro fotográfico enquanto resíduo; e as constantes incidências literárias – das referências evocadas pelo escritor aos registros da memória dos mortos, essencialmente também escritores.

Com isso, o trabalho incide, em última instância, na tentativa de empreender uma crítica sob a perspectiva do cruzamento entre as dimensões da memória e do esquecimento e, por conseguinte, do resgate efetuado a partir da obra. Ao examinar a escrita de Sebald, é possível afirmar que o autor tem por princípio a formalização de uma ausência. Como tal, é esse procedimento que será examinado ao longo deste trabalho e que visa contribuir ao entendimento da obra de arte a partir da estima ao que está esquecido – e que deve, por sua vez, ser resgatado. É sob esse mote que se configura a obsessiva preocupação do escritor com o passado. Em correlação, o itinerário que se segue procura efetuar esse movimento de resgate e explicitar os intentos do autor.

Palavras-Chave: cinza; memória; peregrinação; Sebald

ABSTRACT This paper seeks to investigate the nuances of the memory as ashes in the work of the writer W.G. Sebald. Centered on the effects of destruction, Sebald's writing continuously supports the idea of retention. Having The Rings of Saturn as central framework, due to its strong tone of compendium and the amplitude of the examined theme, the following itinerary registers the flux of the rescue of the ashes – understood as residue, reminiscence – through three essential points of convergence: Space, Image and Literature.

The abovementioned categories will consider recurring aspects of the author's work, seen through the lenses of the proposed framework. Among them, the following shall be highlighted: the theme of pilgrimage – fundamental strategy of Sebald's narratives, in which the notion of the mobilization of space is intrinsically connected to the mobilization of memory; the strong interest towards the work of art and photography – especially, the understanding of the work of art as a residue; and the constant literary incidences – of the references evoked by the writer to register the memory of the dead, who are, essentially, also writers.

Lastly, this paper endeavours to criticize Sebald's work under the perspective of the crossing between the dimensions of memory and oblivion, and, consequently, of the rescue made through his works. When examining Sebald's writing, it is possible to affirm that the author has the formalization of an absence as a principle. This procedure, which will be examined through this work, aims to contribute to the understanding of the work of art through the appreciation of what is forgotten – and must be rescued. It is within this context that the writer's obsessive preoccupation with the past is configured. In correlation, the followed itinerary seeks to replicate this movement of rescue and to unveil the author's intents.

Keywords: ashes; memory; pilgrimage; Sebald

aos que me iniciaram nos mistérios: José Carlos Pereira, Julieta e Angela, rafa, bruna, mãe, pai, irmãs.

Ahora comienza a existir.

Ahora esos cementerios sin flores tienen también ellos su floración.

Pier Paolo Pasolini, Poeta de las Cenizas

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………….8

1. Space...………………………………………………………………………………….…. 12 1.1 Pilgrimage: The Mobilization of Space as the Mobilization of Memory.................................15 1.2 The Rings of Saturn: Movements as mobilized territories....................................................................17 1.3 Topography in movement: The art of memory as a mapping of practiced places……………......................23 1.4 Topographic speeches: Sebald’s writing architecture………...................................................................27

2. Image........................................................................................................................37 2.1 The itinerary of the image in The Rings of Saturn: A guide through the obscure detail....................................................................41 2.2 To infix the image in memory: Photography as residue ................................................................................... 50

3. Literature..................................................................................................................57 3.1 The mysterious survival of the written word: Literary references in W. G. Sebald ..................................................................60 3.2 The books of memories: Sebald as ghost hunter......................................................................................67

Conclusion..................................................................................................... ............75

Bibliography................................................................................................................ 79

Iconographic Sources.................................................................................................82

INTRODUCTION “Ashes derive their symbolism first from the fact that they are preeminently a residue […].”1

This work begins with a kind of observation: there is something in the work of art that revolves around disappearance – a certain original dimension that cannot be ignored2. First, according to Genet: the work of art is for the dead. Then, according to Pasolini, whose poem entitled Poeta de las Cenizas3 reinforces the artist’s esteem for what is forgotten – and which must be rescued. In both notions, the role of the artwork in making this rescue and formalizing it is evident. It is under this motto that the work of W. G. Sebald, a German writer born in 1944 [Wertach, 1944 – Norfolk, 2001], whose work will be the starting point of this dissertation, is also configured.

Centered on the effects of destruction, as evidenced by the reading of his books, Sebald’s writing incorporates a duplicity that simultaneously covers the end and the permanence – or, more precisely, what survives the destruction, identified here as ash. At all times, the author makes a kind of pilgrimage to the vanished and points to the constant crossing between the dimensions of memory and forgetfulness. By using a set of ashes, Sebald effectively seeks to formalize an absence. In this sense, it is possible to introduce a question: how does the recovery of memory as ash happen in the author’s work?

Like the pilgrimage strategy – fundamental in Sebald’s narratives4 – an itinerary will be developed, based on three essential points of convergence: Space, Image 1

CHEVALIER; GHEERBRANT – Penguin Dictionary of Symbols.

“No, no, the artwork is not intended for new generations. It is offered to the innumerable people of the dead.” (GENET, 2000, page 15, own translation) 3 Spanish edition [2015] of the autobiographical poem written in 1966 [Poeta delle Ceneri]. In it Pasolini covers the traces of disappearance: in the first part, he revisits the family trajectory intensely, constantly referring to the original landscapes – geographical and affective; in the second, he elaborates a contemplation of his own work and articulates a brief argument about his creative process.

4 Essentially in those that are parto f the so-called prose-fiction, a term referred to by the author about the following narratives: Vertigo, The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn and Austerlitz.

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and Literature. In this way, it is intended to record the flux of rescue from the ash – again, considered as residue. For the investigation carried out, the analytical detail will be combined with the panoramic view of the author’s work. Under this bias, the narrative of The Rings of Saturn represents the chosen cut, due to the strong tone of compendium and breath of the themes in question.

Still, on the panoramic view, W. G. Sebald’s narratives have a common starting point: the immediate registration of the narrator’s spatial and time record. In the initial contact, it is possible to note the incidence of the author’s writing around the category of space – either by the theme of pilgrimage and the travel diary, like the structure of The Rings of Saturn, or by the set of evoked interests that refer to architecture. It is in this sense that the itinerary proposed here, as an analysis strategy, starts from the rescue of memory as ash under the perspective of space.

Before starting the itinerary properly, it is necessary to keep in mind a certain notion of the art of memory that accompanies Sebald’s work. As the narratives advance, the author’s characteristic spatial mapping process suggests a navigation that is also established through the multiple memory spaces. The meaning found to deal with the recollections is that of an architecture of an interior writing5.To this end, Sebald seems to resort to a certain classic understanding of an art of memory that constantly requires spaces and images for remembrance6.

With The Rings of Saturn as a framework, the chapter on Space seeks, at first, to enter the theme of pilgrimage, with the purpose of discovering the extent to

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“As Frances Yates shows in her seminal study on the subject, the art of memory is an architectonics of inner writing.” (BRUNO, 2018, page 221, own highlights) 6 “Few people know that the Greeks, who invented many arts, invented an art of memory which, like their other arts, was passed on to Rome whence it descended in the European tradition. This art seeks to memorise through a technique of impressing 'places' and 'images' on memory.”

(YATES, 1999, page 1, own highlights);

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which the mobilization of space is also a mobilization of memory. Then, the focus is on the movement of the pilgrim, under the bias of displacement as a possibility of access to the ash. Finally, the approach contemplates the spatial mapping put into practice in the narrative, from the registration of a moving topography.

Following the proposed itinerary, the second chapter maintains the central framework now with the intention of rescuing memory as ash from the perspective of Image. The first part is composed of Sebald’s interest in the work of art and will be guided by the focus on the obscure detail7. The second part, in turn, follows the author’s intentions in relation to the use of photography, in a perspective that privileges the condition of the photographic record as residue.

The last chapter examines the recovery of memory as ash through Literature, also in two parts: In the foreground, it investigates the continued use of literary references by Sebald. Later on, it presents the writer’s perspective as a ghost hunter, whose exercise of creation focuses, fundamentally, on his obsessive preoccupation with the past – here, identified from the records of other writer’s memoirs.

It is with this movement that it is intended, as Maria Filomena Molder tells us, “to show the vestige of what exists in the secret”8. Compatible with Sebald’s procedure, the work as a mystery – and, for this, carry out the “recognition of life in ashes”9. That is the broad meaning of Sebald’s work and the itinerary that follows.

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The notion presented by Sebald at the beginning of the narrative of The Rings of Saturn and which proves to be an essential reading key for the book’s own understanding: “[Janine Dakyns] had developed a particular science about the 19th-century French novel, […] always guided by the obscure detail, never by what was evident […].” (SEBALD, 2010, own highlights and translation) 8 MOLDER, Maria Filomena – Privilégio e Naturalidade. In Rebuçados Venezianos.

9 Still, according to Maria Filomena Molder’s thought: “Here is the alchemical power that Benjamin attributes to the critic: recognizing in the ashes the flame of life […] corresponds to the constitution of the work, which beauty proceeds from ‘touching the streaks of life.’ […]. Only if we know how to criticize it can we conceive it as a mystery. (This is the recognition of life in the ashes).”

(MOLDER, 2016, page 253, own translation)

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1. SPACE

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“Places seem to me to have some kind of memory, in that they activate memory in those who look at them.”10 W. G. Sebald

The idea of pilgrimage is a common strategy in Sebald’s procedure and reveals the author’s interest in a spatial practice associated with movement. The maximum investment, in this sense, is formalized by the work The Rings of Saturn [1995], which central structure goes back to the theme of pilgrimage and establishes a mapping dynamic similar to the very functioning of memory. For this reason, it will be the outline of the itinerary that follows.

The notion of movement is inserted from the immediate reference to Saturn’s rings – which includes, already in the epigraph, an excerpt extracted from the Brockhaus Encyclopedia. In addition to inaugurating the theme of destruction, since the rings originate from fragments of an ancient moon of the planet, the section in question inscribes the circular11 motif which will be the motto of the narrative. There are also other important indications taken in the work in the epigraph: Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably.

(John Milton, Paradise Lost) Il faut surtout pardonner à ces amês malheureuses qui ont élu de fair ele pèlegrinage à pied, qui côtoient le rivage et regardent sans comprendre l’horreur de la lutte et le profond désespoir de vaincus.

(Joseph Conrad a Marguerite Poradowska) Saturn's Rings consist of ice crystals and perhaps meteorite particles that describe circular orbits around the planet's equator. Probably, these are fragments of an ancient moon that, very close to the planet, was destroyed by its tidal effect.

(- Roche limit).

Brockhaus Encyclopedia (own translation)

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Excerpt from an interview with The Guardian. (SBALD, 2001) “The circular motif is repeated throughout the book, in everything from the déjà vu the narrator experiences visiting a friend’s apartment to an extraordinary vision that is one of Sebald’s most beautiful and mystical moments: ‘At earlier times, in the summer evenings during my childhood when I had watched from the valley as swallows circled in the last light… I would imagine that the world was held together by the courses they flew through the air.” (FRANKLIN, 2007, p. 125)

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In the first place, Sebald makes reference to the opposites that structure existence from the excerpt of John Milton, a 17th century English poet. In the second section, he focuses on the idea of pilgrimage and mentions Joseph Conrad, who will be a subject of reflection later in the book. Lastly, as noted above, he describes Saturn’s rings and formalizes the record of the destruction.

In addition to the epigraph, it is possible to add that Sebald’s writing finds echoes in Saturn’s own symbology – “A separating function, at the same time an end and a beginning”12.

It is important, therefore, to keep in mind a notion of duplicity that incorporates destruction and permanence – or, more precisely, ash. The context of the pilgrimage seems to shift in this direction: from the effects of destruction to the rescue of the vestiges that the narrator finds along the way. At this point, it is relevant to insert a question: would the act of crossing be the most efficient form of contact with the vanished?13 What happens in Sebald’s procedure is somewhat conclusive: the mobilization of space as the mobilization of memory.

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“All these are images of the office of divider, which is both an end and a beginning, the halting of one cycle and the beginning of a fresh one, the stress being laid more strongly upon the break in or slowly development.” (CHEVALIER; GHEERBRANT, page 829, own highlights) 13 The term disappeared, here, takes on the meaning of residue, something that is formalized by an absence.

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1.1 Pilgrimage: The Mobilization of Space as the Mobilization of Memory In the case of The Rings of Saturn, the structure of the book takes place, precisely, through a ten-part guided narrative, each named according to the narrator’s pilgrimage route14. The starting point is inscribed through the time and spatial record – August 1992, when the narrator started walking through Suffolk County, east of England, justifying the pilgrimage as a kind of attempt to escape the void after the conclusion of a long job.15 At the first approach, the question of the walker immediately arises the figure of a central narrator who incorporates this dimension. As the narrative progresses, the above justification takes on other shapes. Still, in this first moment of contact with the narrator – whose name is not identified – there is an important indication: the double perspective of the pilgrimage remembered as a pleasant sense of freedom and a way of contact with horror16.

The tone assumed by the narrative is, from then on, driven by the pilgrim’s memories in a second moment, when he begins to take notes – mentally – a year after the beginning of the trip, when he is taken to the Norwich hospital in a state of almost total immobility17. Here, the interaction between mobility and immobility is an important part of the perception of memory. Faced with the horror during the pilgrimage – and, because of it, paralyzed -, the narrator finds himself faced with the journey he has traveled, now even more powerful in the sense of the

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Like part I (first chapter), names as follows: In the hospital – Obituary – Thomas Browne’s Skull Odyssey – Anatomy class – Levitation – Quincunce – Fable beings – Cremation.

15 “In August 1992, when the heatwave days were over, I started walking through Suffolk County, in the east of England, hoping to escape the void that spreads in me whenever I finish a long job.”

(SEBALD, 2010, page 13, own translation) 16 “[...] In the time that followed, I was as much concerned with the memory of the pleasant sense of freedom as with the paralyzing horror that affected me at different times, in the face of the traces of destruction that, even in this distant region, went back to the most distant past.” (Ibid., page 13, own highlights and translation) 17 “[...] exactly one year after the day I started my trip, I was taken in a state of almost total immobility to the hospital in Norwich, the provincial capital, where then, at least in thought, I started writing these pages.” (Ibid., pages 13 and 14, own translation)

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mobilization of memory. As he becomes an immobile spectator, he remembers a path that goes from the vastness of the previous summer to a single-blind and deaf spot in the hospital room18.

At this point, the narrator introduces an even more efficient visual resource: the photograph of the window of the room in which he was installed, on the eighth floor of the hospital [see Image 1]. The focus is on the absence of a landscape, with the exception of a barely significant section of the sky. From that moment on, the sense of space is strictly inserted as a narrative construction tool. The relationship with memory is an important part of the spatial mapping process identified below.

