In Memoriam: W.G. Sebald: 1944-2001
by Clay Risen
"She should have died soon hereafter/there would have been time
for such a word …"
William Shakespeare, "MacBeth"
The recent death of W.G. Sebald came one year too soon. Had Sebald,
who was killed on Dec. 14 in a car accident, died 12 months from now,
he would have been alive to win the awards that are destined to roll in for
his most recent novel, "Austerlitz." He would have lived to see his next novel,
"Luftkrieg," published in English. His death would have garnered a
better spot than page C16 in the New York Times national edition,
behind the stock
quotes. As it is, he died a minor literary celebrity, albeit one
whose star was rising quickly.
The world may never know what it lost. Sebald was not only a unique
stylist (so original that many critics
could only describe his work as
"Sebaldian"); he was also one of those rare writers who could
elucidate a fully developed conscience within their work. His
prevailing theme was memory, both collective and individual,
and he used photographs and sketches scattered through his works to
cast light and doubt on the ways people remember and
forget.
But his work is never simply about memory — Sebald focused on how
tragedy was written and erased in human consciousness.
Like his fellow German novelist Günter
Grass, Sebald was concerned with post-war Europe's attempts to
rewrite its past in a way to absolve it of the
horrors of the 20th century. But unlike Grass, Sebald was not
a political writer; for him the tragedy of forgetting was not a
social failure as much as a personal one. In "Austerlitz," the title
character, raised in Wales, learns that he is actually a Czech Jew
who, as a very young child, was sent to the United Kingdom. Suddenly
bereft of memory, he finds himself unable to navigate
society:
If language may be regarded as an old city full of streets and
squares, nooks and crannies, with some quarters dating back far in
time while others have been torn down, cleaned up, and rebuilt, and
with suburbs reaching further and further into the surrounding
country, then I was like a man who has been abroad a long time
and cannot find his way through this urban sprawl any more, no
longer knows what a bus stop is for, or what a back yard is … I
could not even understand what I myself had written in the past
— perhaps that least of all.
Austerlitz spends the rest of his life tracking down his parents,
and it is only when he finds definitive evidence of their fate
that he comes to some solace. But he never fully returns to
the world; Austerlitz remarks at different times how outside of
everything he feels, how out of touch and unconnected. This, for
Sebald, is the real tragedy of Europe's attempts to forget its
past.
Hence the use of visuals to complement the text. Language,
it seems to Sebald,
cannot fulfill the narrative task of remembrance. The
haunting photographs of long-dead children and abandoned rail
stations don't just illustrate his novels; they complete them,
and in a unique, Sebaldian way. But Sebaldian describes more
than just the author's style. It is more than merely his choice of
words, or his idiosyncratic illustrations. It is his
willingness to take on the immensely personal and subjective side
of social catastrophe, of lost worlds and innocence. Like his
characters, from Jacques Austerlitz to the semi-autobiographical, unnamed
narrator in "Vertigo," Sebald is possessed by a vision of a lost
Europe, one still visible in paintings and architecture, one
dedicated to reason and equality yet harboring the violence that
would inevitably destroy it.
Were Sebald more famous, front-page articles would have noted
that his death itself was "Sebaldian."
Melancholic, an unfinished life. And we would have learned a thing
or two from him; he had something to teach us about sadness and
memory in a way few contemporary authors do. Instead, there is
nothing. Sebald should have died soon
hereafter, because there would have been time for such a word.
E-mail Clay Risen at risenc@yahoo.com.
