1. Space

“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)

10 Excerpt from an interview with The Guardian. (SBALD, 2001) 11 “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)

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.

12 “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.