Image 1: Photograph of the hospital room.

What can be suggested from the author’s procedure is the idea of pilgrimage as the very notion of memory. In the impossibility of physical pilgrimage, highlighted by the hospital episode, the navigation is established through the multiple spaces of memory. In the spatial notion incorporated by Sebald, both the act of pilgrimage

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“[...] I was overwhelmed by the idea that the expanses that had been covered the previous summer in Suffolk had now shrunk to a single blind and deaf spot.” (SEBALD, 2010, page 14, own translation)

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and the remembrance share the architectural experience and involve the dynamics of space, movement, and narrative19.

It is possible to justify, in this way, the choice of the narrator as a pilgrim. By making spatial practice viable, Sebald simultaneously enables the emergence of memory. In this double process, it is the itinerary that constructs the meaning and that, in turn, shapes a kind of mapping. In the map established by Sebald, it is essentially the movement that mobilizes the narrator’s crossing points, as will be seen below.

1.2 The Rings of Saturn: Movements as mobilized territories20 According to the initial presentation conducted around the theme of pilgrimage, the question of the traveler reaches its most potent representation in the work The Rings of Saturn. With the starting point of the book inscribed from the pilgrim’s movement, the itinerary that unfolds here incorporates the mapping recorded by the narrator’s journey. In this sense, it is the formalization of the act of walking that guarantees access to the ash.

In addition to what was outlined previously, there is also a personal configuration in the interest shown by Sebald about the pilgrimage. The access to the vast set of references evoked in his books usually takes place from the perspective of the walk, as we have already mentioned. For the writer, the traveler’s approach – essentially, with regards to the observation of nature – develops a more accurate look, even close to what can be seen in the observation exercise of some

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“This is how architectural experiences – which involve the dynamics of space, movement and narrative […].” (BRUNO, 2018, page 57, own highlights) 20 Em articulação com o argumento de Giuliana Bruno, professora e investigadora da Universidade de Harvard: “Architectural frames, like filmic frames, are transformed by an open relation of movement to events. Rather than being vectors or directional arrows, these movements are mobilized territories, mappings of practiced places.” (Ibid., page 57)

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scientists21.In this sense, Sebald’s explanation converges with the narrative strategy itself and reveals an affinity for the narrator’s context.

Following the period of immobility in the hospital, previously introduced, the narrator marks another time record, now the definitive point of writing the book22.

It is at this moment that the memory of the figure of Michael Parkinson occurs, a professor who soon presents himself as a structuring character in the context of the narrative. Parkinson is the point of connection between the period when the narrator was in the hospital – and the professor was still alive – and the later period, outlined above. It is due to the discovery of Parkinson’s death that the narrator faces a kind of coming to his senses23, which triggers the reflection that led to death and destruction.

Michael Parkinson is presented as an unusual figure, distinguished by an acute sense of accomplishment of his duties and by a modesty of needs – something that borders on a certain quirkiness24. Parkinson’s life experience converges with the narrator’s interests: there is a personal approach between them, and the common importance given to the pilgrimage. When mentioning that Parkinson, during the summer holidays, made long trips on foot linked to studies on Ramuz25,

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“The walker’s approach to view nature is a phenomenological one and the scientist’s approach is a much more incisive one, but they all belong together. And in my view, even today it is true that scientists very frequently write better than novelists. So I tend to read scientists by preference almost, and I’ve always found them a great source of inspiration.” (SEBALD, 2007a, page 81) 22 “Now that I start to clean up my notes, more than a year after being discharged from the hospital, it is inevitable to occur to me the thought that, at the time, Michael Parkinson was still alive in his little house on Potersfield Road […].” (Id., 2010, page 15, own translation) 23 “[...] It is a way of making the ‘come to yourself’ come on the scene, which is accomplished by getting used to the image of death. In Greek getting used is meletáw, which also means taking care of; occupy, do, exercise (in the arc, for example). Taking care of this one, who also understands how to fight against forgetfulness, which means that knowledge can abandon us at all times.” (MOLDER, 2017, page 17, own translation) 24 “[…] Michael was in his fifties, he was a bachelor and, I imagine, one of the most innocent people I have ever met. Nothing was as alien to him as selfishness, nothing worried him more than the fulfillment of his duties (…). Most of all, however, he was distinguished by the modesty of his needs, which many claimed to be bordering on eccentricity. At a time when most people have to continually buy to make a living, Michael hardly ever went out to shop.” (SEBALD, 2010, page 16, own translation) 25 Swiss writer who also used the theme of catastrophe.

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the narrator again introduces the reference to pilgrimage, essentially as an individual activity linked to a certain sense of search26.

The news of Michael Parkinson’s unexpected and unexplained death opens the constellation of grief27 characteristic of Sebald’s procedure. In addition to destruction through death, other indications prove to be important reading keys.

Regarding space, it is worth mentioning the practice of walking linked to thought – and, more properly, to the literary activity. In relation to the narrative unit, another relevant development is due to the convergence of Parkinson’s biographical information with the author’s life28. The strategy is repeated in all of Sebald’s books: while the details included by the narrator seem to reveal an autobiographical tone, the reader never gets to the confirmation of this possibility.

When returning to the narrator’s movement, it is essential to introduce the remembrance of the context of the pilgrimage itself, initiated in the second chapter29. It is from there that a detailed description of the locomotive’s journey down the east coast of England is recorded. The reference to the train – and also to the train stations – is a constant theme in Sebald’s writing: through it, the author reinforces the notion of crossing and incorporates a powerful symbol. In this perspective, the representation of the railroad ensures not only the displacement of the pilgrim but also introduces a symbolic element that reverberates throughout the text.

In extensive contact with Sebald’s procedure, it is possible to perceive that the repeated reference to the train is a resource that is related, to a greater or lesser

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“In general, when he returned from one of those trips, or when I admired the seriousness with which he always did his job, it seemed to me that in his own way he had found happiness, in a form of modesty that is barely conceived today.” (SEBALD, 2010, page 16, own translation) 27 “As he searches for patterns in the constellation of grief that his books record […].” (FRANKLIN, 2007, page 126) 28 “Though the narrator identifies both [Michael Parkinson e Janine Dakyns] characters as professor, and people whose names and biographical data match theirs were in fact his colleagues […].” (Id., 2006, page 129) 29 The diesel locomotive – Morton Peto’s palace – Visit to Somerleyton – German cities on fire – Lowestoft’s decline – Kannitverstan – The old spa – Frederick Farrar and the court of Jaime II

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degree, to the logic of deportation30. Marked by the circumstances of World War II – even though he did not directly experience the horrors of the period31 –, the author draws a good part of his intention from the juncture of destruction left by the years of conflict. Given this, exile and displacement are notion close to Sebald and play in the narratives a tool for access to what is formalized as a loss – something that takes form of a vestige.

It is following this idea that the author establishes a kind of mapping writing. As the locomotive advances, the narrator is faced with monotonous and degraded landscapes – which pay attention, essentially, to transience and destruction32.

Along the way, the idea of ash linked to displacement emerges with increasing force. It is in this light that the pilgrim arrives at the Somerleyton mansion, a property that once belonged to the British landed nobility and whose relevance dates back to the Middle Ages. At Somerleyton, the narrator experiences, more properly, the cracks produced by time33, from the contact with architecture on the verge of dissolution and ruin34. On the contrary, the report presented also ensures the possibility of the building as retaining fragments of memory35. It is in this direction that Sebald’s writing moves36.

The interest in architecture, in the process of destruction, is part of the author’s set of references and can also be observed, in a more evocative way, in 30

“I think that is was a question of trying to find, in a text of this kind, ways of expressing heightened sensations, as it were, in the form of symbols which are perhaps not obvious. But certainly the railway business, for instance. The railway played a very, very prominent part, as one knows, in the whole process of deportation.” (SEBALD, 2007b, and 53, own highlights) 31 Sebald himself, born in 1944, decided to emigrate due to the post-war context. First, he continued his university studies in Manchester, then settled in Norwich, where he taught for over thirty years at the University of East Anglia.

32 “[...] there is nothing to see here but bush and undulating reeds, some dilapidated willows and ruined brick cones, which look like monuments of an extinct civilization, remnants of countless windmills and aeolian bombs […]. When these reflexes paled, in a way the whole region paled with them. Sometimes I imagine, when I observe, that everything is already dead.” (SEBALD, page 40, own translation) 33 “Just a fraction of a second, I usually think, and an entire era passes.” (Ibid., page 41) 34 “And how beautiful the mansion looked to me, now that it was imperceptibly approaching the brink of dissolution and ruin.” (Ibid., page 46, own translation) 35 “Nor can we say at a glance what decade or century we are in, as many ages are overlapping there and coexist.” (Ibid., pages 45 and 46, own translation) 36 Sebald’s literary project points, in a broad sense, to the need for a kind of memorial, as will be highlighted in the third chapter.

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Austerlitz’s narrative – especially under the bias of architecture as a testimony.

In telling the story of Jacques Austerlitz, whose identity linked to the horrors of war unfolds from the perspective of space37, Sebald reinforces the articulation between the experience of the place and memory38. At this point, it is important to bring the reference to architecture as a powerful reflection of reminiscence39: it is through the experience of space that memory opens up.

With that in mind, it is possible to return to the pilgrim’s journey in The Rings of Saturn. After Somerleyton’s passing, what happens continuously in Sebald’s procedure is a kind of opening of the triggers of remembrance. First, it inserts a quick mention of the German cities destroyed due to aerial bombing40 – a topic dear to the author – to, soon after, develop the process of resonance of memory through space. When the narrator arrives at Lowestoft, he observes the city’s astonishing decline and launches a series of symbolic references that focus on decay and destruction [see Images 2, 3 and 4].

From that point on, the author’s approach intensifies around the use of indirect references to arrive at the exact measure of horror41. In the photographs that demonstrate a privileged sense of space, the pilgrim evokes the presence of the dead and the vanished places42 – and, with this, formalizes what is residual. Even 37

The book discusses the life trajectory of Jacques Austerlitz, son of Jews who escaped war as a child due to the well-known Kindertransporte. Adopted by an English Calvinist couple, Austerlitz only really has access to his past when he begins to make a pilgrimage through Prague, his family’s home town.

38 “[…] the idea, ridiculous in itself, that crossed my mind, that that iron pillar to which the scaled surface gave life, could remember me and in a way, said Austerlitz, be a testimony of what I didn’t remember myself.” (SEBALD, 2012a, page 202, own highlights and translation) 39 “[...] I only remember, said Austerlitz, that I went out to the platform to photograph the capital of an iron pillar that awakened in me a reflex of reminiscence.” (Ibid., page 202, own highlights and translation) 40 “When he found out where I was from, [William Hazel, Somerleyon’s gardener] he started telling me that, during his final years of school […], one thing that never left his head was the air war that was going on against Germany form the sixty-seven air bases established in East Anglia after 1940.” (Id., 2010, pages 47 and 48) 41 “And this is why the main scenes of horror are never directly addressed. […]. So the only way in which one can approach these things, in my view, is obliquely, tangentially, by reference rather than by direct confrontation.” (Id., 2007a, page 80, own highlights) 42 “[…] he photographs landscapes, streets, monuments, ticket stubs. Sebald’s books are famously strewn with evocative, gloomy black-and-white photographs that call up the presence of the dead, of vanished places, and also serve as proofs of his passage.” (SCHWARTZ, 2007, page 14)

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in the decline an upward movement is noticeable: the focus on displacement, as a possibility of access to the ash, mobilizes the territories crossed by the narrator.

From then on, the mapping of practiced places43 is established as an essential trigger for recollection.

Image 2: The narrator’s arrival in Lowestoft – seaside town once marked by growth.

Image 3: At the farewell to Lowestoft, the meeting with the black hearse covered with wreaths. The scene allows the narrator to introduce an account of the funeral procession of an Amsterdam merchant.

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Image 4: From the hotel’s balcony, the narrator sees the famous Lowestoft pier – a record of the city’s golden times and, therefore, of its transience.

Still in articulation with Giuliana Bruno’s argument previously mentioned.

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1.3 Topography in movement44: The art of memory as a mapping of practiced places When following the itinerary proposed by the pilgrim in The Rings of Saturn, the first correlation established with the previous arguments is the idea of an art of memory as a mapping of space – which includes the interior space or the architecture of the interior writing45 and, of course, the places practiced. The way found by Sebald to make this process possible is through the use of a moving topography: as the narrator moves, the memories materialize.

It is in this sense that the movement of the pilgrimage activates the triggers of memory. Similar to an architectural tour46 – in which the walk around the architectural object generates successive points of view and orders the experience of fruition47 –, this is how the narrator’s memories accumulate due to the displacement. In this movement, there is no single meaning: the pilgrimage is both physical and mental, simultaneously. Finally, it is the construction of the itinerary that shapes the mapping, as suggested by the link proposed here with Giuliana Bruno’s arguments48: Maps, learning records, after all, follow the experience. They exist after the path has been taken [...]. It is then that the writer/cartographer can map his territory. This includes what he may or may not achieve in his exploration: his terrae incognitae, the seductive voids that, if the 44

“Emotion materializes as a moving topography.” (BRUNO, 2018, page 2) Here, it is necessary to return to Giuliana Bruno’s reflection on the work of Frances Yates: “As Frances Yates shows in her seminal study on the subject, the art of memory is an architectonics of inner writing.” (Ibid., page 221, own highlights) 46 “The art of memory understood recollection spatially. It made room for image collection and, by means of an architectural promenade, enabled this process of image collection to generate recollection.” (Ibid., page 221, own highlights) 47 About the concept of promenade architecturale developed by the architect Le Corbusier: The concept is realized through a set of material properties, consciously worked with the objective of realizing the idea of variation of the route, forcing the experience of the architectural object in different positions and points of view and constantly changing the relationship between the object and the user. (MACIEL, 2002) 48 “Maps, records of learning, after all, follow experience. They come into existence after the path has been traveled (…). It is then that the writer/cartographer can map out her territory. This includes what she could not or did not reach in her exploration: her terrae incognitae, those seductive voids that, if one knows the topophilia of the lacunae, are not there to be conquered but are textures exposed, where the markings of time take place.” (BRUNO, 2018, page 5) 45

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topophilia of the gap is known, are not there to be conquered, but are exposed textures, where time marks occur. (BRUNO, 2018, page 5, own highlights and translation)

The narrative organized as a map, therefore, incorporates the path explored by the narrator. What is mainly established is the exposure of the marks of time, as mentioned above – evidently, under the bias of destruction. In addition, there is also what Sebald calls the lacunae of ignorance49, to make one more correspondence with the previous argument: clues that make him move through this kind of territory and, in this way, deepen the existing connections. The passages that will be evoked from now on reflect on the effects of this destruction – and, ultimately, call for a kind of redemption. This is how Sebald’s procedure achieves the vital persistence of the work of art: by rescuing the ashes, life’s most noble sarcophagus50.

