Whirlpools drag me under the water and I roll along the bed of the river with the stones a gasping fish I return to the surface, my eyes wide with fear.
The pa.s.sage of dreams is haunted by ghosts the Little Hunchback for example standing by the sluice hut on the Ludwig Ca.n.a.l. He wears gla.s.ses with uncannily thick lenses and a blue baseball cap with the logo MARTINIQUE.
back to front on his head.
Empress Kunigunde has been waiting for ever at the foot of the Katzenberg and on the bridge over to the old Town Hall of which an oleograph always hung in our sitting-room the dog Berganza crosses my path for the third time.
A little way further upstream up at the Hain Park Schorsch and Rosa are taking a stroll one August afternoon in "43 she in a light dust-cloak he with his traditional jacket slung over his shoulder. They both seem happy to me, carefree at least and a good deal younger than I am now.
Thus, thinks Kara Ben Nemsi son of the German, floweth time a ruby red cipher leaping from digit to digit trickling in silence from the dark of night to the gray of dawn just as sand once ran through the hour gla.s.s.
Mai 1996
Mai 1997
Marienbad Elegy I can see him now striding through the suite of three south-westerly facing rooms in his cinnamon-colored coat pondering diverse matters for example his long- harbored plan for a treatise on clouds & yet somewhat troubled too & testy on account of his pa.s.sion for Ulrike who is the reason for his third visit to this up-&-coming resort. He looks out at the little rotund trees evenly s.p.a.ced around the square in front of the Kebelsberg Palais, sees a gardener pushing a barrow uphill, a pair of blackbirds on the lawn. He has slept badly in the narrow bed & felt like some beetle or other strange creature till outside dawn spread its wings & he could rise & continue his work. True, he"d give anything now to rest again but any minute now they would call him to table.
Perhaps they"ll serve a pike, then escalope & to finish a compote of wild berries.
Bohemians know a thing or two about cooking: the sweet dumplings with his morning coffee were a joy & his dearest beloved seemed so gentle again, of such delicate humor & fondness for himself he all but died of loving hope & felt his heart throb in his throat.
Thus the days pa.s.s.
He gazes into her eyes & twists his finely embroidered napkin wallet once to the left once to the right.
When his request for her daughter"s hand is met with reluctance by her mother & after the last cruelly sweet kiss he departs in a sombre mood through the mountains & still in his coach composes the famous elegy of twenty-three stanzas which in the manner of his own telling is said to have leapt from a tempest of feeling the ripest creation of his old age.
As for me however I have never really liked this gorgeous braid of interwoven desires which the poet upon arriving home had transcribed in his most elegant hand & personally bound in a cover of red morocco tied around with a ribbon of silk. I saw its facsimile in the Marienbad Museum this morning along with several other objects which meant much more to me & among which was a wick trimmer & a set of sealing waxes, a little papier-mache tray & an ink drawing on pasteboard by Ulrike showing in somewhat uncertain perspective the North- Bohemian village of Trebivlice where she lived as a spinster until her death. Further a China-yellow tulip-poplar leaf from her herbarium inscribed in black ink across its thin veins then the sad remains of black lace to which Czech gives the lovely name krajky, a kind of choker or cravat & two wristlets not unlike m.u.f.fetees & so narrow that her wrist cannot have been much stronger than a small child"s. Then there is a steel engraving showing Fraulein Levetzow in her declining years. By now her former suitor has long lain under the soil & here she stands in a gray taffeta dress next to a book table, with an abominable bonnet-ful of corkscrew curls & a ghostly-white face.
Marienbad, 14. viii. 99 At the edge of its vision the dog still sees everything as it was in the beginning And always towards the East the corn blindingly white like a firn-field at home How silvery on that January morning the towers of Frankfurt soared into the ice-cold air Somewhere behind Turkenfeld a spruce nursery a pond in the moor on which the March ice is slowly melting In the sleepless small hours of Sunday 16th January last year in the hideously rustic Hotel Columbus in Bremer haven I was set upon with whoops & squawks by the four Town Musicians. The terror still in my limbs I sat on the dot of eight alone but for my morning coffee & jaundiced by the light coming in through the bull"s-eye panes of the guest house.
Past the window on the wet cobbles outside filed the shadows of emigrants with their bundles & packages people from Kaunas & Bromberg from the Hunsruck & Upper Palatinate. Over the loudspeaker came the soft strains of that same old accordion the same old singer"s voice quavering with emotion forgotten poesy of our people the home star & the sailor"s heart. Later from the train the Powder Tower from Nibelung days the coffee silos block-h.o.a.rds of brown gold on the horizon a satellite town before it a colony of allotments once maybe known as Roseneck Samoa or Boer"s Land. And over the North German plains motionless for weeks now these low blue-black clouds the Weser flooding its banks & somewhere around Osnabruck or Oldenburg on a patch of gra.s.s in front of a farm a lone goose slowly twisting its neck to follow the Intercity careering past.
