by W. G. Sebald
2 Vormärz Refers to the period before the failed March revolutions of 1848 in Germany (particularly Baden), and also to the (German-speaking) writers active then. It tends to signify a more politically engaged writing than that of the preceding Biedermeier era, usually thought of as spanning the years 1815—48.
3 Martin Salander Keller’s second and last novel (1886) has been translated into English by Kenneth Halwas: Martin Salander (London: Calder, 1963).
4 well-known passage Refers to Keller’s story “Kleider machen Leute” (“Clothes Make the Man”) from the collection Die Leute von Seldwyla. For a list of English translations, see the Bibliography.
5 Veilchenberg Keller’s original has Veilchenburg (Violet Castle).
6 Der grüne Heinrich English translation by A. M. Holt, Green Henry (London: Calder, 1960; Oneworld Classics, 2010).
7 The Origin of Private Property Full title: The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.
8 bric-a-brac mountain The pun on Brockengebirge (literally mountain of junk or bric-a-brac, but no doubt alluding to the Brocken, the highest peak in the Harz mountains, and famously the scene of the Walpurgisnacht, e.g. in Goethe’s Faust) is untranslatable here.
9 Ferdinand Kürnberger (1821—1879), Austrian writer who for political reasons emigrated to Germany between 1849 and 1856. The novel referred to is probably Der Amerika-Müde: Amerikanisches Kulturbild (The Man Who Tired of America: A Picture of American Culture) of 1855.
10 the Landvogt von Greifensee Refers to the eponymous story from the collection Zürcher Novellen; English translation by Paul Bernard Thomas, The Governor of Greifensee (New York: Mondial Books, 2008).
11 Hoffmann’s drops Used for fainting spells and cramps.
12 a box with musk Marderdreck: formerly used as perfume. There is an old saying in German, “to know one’s musk from one’s marten scat,” perhaps roughly equivalent to knowing one’s onions. While pine martens are rare in the UK, in continental Europe the related beech marten is a household pest, and formerly pet—cf. the (in Keller’s text tame) martens in Heinrich’s dream of homecoming on pp. 108—109 above.
13 plaited from fragrant palm leaves Keller has Halme[n] (“blades of grass, grasses”), Sebald Palmen (“palms”)—the former makes more sense, but cf. the use of palm leaves for (somewhat absurd) decoration in Robert Walser’s story from the Bleistiftgebiet cited above (p. 141).
14 Die drei gerechten Kammacher English translation by Robert M. Browning, “The Three Righteous Combmakers,” in Gottfried Keller, Stories, ed. Frank G. Ryder (New York: Continuum, 1982) (translation adapted).
15 little Meret Cf. the eponymous chapter (“Das Meretlein”) in Der grüne Heinrich (vol. I, ch. 5).
16 fall peacefully asleep Entschlafen is more often used as a euphemism for dying, though it can, as here, mean falling asleep. Sebald deliberately plays on this ambiguity here.
17 “brings us closer” Walter Benjamin, “Gottfried Keller,” in Selected Writings, vol. 2, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999) (Gesammelte Schriften, vol. II.i, pp. 283—95).
18 “Sometimes the river glided” Keller, “A Village Romeo and Juliet” (“Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe”) from the collection Die Leute von Seldwyla. Along with “Clothes Make the Man,” this is possibly the best-known of Keller’s stories, and the one translated the most frequently into English. The passage quoted here is adapted from the version published as A Village Romeo and Juliet: A Tale, intro. Edith Wharton (London: Constable, 1915 [no translator given]), p. 155. Other English translations are listed in the Bibliography.
19 the colossal scrawl “die kolossale Kritzelei.”
LE PROMENEUR SOLITAIRE
1 Martin Walser The essays by Martin Walser and Elias Canetti, along with an extract from Carl Seelig’s “walks with Robert Walser,” are contained in Katharina Kerr, ed., Über Robert Walser, vol. 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1978). English translations (where available) are listed in the Bibliography. The German writer Martin Walser (b. 1927) is no relation to his Swiss namesake Robert.
2 Was it a lady named Wanda The diverse items in this list in the main reflect titles of actual texts by Walser.
3 Bleistiftgebiet Das Bleistiftgebiet is the collective term used to refer to Robert Walser’s “microscripts” or “micrograms,” written in pencil on scraps of paper in a minuscule, almost indecipherable script and long thought to be written in code. See pp. 149—52 above.