Sebald’s set of references regarding the ash is quite varied: in the case of space, it is especially located in the remnants found in desolate and remote landscapes.

In the pilgrimage on foot, the narrator goes to the South coast of Lowestoft, a scenario that will evoke reports on natural history – a recurring theme in Sebald’s work. When faced with a series of shelters in the shape of a tent, used by those who eagerly wait for herring fishing, the author forays the prospect of destruction by humans51.

In this sense, there is a detailed report on herring fishing52 and its consequences.

Here, Sebald’s effort focuses on man-made disasters, capable of generating a

49

“And it’s these lacunae of ignorance and the very few facts that we have that were sufficient somehow for me to move into this territory and to look around there and to feel, after a while, quite at home.” (SEBALD, 2007b, pages 42 and 43) 50 “If the work of art does not know death as the definitive extinction of breath and shine, this is because, strictly speaking, it is not life, but ashes, life’s most noble sarcophagus. […] As life is always the life of the spirit, we speak of the ‘vital persistence of works in a completely nonmetaphorical sense’ […].” (MOLDER, 2016, page 252, own highlights and translation) 51 “It is as if the last remnants of a nomadic people had settled there, at the extreme limit of the earth, waiting for the miracle coveted since time immemorial, a miracle that would justify all their deprivations and previous wanderings.” (SEBALD, 2010, page 262, own translation) 52 “In this passage, an educational film about herring fishing emerges to the narrator’s memory, seen still at school: “In the memory that I keep of this educational film, I see the men in their shiny black raincoats working heroically under the stormy sea that broke over them […] – herring fishing

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profusion of debris53 – a process largely driven by our supposed thirst for knowledge54. For this, the author includes several sources that concretize his procedure, deeply marked by the reflection on destruction: (...) natural historians sought solace in the idea that humanity is responsible for only a portion of the endless destruction that occurs in the life cycle, and furthermore in the assumption that the physiological structure of fish protected them from the feeling of fear and of the pains that afflict the bodies and souls of the higher animals in the longing for death. (SEBALD, 2010, page 65)

The accounts arranged throughout the book add up around the central argument: if everything is destruction, memory would be the vestige itself – or, according to the reasoning here, memory offers itself as ash. There is a concern on the part of Sebald to inject references from various contexts, which respond not only to his writing process but also to the constant dualities investigated by the author.

Once again, the narratives display a series of symbolic references, instead of opting for a direct confrontation with the theme of destruction [see Image 6]. On the encounter with the desolate landscapes, the photographs displayed by Sebald help to configure the spatial record 55 [see Images 5 and 7].

as one of the exemplary scenarios of humanity’s struggle with the power of nature.” (Ibid., page 64, own highlights and translation) 53 “[...] Sebald dwells always on the same large themes. His favorite is the swift blossoming of every human endeavor and its long slow death, either through natural or man-made disaster, leaving a wealth of remains to be pored over […].” (SCHWARTZ, 2007, page 13) 54 “Such a process, inspired by our thirst for knowledge, can be described as the culmination of the history of suffering of a species constantly threatened by catastrophe.” (SEBALD, 2010, page 67, own translation) 55 It is important to point out that the use of photographs establishes, in principle, an attempt by Sebald to make the record of space and conform a feasible experience. However, as one gets in touch with the author’s work, the intention of conceiving an “unreliable narrative” (FRANKLIN, 2007, page 125) is noticeable, since there is no reference to the origin of the photographs.

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Image 5: The pilgrimage continues South of Lowestoft.

Image 6: A frame from the educational film about herring fishing that emerges to the narrator’s memory.

Image 7: Records the continuity of the route, now towards Southwold.

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1.4 Topographic speeches: Sebald’s writing architecture It is within the scope of moving topography that Sebald arranges the layers of his speech. In the format of the reports that become denser around the narrator’s experience, as preciously mentioned, there is a sense of layers of memory – elaborated from the incessant spatial and time records and their correlations. It is through this almost archeological approach that the narrative is inscribed – with space actively participating in this function.

The main idea in Sebald’s work is an attempt to reconcile memory: because of the little we have managed to retain, an effort is needed to remember what is constantly in the process of being forgotten. In this sense, it is worth rescuing an enlightening passage from Austerlitz’s narrative: Even today, when I try to remember, when I go back to examining the Breendonk crab plant56 (...), the darkness does not diminish, but thickens, /when I think how little we managed to retain because all things are constantly falling into the oblivion to each life that extinguishes, how much the world empties itself through the history of countless places and objects, in themselves incapable of memory/, never to be heard, never to be shown or transmitted. (SEBALD, 2012a, page 27, own highlights and translation)

Although the displacement goes back to the spatial instance of memory functioning – a thesis elaborated throughout this chapter – what is fundamentally capable of mediating the constant process between memory and forgetfulness is writing. It is at this point that the intention to rescue the ash through literature lies57, a strategy that will be addressed in the third chapter. Before that, it is necessary to continue exploring the sources used by Sebald in the process of reconciling memory, such as the space category.

56

Military fortification in Belgium visited by the narrator of Austerlitz.

Still in Austerlitz, there is a clue to Sebald’s intentions, in accordance with the coincidences that are established between the character’s figure and the writer himself: “[…] because I wanted to put on paper my investigations on history or architecture and civilization, my long-standing intention.” (SEBALD, 2012a, page 112, own highlights and translation)

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Upon returning to the pilgrimage in The Rings of Saturn, the narrator’s arrival in the city of Southwold summons a series of sediments from memory brought to the fore in the narrative. While contemplating the North Sea, the pilgrim recalls the episode of the Battle of Sole Bay, fought between England and Holland in 1672. In this passage, Sebald highlights the absurdity of vessels used in conflicts, which use is intended for annihilation58. Further on, in convergence with the memory of Holland, the narrator’s meditation follows the memory of a previous pilgrimage through The Hague, which includes a small analysis of the painting by Jacob Van Ruisdael, View of Haarlem with Bleaching Fields59 [1665], seen in Mauritshuis. Here, it is relevant to highlight Sebald’s sense of space as an important point of appreciation of the image60.

In the flow of writing that maps what he sees – and, in accordance with this idea, creates a topographic arrangement -, the author definitely reveals a concern in considering the landmarks of the landscape. This is how the narrator recalls the city of The Hague and the beach of Scheveningen [see Images 8 and 9], memories of previous pilgrimages61. When approaching them through photographs, Sebald uses reminiscences as images – evocative, in turn, of a sense of dominance of space.

58

“The suffering agony and the whole mechanism of destruction far surpass our power of understanding, just as it is not possible to conceive the monumental effort that it took […] to build and equip vessels, almost all predestined to annihilation.” (SEBALD, 2010, pages 85 and 86, own translation) 59 Amongst the memories of the narrator’s pilgrimage, references are repeated, such as 17thcentury Dutch paintings, as Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson and Ruisdael’s painting.

60 “The truth is that Ruisdael did not position himself on the dunes to paint, but at an imaginary and artificial point, some distance from the world. Only this way was he able to see everything at the same time, the huge cloudy sky that occupies two-thirds of the painting, the city, which is little more than a fringe of the horizon […].” (SEBALD, 2010, page 90) 61 “[...] so it was impossible for me to believe, sitting on Gunhill in Southwold that night, that exactly a year earlier I had contemplated England from a Dutch beach.” (Ibid., page 88, own translation)

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Image 8: Façade of a degraded building found in The Hague.

IMAGE 9: Scheveningen beach landscape.

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It is also in Southwold that the narrator presents the life trajectories of Roger Casement and Joseph Conrad, both pilgrims par excellence62. The starting point is given by the mention of a documentary about Casement seen at the hotel63, which is why the narrator seeks to reconstruct the narrative about the encounter between Casement and Conrad – witnesses of the horrors of the colonization of Congo. At this point, Sebald’s account essentially mixes historical sources and travel diaries and soon becomes a tangle of memories and references around the ashes. On the question of space, he inquires about the representation of historical monuments, such as the Lion Monument and the entire memorial of the Battle of Waterloo, rescues from a previous passage by the narrator in Belgium: What about all the bodies and remains? Are they buried under the monument's obelisk? Are we standing on a mountain of the dead? Is this, after all, our point of observation? Do we really have the infamous historical synopsis to such an extent? (SEBALD, 2010, own highlights and translation, page 130)

The experience of architecture, in this case, goes back to the vision of destruction from a historical perspective. In other books, Sebald compiles his strong interest in architectural knowledge, a relevant point of connection to deal with the topic of destruction. In Austerlitz, there are even technical reports in the buildings and images of the architectural designs of military fortifications, a pertinent example within the cluster of the author’s references: [...] it is often our most ambitious projects that most obviously reveal the level of our insecurity. It can be said that the construction of fortifications [...] shows well how we feel forced to continually surround ourselves with defenses [...]. (SEBALD, 2012a, page 18, own highlights and translation) [...] because in some way we naturally know that the oversized buildings already cast the shadow of their destruction, conceived from the origin 62

During the Belgian colonization project in Congo, the Irishman Roger Casement exercised the function of British consul, reporting the horrors seen in the African country to foreign services.

Conrad, for his part, was born in Poland under the context of the Russian occupation and lost his parents prematurely, a fact that led him to live in several cities in Europe. The unusual desire to become a sailor, as Sebald reports, led him to initiate life at sea, even reaching Congo, where travel reports gave origin to the book Heart of Darkness.

63 Until then unknown by the narrator, the figure of Roger Casement emerges with great importance: in addition to being a British consul in Congo, he participated in the Irish independence movement, being executed for high treason in 1916, under the pretext of maintaining homosexual relations.

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with a view to a future existence as ruins. (SEBALD, 2012a, pages 22 and 23, own highlights and translation)

When resuming the topographic arrangement provided in The Rings of Saturn, Sebald weaves an intricate network of comments according to the narrator’s pilgrimage situations. This is the case observed in the walk between Southwold and the village of Walberswick, where the pilgrim contemplates the bridge over the River Blyth, naturally in a state of neglect. From this passage, the author mentions a series of passages that recall the decadence of the Empire of China64.

Here, there is one more quote referring to the railways, the original function of the bridge built over the Blyth. Sebald’s obsession around railways remains – a possible emblem of pilgrimage as well.

Continuing the narrator’s journey, perhaps the most important spatial record in the entire book is in his passage through Dunwich, a city eroded by the movement of the sea [see Image 10]. To think about the ordered pattern of destruction, Sebald uses the concept of time, a reference always present in the writer’s narratives. For Sebald, the activity of memory is not exactly due to the common sense of returning to the past, but by the negation of the notion of time65, in which memory would be a set of interconnected space66. Under this perspective, the Dunwich ruins represent Sebald’s maximum effort to associate time with the sense of space [see Images 11 and 12], in which the formalization of destruction is, simultaneously, the maximum perspective of permanence67. The narrator’s passage through Dunwich is also justified by its importance as a pilgrimage center:

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“The bridge over Blyth was built in 1875 for a narrow-gauge railway that connected Halesworth to Southwold and which wagons, as several local historians cliam, were originally intended for the Chinese emperor.” (SEBALD, 2010, page 142, own translation) 65 In this passage from The Rings of Saturn, Sebald cites as reference the short story Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, by Jorge Luis Borges: “The denial of time, says the Orbis Tertius writing, is the most important principle of Tlon’s philosophical schools.” (Ibid., page 157, own translation) 66 For this articulation, it is necessary to return to the narrative of Austerlitz: “I don’t think we know the rules that govern the return of the past, but rather I feel more and more that time does not exist, on the contrary, there are several spaces that are interconnected […].” (Id., 2012a, page 168, own translation) 67 “[...] so that the slowly dying city described – let’s say, by reflex – one of the basic movements of human life on Earth.” (Id., 2010, page 161, own translation)

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Dunwich, with its towers and several thousand souls, dissolved in water, sand and gravel and in the thin air. When you look at the sea from the top of the hill, in the direction of where the city must have once been, you feel the powerful sip of the void. Perhaps this is why Dunwich became a sort of pilgrimage center for melancholic writers in the Victorian era68. (SEBALD, 2010, page 162, own highlights and translation)

Image 10: Dunwich Coast.

Image 11: Ruins of All Saints, the only church that lasted in Dunwich.

Image 12: Tower of the old Eccles Church Tower.

68

Like Algernon Swinburne, mentioned by Sebald in the Dunwich section, whose reference will be covered in the third chapter.

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Although the role of ruin calls for destruction and, of course, ash, Sebald rekindles its relationship with life, by attributing to the tragedy the sense of an ordered pattern and by giving meaning through it69. In the mapped topography of the book, the movement through space recognizes destruction on several levels70, namely in the hidden landscapes of the pilgrimage, as the stretch of the walk between Dunwich and the village of Middleton: Just as forests had once colonized the Earth in random patterns, growing together gradually, so now ash fields devoured the world of green foliage in an equally random way71. (SEBALD, 2010, page 171, own highlights and translation)

Finally in Middleton, the narrator seeks the home of Michael Hamburger, a writer who lives in the English village. As in the previous procedures, there is an imminent connection between the characters, almost to the point of being explained by the author. Again, in contact with Sebald’s life trajectory, it is possible to understand who Hamburger is: translator and personal friend of the author, whose identification is clear in the introduction written by Hamburger in Unrecounted [2004], Sebald’s work published posthumously.

It is through Hamburger that the narrator openly introduces one of Sebald’s characteristic themes: exile. In the face of the loss burden experienced by Hamburger when he had to leave Berlin as a boy, Sebald explores – repeatedly from the notion of space – erasure images, but also of memory permanence72.

In this record, mappable topography is, above all, a mental topography: If I look back to Berlin today, writes Michael, I see nothing more than a bluish-black backdrop and a gray stain on it (...). Perhaps this blind 69

“[…] when you’re looking at the past, even if you redesign it in terms of tragedy, because tragedy is still a pattern of order and an attempt to give meaning to something, a life or a series of lives.”