Room 645 Hotel Schweizer hof, in Hinuber Strae Hannover a table-top composed like a jig- saw of various exotic & home- grown timbers finished with a cover of marbled faux leather. On the walls greenish dotted textured paper & a picture composition by Karsten Krebs with Sogni di Venezia beneath it in silver script. The carpet is spotted with midnight blue the velvet curtain is claret the sofa ultra marine the bedspread calyx motif turquoise with a dizzying arabesque in lilac & violet on the bedside rugs.
Through the gray net curtain the view of an ugly tower block the TV-tower the coal-black Sparka.s.se-building its top story with the S-logo & saver"s penny.
Nothing happens all day until towards evening stretched across the entire re inforced gla.s.s window a ragged flight of crows makes wing to its roost.
My ICE Rail-Planner Herrenhausen is offering a cruise to Denmark two visits to the seawater wave- bath thrown in someone will be waiting at the station & will say how nice to meet you & how about a Fitness-Week in Eckernforde. Outside the light is thinning the ribbon of a road glistening in the drizzle black patches of forest & off white farmsteads pa.s.s, in a lime works over the hills stone is being ground to dust. We are wired I read to the vital nerves of our national economy radio, transmission & defense systems office communications railways & building components ready & waiting for you.
Simply phone or fax us this coupon. At some point during the hour between Fulda & Frankfurt it had started to get dark & where a moment before there had been blue landscape I saw in their rows beside me the reflections of the heads of my tired fellow travelers gliding on through the night. Thus spake the angel of the Lord: Fear not for our house is kept to the highest standards & has a pleasant ambience. Gall-bladder liver stomach intestines metabolic disorders overweight aging impairments rheumatism please write for our prospectus & ask your chemist for the energy-vitamin for executives especially those over forty.
One Sunday in Autumn 94 I am in the unmanned station in Wolfenb.u.t.tel waiting for the railcar from Gottingen to Brunswick. Fleecy clouds fleck the sky sporadic leaves spin from the trees an old- timer in brown breeches rides a lady"s bike across the tracks. Hearing the bells ring I recall the cathedral at Naumburg the minsters of Ulm & Freiburg the Church of Our Dear Lady in Munich long-forgotten Hogmanays & other catastrophes.
The Herzog August Video Rental a one-window-fits- all semolina-colored establishment is closed but the kiosk between the donershop & the Wellaform hair-salon is open to anyone in a hurry to purchase the Bild- Zeitung or a p.o.r.n mag.
In the yard in front by a lattice fence overgrown with pink roses stands a small gathering of all-weather drinkers in beards & baseball- caps like gold diggers from the Australian outback.
Their bottle of Chantre does the rounds while from an election poster on an advertising column the Father of the German Nation gazes anxiously on his reunified country.
Calm November weather in Germany persistently foggy & dull. Bottom temperatures from zero to three degrees with low cloud cover over Brandenburg & Berlin.
A cold sea breeze from the north sweeps across the square where once the l.u.s.tgarten lay with its symmetry of Prussian precision a fountain to left & right, white diagonal gravel paths an equestrian monument at the exact center & lawns that are out of bounds.
That says my guide is the cathedral sixteen Hohenzollerns lie under the sand in fact this ground is steeped in history they find corpses every time they dig.
The ravens on yonder gra.s.s patch know what they are after. The S-Bahn winds out of the chasm between the Pergamon & Bode Museums a bright streak high on the bridge another below in the dark waters of the Spree.
At the train station which is wrapped in plastic sheeting we say goodbye. She returns to Bruderstrae while I set off to Wannsee there to stay the night at the literary villa & for the very first time ever witness a living Greenlandic poet in the flesh.
Called Jessie Kleemann she stands in a blaze of floodlights in her red velvet suit her pale oriental- looking face in front of the penumbral figures of the audience her lips whispering into the microphone forming sounds that consist it seems to me of nothing but double vowels & double vees sliding up & down the scale the sounds of her feathery language taavvi jjuaq she says the great darkness & lifting her arm qaavmaaq the shimmering light.
Unchanged for years now these inter- regional catering cliches the full buffet breakfast the sliced cheese the boiled ham the scrambled eggs the nutty nougat creme the stew of the day the hearty goulash the Nuremberg Bratwurst the potato salad the burger with bread-roll grandma"s beef olives your favorite choc-bar the salted peanut De Beukelaer"s chocolate-filled cookies the Nordhauser Doppelkorn the oldest Asbach the finesses of Gau Kongernheimer Vogelsang & the Rotkappchen dry.
In the Summer of 1836 said the guide Friedrich Chopin stayed here at the White Swan Inn. It had taken him nine days from Paris by coach to reach his beloved Marie Wodzinka. He gave frequent recitals on the piano to a small circle who gathered in the evenings. The peaks of the blue Bohemian mountains grow ever darker through the window. The cold damp weather weighs on his chest the doctor mumbles something about incipient tuberculosis. At the beginning of November their engagement is shattered her father in Dresden has put his foot down.