4 Der Räuber The Robber, trans. and intro. Susan Bernofsky (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2000). See also The Tanners (Die Geschwister Tanner), trans. Susan Bernofsky (New York: New Directions, 2009). The present essay first appeared as an introduction to this volume; it has been revised slightly for the present edition. For further English translations of Walser’s works, see the Bibliography.
5 a clairvoyant of the small Sebald’s phrase is “ein Hellseher im Kleinen.” In Walser’s introduction to his first collection, Fritz Kochers Aufsätze (Fritz Kocher’s Essays), the narrator explains how he has seen little of the wider world (“die große Welt”), but “dafür ist es ihm vergönnt gewesen, in seiner kleinen hell zu sehen”—he has been granted the gift of farsightedness in his own small world. “Hellsehen” (“seeing clearly”) has in German the additional meaning of clairvoyance.
6 “night-bird shyness” “das Nachtvogelhaftscheue, in der Finsternis die Meere überfliegende, in sich Hinabwimmernde.” English translation by Susan Bernofsky (The Robber, p. 26).
7 Schützenfest “Shooting fair” or “marksmen’s festival,” a traditional event featuring shooting competitions, food and drink stalls, and often a funfair or circus. The Schützenfest is still an annual feature of (mainly) rural life in Germany and Switzerland today.
8 “from insanity and nowhere else” Walter Benjamin, “Robert Walser,” in Selected Writings, vol. 2: 1927—34, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999) (Gesammelte Schriften, vol. II.i, pp. 324—28).
9 “In the Government of Simbirsk” Vladimir Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol (New York: New Directions, 1961; London: Penguin Books, 2011).
10 attic cell Sebald uses the term Bleikammer, a reference to i piombi, the attic cells under the roof of the Doge’s palace in Venice used to house political and other prisoners. Casanova’s incarceration there is recalled in “All’estero” (in Vertigo); cf. the comment there: “presumably not a few prisoners slowly perishing beneath the leaden roof of the palace will have been of that irrepressible species whose desire drives them on, time after time, to the very same point” (trans. Michael Hulse), which seems equally to apply to the fate of the writer as set out here.
11 “storms of steel” A reference to Ernst Jünger’s famous novel of the Western Front in the First World War, In Stahlgewittern (1920). English translations (Storm of Steel) by Basil Creighton (1929) and Michael Hofmann (London: Penguin Books, 2003).
12 Kleist Heinrich von Kleist (1777—1811) wrote his first drama, Die Familie Ghonorez (better known as the tragedy Die Familie Schroffenstein) in Switzerland in 1802, where—perhaps influenced by Rousseau’s views on nature—he briefly harbored hopes of settling to a rural existence. He killed himself in a suicide pact with Henriette Vogel on November 21, 1811, on the shores of the Wannsee near Berlin.
13 Otto von Kotzebue On Kotzebue, see “Why I grieve I do not know” p. 71 and note p. 191 above, and also Walser’s eponymous piece in the volume Fritz Kochers Aufsätze: Geschichten; Aufsätze (pp. 326—27). Otto von Kotzebue was in fact the son of the dramatist.
14 “yards and yards” Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1987), pp. 65—66; (New York: Vintage, 1989), p. 83.
AS DAY AND NIGHT—
1 “Action et passion” “Action and passion so little separable that one no longer knows who is looking and who is being looked at, who is painting and who is being painted” (translation by Michael Hamburger, in his
version of this essay in Unrecounted, p. 80: a closer rendering than in the published translation of Merleau-Ponty’s essay listed in the Bibliography).
2 his comprehensive work on art and illusion E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 206.
3 Gombrich goes on to explain Ibid., p. 207.
4 “And though he may try” Ibid., p. 220.
5 We are such stuff as dreams In English in the original where, however, “on” is misquoted as “of.”
6 ’tis all a Chequer-board In English in the original (Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, trans. Edward FitzGerald).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A NOTE ON TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS
The following bibliography lists both the works referred to in W. G. Sebald’s texts and their English translations where available. An asterisk denotes an edition known to have been owned or consulted by the author. For a catalog of Sebald’s library at the time of his death, see Jo Catling and Richard Hibbitt, eds., Saturn’s Moons: W. G. Sebald—A Handbook (Oxford: Legenda, 2011).
Where Sebald quotes directly from other writers in the text, the relevant passages are quoted, wherever possible and appropriate, from the published English translations listed below. In some cases, however, these have been adapted where necessary to fit more closely with Sebald’s original. It should, though, also be noted that Sebald often does not quote directly but adapts citations for his own ends.