(SEBALD, 2007, page 58) 70 “[…] a landscape in constant creation, a landscape whose improbable order is determined by its changeability and precariousness” (DARBY, 2006, page 275) 71 “[...] everything is combustion, and combustion is the most hidden principle of each object we produce.” (SEBALD, 2010, page 172, own translation) 72 “[…] How little has remained in me of my native country, constata o cronista ao repassar as poucas memórias que lhe ficaram, apenas suficientes para um obituário de um garoto desaparecido.” (Ibid., page 178)

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spot is also a post-image of the ruins I wandered through in 1947, when I first returned to my hometown to look for clues of the time that had eluded me. (SEBALD, 2010, page 179, own highlights and translation)

It is also due to the link with Hamburger that the importance of the theme of the house in Sebald’s writing is better perceived. When contemplating the spaces of the house in Middleton, the narrator activates a dimension of memory linked, essentially, to identity. The subjective bond with space is evident in this passage and reveals yet another identifying feature between the narrator and Hamburger73. Ahead, there is a return to the theme of the house, now under the look of ruin. When talking about the stay at the Ashburry family home, reminiscent of a previous pilgrimage through Ireland, it is noticeable the approach of space as a privileged point of connection with memory: from the detailed description of the houses’ decay process, there is evidence of personal decay74. Here, Sebald’s literary procedure is almost architectural and recalls the words of Manuel António Pina, in How to draw a house: A house is the ruins of a house, a threatening thing waiting for a word; draws it like someone who holds remorse with some degree of abstraction and without a strict plan. (PINA, 2011, page 9, own highlights and translation)

Images 13 and 14: Photographs of Michael Hamburger’s house.

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“[...] the idea totally contrary to reason took possession of me, I confess, that these things - the sticks for the fireplace, the envelopes, the preserved fruits, the seashells and the sound of the sea inside them – had survived me and that Michael was leading me through a house where I myself had lived a long time ago.” (SEBALD, 2010, page 185, own translation) 74 “But no one was willing to buy the house, which was increasingly abandoned, and so we were stuck to it like lost souls at their place of torment.” (Ibid., page 220, own translation)

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In the remembrance work carried out by Sebald, the intention to map is accentuated by the presence of a map of the Ofordness region [see Image 15], one of the final destinations of the pilgrimage. In addition to placing another record, the map gives a kind of legitimacy to the topographic procedure visualized throughout the book75. Ahead, and increasingly confused about the weight of the pilgrimage76, the narrator reflects on the memoirs of the Viscount de Chateaubriand, one of the writers punctuated in the narrative: The chronicler who was present and remembers what he saw inscribes his experiences, in an act of self-mutilation, in his own body. By writing, he becomes the exemplary martyr of the destiny that Providence has in store for us, and, still in life, already sees himself in the tomb that his memories represent. (SEBALD, 2010, page 254, own highlights and translation)

From the meditation on Chateaubriand, it is possible to extract the idea that the experience of walking inevitably enters the writer’s body. When unveiling the section in question, there is the recognition of life in the ashes77 – here, represented by the notion of memory. Ultimately, Sebald compares pilgrimage to life: it is the various stations of the journey that compose the idea of a journey78.

It is also through Chateaubriand’s memoires that the narrator makes the circular movement so characteristic of the book79 and makes a final record of space: in Ditchingham80, 10 years ago, under a cedar dated from the beginning of the creation of the park [see Image 16]. The inserted photograph raises one of the 75

“I had been studying the curious formations of the Orford coast on the map and was interested in the so-called extraterritorial land language of Ofordness, which stone by stone, in a period of millennia, had moved from the north towards the mouth of the River Alde, so that in the low tide, known as Ore, it runs for about twenty kilometers just behind the current coastline or in front of the old line.” (SEBALD, 2010, page 232, own translation) 76 “[...] and at the time I knew as little as now whether my lonely journey was more of a pleasure or a torment.” (Ibid., page 239, own translation) 77 MOLDER, Maria Filomena – Um Soluço Ardente. In Rebuçados Venezianos.

78 When referring to Chateaubriand’s memoirs, especially with regards to the Viscount’s travels, the narrator points out: “(…) these are just some of the stations of the journey that now comes to an end.” (SEBALD, 2010, page 255, own translation) 79 “It is there that [Chateaubriand] begins to write his memories, and writes, at the very beginning, of the trees he planted and which he takes care of with his own hands. Now, he writes, they are still so small that I shade them when I stand between them and the sun. But one day, when they grown, they will give me back the shade and protect my old age, just as I protected their youth. I feel attached to the trees, I write sonnets and elegies and odes to them; they are like children, I know them by name and my only wish is to be able to die under them.” (Ibid., page 260) 80 The region in which Chateaubriand lived part of his youth.

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uncertainties of the narrative and proposes a connection with the next chapter, dedicated to the topic of the image: could it be Sebald himself?

Image 15: Map that reveals the highlight for the Ofordness extraterritorial land strip.

Image 16: Could the photograph indicated as the last record of space in the book be of Sebald himself?

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2. IMAGE

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Image 17: Lithography of W. G. Sebald by Jan Peter Tripp.

At the end only so many will remain as can sit round a drum81

81

Poem by W. G. Sebald that accompanies Jan Peter Tripp’s lithography in Unrecounted [2004], translated by Michael Hamburger. The book features a set of thirty-three poems by the author for the selected lithographs by Jan Peter Tripp, Sebald’s longtime friend. In the work, the focus of the lithographs is on the eyes of writers and artists, like Borges and Rembrandt, references of Sebald’s work.

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The question posed earlier, about Sebald’s own photographs, proposes an immediate link with the writer’s mediations on the image. There is in the work After Nature82 [1988], Sebald’s first literary publication, a relevant clue: the focus on the figure of the German painter Matthias Grünewald [1470-1528], to whom Sebald devotes particular interest in the explicit relationship that the artist establishes with his own representation in the work of art83. About Grünewald, the author writes: [...]. The face of the unknown Grünewald is always appearing in his work, that of the witness in the desert, that of the pious in the Christ Mocked of Munich. […] Always the same Mildness, the same burden of melancholy, the same irregularity of the eyes, veiled, deviated, sunk in solitude. (SEBALD, 2012b, page 11, own highlights and translation)

In the presentation of the figure of Grünewald, it is possible to recognize a kind of self-portrait of Sebald himself84. As in Jan Peter Tripp’s lithography highlighted above, the writer’s face continually emerges in his work – curiously dissimulated85. The reference to Grünewald’s veiled gaze is also a characteristic assumed by the writer’s procedure86, as the work of recalling his narratives takes place, as already mentioned, by the attempt to access what is hidden – again, under the notion of ash.

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The book is divided into three parts, each dedicated to a specific thematic interest from different historical periods: the first covers the Renaissance painter Matthias Grünewald; the second, the 18th-century naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller; the third, in turn, contains elements of Sebald’s own life, which immediately registers an autobiographical dimension of the work. (MÜCKE, 2011) 83 This is the case of the Lindenhardt Altar, in which the face of St. George is, in fact, the face of Grünewald. (KÖHLER, 2004) 84 “One does not need to see the last photographs of W. G. Sebald (…) to recognize a sort of selfportrait in that description; and there is hardly a motif as central to his work as eyes.” (Ibid., page 97) 85 “These are cases of similarity/curiously dissimulated, wrote Fraenger,/ whose books the fascists burned. / Yes, it seems that in the work of art/ men respect each other as brothers,/ build monuments to each other/where their paths cross.” (SEBALD, 2012b, page 12, own translation) 86 “It is with Grünewald’s veiled gaze that the ‘elemental poem’ After Nature […] begins. But the dimming of vision and the penetration of darkness are the key metaphors in all his books for his most intimate concern: the work of remembrance, the work of witness, in the torrential flux of time.” (KÖHLER, 2004,97)

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The focus on the issue of gaze is central to Sebald’s procedure and reaches an even more potent force in the last books – Austerlitz and the posthumous Unrecounted. In Austerlitz, the author mentions exactly the exercise of the gaze that manages to penetrate the darkness, specific to certain painters and philosophers87. It is with this notion that Sebald seeks to build his memorial of images, always guided by the choice of a peripheral vision88. In this sense, attention is not given to what is evident in the image, but rather to its obscure detail.

87

“[...] and that stare, inquiring that is found in certain painters and philosophers who, using only pure observation and pure thought, seek to penetrate the darkness that surrounds us.” (SEBALD, 2012a, pages 10 and 11, own translation) 88 In articulation with Andrea Köhler’s careful observation in the text Penetrating the Darkness, which is part of the English edition of Unrecounted: “In his last novel, Austerlitz, the narrator tells of a sudden loss of vision in the right eye. It seemed to him then ‘as though at the edge of my field of vision I could see with undiminished clarity, as though I need only to direct my attention to the periphery to put an end to what at first I judged to be a hysterical weakening of my sight.’ This suggests that here the physical change responds to a psychic one, as though the eye had chosen to focus on the peripheral, on those things which the author was so intent on conserving, collecting and archiving.” (KÖHLER, 2004, page 98, own highlights)

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2.1 The itinerary of the image in The Rings of Saturn: A guide through the obscure detail As pointed out in the previous chapter, Sebald’s work relentlessly makes use of the visual resource – notably, the black-and-white photographs that illustrate almost all of his books89. In The Rings of Saturn, the writer makes use of a set of diverse sources to assure the role of the image in the narrative: either from photography, which origin is unknown90, either from the work of art through illustrations and clippings from the references used by Sebald. There is still the presence of the symbol, an element of strong reverberation in the text.

At first glance, the insertion of the photographs seems to indicate a kind of feasible example of the pilgrim’s experience. As already seen, as the pilgrimage progresses, the photographic record follows the itinerary of the displacement – interspersed, in turn, by the images that are recalled to the narrator’s memory.

Despite the autobiographical tone, there is no consistent evidence to prove the link between these records and Sebald’s authorship. In practice, what is noticeable throughout the narrative is a constant attempt to promote a certain ambiguity – centered especially on the narrator’s figure and in the inserted photographs91.

According to Sebald himself, there are possibly two objectives in the use of the photographs arranged throughout the text: the first is that of verification since the photograph is capable of legitimizing, in principle, the story told by the narrator; the second concerns an effort to apprehend time in the narrative, something that 89

With the exception of the long prose poem After Nature [Nach Der Nature, 1988], mentioned earlier.

90 “The photographs have neither captions nor credits to give a clue to their provenance; the text describes the taking of some of them, while others seem to be more generally illustrative, and still others entirely random.” (FRANKLIN, 2007, page 123) 91 “The conflict between fact and fiction reaches its epitome in the voice that narrates all these stories of loss […]. Yet these details, like the photographs, obscure as much as they reveal.”

(Ibid., pages 124 and 125)

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brings reading closer to a fruition experience more compatible, for example, with the visual arts. Sebald’s intent with the image, in this sense, would correspond to a form of redemption found, mainly, in the exercise of contemplation92.

Image 18: Photograph inserted as a part of the pilgrimage context.

The redemption to which the writer refers is experienced by the reader at the beginning of the narrative, essentially through the work of art. Before going into this aspect more properly, it is necessary to clarify that, for Sebald, there is a comparative factor: while the photographic image tends to a kind of tautology93, 92

“I think they have possibly two purposes in the text. The first and obvious notion is that of verification – we all tend to believe in pictures more than we do in letters. […]. So the photographs allow the narrator, as it were, to legitimize the story that he tells. (…). The other function that I see is possibly that of arresting time. […] And as we all know, this is what we like so much about certain forms of visual art – you stand in a museum and you look at one of those wonderful pictures somebody did in the sixteenth or the eighteenth century. You are taken out of time, and that is in a sense a form of redemption […].” (SEBALD, 2007b, pages 41 and 42) 93 Here, Sebald rescues Susan Sontag’s writings: “The photographic image turns reality into a tautology. When Cartier-Bresson travels to China, Susan Sontag writes, he demonstrates that there are people in China and that these people are Chinese.” (SEBALD, 2004, page 89)

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the work of art requires a notion of ambiguity and versatility – something like the resonance of an obscurity that simultaneously generates illumination94. There is also a distinction regarding the idea of the proximity of life to death: while this would be the very theme of art, Sebald understands it as the addiction to photography. At his point, the author resorts to the understanding of the photographic record as the residue of a life that perpetually vanishes95, a perspective that clearly relates to the notion of ash and that will be addressed below.

When Sebald reinforces the ambiguity regarding art, he seems to direct this intent also to the photographs in his narratives. It is the sense of versatility highlighted by the author previously that guides his procedure in relation to the image. In the case of The Rings of Saturn, the first most incisive reference to the work of art comes from a conversation between the narrator and Janine Dakyns96, a character introduced shortly after the mention of Michael Parkinson. Dakyns, also a teacher and a friend of Parkinson’s, presents the notion of the obscure detail – borrowed here by analogy with Sebald’s procedure. In the passage, the narrator alludes to Dürer’s melancholy angel and invokes, through the reference to the work of art, the idea of permanent coexistence that is noticeable in the book: When I once told her that, sitting amongst her papers, she looked like Dürer’s melancholy angel, immobile amid the tools of destruction, her response was that the apparent disorder of her things actually represented something like a perfect order or that aspired to perfection.

(SEBALD, 2010, page 19, own highlights and translation)

Interestingly, Dürer’s engraving is not inserted in the body of images of the work.

In addition to indicating the possibility of knowledge as a tool for access to

94

Right after the excerpt in which Sebald highlights the thinking of Susan Sontag, referred to earlier: “What may be right for photography, though, is not fitting for art. It needs ambiguity, polyvalence, the resonance of a darkening and illumination, in short, the transcendence of that which in an incontrovertible sentence is the case.” (Ibid., page 89) 95 “Roland Barthes saw in the by now omnipresent man with a camera an agent of death, and in photography something like the residue of a life perpetually perishing. What distinguishes art from such undertaker’s business is that life’s closeness to death is its theme, not its addiction.” (Ibid., page 89) 96 Dakyns succumbs to illness shortly afterward due to the inability to bear the mourning of Michael Parkinson’s death. Under this bias, Sebald incorporates the chain effect of destruction – a significant part of the development of the narrative.

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destruction, Sebald seeks to signal the existence of a symbolic charge that runs through the entire text: the image of immobility – an inherent attribute of the melancholic97 – remains in the most varied situations, whether in the period experienced by the narrator in the hospital, or in the analysis of Dakyns workspace98. It is interesting to note once again, the doble aspect of the narrative, guided simultaneously by the uninterrupted movement of the pilgrimage and the persistence of immobility.

Image 19: Albrecht Dürer, Melencolia I, 1514. Highlidght to the figure of the immobile angel amid the tools of destruction, as referred

by Sebald.

With the mention of Dürer’s work, it is already possible to identify the attempt to access what is hidden – a current procedure in the author’s modus operandi and

97

“We know that slowness is an attribute of the melancholic.” (DANZINGER, 2007, page 128) “It is interesting to note that all of Sebald’s characters seem to be caught up in a dark thread of meaning that brings them together in near immobility. As much as Janine Dakyns made progress in collecting data that would contribute to Flaubert’s through and exhaustive analysis, the more she seems stuck with her proliferation of papers.” (DANZINGER, 2007, page 131, own translation)

98

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which is unfolded throughout the narrative. In this sense, the ambiguity of the image is its strong point par excellence, something that guarantees the reach of what is not given in an evident way. To resume Dakyn’s words, now directed at the question of the image, only the obscure detail of the artwork is able to guide the look to the notion of ash – here mainly related to the perspective of something covered up, hidden, and, even so, reminiscent.

