It’s hard to believe it took me 50 years to find my way to WG Sebald.
Much like reading Thomas Bernhard, reading WG Sebald is to concentrate on solving a puzzle. (And indeed, Sebald himself has acknowledged this influence).
Sebald's books are not for kicking back and waiting to be entertained.
Instead, you need to stay awake/ be alert, ready to doubt everything and try to draw the threads together. What is this guy trying to say? You have to keep your eye on the ball.
I was listening to a fabulous conversation about Rings of Saturn, in which the guests remarked that to read Sebald is to try to "understand the world by assembling fragments together, like piecing together pieces in the puzzle."
And another guest remarked that, isn't that more like what it's like to live life? Our lives really don't feel like those things we read about in an American novel "with a clear narrative arc and "through line." Meaning is gained through examining multiple threads, varying starts and stops and traveling over old ground--in rings." This is my memory of what I heard on the program --but it is also really how I feel about writing, reading and living life.
Sebald once said in an interview that he writes palimpsests.
The story goes over and over the same ground.
Over the Saint Bernard Pass--again and again-- to W. First, following in the footsteps of Stendhal, then twice journeys he made as himself (kind of?)...Is this fiction/memoir/travel/history--what is it?
Smaller journeys are made again and again: from Vienna to Venice and from Venice to Padua... he himself --as himself-- does this several times, Kafka too. Casanova as well. By creating these multi-layered palimpsests, going over the same ground multiple times from multiple angles, metaphysical meaning might be read in the meanderings?
Also like Bernhard-- but more like Proust-- Sebald really looks at the Old Masters.
(For me, Sebald is a little Bernhard plus Proust... but I maybe like Sebald best of all?)
Pisanello. I have never seen his work in person. How is that possible?
I adore Pisanello. And reading this novel (is it even really a novel?) --with its illuminating meditations about the paintings, I fell totally in love.
The painter is sometimes compared to two of my favorites: Piero and Durer...
This painting, in the National gallery in London, The Virgin with the Saints, is just extraordinary. Look at that hat!
Here is Sebald:
The following afternoon, back in London, my first port of call was the National Gallery. The painting by Pisanello that I wanted to see was not in its usual place, but owing to renovation work had been hung in a poorly lit room in the basement into which few of the visitors who wandered the gallery every day found their way. It is a small painting, measuring about 30 by 50 centimetres, lamentably imprisoned in a far too heavy Victorian frame. The upper half of the picture is almost completely filled by a golden disc, radiant against the blue of the sky and serving as a background for the Virgin and her Redeemer Child. Lower down runs a line of dark green treetops from one side to the other. On the left stands the patron saint of herds, herdsmen and lepers, St Anthony. He is wearing a dark red cowled habit and a capacious earthen-brown cloak. In his hand he holds a bell. Beside him lies a tame boar, close against the ground in kindly submission. The hermit with a stern expression surveys the shining knight who stands before him, and who, for his part, is all of this world, almost heart-rendingly so. The dragon, a ringed and winged creature, has already breathed its last. The ornate armour, wrought of white metal, draws the evening light unto it. Not the slightest shadow of guilt shows on the youthful face of St George. His neck and throat are bared to us, unprotected. The most remarkable feature, however, is the very finely worked broad-brimmed straw hat adorned with a large feather which the knight wears on his head. I wish I could know how Pisanello conceived the idea of furnishing St George with such inappropriate and positively extravagant headgear. San Giorgio con cappello di paglia – most odd indeed, as the two trusty horses gazing across the knight’s shoulder may well be thinking too.
(Great post here about Sebald on Pisanello)
[Posts about German art and literature under "Bavarians" category at right]
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