Thirteen years later a packet of faded letters is found in the deceased pianist"s residence. Tied with ribbon it carries the inscription: Moja Bieda-My sorrow.
In Alfermee late in November the rain sweeps down from the Jura throughout the night Threading sleep letter by letter comes a language you do not understand The exhausted eyes of the writer the fingers of one hand on the keys of her machine Darkness lifts from the earth in the morning leaving no difference between lake & air Along the sh.o.r.e is a row of poplars behind them a lone boat at a buoy Beyond the gray water invisible through swaths of mist the village of Sutz a few lights going out & a column of snow- white smoke On the Eve of All Hallows nineteen hundred and ninety-seven at Schiphol Airport among globetrotters from Seoul & Sa Paulo Singapore & Seattle.
There they sit with neon-blue faces slumped down on the benches rummaging now and then distractedly in their luggage not one of them uttering a spoken word. With the witching hour past they lie stretched out under blue blankets asleep while outside the fog gradually shifts revealing once again through the darkness the runways & lit steps the enormous bodies & tail fins of the vessels lying at anchor at their quays. Not a single movement around me now only the sparrows who have survived for years in this part of the terminal whirr back & forth across the hall & up & down the arcade settling in the green palms & ficus trees jerking their little heads this way & that looking out between the artificial leaves with their shiny black eyes & chattering raucously among themselves as if something were not quite right.
In the Paradise Landscape of the younger Brueghel on a surface roughly thirty by forty centimeters in size before which I stood for a time at the Stadel Museum all manner of beasts & birds have come together in peace an eagle owl with horned ears an ostrich with b.u.t.ton eyes & a strangely flat beak a billy goat & a few sheep two polecats or martens a wolf a horse a peac.o.c.k a turkey & in the foreground at the bottom edge two spectacled monkeys one of which is gingerly plucking strawberries from a little shrub while on the right roses climb an apple or pomegranate tree & tulips in full blossom & spring stars & lilies & hyacinths & somewhat in the background in a choice act of man-manly procreation our Lord & Creator a tiny & obscure figure barely visible to the naked eye bends over Adam sleeping on a gra.s.sy bank & cuts from his side his bride to be.
Appendix
Two poems written in English by W. G. Sebald.
I remember
the day in the year after the fall of the Soviet Empire I shared a cabin on the ferry to the Hoek of Holland with a lorry driver from Wolverhampton.
He & twenty others were taking super- annuated trucks to Russia but other than that he had no idea where they were heading. The gaffer was in control & anyway it was an adventure good money & all the driver said smoking a Golden Holborn in the upper bunk before going to sleep.
I can still hear him softly snoring through the night, see him at dawn climb down the ladder: big gut black underpants, put on his sweat- shirt, baseball hat, get into jeans & trainers, zip up his plastic holdall, rub his stubbled face with both his hands ready for the journey.
I"ll have a wash in Russia he said. I wished him the best of British. He replied been good to meet you Max.
October Heat Wave From the flyover that leads down to the Holland Tunnel I saw the red disk of the sun rising over the promised city.
By the early afternoon the thermometer reached eighty- five & a steel blue haze hung about the shimmering towers whilst at the White House Conference on Climate the President listened to experts talking about converting green algae into clean fuel & I lay in my darkened hotel room near Gramercy Park dreaming through the roar of Manhattan of a great river rushing into a cataract.
In the evening at a reception I stood by an open French window & pitied the crippled tree that grew in a tub in the yard.
Practically defoliated it was of an uncertain species, its trunk & its branches wound round with strings of tiny electric bulbs.
A young woman came up to me & said that although on vacation she had spent all day at the office which unlike her apartment was air-conditioned & as cold as the morgue. There, she said, I am happy like an opened up oyster on a bed of ice.
Notes.
The notes that follow cannot be comprehensive, nor do they propose to "explain" the poems or disclose their secrets. Their purpose is twofold: to show the textual sources on which the present volume draws and to throw light on some of Sebald"s allusions to landscapes, works of art or literature, and other matters of historical interest. Points of reference and connotation inevitably inform a translator"s decisions as he goes about the business of rebuilding a poem in a different language. Even after considerable research, however, many details have remained obscure. Readers better acquainted than I am with the life and work of W. G. Sebald will recognize echoes, overtones, and contexts that I have overlooked.