The best example of this procedure is ensured by the narrator’s reference to the Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp, a famous painting by Rembrandt dated 1632. It is through a passage dedicated to the writings of Thomas Browne99, a possible spectator of the dissection recorded by Rembrandt100, that Sebald establishes a unique point of convergence and develops a detailed analysis of the work. Here, the author also explores, in a more effective way and through the work of art, the aforementioned experience of redemption. Sebald’s strategy does not only imply the layout of the image but the emphasis given to the scale and detail of the dissected hand executed by Rembrandt [see Images 20 and 21].

Around the analysis of Rembrandt’s painting, a context rich in references emerges: the interest of Browne and the society of the time in the mysteries of the human body, something then deeply obscure; the simultaneous perspective of scientific illumination and the archaic dismemberment ritual; the ceremonial character of the body’s retaliation; and, lastly, Rembrandt’s use of the misrepresentation of the painted hand. This exercise of analyzing the work of art is of an impressive singularity and exposes Sebald’s vast knowledge on painting, especially with regards to the articulation with the theme of destruction through death: And that hand is a particular case. Not only does it have a grotesque disproportion when compared to the hand closest to the observer, but 99

English doctor who had worked in Norwich in the seventeenth century and writer of profound admiration for Sebald. Browne’s writings will be covered in the later chapter, dedicated to literature.

100 “[...] it is more that likely that Browne did not miss the announcement of this dissection and that he witnessed the spectacular event, recorded by Rembrandt in his portrait of the surgeon guild […].” (SEBALD, 2010, page 21, own highlights and translation)

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it also is totally deformed in anatomical terms […]. It is with him, the victim, and not with the guild that commissioned his work, that the painter identifies himself. Only he does not have the rigid Cartesian gaze, only he perceives it, the extinct and greenish body, only he sees the shadow in the half-opened mouth and over the eye of the dead.”

(SEBALD, 2010, pages 22 and 26, own highlights and translation)

Image 20: The Anatomy Lesson seen from the narrative of The Rings of Saturn.

Image 21: Emphasis given to the misrepresentation of the hand.

Sebald’s effort to bring the obscure detail of Rembrandt’s gesture to the fore shows a kind of compatibility between the two: just as the painter identifies with

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the victim, Sebald also opts always for a peripheral position. It is from this choice that his point of analysis results, not only concerning the example in question but in the entire process of recovering memory as ash identified in the narrative. From the approach addressed to the work of art, the writer reveals, especially, his transgressive side.

Sebald’s focus of analysis is more precise around Rembrandt’s painting, but it also includes other significant examples. In the memory of a precious pilgrimage through the Netherlands, as previously mentioned – the same one in which the narrator travels with the almost exclusive intention of seeing The Anatomy Lesson101 –, there is a curious account of Ruisdael’s painting102, also referred to in the previous chapter [see Image 22]. Sebald’s point here is to draw attention to the artificiality of the so-called birds-eye view – a panoramic view that dominates the pictorial representations seen in the book103. In this case, there is a choice of an angle usually more totalizing by the artist’s exercise.

The same notion is applied in other examples of the narrative: case of the Battle of Sole Bay104, seen by the narrator at the Greenwich Maritime Museum, and of the panorama of Waterloo [1912], seen together with the monument of the Battle of Waterloo, in Belgium [see Images 23 and 24]. Unlike Rembrandt – in which the grotesque error of the hand is associated with the choice of a more peripheral position by the painter -, the posture assumed in these composition is that of a

101

Again, the reference to the Anatomy Lesson, a painting which arouses the narrator’s continued interest: “[…] planted before the group portrait The Anatomy Lesson, with its almost four square meters. Although I went to The Hague especially to see this painting, which would occupy me a lot in the following years […].” (SEBALD, 2010, own highlights and translation, page 90) 102 “The plain that extends to Haarlem is seen from above, from the dunes, as is generally stated, but the impression of an aerial view is so strong that these dunes would have to be true hills, or even low mountains. The truth is that Ruisdael did not position himself on the dunes to paint, but at an imaginary and artificial point, some distance from the world.” (Ibid., page 90, own highlights) 103 According to the speech given by the researcher Judith Ryan at the conference Art, Fiction & History: The Work of W. G. Sebald 104 “[...] the pictorial representations of the great naval clashes are, without exception, pure fictions. Even celebrated naval painters such as Storck, Van der Velde or De Loutherbourg, of whom I have studied closely some versions of the Battle of Sole Bay at the Maritime Museum in Greenwich, are not able to give, despite the recognized realistic purpose, a true impression of how it should have been on board one of those ships […].” (SEBALD, 2010, page 84, own translation)

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falsification of perspective105, associated with the historical component, in which the point of view is sought to be more centralized and homogeneous. However, Sebald’s effort to exhibit what is obscure in the work of art remains – something that translates into the search for its residual, peripheral aspect. To a certain extent, it is also the case of the photographs made available by the narrator, the next point of analysis of the itinerary. In the hybrid reports of the writer, there is, therefore, space for art criticism, similar to the analysis of Rembrandt’s gesture and in agreement with the thought of Maria Filomena Molder: “What does art criticism consist of? The analytical procedure is not to remove the wrap. The core is not dug up at the expense of anatomy.

Depth is obtained by diving into the surface.” (MOLDER, 2016, own highlights and translation)

Image 22: View of Haarlem with quarar fields, Jacob van Ruisdael, 1670-1675. The image is not reproduced in the narrative, but it conditions a curious point of analysis of the narrator about the aerial view performed by the artist.

105

Like what can be seen at Waterloo: “(…) the gaze rises to the horizon, towards the huge circular mural, one hundred and ten meters by twelve, executed by the French marine painter Louis Dumontin in 1912 (…). It is then, one imagines when looking around, the art of representing history. It is based on a falsification of perspective. We, the survivors, see everything from top to bottom, we see everything at once an we still don’t know how it went.” (SEBALD, 2010, own highlights and translation, page 129)

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Image 23: Battle of Sole Bay, Willem Van der Velde, 1672. The narrator situates the pictorial representation of the great naval clashes as pure fiction.

Image 24: Small scale snapshot of the Battle of Waterloo panorama, possibly Sebald’s own strategy to make the image more intricate.

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2.2 Ton infix the image in the memory106: Photograph as residue Sebald’s writing architecture accommodates, amongst its pillars, a relevant point: the presence of black-and-white photographs, arranged according to the progress of the narratives. As one gets in touch with the author’s work, it is possible to say the use of photography reinforces its peripheral position in dealing with the image: there is often no more significant mention of the origin of the records. Still, in relation to this, it is also worth noting some effort to change the quality of the photographs107, a strategy that highlights the condition of residue.

It is important to go back, first of all, to the heart of Sebald’s interest in photographs. According to the author, photography is a kind of manifestation of the dead, something that calls for a certain spectral presence108. Sebald’s point of view relates to a very familiar notion about death, still derived from his postwar experience. However, it is in a text dedicated to the notes on cinema written by Kafka109 that Sebald is closer to what he means by photography. First, the compatibility with Kafka’s view of the progressive annulment110 – or approach of death – made explicit by the photographs. In the text in question, there is an even more conclusive passage: (...) we can assume that the erotic radiation of these images, of these snapshots (…) is due to their proximity to death. (…) The look that reveals everything, that penetrates everything has the underlying force of repetition. It always wants to make sure it saw what it saw. All that remains is to look, an obsession in which real time is suspended while the dead, the living, and the unborn, as sometimes happens in dreams,

106

Title of a work by the artist Vija Celmins [To Fix the Image in Memory], borrowed here for the similarity with Sebald’s procedure in relation to the use of photographs.

107 “We do also have to know that these seemingly deteriorating and deteriorated pictures are very largely made to be that. He’s fabricating these things.” (RYAN, 2017) 108 “And photographs are for me […] one of the emanations of the dead, especially these older photographs of people no longer with us. Nevertheless, through these pictures, they do have what seems to me some sort of a spectral presence.” (SEBALD, 2007b, page 40) 109 See SEBALD, W. G. – Kafka no cinema.

110 “[...] as so often happens when we look at old photographs, it leaves him terrified [referring to Kafka] with the progressive annulment of his person and the approach of death.” (SEBALD, 2014a, page 149)

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all come together on the same plan. (SEBALD, 2014a, page 147, own highlights and translation)

The idea of dissolution denounced by the photographs underlies Sebald’s continued interest in the way of dealing with images. Regarding Kafka’s notion, the progressive annulment, would have its origin in the fact that the copy lasts even after the copied one disappears111, an astonishment that seems to remain in Sebald’s narratives. On the other hand, the copy sustains the strength of repetition, a process that allows, in Sebald’s understanding, a suspension of time.

The getting used to the image of death112 provided by the photographs, therefore, comprises a double perspective: sometimes of astonishment – or even of terror , sometimes of combat against forgetfulness.

As was said in relation to architecture in the process of destruction, Sebald also seems to opt for the retention charge of the photographic image. In addition to the aesthetic sense, a concern confirmed by the writer113, the use of photography is an attempt to rescue in the uninterrupted flow of things that are constantly falling by the wayside. Once again, there is an ambiguous sense: at the same time that the copy is originally made to last, Sebald recognizes the nomadic aspect of photography - something that is easily lost and has the slightest chance of survival114.

In effect, the writer is especially attentive to this condition of residue. In Austerlitz, a narrative that Sebald identifies as closest to an elegy115 – coincidentally, the last book published in life – the effort to remove the photographs from oblivion

111

“And since the copy lasted after the copied one disappeared, there was an uncomfortable suspicion that the original, person or nature, has a lower degree of authenticity that the copy, that the copy wore out the original, in the same way that is said that whoever finds their doppelgänger senses their own destruction.” (SEBALD, 2014a, page 148, own translation) 112 Term used by Maria Filomena Molder, quoted previously in reference to the narrator’s coming to his senses.

113 Asked about the use of photographs, Sebald confirms: “There is primarily an aesthetic sense.”

(SEBALD, 2014b) 114 “The photograph is meant to get lost somewhere, is a nomadic thing that has a small chance to survive.” (SEBALD, 2014b) 115 “I think this one [Austerlitz] is much more in the form of an elegy, really, a long prose elegy.”

(SEBALD, 2007c, page 103)

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seems to be even greater. In this perspective, photography comes with the primary function of retaining and rescuing memory: One has the impression, [...] that something in them moves, as if we catched moans of despair, [...], as if the images have a memory of their own and remember us, the survivors, and remember us who we were and who the others were, those who are no longer with us. (SEBALD, 2012a, page 166, own highlights and translation)

Image 25: Photograph attributed to the character Jacques Austerlitz.

In The Rings of Saturn, on the other hand, the measure of elaboration seems to be different: the idea of retention remains, but the fight against forgetfulness incorporates an even wider scale in terms of destruction and catastrophe. Here, the need to erect a memorial takes on the tone of a compendium, under the warning that in every new form the shadow of destruction already resides116. If 116

“In a similar way to this continuous process of consuming and being consumed, in Thomas Browne’s view there is nothing left. In each new form the shadow of destruction already resides.

It is that the history of each individual, of each society and of the whole world does not describe an arc that expands more and more and gains in beauty, but an orbit that, once reached the meridian, inclines towards the darkness.” (SEBALD, 2010, page 32, own translation)

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nothing survives the simultaneous process of creation and destruction, a reflection guided by Thomas Browne, memory would be the vestige itself - or, again, the ash. It is precisely in this direction that the set of photographs in the book focuses In the context of the narrative, the photographs mainly anchor the pilgrimage path. Amidst the constant references that evoke death, aberration and catastrophe, what seems to stick to memory are the images of abandoned landscapes. For Sebald, it is about witnessing what surpasses us117 – vestiges left by a species that becomes increasingly monstrous in the course of the civilization's progress118. Amongst newspaper clippings, diverse illustrations and other resources that add to the book, it is the photographs that effectively denote the residue - and that are, as it were, a manifestation of ash [see Images 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31119].

As Sebald rescues via Kafka, “the images are beautiful, we cannot do without them, but they are also a torment.”120 In order to erect a memorial, a greater possibility of combating forgetfulness, it is necessary not only to appeal to the memory of the dead, but to reconstruct the moment of pain121 – an experience that can be translated in the context of the pilgrimage as a whole. In addition to

117

“Because (in principle) things outlast us, they know more about us than we know about them: they carry the experiences they have had with us inside them and are – in fact – the book of our history opened before us.” (Id., 2004, page 86) 118 In a text about Jan Peter Tripp’s work, which actually reflects Sebald’s own position: “The reverse side of this depiction of a species becoming more and more monstrous in the course of a civilization’s progress is the study of the abandoned landscapes and specially the still lifes in which – far beyond the events – only the motionless objects now bear witness to the former presence of a peculiarly rationalistic species.” (Ibid., page 86) 119 Here, similar to the strategy used in the book, the images are displayed without a caption.

120 “My dear, he writes [Kafka] to Felice in a photograph in which she looks at him sadly, ‘the images are beautiful, we cannot do without them, but they are also a torment’.” (Id., 2014a, page 146, own translation) 121 According to Sebald’s article on the German writer and painter Peter Weiss: “[…] the abstract memory of the dead is of little use against the attraction of amnesia if it does not also express sympathy […] in the study and reconstruction of the concrete moment of pain.” (Id., 2014c, page 97, own translation)

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the rescue through space and image, the fight against the art of forgetting122 is, eminently, written. It is this last mediation, therefore, that will be examined below.

122

Sebald writes about Weiss: “[...] the struggle against the ‘art of forgetting’ that is as much a part of life as melancholy or death, a struggle that consists in the constant transfer of memory to written characters.” (Id., 2014c, page 97, own translation)

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55

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3. LITERATURE

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“Could the desk be the place for ghosts?”123 W. G. Sebald

In principle, the emphasis given to the notion of the art of memory was fundamental to understand Sebald's strategy around space. Now, the reverse side takes priority: it is the study of the art of forgetting that seems to guide the writer's approach. More than resorting to the memory of the dead, as previously mentioned, it is necessary to understand what forgetting is all about - and, from there, guarantee the rescue of memory as ash by the writing.

