N° 3378
It is not often that books receive the universal critical
acclaim with which W.G. Sebald's work in English translation has
been met. The Rings of Saturn, in particular, achieved the
sort of plaudits which would enable most writers to die happy.
Sebald's limpid prose is literally entrancing and has encouraged a
serious, passionate and aesthetic response. His unique style was
first employed in Vertigo, published in the original
German in 1990 and now available in English. As in The
Emigrants, Vertigo interweaves four narratives that
develop an elegiac evocation of a transcendent theme--which, in
this case, is that of memory. Beginning with Marie Henri Beyle
(Stendhal), and his painful and unreliable recollections of the
military campaign during which his rites of passage were won, the
narrative elegantly traverses Sebald's own voyages through Italy.
It journeys into the intersection of temporal and personal
perspectives which is the stuff of all interpretations, both past
and present.
As the book develops, it returns to the same locations: Milan,
Verona, Venice and the Alps. In the course of this fractured
meandering, the reader lives with a haunted Franz Kafka and admires
the serene beauty of the stars above Lake Garda, before returning
to Sebald's home in the Bavarian Alps ,where the author confronts
his childhood memories.
Of all Sebald's works, his narrative style is perhaps best suited
to the subject-matter of this book, for it is precisely the
distorted and unfathomable essence of memory that his stumbling
journey seeks to unravel. Thus in Vertigo, Sebald's
integration of personal, historical and fictional perspectives,
combined with the nature of his physical exploration, creates a
vivid and lasting impression of the imaginative confusion that is
inherent in any thought, recollection or projection. This style of
writing requires deep integrity and it is impossible not to develop
a picture of a deeply sensitive mind, which is aware of the very
nature of its conceits and deceptions. "What is it that undoes a
writer?", asks Sebald, when thinking of Stendhal. The question
weighs over the rest of the book and indeed over much of Sebald's
work.
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