In indicating the source of a poem, the following abbreviations will apply: FSZ (Freiburger Studentenzeitung); ZET (Das Zeichenheft fur Literatur und Grafik); PT (Collection "Poemtrees. Lyrisches Lesebuch fur Fortgeschrittene und Zuruckgebliebene," Folders 1 & 2, in The Papers of W. G. Sebald, Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach); H (Hanser Verlag volume uber das Land und das Wa.s.ser, ed. Sven Meyer: 2008); SL (Folder 1: "Schullatein," in collection "uber das Land und das Wa.s.ser," in The Papers of W. G. Sebald, Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach); uLW (Folder 2: "uber das Land und das Wa.s.ser," in collection "uber das Land und das Wa.s.ser," in The Papers of W. G. Sebald, Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach); VVJ (Folder 3: "Das vorvergange Jahr," in collection "uber das Land und das Wa.s.ser," in The Papers of W. G. Sebald, Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach); GG1 (File "Gedichte und Gedichtentwurfe," Folder 1, in The Papers of W. G. Sebald, Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach); DK (Der Komet. Almanach der Anderen Bibliothek auf das Jahr 1991, Frankfurt am Main: 1991); WS (Weltwoche Supplement: Juni 1996); JPT (Jan Peter Tripp, Die Aufzahlung der Schwierigkeiten: Arbeiten von 198592, Offenburg, 1993); FL (Franz Loquai, W. G. Sebald, Eggingen, 1997); NZZ (Neue Zurcher Zeitung, Nr 256, 13 November 1999); AK48 (Akzente 48 J., 2001); AK50 (Akzente 50 J., 2003); K&C (Konterbande und Camouflage. Szenen aus der Vor- und Nachgeschichte von Heinrich Heines marranischer Schreibweise. Berlin, 2002); P (Pretext, vol. 2: Autumn 2000); FYN (Collection "For Years Now," in The Papers of W. G. Sebald, Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach).
1 "For how hard it is" PT, FSZ 14 (1964), H.
2 "A colony of allotments" PT, FSZ 14 (1964), H.
3 "Smoke will stir" PT, FSZ 14 (1964), H.
4 "The intention is sealed" FSZ 14 (1964), H.
5 Nymphenburg PT, FSZ 14 (1964), H. t.i.tle: the gardens and interiors of the Baroque Nymphenburg Palace, formerly the summer residence of Bavaria"s ruling Wittelsbach dynasty, are among Munich"s most frequently visited attractions. mauves: French for "mallows." Wishing Table: the poem invokes the Brothers Grimm"s tales "Dornroschen" ("Sleeping Beauty," or "Briar Rose") and "Tischchen deck dich, Goldesel und Knuppel aus dem Sack" ("The Wishing Table, the Gold a.s.s and the Cudgel in the Sack"), in which a table, on command, sets and spreads its own surface with food and drink.
6 Epitaph FSZ 15 (1965), H.
7 Schattwald in Tyrol PT, FSZ 15 (1965), H. t.i.tle: Tyrolean village to the east of Oberjoch, from which the narrator of the final section ("Il ritorno in patria") of Sebald"s Schwindel. Gefuhle (1990; Eng. trans. Vertigo, 1999) walks to Wertach, the author"s place of birth. Rosetta stone: an ancient Egyptian stele of black granodiorite, inscribed with the so-called Memphis decree, issued in three languages in 196 BCE. Its discovery contributed to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics. In an earlier version of the poem, the second stanza reads: "Am Anfang der Legende / brachte die Botschaft / der Engel des Herrn / ins Haus aus Schatten" (At the beginning of the legend / the Angel of the Lord / brought the tidings / to the House of Shadows").
8 Remembered Triptych of a Journey from Brussels PT, FSZ 15 (1965), H. near Meran in Ezra"s hanging garden: from 1958, after his release from St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., Ezra Pound stayed at Castle Brunnenburg near Meran in northern Italy, the home of his daughter Mary de Rachewiltz. battlefield at Waterloo: Sebald"s narrator describes visits to Waterloo in the pa.s.sage ent.i.tled (in the contents) "The Panorama of Waterloo," in the fifth chapter of The Rings of Saturn, including a visit in December 1964, when he stayed at a hotel near the Bois de la Cambre and visited a bar in Rhode St. Genese. Marie-Louises: young soldiers of the Napoleonic army in 1814, many of them between fourteen and fifteen years old, who had been conscripted during the regency of Empress Marie-Louise, Napoleon"s wife, during her husband"s absence for the German campaign of 181314. ferme in Genappe: the farmhouse was Napoleon"s headquarters on the night of June 17, 1815, the eve of the Battle of Waterloo. Marquise of O.: the reference to the eponymous protagonist of Heinrich von Kleist"s story is obscure, but see note on Light in August below. A woman"s mouth ... roses: in English in the German text. Depart ... Milan via St. Gotthard: the train for Milan via St. Gotthard departs from platform 8 at 00.16 hours. industrie chimique: chemical industry. light above the heavenly vaults: in English in the German text. Bahnhof von Metz: Metz train station. bien eclairee: well illuminated. Gregorius, the guote sundaere (Gregorius, the good sinner): a medieval verse epic by Hartmann von der Aue (died ca. 1210). Au near Freiburg: one of the munic.i.p.alities of that name which claim a.s.sociation with the poet. rechtsrheinisch: on the right (eastern) side of the Rhine. Froben & Company: the humanist Johann Froben (14601527), a friend of Erasmus of Rotterdam, set up a successful printing business in Basel in 1491. Light in August: t.i.tle of a novel (1932) by William Faulkner (18971962). One of the characters is Lena Grove, who, like the pregnant Marquise of O. in Heinrich von Kleist"s story, mentioned earlier in the poem, is trying to find the father of her unborn child. To do so, she walks a long distance to Jefferson, in Yoknapatawpha, the fictional setting of several of Faulkner"s novels.