There is an important notion that must be considered now: forgetting establishes memory124. In its performance, it "defies what is buried because it is unbearable”125. It is in this sense that retention enters: an operation that handles forgetfulness with the intention of preserving what must be returned. Regarding this process, the writer must have the ability, through language, to retrace the remembrance126. Or, as the narrative in The Rings of Saturn highlights127:

But the truth is that writing is the only way to deal with my remembrances (...). If they remained locked in my memory, they would become more and more burdensome over the course of time, so that in the end I would succumb to their growing weight. Memories sleep inside us for months and years on end, proliferating in silence, until they are awakened by some trifle and blind us to life in a strange way. (SEBALD, 2010, pages 252 and 253, own highlights and translation)

123

Excerpt from Austerlitz’s narrative (SEBALD, 2012a, page, own translation) According to the French writer Pascal Quignard: “Memory is, in principle, a selection of what to forget and, only afterward, there is a retention of what is intended to be removed from the act of forgetfulness that establishes it.” (QUIGNARD, 2018, page 61, own translation) 125 “Forgetfulness is never confronted with the erasure of something friable: it faces what is buried because it is unbearable.” (Ibid., page 61, own translation) 126 To retrace the memory it is necessary to reconstitute the moment of pain, as mentioned in the previous chapter. About this, Quignard writes: “A memory is, each time, something else and not an inert mnemic trait […]. For this trait to return, it is necessary that the hallucination that denies the loss has suffered such a terrible need […] that it sees again the thing that is not, and retraces it.” (Ibid., page 63, own translation) 127 Fragment of Chateaubriand’s diary incorporated into the narrative.

124

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In effect, Sebald searches the written word for the remnants of oblivion - that which guarantees access to the terrifying night, the unapproachable night128.

What guides his catalog of references is, above all, those who tried to penetrate the indomitable129, like the medical writings of Thomas Browne and the fantastic tales of Jorge Luis Borges. The diary as a source of access to the ash is also one of Sebald's current strategies – both in relation to the narrator's modus operandi and the writers' records mentioned in the books.

It must be said that forgetting, as the first act, brings together the forgotten and the retained130. In this perspective, literature is able to contemplate these two points, even if it is not in its total efficiency: it is the possibility of the word that tries to encompass the concrete experience of the unspeakable131. With this in mind, the following chapter investigates the recovery of memory as ash from the perspective of literature.

128

The night as a metaphor for loss and forgetfulness: “The night is at the source of the words […]. Thus, the terrifying night, the unapproachable night that is at its source is also its destiny.”

(QUIGNARD, 2018, page 65, own highlights and translation) 129 According to Maria Filomena Molder: “The night that returns resembles a threat, the night that is an imposition of life, of the dark part of life […]. […] among the Greeks, there were those who discovered that that night that may be an indomitable one, one that does not let us have secrets.”

(MOLDER, 2017, pages 75 and 76, own translation) 130 “Forgetfulness is the aggressive and first act that erases and that classifies, digs up and buries – and brings together forever – the forgotten and the retained.” (QUIGNARD, 2018, page 61, own translation) 131 Quignard reflects on the acquisition of language: “It is the helplessness of what was not, what was born, but which is hidden in the abandonment of the acquired word that fails.” Still in relation to this, he adds: “[…] being the concrete experience of the unspeakable in us, the difficulty in talking about language acquisition and death as a destiny (….).” (Ibid., pages 62 and 60, respectively, own translation)

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3.1 The mysterious survival of the written word132: Literary references in W. G. Sebald The mediation between memory and forgetfulness through the word is shown right at the beginning of the narrative of The Rings of Saturn: immobilized in the hospital, the narrator feels the urgency to take notes - at least, mentally - of the entire journey of the pilgrimage. Attached to the cutout image of the hospital window, as pointed out in the chapter on Space, what happens is a kind of comparison with Gregor Samsa133, famous character of Kafka - a constant literary reference in Sebald's work. It is noticeable, since the beginning, that kind of attraction of the written word that frequently emerges in the passages of the book.

It is in the record of the final point of writing by the narrator – one year after being discharged from the hospital, as already mentioned – that the references are inserted even more actively in the narrative. When evoking the figure of Michael Parkinson, whose trace of compatibility with Sebald himself gives evidence of the book's autobiographical tone134 a mention is made of Ramuz, also a writer. Here, it is important to return to the notion of the practice of walking linked to the literary activity, persistent evidence in Sebald's prose. In this sense, the author seems to follow the idea defended by Thomas Bernhard135 – another writer of his deep admiration: there is a permanent relationship between the act of walking and thinking136.

132

The title in question was taken from the narrative of The Rings of Saturn (SEBALD, 2010, page (101).

133 “In the contorted posture of a creature that stood upright for the first time, I was leaning against the glass and involuntarily thinking about the scene in which poor Gregor Samsa, his trembling legs, climbs the chair and looks out of the room, with an indistinct memory, so he says, of the feeling of freedom that before allowed him to look out the window.” (SEBALD, 2010, page 15, (own translation) 134 Parkinson, like Sebald, was a professor of literature at the University of East Anglia.

135 Openly, a reference to Sebald, as can be extracted from the author’s interviews. In addition, Bernhard’s writings are the subject of analysis in the book The Description of Unhappiness, originally written by Sebald in 1985.

136 Bernhard writes in Walking [1971]: “Walking and thinking are in a perpetual relationship that is based on trust. Cit. by POPOVA, Maria – Thomas Bernhard on Walking, Thinking and the Paradox of Self-Reflection.

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The mention of Parkinson is followed, shortly after, by the passage of Janine Dakyns, also a professor of literature and a staunch scholar of the work of Gustave Flaubert. In addition to the emphasis given to the obscure detail mentioned earlier, Janine's interest in investigating the fear of the false137 in Flaubert's writing draws attention. The difficulty that led him to not write for weeks or even months on end is explained as a response by the writer to the inevitable advance of stupidity138. In addition to the literary reflection, it is important to highlight the allusion to sand, a relevant detail of the passage in question: for Flaubert, the attempt to write was close to the idea of sinking into the sand. The metaphor is a key point in Sebald's procedure, since the sand appears under the symbol of ephemerality and residue139 – something that refers to forgetfulness, but that resists140.

Dakyns' character is also established as the link found to launch the next point of analysis141: the writings of the English doctor Thomas Browne. It is in this respect that the author's set of literary references around the ashes are actually configured. In Browne's case, the theme of the treatise on the practice of cremation and funerary urns, extensively addressed by Sebald, and the story described about Browne's lost skull142 closely corresponds with the author's intentions.

137

“[...] took a great personal interest in investigating the scruples that marked Flaubert’s writing, that fear of the false that, as she said, sometimes confined him to the couch for weeks or months on end […].” (SEBALD, 2010, page 17, own highlights and translation) 138 “Janine maintained that Flaubert’s scruples went back to the ineluctable advance of stupidity that he observed everywhere and, as he imagined, had already spread in his head. It was like, so they say he said once, as if the person sank in the sand. Perhaps for this reason, said Janine, sand was so important in her work. The sand conquered everything.” (Ibid., page 17, own translation).

139 ”Sand is one of the elements of Vanitas, dead-nature in which objects laden with symbolic values warn against the precariousness of human life [...]. […] Vanitas’ theme is constant throughout Sebald’s book, notable in the description of so many and so many sparkles of the past that have become opaque today.” (DANZINGER, 2017, page 133, own translation) 140 There is also the idea of return in the symbol of the sand: “Shifting and penetrable, sand adopts the shapes of the bodies resting in it and in this respect is a womb symbol.” (CHEVALIER; GHEERBRANT, page 825, own highlights) 141 “It was also Janine who indicated surgeon Anthony Batty Shaw to me, […] when, shortly after I was discharged from the hospital, I started my research on Thomas Browne, […] who had left a series of writings that barely allow comparison.” (SEBALD, 2010, page 19, own translation) 142 “Browne himself, in his famous treatise (half archeological, half metaphysical), on the practice of cremation and the funerary urns, offers the best comment about the later odyssey of his skull, when he writes that being scraped out of the grave was an abominable tragedy. But who knows,

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When investigating in depth the records left by Browne - in particular, the archaeological perspective, so to speak, of the English doctor's treatise143 –, the narrator reveals perhaps the most significant vision of what can be understood as ash confirming the often pointed out residual character. What is shown throughout the entire book is the compatibility with Browne's explicit vision144, the point of unfolding the entire narrative: The invisibility and intangibility of what moves us, this remained a mystery also to Thomas Browne, who saw our world as the shadow of another world. [...] all knowledge is surrounded by impenetrable darkness. What we perceive are only isolated lights in the abyss of ignorance, in the building of the world immersed in deep shadows.

(SEBALD, 2010, pages 27 and 28, own highlights and translation)

Still looking at the writings of the English doctor, Sebald rescues the essay on the Garden of Cyrus, in which Browne discovers a geometric structure - the quincunce145 [see Image 32] – found everywhere, whether in living or dead matter, and even in the works of art. Browne's intent recorded by the narrator, from this perspective, is to expose “patterns always recurring in the seemingly infinite diversity of forms”146 – or even, the idea that eternity resides in the reflection of the transitory nature.

he adds, the fate of his bones and how many times he will be buried?” (Ibid., page 20, own highlights and translation) 143 “[Browne’s] considerations are constantly returning to what came to light in the excavations field near Walsingham. It is amazing, says Browne, that the clay urns with such thin walls have been preserved unscathed for so long, half a meter from the surface, while plows and wars passed over them and large buildings […] crumbled and collapsed.” (Ibid., page 34, own translation) 144 It is important to point out the similarity between the narrative strategies of Browne and Sebald: “[…] Browne always boasts all his erudition […], working with metaphors and analogies of vast scope and constructing labyrinthine phrases, which sometimes extend for one or two pages, similar to processions or funeral processions in their pure prodigality.” (Ibid., page 28, own ihghlights and translation) 145 “Browne discovers this structure everywhere, in living and dead matter, in certain crystal forms, in starfish and sea urchins, in the vertebrae of mammals, in the backbone of birds and fish […] and in the works of art of man, in the pyramids of Egypt and in the mausoleum of Augustus, as well as in the garden of King Solomon […].” (Ibid., page 29, own highlights and translation) 146 “We study the order of things, but what is behind it, says Browne, eludes us. For this reason, it is appropriate to write our philosophy in lowercase, using the abbreviations and stenograms of the transitory nature, which exclusively reflect the reflection of eternity. True to the percept, Browne records the patterns that always recur in the seemingly infinite diversity of forms.” (Ibid., page 28, own highlights and translation)

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Image 32: The quincune structure discovered by Thomas Browne.

In articulation with this idea, there is a kind of explanation of destruction as a process inherent in everything that exists, albeit under the bias of permanence again, a substantial view of what can be understood as ash. It is the clue left by Browne that opens up the possibilities explored throughout the book and introduces the symbol of the moth, constantly evoked in Sebald's narratives and which will be mentioned later: And as the heaviest stone of melancholy is the inescapable anguish of our nature, Browne searches among what escaped annihilation147 for the traces of the mysterious transmigration capacity that he has observed so often in caterpillars and moths. (SEBALD, 2010, page 35, own highlights and translation)

The study of Browne's work also leads the narrator to introduce a reference to Libro de los seres imaginarios [1967], by Jorge Luis Borges. In the same way that the investigation of the patterns of nature fascinated the English doctor, the idea of the infinite mutations is also highlighted in Browne's descriptions. The trigger used by Sebald to establish the affinity between the two texts - by Browne and

147

It goes back to Browne’s writing about the funeral urns found in Walsingham, as already mentioned.

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by Borges - is the attraction around the “chimeras born in our thought”148. The two literary references persist in the narrative, which indicates Sebald's approach to the fantastic and the hidden senses149.

In the context of the pilgrimage, the narrator focuses once again on Borges' writing – more precisely, on the short story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius [1940].

Faced with the experience of visualizing a kind of “sea monster”, a delusion that came to the fore in the constant contact with horror, the pilgrim speaks of “our attempts to invent second or even third-degree worlds”150. The short story to which it refers deals with a conversation between Borges' narrator and the writer Bioy Casares, in which they talk about the possibility of writing a novel – "that would challenge tangible facts and incur in several contradictions151. Thus, few readers would be able to unveil the hidden reality of the narrative.

With reference to the short story, Sebald also suggests that he is not so committed to the real, despite the successive evidences shown in the book. There is an attempt by the narrator to document each step, but the attentive reader, as Sebald expects, is able to realize that there is something beyond that. In this sense, it is possible to fall into two perspectives: at first, the function of the imaginary as a way of transfiguring horror; in addition, the idea of fantasy as a component of memory152 – and therefore a central element to the writer's work.

148

“[...] in his compendium Pseudodoxia Epidemica, […], [Browne] deals with all kinds of beings, both real and imaginary […]. In any case, it follows from Browne’s descriptions that the idea of the infinite mutations of nature, which surpass all limits of reason, or the chimeras born in our thought were as fascinating to him as, three hundred years later, to Jorge Luis Borges, editor of Lo libro de los seres imaginarios […].” (SEBALD , 2010, page 31, own translation) 149 “[…] but the amazing monsters that we know exist in reality make us somehow suppose that the animals invented by us are not merely the fruit of imagination.” (Ibid., page 31) 150 “The memory of the uncertainty that I felt then brings me back to the aforementioned Uruguayan tale, which deals essentially with our attempts to invent second or even third worlds.”

(Ibid., page 78, own highlights and translation) 151 “[...] the two had lingered in a conversation about writing a novel that would challenge the tangible facts and incur several contradictions, in such a way that few readers – very few readers – would be able to unveil the reality hidden in the narrative, an atrocious reality, but at the same time totally meaningless.” (Ibid., page 78, own highlights and translation) 152 According to Pascal Quignard (2018, page 63): “Thus, it is necessary to list at least three memories: the memory of what has never been (the fantasy); the memory of what was (the truth); the memory of what could not be received (the reality). […]. It is the strange bed of memory of the triple past: whether it has never been, whether it has been or has been refused.”

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Borges' story also refers to the prospect of disappearance, by mentioning Tlön's labyrinthine construction153. Still in relation to the possibility of accessing a hidden reality through the narrative, the pilgrim adds in his report that Tlön's project "intended to achieve, in the course of time, a new reality through the unreal”154. It is precisely at this point in the book that Sebald's mapping strategy takes on a dubious characteristic: hitherto feasible, the places of pilgrimage seem to indicate a broader meaning. Later on, and perhaps as an answer, Sebald continues to weave his set of references and persists in the notion of ambiguity between destruction and ash, namely when articulating Borges and Browne: The world will be Tlön. But I ignore it, concludes the narrator [by Borges], in the serene leisure of my country house, I continue to revise an indecisive translation, chosen in Quevedo, of Urn Burial155, by Thomas Browne (which I do not intend to publish). (SEBALD, 2010, page 80, own highlights and translation)

In the manner of a weaver, Sebald allows the experience of the narrator to mix with the various accounts displayed in the book, as in the elaboration of a web.