INTRODUCTION
Lubow, Arthur. “Crossing Boundaries,” in Emergence of Memory: Conversations with W. G. Sebald, ed. Lynne Sharon Schwartz (New York, London, etc.: Seven Stories Press, 2007), pp. 59—173.
Silverblatt, Michael. “A Poem of an Invisible Subject,” in Emergence of Memory, pp. 77—186 (Bookworm Interview, KCRW, Santa Monica, California, December 6, 2001).
“Three Conversations with W. G. Sebald: (1) Echoes from the Past: Conversation with Piet de Moor (Brussels, 1992); (2) Lost in Translation? Conversation with Jon Cook (Norwich, 1999); (3) In This Distant Place: Conversation with Steve Wasserman (Los Angeles, 2001),” in Saturn’s Moons: W. G. Sebald—A Handbook, eds. Jo Catling and Richard Hibbitt (Oxford: Legenda, 2011), pp. 349—75.
A COMET IN THE HEAVENS
Hebel, Johann Peter. Werke, 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1968).* Vol. 1: Erzählungen des Rheinischen Hausfreundes. Vermischte Schriften: “An den Vetter: Patriotisches Mahnwort”; “Der Brand von Moskau”; “Die Fixsterne”; “Der Komet von 1811”; “Die Kometen”; “Ein Kriegsschiff”; “Das Unglück der Stadt Leiden”; “Traumbilder.” Vol. 2: Gedichte: Briefe: “Der Bettler”; “Die Vergänglichkeit.”
Johann Peter Hebel: Schatzkästlein des Rheinischen Hausfreunds: Ein Werk in seiner Zeit, ed. Hannelore Schlaffer (Tübingen: Rainer Wunderlich Verlag Hermann Leins, 1980).*
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS:
Hebel, Johann Peter. The Treasure Chest (selections), intro. and trans. John Hibberd (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1994): “The Tailor at Penza” (“Der Schneider zu Pensa”); “The Great Sanhedrin in Paris” (“Der Große Sanhedrin zu Paris”); “The Sly Pilgrim” (“Der schlaue Pilgrim”); “Kannitverstan” (“Kannitverstan”); “The Emperor Napoleon and the Fruit Woman in Brienne” (“Kaiser Napoleon und die Obstfrau in Brienne”).
The Penguin Book of German Verse, trans. Leonard Forster (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1994): Hebel, “Transience.”
SECONDARY SOURCES:
Benjamin, Walter. Angelus Novus: Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1966)*: “Johann Peter Hebel”; “Gottfried Keller.”
———. Illuminationen: Ausgewählte Schriften (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1961)*: “Robert Walser.”
———. “Johann Peter Hebel (I): On the Centenary of His Death,” English translation by Rodney Livingstone, in Selected Writings 1913—1926, vol. 1, eds. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996).
———. “A Chronicle of Germany’s Unemployed: Anna Segher’s novel Die Rettung,” trans. Edmund Jephcott, in Selected Writings, vol. 4, pp. 126—33 (Gesammelte Schriften, vol. III, pp. 530—38).
Bloch, Ernst. Das Prinzip Hoffnung, 3 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1968).*
———. The Principle of Hope, trans. Neville Plaice et al. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).
Dutourd, Jean. Le Feld-maréchal von Bonaparte: Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Français et de leur décadence (Paris: Flammarion, 1996).*
Heidegger, Martin. Hebel—Der Hausfreund (Pfullingen: Neske, 1957), reprinted in Heidegger, Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens (Gesamtausgabe, vol. 13) (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1983); English translation by Bruce V. Foltz and Michael Heim as “Hebel—Friend of the House,” in Contemporary German Philosophy 3 (1983).
———. “Die Sprache Johann Peter Hebels” (1955), in Martin Heidegger, Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens.
———. Gespräch mit Hebel: Rede beim Schatzkästlein zum Hebeltag 1956 (Lörrach: Hebelbund, n.d.). (= Aus der Schriftenreihe des Hebelbundes Sitz Lörrach e. V., Nr. 4), reprinted in Hanns Uhl (ed.), Hebeldank: Bekenntnis zum alemannischen Geist in sieben Reden beim Schatzkästlein (Freiburg: Rombach, 1964).