9 Life Is Beautiful PT, FSZ 15 (1965), H.
10 Matins for G. PT, FSZ 15 (1965), H. Where no kitchen/There no cook: As Leon, in Act 1 of Franz Grillparzer"s drama Weh dem, der lugt! (Woe to Him Who Lies!), Vienna: 1840 (p. 6), exclaims, "Wo keine Kuche, ist kein Koch."
11 Winter Poem PT, FSZ 15 (1965), H. Child Jesus in Flanders: the German translation of the Flemish writer Felix Timmermans"s novel (Het Kindeken Jezus in Vlaanderen, 1917), published in 1919 under the t.i.tle Das Jesuskind in Flandern, was immensely popular in Germany between the wars and during the 1950s. Its plot sets the birth of Christ in rural Flanders. Another story, "Jesus-Christ en Flandre" (1831) by Honore de Balzac, is apparently based on a medieval folktale. The Christ-child theme recalls the nativity scenes of Dutch Masters. Believe and be saved: see Mark 16: 16. A handwritten comment on the PT typescript claims there is too great a discrepancy in the poem between the ironic tone of the second stanza and the apparent naivete of the first.
12 Lines for an Alb.u.m PT, FSZ 15 (1965), H.
13 Bleston: A Mancunian Cantical PT, H. t.i.tle: in English in the original text. Bleston is the name given to Manchester in the 1957 novel L"Emploi du temps (translated into English as Pa.s.sing Time) by the French writer Michel Butor (b. 1926). Like Sebald (196668), Butor had been an a.s.sistant teacher at Manchester University (195153). The final section ("Max Ferber") of W. G. Sebald"s prose work The Emigrants is set in Manchester, as is the fourth part of "Dark Night Sallies Forth," the final section of After Nature. Sebald finished writing the poem on or shortly before January 26, 1967 (according to a letter that he wrote to his friend Albrecht Rasche). The poem presents a labyrinth of allusions, and the reader who attempts to follow them risks becoming "Perdu dans ces filaments" (lost in these filaments), a fate of which the t.i.tle of the fifth part of the poem appears to warn us. Fete nocturne: night party. Big Warehouse: in English in the German text. Lewis"s was a former Manchester department store, opened in 1877. "Warehouse" is probably a Germanicism, an Englishing of the German "Warenhaus" (department store). Consensus Omnium: agreement of all. Place of Breast-like hills: in English in the German text. Dis ... curavi: "Dis Manibus" is found on Roman gravestones and means "for the spirits of the ancestors"; in this case, "for the spirits of the ancestors I have arranged for the building of this Mamucium [Manchester]." a travers les ages: through the ages. Sharon"s Full Gospel ... before our eyes: in English in the German text. According to the website of the Sharon Full Gospel Church, the church "began with a gospel mission in a tent in Pontypool Park during 1936. Many local people were ... miraculously healed." There is an SFG church in South Manchester. Lingua Mortua: dead language. Kebad Kenya: a character in an episode in the first volume (Das Holzschiff) of Hans Henny Jahnn"s novel Flu ohne Ufer (1949). The story has appeared in English in a translation by Gerda Jordan-Peterson in The Ship (1961) and Thirteen Uncanny Stories (1984). Briefly, Kebad decides to eat himself, fails to die, attempts to become one with his mare, lies down as if dead, is buried, witnesses the corruption of the flesh, is a revenant, takes possession of men"s bodies, and inflicts terror by stealing horses. Hipasos (sic) of Metapontum: Pythagorean philosopher who conducted experiments in musical theory. Hippasos claimed the discovery of concords with bronze disks of equal diameter and varying thickness. Et pulsae referunt ad sidera valles: and the valleys echoed the sounds to the stars (Virgil"s Eclogue 6.1.84). fil d"Ariane: Ariadne"s thread. The theme of Ariadne and Theseus, the labyrinth and the Minotaur, are ever present in Butor"s novel L"Emploi du temps: "that rope of words is like Ariadne"s thread (ce cordon des phrases est un fil d"Ariane), because I am in a labyrinth, because I am writing in order to find my way about in it ... the labyrinth of my days in Bleston, incomparably more bewildering than that of the Cretan palace, since it grows and alters even while I explore it" (Pa.s.sing Time, trans. Jean Stewart, New York: 1969, p. 195). opgekilte schottns: both words occur in the Yiddish lexicon, the second one more frequently as shotns. If Sebald intended the words to be recognized as Yiddish, they would mean something like "frozen shadows." Perhaps they should be read in the context of "return," albeit a return ant.i.thetical to the desired