I loved this book when it came out (at the time I thought it had been translated into German because of the Sebald's exile in the UK) but am not sure how exciting this is for most HN readers.
Sebald was a true genius. His writing is a journey down fascinating veins of human history and culture, and the uncanny experiences we have of these in the present. He had a profound sensitivity and empathy for what it is to be a human being. You will get something new from his books with each read, and always the same marveling at our world, the tragedy we make in it, and what an imagination could have captured this.
Highlights of the scant recordings we have of him are:
For me, his most important contribution is his essay on post war German literature and how it failed to adequately reflect the mass bombing of German cities. (Title: On the natural history of destruction / Luftkrieg und Literatur)
It made me better understand what I felt was wrong about how young Germans are introduced to literature and national heritage. Contrast Sebald with Günther Grass. It's shocking to see how popular Grass' or Andersch's brand of literature is, and how forgotten Sebald already is in Germany.
It also made me realize that so many stories of personal loss and tragedy will die untold with my father's generation. I think the denial of suffering Sebald discusses is partly why liberalism still has a difficult stand in Germany, and why Sebald found greater freedom abroad. It took my father 62 years to tell me what happened to his 3 sisters when their refugee train from Saxony to the Ruhr Valley got attacked from the air. There are just so few stories like his published. This must have made it so hard to heal for the war generations. Sebald understood this suffering from a deeply moving, human perspective.
OP may find it illuminating to read Sebald's take on post war Germany and Heiner Müller's take at the same time. That's how I currently try to make sense of all this.
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[ 0.28 ms ] story [ 20.5 ms ] threadHighlights of the scant recordings we have of him are:
- Reading from Austerlitz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccMCGjWLlhY
- An interview with Michael Silverblatt shortly before his death: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSFcTWIg-Pg
For me, his most important contribution is his essay on post war German literature and how it failed to adequately reflect the mass bombing of German cities. (Title: On the natural history of destruction / Luftkrieg und Literatur)
It made me better understand what I felt was wrong about how young Germans are introduced to literature and national heritage. Contrast Sebald with Günther Grass. It's shocking to see how popular Grass' or Andersch's brand of literature is, and how forgotten Sebald already is in Germany.
It also made me realize that so many stories of personal loss and tragedy will die untold with my father's generation. I think the denial of suffering Sebald discusses is partly why liberalism still has a difficult stand in Germany, and why Sebald found greater freedom abroad. It took my father 62 years to tell me what happened to his 3 sisters when their refugee train from Saxony to the Ruhr Valley got attacked from the air. There are just so few stories like his published. This must have made it so hard to heal for the war generations. Sebald understood this suffering from a deeply moving, human perspective.
OP may find it illuminating to read Sebald's take on post war Germany and Heiner Müller's take at the same time. That's how I currently try to make sense of all this.