———. “Dank bei der Verleihung des staatlichen Hebelgedenkpreises,” in Hebel-Feier: Reden zum 200; Geburtstag (Karlsruhe: Müller, 1960), reprinted in Hebel in Ehren: 50 Jahre Hebel-Preis (Bühl-Moos: Elster, 1986) (= Allmende, Nr. 13).
Minder, Robert. “Heidegger und Hebel oder die Sprache von Messkirch,” in Dichter in der Gesellschaft: Erfahrungen mit deutscher und französischer Literatur (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1966);* also includes “Johann Peter Hebel und die französische Heimatliteratur.”
Remembering Johann Peter Hebel: Anniversary Essays, eds. Julian Preece and Robert Gillett, Oxford German Studies 40: 1 (2011).
J’AURAIS VOULU QUE CE LAC EÛT ÉTÉ L’OCÉA —
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Les Confessions, 2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1980).*
———. La Nouvelle Héloïse, 6 vols. (Paris: Librairie des Bibliophiles, 1889).*
———. Träumereien eines einsamen Spaziergängers: Der fünfte Spaziergang, trans. Franz Bäschlin (Biel: Verkehrsverein Biel und Umgebung (Schweiz), n.d.)* (Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire: Cinquième promenade).
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS:
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Confessions (trans. anon.), ed. and intro. P. N. Furbank (London: Everyman’s Library, repr. 1992).
———. Meditations of a Solitary Walker, trans. Peter France (Harmondsworth: Penguin 60s Classics, 1995).*
———. Reveries of the Solitary Walker, trans. Peter France (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1979) (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire).
———. Reveries of the Solitary Walker, trans. Russell Goulbourne (Oxford: World’s Classics, 2011).
SECONDARY SOURCES:
Henzi, Werner. St. Petersinsel und J-J Rousseau’s Aufenthalt 1765 (Biel, 1956).*
Starobinski, Jean. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: La transparence et l’obstacle: suivi de sept essais sur Rousseau (Paris: Gallimard, 1971); English trans. Arthur Goldhammer, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988).
———. Rousseau: Eine Welt von Widerständen, German trans. Ulrich Raulff (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1993).*
WHY I GRIEVE I DO NOT KNOW
Mörike, Eduard. Sämtliche Werke (Munich: Hanser, 1964)* (Prose: Das Stuttgarter Hutzelmännlein, including Die Historie der schönen Lau: Maler Nolten. Poems: “Verborgenheit”; “Der Feuerreiter”; “Früh im Wagen”; “Peregrina”).
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS:
Mörike, Eduard. Mozart’s Journey to Prague and a Selection of Poems, trans. and intro. David Luke (London: Penguin Classics, 2003): “Peregrina”; “Seclusion” (“Verborgenheit”).
———. Die Historie der schönen Lau / The Story of Lau, the Beautiful Water
Nymph, bilingual edition with translation by Stan Foulkes, ed. Peter Schmid (Munich: Langewiesche-Brandt, 1996).
———. Nolten the Painter, trans. Raleigh Whitinger (Rochester, N.Y., and Woodbridge: Camden House, 2005) (Maler Nolten); includes the poem “Fire Rider” (“Der Feuerreiter”).
SECONDARY SOURCES:
Holthusen, Hans Egon. Eduard Mörike in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Bildmonographie, 1976).*
Mayer, Birgit. Eduard Mörike (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1987).*
DEATH DRAWS NIGH, TIME MARCHES ON
Keller, Gottfried. Werke, 4 vols. (Leipzig: Insel, 1921).* Vol. 1: Gedichte; Das Sinngedicht; Vol. 2: Der grüne Heinrich; Vol. 3: Die Leute von Seldwyla; Sieben Legenden; Erzählungen; Vol. 4: Zürcher Novellen; Martin Salander; Therese.
———. Der grüne Heinrich, 4 vols. (Stuttgart and Berlin: Cotta, 1919).*
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS:
Keller, Gottfried. Green Henry, trans. A. M. Holt (London: Calder, 1960; Oneworld Classics, 2010) (Der grüne Heinrich).
———. Martin Salander, trans. Kenneth Halwas (London: Calder, 1963; 2010).
———. The Governor of Greifensee, trans. Paul Bernard Thomas (New York: Mondial Books, 2008) (“Der Landvogt von Greifensee,” from Zürcher Novellen).
———. A Village Romeo and Juliet: A Tale, intro. Edith Wharton (London: Constable, 1915) (no translator given).