echo: the revenant murderous shadows of Kebad, or Theseus, who after abandoning Ariadne on Naxos forgot to change the black sail to white, thereby causing the death of his father, Aegeus. Alma quies optata veni nam sic sine vita / Vivere quam suave est sic sine morte mori: "How sweet, though lifeless, yet with life to lie, / And, without dying, O how sweet to die" (translation by John Walcott [17381813]). Authorship of the epigram appears to be obscure, with Georg Christoph Lichtenberg attributing the lines to Heinrich Meibom (15551625), while British critics have tended to see the poet laureate Thomas Wharton (172890) as the author. Rapunzel: In the fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, Rapunzel, exiled to the wilderness by the witch to live on her own, one day hears the voice of the prince, whom the witch has blinded by throwing him from the tower. They reunite, his sight is restored, and they live happily ever after. Perdu dans ces filaments: lost in these filaments. A quotation from Michel Butor"s novel L"Emploi du temps (Paris: 1956, p. 54) (Pa.s.sing Time, op. cit., p. 41): "Thus I, a mere virus lost amidst its filaments, was able like a scientist armed with his microscope to study this huge cancerous growth." Eli Eli (Mark 15: 34): "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" ("My G.o.d, my G.o.d, why hast thou forsaken me?") Mr. Dewey"s International cla.s.sification system: Melville Louis Kossuth Dewey (18511931) invented the Decimal Cla.s.sification System, which revolutionized library cataloging in the 1870s and 1880s. On ne doit plus dormir: One must no longer sleep. The French dictum derives from Theodor W. Adorno"s essay "Commitment" (see New Left Review, First Series, no. 8788, 1974, p. 85), first published in German in 1962: "The abundance of real suffering tolerates no forgetting; Pascal"s theological saying, On ne doit plus dormir, must be secularized." Adorno, however, has adapted rather than cited Pascal, who wrote: "Jesus sera en agonie jusqu"a la fin du monde. Il ne faut pas dormir pendant ce temps-la" ("The agony of Jesus will last until the world ends. Until that time we must not sleep"), in Blaise Pascal, Pensees (919) (Texte etabli par Louis Lafuma), Paris: 1963 (p. 378).
14 Didsbury PT, H. t.i.tle: the author lived in Didsbury, a suburb of Manchester, from January 1967 until his departure in 1968 to teach at a school in St. Gallen, Switzerland, initially sharing a flat with Reinbert Tabbert. The poem was among a small number of items, including "Giulietta"s Birthday" and "Time Signal at Twelve," collected in a Festschrift put together in the summer of 1967 by Tabbert and Sebald for Idris Parry (19162008), a professor of German at the University of Manchester and Sebald"s later supervisor for his M.A. dissertation (1968) on the German writer Carl Sternheim. An earlier version of the poem is ent.i.tled "Weekend."
15 Giulietta"s Birthday PT, H. See note on "Didsbury" above.
16 Time Signal at Twelve PT, AK50. See note on "Didsbury" above. Lejzer Ajchenrand: a Jewish poet born in Demblin (Poland) in 1911 who emigrated to France in 1937 and served in a French volunteer battalion. He was interned under the Vichy regime and, in 1942, fled to Switzerland, where he was again interned. Although Ajchenrand spent the rest of his life in Switzerland, he was never granted citizenship. He died in the town of Kusnacht, on Lake Zurich. His mother and sister were murdered by the n.a.z.is, and the Shoah remained the subject of a poetic oeuvre composed entirely in Yiddish. Several of his poems appeared in the German literary magazine Akzente. The best known of his nine books of poems is Aus der Tiefe (De Profundis, 1957), first published in Paris in 1953 and reprinted with German translations in 1998. Melk: a town in Lower Austria and the site of a famous Benedictine abbey, founded in 1089. Between April 1944 and May 1945, 14,390 mainly Jewish prisoners were deported to the Melk concentration camp, a sub-camp of KZMauthausen. It is thought that some five thousand prisoners were murdered there. The crematorium is all that remains of the camp today. If no one asks him ... knows not: The phrasing of the fifth stanza echoes a pa.s.sage in Augustine"s Confessiones (XI, 14) in which the author ruminates on the nature of time, its absence, and eternity. "Quid ergo tempus est?" ("What then is time?") he asks, and continues, "si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio" ("if no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it to him who asks, I know not").
