W.G. Sebald - Austerlitz

‘I think of how little we can hold in mind, how everything is constantly lapsing into oblivion with every extinguished life, how the world is, as it were, draining itself, in that the history of countless places and objects which themselves have no power of memory is never heard, never described or passed on.’

Austerlitz

‘His art is a form of justice’

Rachel Cusk

The last book by the great German writer W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz (2001), tells the story of one individual’s twentieth century trauma through the repression and return of his memory and belated investigations into his origins.

‘Jacques Austerlitz’ is a Kindertransport survivor who spent most of his adult life avoiding any knowledge of the Third Reich, including his own involvement and his family’s fate. When memory returns, the effect is shattering and seismic. At once a study of a traumatised consciousness at the limit, and a new way of apprehending (and beginning to understand) the degenerate history of the twentieth century.

This may seem like more than enough to be going on with, but as a literary work Austerlitz is so much more. With no chapters, few paragraphs, and dotted throughout with ambiguous photographs, this doesn’t look much like an ordinary novel. And indeed it partakes of many other genres, including memoir, travelogue, philosophy, history . . . Long passages are devoted to architectural history, birds, the nature of time, early aviation and religion in Wales, topics which may or may not relate to the central themes of the book.

And as in all Sebald’s prose narratives, there is the mysterious narrator, someone who both is and is not the author, who listens with respect and empathy to Austerlitz’s story, meeting him by chance over several decades, and who adds his own documentations and investigations to the story. The result is a book that is beautifully written, revelatory and ultimately almost unbearably moving.

Over the eight weeks of this study we will begin to answer the following questions, among others:

• What does this novel tell us about the nature of memory itself?
• What are the ethical and moral quandaries faced by both writer and reader of this book?
• How do Sebald’s unique style and technique – at once archaic and postmodern, German and English – enhance our appreciation and understanding of the narrative?
• What connects the author-narrator to his traumatized subject?
• What role do the enigmatic, caption-less photographs and images play in the text?
• What is the background to the writing of this book, and its inspiration (much has been discovered since the author’s death)?

JOINING DETAILS:

• Eight-meeting study, live on Zoom, led by Lewis Ward
• Wednesday 8 July – 26 August, 7.00-9.00 pm
• £280.00 for eight two-hour meetings
• Recommended edition: Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald, Penguin, ISBN: 9780241951804