In addition to the prospect of exploring the layers of memory, referred to in the first chapter, the author comments on the need to create a type of periscopic narrative156, in which the narrator constantly incorporates other people's narratives. For Sebald, the act of writing essentially consists of incessant

153

“Töln’s labyrinthine construction [...] is on the verge of extinguishing the known world.”

(SEBALD, 2010, page 80, own highlights and translation) 154 “It remains unclear, therefore, whether Uqbar once existed or whether the description of this unknown country is not a case similar to that of Tlön, the encyclopedist’s project to which the main part of the story in question is dedicated and which he intended to achieve, over the course of time, a new reality through the unreal.” (Ibid. page 80, own highlights and translations) 155 Again, Browne’s text on the discovery of the funerary urns.

156 In an interview, Sebald refers to the influence of Thomas Bernhard’s writing: “He only tells you in his books what he heard from others. So he invented, as it were, a kind of periscopic narrative. […]. So Bernhard, single-handedly I think, invented a new form of narrating which appealed to me from the start.” (Id., 2007a, page 83 own highlights and translation)

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elaboration157. Somehow, this narrative strategy leads to an intertwining of the themes158 and points, mainly, to the author's continuous effort to retain.

It is in the pilgrim's passage through the Sailor’s Reading Room159, a kind of maritime museum dedicated to the activity of sailors, that the possibility of literature is best seen as retention - and, evidently, as ash. When considering the “mysterious survival of the written word”160, the narrator identifies literature as a tool for accessing the traces161. Here, the narrator's gesture seems to allude to the idea that “writing is hearing the lost voice”162. It is also under this perspective that Sebald uses memoirs, the next point of appreciation. From the point of view of his own procedure163, the author writes: [...] But if I see the ribs from the past life, I always think: this has to do with the truth. The brain works continuously on the traces [...] [...]

How far do we have to go back to find the beginning? (SEBALD, 2012b, page 79, own highlights and translation)

157

“Writing and creating something is about elaboration. You have a few elements. You build something. You elaborate until you have something that looks like something. […]. But the degree of elaboration is absolutely fantastical. It goes on and on and on and on.” (Id., 2007, page 114, own highlights) 158 “And I’ve always found that quite a good measure – that once things are going in a certain way that you can trust, the even in the writing process itself, things happen. […]. I think it’s the whole business of coincidence, which is very prominent in my writing. […] it seems to me simply an instance that illustrates that we somehow need to make sense of our nonsensical existence.”

(SEBALD, 2007, page 96) 159 “There is in Southwold [...] the so-called Sailor’s Reading Room, an establishment of public utility that, being the sailors in danger of extinction, serves mainly as a kind of maritime museum, where all kinds of things related to the sea and marine life.” (Id., 2010, page 99, own translation) 160 “That morning, when I carefully closed the marble cover of the logbook, pondering the mysterious survival of the written word […].” (Ibid., page 101, own highlights and translation) 161 “First, [...] I flipped through the Southwold logbook, a patrol ship anchored in front of the pier since the fall of 1914. […] Each time I decipher one of these notes, I am amazed that a trace long gone in the air or in the water remains visible here on paper.” (Id., 2010, pages 100 and 101) 162 “To write is to hear the lost voice. It is taking the time to find the word of the enigma, to prepare your answer. It is looking for language in lost language.” (QUIGNARD, 2018, page 87, own highlights and transaltion) 163 Extract from the autobiographical part of the book After Nature.

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3.2 The books of memories: Sebald as a ghost hunter164 In the hybrid accounts characteristic of Sebald's prose – a kind of arrangement produced from fictionalized memories, travel journals, inventories of natural curiosities and meditations around the work of art165 –, a notion prevails: the idea that his entire work, just as the author refers to the writing of Peter Weiss, is "conceived as a visit to the dead”166. Amongst the variety of sources that compose his catalog of references, it is possible to affirm that the books of memories namely, the diaries kept by writers - have an essential character.

It is in this perspective that the narrative of The Rings of Saturn directs itself: firstly, through Sebald's quotations of Joseph Conrad's diary [1857-1924]. From a trigger of the pilgrimage - the narrator's passage through the city of Southwold and the documentary seen on Roger Casement, as mentioned above - the writer takes a considerable glimpse of Conrad's personal history and, in effect, seeks to reconstruct the narrative about the encounter between Casement and the then Belgian steam captain in Congo167. The procedure is crucial to understand Sebald's logic and explains the author's creative process.

There are a number of themes that define Sebald's affinity around the figure of Conrad: the interest in pilgrimage and life at sea168, the scale of destruction 164

Asked, in an interview, about the possibility of seeing himself as a ghost hunter, Sebald replies: “I think it’s pretty precise. It’s nothing ghoulish at all, just an odd sense that in some way the lives of people who are perhaps no longer here – and these can be relatives or people I vaguely knew, or writer colleagues from the past, or painters who worked in the sixteenth century – have an odd presence for me, simply through the fact that I may get interested in them.” (SEBALD, 2007b, page 42) 165 “[…] critics have puzzled over what to call his works, with their mélange of fictionalized memoir, travel journals, inventories of natural and man-made curiosities, impressionistic musings on paintings, entomology, architecture, […] and more.” (SCHWARTZ, 2007, page 16) 166 “All of his work [by Peter Weiss] is conceived as a visit to the dead.” (SEBALD, 2014c, page 97, own translation) 167 “As I had lost, except for those few words [from Conrad’s diary] and some somber images of Conrad and Casement, […], I have since tried to reconstruct in some way, from the sources, the story from which sleep deprived me that night (unforgivingly, I imagine) in Southwold.” (Id., 2010, page 110, own translation) 168 “[Joseph Conrad] Korzeniowski, who in the meantime had acquired British citizenship and the rank of captain had been in the most remote regions of the globe […].” (Ibid., page 120)

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addressed by the two authors and the imagetic quality of the writing169. Through the elaboration of the narrator around the Polish writer's life trajectory, the narrative inscribes a panorama of the destruction170 and calls into question, once again, the catastrophe caused by humans – now, under the justification of progress171. In the course of his work, Sebald reinforces a constant link between the distortions of interior life172 and the historical perspective. Still, with regards to the pilgrimage, the account of Conrad's life highlights the idea of the pilgrim as a wanderer173 – a view taken from the life and work of the Polish writer, as seen in the Heart of Darkness174: Nor is there an initiation into such mysteries. He [man] needs to live in the midst of what is incomprehensible, which in turn is also hateful. And all of this also contains a fascination that acts on him. (CONRAD, 2019, p. 8)

Further on, the narrator focuses on the life of the writer Algernon Swinburne [1837-1909], a regular at Dunwich - the ruined city referred to in the first chapter.

By incorporating a series of events related to Swinburne - taken from notes compiled by biographers of the author and colleagues at the time -, Sebald inserts one of the most relevant comparisons with regards to the exercise of literature, precisely as “a less radical form of self-destruction”175. About Swinburne's production, the text highlights the poem By the North Sea, a kind of elegy that

169

“Like Conrad, [...], Sebald makes us see. His mental process is essentially organic; it proceeds by means of visual and emotional association, at the opposite pole of the systematic thought […].”

(ROMER, 2002) 170 From the records of the Russian occupation of Poland to the horrors of Congo’s colonization.

171 “[...] King Leopold, patron of the exemplar enterprise, declares that the friends of humanity could not seek a more noble objective: to open the last part of our land that until then had remained untouched by the blessings of civilization.” (SEBALD, 2010, page 123, own translation) 172 Still on Weiss’s writing, but which correlates with Sebald’s own understanding: “But in the course of this evolution, even private suffering is increasingly mixed with an understanding that the grotesque deformations of our inner life have their background scenario and origin in the collective social history.” (Id., 2019, page 9, own transaltion) 173 “He was a sailor, but he was also an errant […].” (CONRAD, 2019, page 5, own translation) 174 Joseph Conrad’s novel describing the horrors of Congo’s colonization through the figure of Marlow, captain of a steamboat for a Belgian trading company.

175 “Despite his extremely disproportionate physique, Swinburne dreamed from an early age […] of joining a cavalry regiment and losing his life as a beau sabreur in some equally absurd battle. […] only when he lost hope once and for all of a heroic death, due to his underdeveloped body, did he fully engage in the exercise of literature and thus, perhaps, to a less radical form of selfdestruction.” (SEBALD, 2010, page 165, own highlights and translation)

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refers to the ruined landscape of Dunwich: “Like ashes the low cliffs crumble and the banks drop down into dust176.

The narrator's movement is noticeable: as he captures the memory records of the dead, he pays important reflections on the exercise of literature itself. The only exception is represented by the visit to Michael Hamburger [1924-2007], the only writer alive until then. From the dialogue with Hamburger, Sebald's narrative introduces two questionings: the first asks about the reason for the writing; the second, on the duration of elective affinities, an essential point of connection between Sebald and the writers of his admiration: We broke our heads in vain, days and weeks on end, and, if asked, we would not be able to say whether we continue to write out of habit or vanity, or because we do not know how to do anything else of life, or out of astonishment, out of love for the truth, out of desperation or out of indignation, nor would we be able to tell whether writing makes us more perceptive or crazier. (SEBALD, 2010, page 183, own translation) Over what distances in time do elective affinities and correspondences prevail? How do we see ourselves in another person, or, if not ourselves, then our precursor177? (Ibid., P. 183, own highlights and translation)

From the encounter with Hamburger, the most enlightening passage about Sebald's procedure also emerges, which reason "can do nothing against the ghosts of repetition”178. It is in this perspective that the writer's work takes place, in the manner of a ghost hunter. In an article on the writing of Nabokov, another writer who continually integrates his network of references179,” Sebald is even 176

“A long poem entitled By the North Sea is his tribute to the progressive dissolution of life. Like ashes the low cliffs crumble and the banks drop down into dust.” (SEBALD, 2010, page 162, own translation) 177 Then, the narrator offers a moment of contemplation around the elective affinities with Hamburger and introduces yet another autobiographical correspondence: “That I have passed through the English custom-house thirty-three years after Michael, that I now think about giving up my craft of professor, that he is working hard writing in Suffolk and me in Norfolk […]: none of this is particularly strange. But because on my first visit to Michael, I had the feeling that I lived or had once lived in his house, just as he lived, that I cannot explain.” (Ibid., pages 183 and 184, own translation) 178 “[...] my reason can do nothing against the ghosts of repetition, which haunt me more and more assiduously.” (Ibid., page 188, own highlights and translation) 179 The mention to Nabokov is common in interviews given by Sebald, in particular about the memoir Speak, Memory. From this biography, Sebald also incorporates Nabokov’s passion for the study of butterflies and moths: “In my view, almost nothing concerned him as much as the

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more forceful: “Ghosts and writers meet in their common concern with the past, theirs and of the ones they loved180.

In dealing with this uninterrupted flow of rescue, Sebald establishes a series of correspondences: this is the case of the mention of Edward Fitzgerald [18091883], a writer who appears in the narrative of The Rings of Saturn and in the article on Nabokov mentioned above181. In both texts, the importance of Fitzgerald is explained by the author's translation of Rubayat, by the Persian poet Omar Khayyam - an experience referred to by the translator as a kind of colloquy with the dead182. Like the other life trajectories covered in The Rings of Saturn, there is a permanent relationship between the personal aspect and the recurrent signs of destruction. From Fitzgerald's records, the narrator highlights the friendship with William Browne183, whose loss awakens an unforgiving melancholy on the writer.

Still, on memoirs, perhaps the most striking reference in the entire narrative is the diary kept by the Viscount de Chateaubriand [1768-1848], published under the title Memories from beyond the grave. It is through the invocation of Chateaubriand's past that Sebald best questions the exercise of creation and the ability of memory to remain184. There is also, from the fragments of the French writer, a kind of tribute - albeit disappointed - to the imperious force of memory:

knowledge of the spirits, of which his famous passion, the study of butterflies and moths, was perhaps just a variant.” (SEBALD, 2014d, page 136, own translation) 180 SEBALD, W. G – Texturas Oníricas: Pequena observação sobre Nabokov.

181 “Had Nabokov known verses by the 11th-century Persian poet translated by Edward Fitzgerald, his distant predecessor at Trinity College, Cambridge, and he would have subscribed to the notion of perpetual movement found in them.” (SEBALD, 2014b, page 141, own translation) 182 “Fitzgerald described the endless hours he spent translating this two and twenty-four-page poem as a colloquy with the dead.” (Id., 2010, page 202, own highlights and translation) 183 “It is not clear whether he realized […] the desire that moved him, but only the constant care that Browne’s state of health inspired him was an indication of his deep passion. Browne undoubtedly embodied for Fitzgerald a kind of ideal, but precisely for that reason he had seemed to him from the beginning under the shadows of transience […].” (Ibid., 203, own translation) 184 “Isn’t it unfair to waste your happiness in favor of exercising the talent? Will my writings survive my grave? Will anyone still be able to understand me in a modified world from top to bottom? – The viscount writes these lines in 1822.” (Ibid., page 251, own highlights and translation)

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And yet, what would we be without memory? We would not be able to order the simplest thoughts, the most sensitive heart would lose the ability to become attached to another [...]. What sadness is not our life!

So full of false assumptions, so futile that it is little more than the shadow of the chimeras released by memory. (SEBALD, 2010, page 253, own highlights and translation)

In the last chapter of the book, the mention of Thomas Browne's library - largely imaginary - recalls the principle of cataloging explored throughout the narrative.

The so-called Musaeum Clausum or Bibliotheca Abscondita is a reference by Browne to his probable collection of books and antiques, the extent of which also covers, according to the narrator, “the inventory of a treasure existing only inside his head”185. In addition to the allusion to the compendium, Sebald shapes the circular movement characteristic of his writing – from Browne, a recurring figure in the narrative, to the mention of the silkworm186. It is at this point that we have some access to the symbolism of the moth, a presence that accompanies the development of the narrator's entire report187.

The continuous reference to the moth aligns with the mental pilgrimage of the last chapter: in the foreground, the narrator describes the process of reproduction of the moths and, consequently, the metamorphosis of the silkworms. From the remarkable complexity resulting from this process - inspired by the perspective of destruction188 –, the book enters the human interest in the practice of sericulture and makes a vast historical record - from the introduction in China,

185

“In a folder of posthumous writings by Thomas Browne […], there is also a catalog entitled Musaeum Clausum or Bibliotheca Abscondita of books, figures, antiques […], of which this or that must have been an effective part of a collection of the rarities collected by Browne, but most were certainly the product of his imagination, the inventory of a treasure existing only inside his head.”