17 Children"s Song PT, AK50. The poem, dedicated to Sebald"s niece, was first published in Reinbert Tabbert"s reminiscence of his friendship with Sebald in the magazine Akzente. It later appeared in a second article by Tabbert in a journal called Literatur in Bayern (no. 97, September 2009), this time with a short commentary linking the poem to the topography and mood of Sebald"s childhood memories of his daily route to school in his native Wertach.
18 Votive Tablet SL.
19 Legacy SL.
20 Sara.s.sani SL. t.i.tle: Sebald"s spelling may be incorrect, but only if the t.i.tle refers to the Sarrasani Circus, founded by Hans Stosch (alias Giovanni Sarrasani) in Meien in 1902, and still in family hands.
21 Day"s Residue PT, SL. t.i.tle: a psychoa.n.a.lytic term (German: Tagesrest) coined by Sigmund Freud in his book on the interpretation of dreams, Die Traumdeutung (1900). The term describes the way the residual material of a day"s experience-thoughts, impressions, and unfinished tasks-may trigger the "dream work" of the following night.
22 Border Crosser SL. witch"s thaler: a gold or silver coin whose currency magically alters in accordance with the mint of the country in which its owner is a resident.
23 Lay of Ill Luck SL, H. black bird: the combination of fox and crow (or, in German, Rabe: raven) is likely to be a.s.sociated in the reader"s mind with Aesop"s ancient Greek fable "The Fox and the Crow," or with its later French version by Jean de La Fontaine. However, it is in Leo Janaek"s opera The Cunning Little Vixen (German: Das schlaue Fuchslein; in Sebald"s poem the fox is also a "Fuchslein") that the "little vixen" escapes. The "monosyllabic creature" of the translation is, in German, einsilbig, which can also, figuratively at least, mean "taciturn." "Monosyllabic" at least captures Mistress Crow"s "Caw!" which lost her the cheese in the fable. The final stanza, however, may contain a nod to the taciturn "black bird" in Edgar Allan Poe"s poem "The Raven": possibly a figure closer to Sebald"s own melancholy muse.
24 Memorandum of the Divan SL.
25 Il ritorno d"Ulisse SL. t.i.tle: probably a reference to Claudio Monteverdi"s opera of 1640, whose full t.i.tle is Il ritorno d"Ulisse in patria. The t.i.tle of the final section ("Il ritorno in patria") of Sebald"s prose work Schwindel. Gefuhle (1990; Eng. trans. Vertigo, 1999) also appears to echo the t.i.tle of Monteverdi"s opera. in scattered spots with the black paper hearts of men shot by the arquebuse: the German ("an zerstreueten Orten waren schwarze Papierherzen arkebusierter Menschen") is from Jean Paul Richter"s novel t.i.tan (vol. 1), in Samtliche Werke. Bd. 2, Berlin: 1827 (p. 115); translated into English by Charles T. Brooks as "in scattered spots were the black paper hearts of men shot by the arquebuse," in t.i.tan. A Romance, London: 1863 (p. 36).
26 For a Northern Reader SL.
27 Florean Exercise SL. t.i.tle: there is more than one reference in Sebald"s work to the name of the Northamptonshire village Flore. In the second chapter of The Rings of Saturn, for example, the narrator"s neighbor Frederick Farrar is sent in 1914 to a prep school near Flore in Northamptonshire. Flore is also mentioned in the poem "Pneumatalogical Prose," in this volume. the Dardanian G.o.ds: the final lines cite an Etruscan inscription discovered in North Africa by the French Latinist and Etruscan scholar Jacques Heurgon. The Dardanoi formed one of the two royal houses of ancient Troy, and the rulers of Rome would sometimes claim, through their founder Aeneas, Dardanian descent. In this poem, then, the apparently unremarkable village of Flore emerges as the unexpected repository of a genealogical current that arose in mythical northwestern Anatolia, pa.s.sed through Troy, Carthage, and Rome, and that continues to exert metaphysical pressure on the imagination in twentieth-century Northamptonshire, one and a half millennia after the Romans left.
28 Scythian Journey SL. t.i.tle: in cla.s.sical antiquity Scythia was the area to the north of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. with the birds and fishes: reminiscent of lines in the second poem in book 1 of Horace"s Odes: "omne c.u.m Proteus pecus egit altos visera montis, / piscium et summa genus haesit ulmo, / nota quae sedes fuerat columbis" ("when Proteus drove all his herd to visit the high mountains / and the race of fishes lodged in the elm-tops / which once were known as the haunt of doves"). Berecyntian horn: mentioned in Horace"s Odes (bk. 1, ode 18), but also to be found in Catullus, Ovid, and other cla.s.sical writers. Berecyntus was the name of a mountain in Phrygia, sacred to Cybele. Penates: guardian deities of the household and the state.
29 Saumur, selon Valery SL. t.i.tle: Saumur, as seen by Valery. There is a National Equestrian Academy at Saumur, home to the world-renowned Cadre Noir. In his Cahiers (Notebooks), the French poet Paul Valery compares mental and aesthetic training with the equestrian art of dressage: he aims to write a treatise on "le dressage de l"esprit" ("dressage of the mind"), to be called "Gladiator." In the Cahiers (6, 901), he also mentions the mythical centaur as a model of perfect control. Another model was the Saumur equestrian instructor Francois Baucher (17961873), of whom Valery, in his essay "Autour de Corbot," recites an anecdote with which Sebald was evidently acquainted. Baucher dazzled one of his favorite pupils at Saumur by appearing as "un Centaure parfait" (a perfect centaur): "Voila ... Je ne fais pas d"esbroufe. Je suis au sommet de mon art: Marcher sans une faute" ("There ... I"m not showing off. I have reached the summit of my art: Walking without error"), in Paul Valery, uvres 2, Paris: 1960 (p. 1311).
30 L"instruction du roy PT, SL, H. t.i.tle: probably a reference to the posthumously published L"instruction du roy en l"exercise de monter a cheval (1625), by Antoine de Pluvinel (15551620). The book was one of the earliest equestrian manuals and is conceived in the form of a conversation between the author, Louis XIII, and Monsieur Le Grand, the King"s Master of the Horse.
31 Festifal PT. the Dictaean Grotto: the Diktaion Andron on Crete, traditionally the birthplace of Zeus. polar dragon: according to Lempriere"s cla.s.sical dictionary this was the guardian of the apples of the Hesperides; see: J. Lempriere, Bibliotheca Cla.s.sica, London: 1811 (p. 340). As Ladon, the dragon is depicted coiling around the apple tree; in (ancient Egyptian) celestial atlases he is coiled around the pole of heaven. Could Sebald have been aware of W. B. Yeats"s lines "And though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and wept, / The Polar Dragon slept, / His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep"? ("The Poet Pleads with the Elemental Powers.") Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas, / nocturnos lemures portentaque Thessala rides? are lines from the second book of Horace"s Epistles (ll. 2089), which Philip Francis, cited by Robert Burton in the Anatomy of Melancholy, translates as "Say, can you laugh indignant at the schemes / Of magic terrors, visionary dreams, / Portentous wonders, witching imps of h.e.l.l, / the nightly goblin, and enchanting spell?" See The Works of the English Poets from Chaucer to Cowper, vol. 8, London: 1810 (p. 742). The plump Etruscan blows on an ivory flute in Virgil, Georgics, 2, l. 193, trans. C. Day Lewis, Oxford: 1999 (p. 75). Proteus: an ancient sea G.o.d and herdsman of Poseidon"s seal herds. The Sphinx fleeing toward Libya: "I have seen the Sphinx fleeing toward Libya." See The Letters of Gustave Flaubert 183057, ed. Francis Steegmuller, Harvard: 1980 (p. 112).
32 Pneumatological Prose SL. Flore: see note on "Florean Exercise" above. The animal is a victor: the indented pa.s.sage is cited from the legend in Durer"s 1515 woodcut of a rhinoceros. The pa.s.sage in Sebald"s German text reads: "Das da ein Sieg Thir ist / des Heilffandten Todtfeindt / den wo es Ihn ankompt / so laufft ihm das Thir mit dem Kopff / zwischen die fordern bayn // Sie sagen auch / das der Rhinocerus / schnellfraytig und auch l.u.s.tig sey." The legend in Durer"s woodcut reads: "das da ein Sieg Thir ist / des Heilffandten Todtfeyndt. Der Heilffandt furchts fast ubel / den wo es Ihn ankompt / so laufft Ihm das Thir mit dem kopff zwischen die fordern bayn / und reist den Heilffandten unten am bauch auff / und er wurget ihn / des mag er sich nicht erwehren. dann das Thier ist also gewapnet / das ihm der Jeilffandt nichts Thun kan / Sie sagen auch / das der Rhinocerus / Schnell / fraytig / und auch l.u.s.tig / sey." Footnote: Messrs. H. and C. Artmann: a pun on the name of the Viennese poet H. C. Artmann (19212000). as Pliny tells us: Pliny, in book 8 of Naturalis Historia, discusses the character and virtues of the elephant. This pa.s.sage recurs in modified form in Unrecounted, London: 2004 (p. 13). Footnotes 1 and 2: the footnotes in the German text are reprinted verbatim in the translation.
33 Comic Opera SL. t.i.tle: comic opera (komische Oper) can be opera buffa, with its beginnings in the Italian eighteenth century, or the often more serious, or satirical, opera comique. green theatre: theatre de verdure, a garden or hedge theatre.
34 Timetable ZET, SL, H. Cretan trick: an acrobatic feat of bull-leaping or somersaulting over or between a bull"s horns. Depictions of the ritual, possibly once a rite of pa.s.sage for young men, have been found in ancient Minoan artwork.