(SEBALD,2010, pages 269 and 270, own translation) 186 “All of this is compiled in the naturalist and medical record, rich in wonders, of Thomas Browne, all of this and much more, of which, however, I will not mention the rest now, except perhaps that bamboo cane that served as a staff and within which […] were brought the first silkworm eggs to the western world. “ (Ibid., page 271, own translation) 187 After the quotation, from Browne, on the process of transmigration of moths, the narrator forays into the practice of sericulture in China, the motto for the development of the sixth chapter.

188 “The sole purpose of this butterfly is to breed. The male dies shortly after mating. The female lays three to five hundred eggs in the space of several days and then also dies.” (SEBALD, 2010, page 272, own translation)

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through the expansion of cultivation in France189 until the arrival in Nazi Germany190.

In a broad perspective, the presence of the moth summons the intricate net that Sebald develops throughout the narrative - in the manner of the web produced by the bowels of the silkworm and, consequently, of the thread manufactured by the weaver. It is in this sense that the author establishes a connection between the exercise of literature and the weaver practice191. Ultimately, the symbol of the moth is the structure capable of signaling the notion of permanent duplicity around destruction and ash192 – either by the transmigration process itself, as Browne observed at first, or by the convergence pointed out by Sebald in the closing of the book: And Thomas Browne, who as the son of a silk merchant would have had an eye for these things, observes in a passage [...] of his Epidemic Pseudodoxy that, in Holland of his time, it was a habit to cover with silk veils all mirrors and all the paintings that exhibited landscapes, people or fruits of the earth in the house of the deceased, so that the soul, when leaving the body, would not be distracted on its last trip, either by its own reflection or by its homeland, which it would soon lose forever.

(2010, page 292, own highlights and translation)

The last convergence of the narrative is not trivial: the silk veil does not prevent the return of the dead, but rather makes the retention process viable. Amongst

189

To this end, Sebald uses yet another memoir: Mémories de Sully, by Maximilien de Béthune – Duke of Sully-, in which the duke presents the advantages of silkworm cultivation to his sovereign.

190 After commenting on Hazzi’s unsuccessful plan [German advisor at the time of the first promotion of sericulture], the narrator states that the plan was carried out by fascists, as he discovered in the public archive of the village where he was born. There are notable points of convergence between the practice of sericulture and the purposes of the regime, including “extermination to prevent the degeneration of the breed.” (SEBALD, 2010, page 290, own translation) 191 “It is natural, therefore, that, above all, the weavers, along with the educated and other writers with whom they have a lot in common […] tended to suffer from melancholy and from all the other evils associated with it, due to the work that forced them to sit hunched, day after day, in an attempt to keep their reflection permanently sharp and to calculate without rest the complex artificial models they create.” (Ibid., page 279, own highlights and translation) 192 About achieving a presence that accompanies the entire narrative through the symbol: “[...] [it’s] an opportunity to create something which has a kind of haunting, spectral quality to it, something that appears, forms of apparitions of virtual presence that have, vanishing though they are, a certain intensity which can otherwise be not very easily achieved.” (SEBALD, 2007b, page 53)

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the ghosts of repetition of Sebald's writing – from the literary references to the records of the memory of the dead – there is something that emerges, fundamentally from the perspective of the permanence of ash. Or again, as the author asserts: “the desire to suspend time is only validated in the most scrupulous evocation of things long forgotten”193.

193

“Nabokov also knew, and better that most of his fellow writers, that the desire to suspend time is only validated by the most scrupulous evocation of things long forgotten.” (SEBALD, 2014d, page 139, own translation)

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Image 33: The adult silkworm moth (table 29, figure 23), incorporated by Sebald into the narrative.

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CONCLUSION Throughout this itinerary, focused on the investigation of the recovery of memory as ash, it was sought, in the same way as was initially said about the work of criticism, “recognizing in the ashes the flame of life”194. In accordance with the observation of the recurrent patterns of Sebald's work – or, of the ghosts of repetition, as the author refers it –, it was possible to establish three points of convergence: Space, Image and Literature. In this sense, the itinerary sought to unfold, in each chapter, the nuances of the rescue carried out by Sebald.

Under this motto, and having The Rings of Saturn as a framework, the examination of each category mentioned made it evident that the rescue work of the German writer is, to a large extent, explicit. Although Sebald perpetuates a kind of mourning constellation in his narratives - especially, in the compendium that constitutes The Rings of Saturn –, there is an attempt, like the observations about Thomas Browne, to continuously record the residues, with the characteristic intention of retention. If for Genet, as highlighted in the introduction, the work of art is for the dead - but of the dead who were never alive or who “were alive enough for us to forget them”195 –, Sebald points out that the rescue can either be veiled, or it can be explicit.

In this perspective, there is a purpose for the emergence of memory, based on the writer's own mediation sources. In the case of Space, the main understanding is that this art of memory experienced by Sebald understands the recollection spatially196. At the same time, the use of pilgrimage enables the notion of spatial practice – intrinsically linked to literary practice, as suggested in all of Sebald's 194

Once again, Maria Filomena Molder through Walter Benjamin: “This is the alchemical power that Benjamin attributes to the critic: recognizing in the ashes the flame of life.” (MOLDER, 2016, page 253, own highlights and translation) 195 “But these dead people I speak of were never alive. Or else I forgot them. They were alive enough for us to remember them, since their life had the function of making them cross that quiet margin from where they wait for a sign – coming from here – and recognize it.” (GENET, 2000, page 15, own translation) 196 Confirming the thought of Giuliana Bruno (2018, page 221): “The art of memory understood recollection spatially.”

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work – and the remembrance. Therefore, the choice of the narrator as a pilgrim becomes justified. In a broad sense, the author appeals to the spatial instance of memory functioning and compares the pilgrimage to life. Moreover, in the manner of what is rescued via Chateaubriand: the experience of walking is inscribed in the body of the writer – who, “still in life already thinks himself in the tomb that his memories represent”197.

The statement extracted from Chateaubriand's diary, one of the writers addressed throughout the narrative, confirms the notion of memory as ash exercised by Sebald. By continuing to explore the author's sources of mediation, the second chapter, referring to the Image, proves the effort to show what is obscure in the work of art – something that is translated, more strongly, by the search for its residual, peripheral aspect. With effect, the writer develops an art criticism that, in search of the notion of ambiguity and versatility of the work, refers to the articulation with the thought of Maria Filomena Molder, where echoes the Deleuzian thought: “depth is obtained by diving into the surface”198.

While the proximity of life to death is the very theme of the work of art – and, therefore, a source of access to ash –, Sebald understands it as the addiction to photography. In this direction, the author is compatible with Kafka's view of the progressive annulment – or approach of death – denounced by the photographic record. At the same time, Sebald's procedure indicates that getting used to the image of death199 is twofold: now with astonishment – or with terror – and now with the fight against forgetfulness. Regarding the perspective of The Rings of Saturn, the writer bets on the retention burden of photography, on an even broader scale in terms of destruction and catastrophe. When anchoring the pilgrimage path, it is the photographs that, in fact, denote the residue - and that are, properly, a manifestation of ash.

197

Again, Sebald’s record according to Chateaubriand’s diary: “In writing, he [the writer] becomes the exemplary martyr of the destiny that providence reserves for us, and, still in life, he already thinks himself in the grave that his memories represent.” (SEBALD, 2010, page 254, own highlights and translation) 198 MOLDER, Maria Filomena – Um Soluço Ardente. In Rebuçados Venezianos.

199 Again a reference to the expression used by Maria Filomena Molder.

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Finally, there is the mediation of Literature, persistent evidence in the fight against the art of forgetting200. In spite of the notion of the art of memory explained earlier, it is the attraction of amnesia201 that justifies the author's persistence. Sebald seeks – from literary references to the records of the memories of the dead – the remains of oblivion, giving priority to literature as a tool for accessing the vestiges.

It is the experience of language that encompasses the concrete experience of the unspeakable202, in the multiple facets explored by Sebald. Here, the analysis of the writer's extensive use of references results in an affinity with Pascal Quignard's point: “To speak dumb, to speak muted, to peek at the missing word, to read, to write: it is the same thing”203.

In relation to memoir books, extensively addressed by Sebald, it is important to register the perception of elective affinities204 and the obsessive concern of the writer with the past, whose motto guides his writing process. In order to undertake a cataloging of the ash, Sebald uses the “evocation of things long since forgotten” – especially, the records of dead writers. It is through this understanding that the desire to suspend time is made possible - and that, strictly speaking, the permanence of ash is made possible.

The redemption experience brought up by Sebald's work is the result of the continuous rescue work. However, there is no real possibility of salvation: amid the destruction called for, the author gives visibility – and suspension – to the residue. Like the work of art, Sebald's writing achieves vital persistence205 by rescuing the ashes – namely, “life's most noble sarcophagus”206. Even so, again as Maria Filomena Molder tells us, it is not able to save the night – understood

200

Referring again to the term extracted from Sebald’s text on the written work of Peter Weiss.

Still on Weiss’ writing, in correspondence with Sebald’s procedure, as previously cited in a footnote.

202 Term designated by the writer Pascal Quignard, as previously mentioned.

203 QUIGNARD, Pascal – O nome na ponta da língua.

204 As has been said, this is the essential point of connection [or of correspondence] between Sebald and the writers of his admiration.

205 MOLDER, Maria Filomena – Um Soluço Ardente. In Rebuçados Venezianos.

206 Ibid., page 252.

201

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as a threat, as a part of the darkness of life – it only illuminates it207. With regards to what appears continuously in his work, Sebald was aware of this process: In America, says Thomas Browne in his treatise on funerary urns, hunters are on their feet when the Persians have just drifted into the deepest sleep. The night shadows are pulled over the earth like the tail of a cloak, and like almost everything, from one meridian to another, lies down after sunset, he continues, it would be possible, following the setting sun, to see in the globe inhabited by us only bodies extended, row after row, as if mowed by Saturn's sickle - a cemetery of infinite extension for a humanity that succumbs to prostration. (SEBALD, 2010, page 86, own translation)

207

In agreement with Maria Filomena Molder’s argument from Walter Benjamin: “The night that returns resembles a threat, the night that is an imposition of life, from the dark part of life, part that Benjamin considers to never know redemption […] But with the night the stars come back, for him another name for the works of art, which do not save the night […], only illuminate it.” (MOLDER, 2017, page 74, own highlights and translation)

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DANZIGER, LEILA - Imagens e espaços da melancolia: W.G. Sebald e Anselm Kiefer. Revista Brasileira de Literatura Comparada. [In Line]. 9: 10 (2007).

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DARBY, David – Landscape and Memory: Sebald’s Redemption of History. In W. G. Sebald: history, memory, trauma. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2006. ISBN 978-3-11020194-9. p. 265-276.

GENET, Jean – O Ateliê de Giacometti. São Paulo: Cosac & Naify Edições, 2000. ISBN: 85-86374-71-7.

FRANKLIN, Ruth – Sebald’s Amateurs. In W. G. Sebald: history, memory, trauma. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2006. ISBN 978-3-11-020194-9. p. 127-138.

FRANKLIN, RUTH – Rings of Smoke. In The emergence of memory: Conversations with W. G. Sebald. 1. ed. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007.

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GUIGNARD, Pascal – O nome na ponta da língua. Belo Horizonte: Chão da Feira, 2018. ISBN 978-85-66421-17-0.

KÖHLER, Andrea – Penetrating the Dark. In Unrecounted. New York: New Directions Books, 2004. ISBN 0-8112-1596-2. p. 97-102.

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MOLDER, Maria Filomena – Um Soluço Ardente. In Rebuçados Venezianos.

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MOLDER, Maria Filomena – Para onde vai a luz quando se esconde? In Cerimónias. Belo Horizonte, Chão da Feira, 2017. ISBN 978-85-66421-14-9. p.

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MÜCKE, Dorothea von – History and the Work of Art in Sebald’s After Nature.

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SEBALD, W. G. – As day and Night, Chalk and Cheese: On the Pictures of Jan Peter Tripp. In Unrecounted. New York: New Directions Books, 2004. ISBN 08112-1596-2. p. 85-95.

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ICONOGRAPHIC SOURCES Image 1. Photograph of the hospital room. Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), page 14.

Image 2. The narrator’s arrival at Lowestoft. Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), page 50.

Image 3. At the farewell to Lowestoft, the meeting with the black hearse covered with wreaths. Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), page 54.

Image 4. From the hotel's balcony, the narrator sees the famous Lowestoft pier.

Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), page 53.

Image 5. The pilgrimage continues South of Lowestoft. Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), page 61.

Image 6. A frame of the educational film about herring fishing that emerges to the narrator's memory. Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), page 64.

Image 7. Records the continuity of the route, now towards Southwold. Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), page 79.

Image 8. Façade of a degraded building found in The Hague. Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), page 88.

Image 9. Scheveningen beach landscape. Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), page 92.

Image 10. Dunwich Coast. Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), page 158.

Image 11. Ruins of All Saints, Dunwich. Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), page 159.

Image 12. Tower of the old Eccles Church Tower. Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), page 159.

Images 13 and 14. Photograph of Michael Hamburger's home. Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), pages 185 and 184, respectively.

Image 15. Map that reveals the highlight for the Orfordness extraterritorial land strip. Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), page 232.

Image 16. Probably a photograph that exhibits Sebald himself. Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), page 260.

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Image 17. Lithograph of W. G. Sebald by Jan Peter Tripp. Available in Unrecounted (2004), page 82.

Image 18. Photograph inserted as part of the pilgrimage context. Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), page 75.

Image 19. Albrecht Dürer, Melencolia I, 1514. Available in: <http://www.albrechtdurerblog.com/theres-no-melancholy-in-melencolia-onesecret-of-greatest-art-fraud-in-art-history/>, consulted on September 8th 2019.

Image 20. The Anatomy Lesson seen from the narrative of The Rings of Saturn.

Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), pages 22 and 23.

Image 21. Emphasis given to misrepresentation of the hand. Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), page 25.

Image 22. View of Haarlem with quarar fields, Jacob van Ruisdael, 1670-1675.

Available in:<https://www.mauritshuis.nl/en/explore/the-collection/artworks/viewof-haarlem-with-bleaching-grounds-155/>, consulted on July 8th 2019.

Image 23. Battle of Sole Bay, Willem Van der Velde, 1672. Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), page 85.

Image 24. Small-scale snapshot of the Battle of Waterloo panorama. Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), page 130.

Image 25. Photograph attributed to the character Jacques Austerlitz. Available in Austerlitz (2012a), page 167.

Images 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 and 31. Photographs of the desolate landscapes covered by the narrator. Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), pages 40, 198, 262, 142, 217 and 141, respectively.

Image 32. The quincunce, structure discovered by Thomas Browne. Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), page 29.

Image 33. The adult silkworm moth (table 29, figure 23). Available in The Rings of Saturn (2010), page 272.

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