a ceaseless examination of memory (and more) aritz galarraga
It could have been Herminio Martinez, Jose Armolea or Josefina Stubbs, or Antolin before he got married. But it was writer W.G. Sebald who wrote a novel based around Jacques Austerlitz and gave it his surname. Childhood in Wales, a spell in Paris, London a long time ago… he’s completely removed from his first four and a half years. All of a sudden he hears two women on the radio: they explain how they, as children fled from the Nazis to England in the summer of 1939. “It was then I realised I had few customs to remember and, to the contrary, I made a particular effort not to remember anything.”
Sebald is concerned about memory, individual memory: “the progressive disappearance of our ability to remember, which comes with the proliferation of information”. The same is true of collective memory. While we were not yet sure whether to address the issue of historical memory or not, people were already criticising Sebald. From 1999: “The main problem with saying what’s happened during a life is its insufficiency, the obvious lack of reliability and a peculiar vacuum; the ability to churn out clichés, to always repeat the same things”. Which may be why he positions his characters in what has been called “post memory”: dominated by tales from before birth, their own stories are void of meaning, because the traumatic experiences of previous generations make it impossible for them to understand and recreate. So Sebald’s work is to continually re-examine memory.
But not just that. His work is not only a simple examination of memory: documentaries, archives, genres, fakes, witnesses’ accounts, disasters, families, journeys, needs. And then the great subjects of the 20th century: migrations, historical arguments, political violence. He takes Benjamin, Walser, Wittgenstein and Bernhard and hangs them on the walls of his office at East Anglia University. The extermination of the European Jews beats on every page of Sebald’s work. Each page is documentary and fiction at the same time. Autobiographies which build towards collective history. Poetic, nostalgic prose. He puts his texts together like nets, leaving his tracks on it, one quote after another. It’s DIY. Literature which tries to show the complexity of the world in its smallest details. Long sentences, countless diversions, ceaseless bends in the plot. He puts in photographs even though, as well as believing that writing promotes memory, like Barthes and Sontag, he thinks that taking photos promotes oblivion. He doesn’t believe that we can try to get literature by itself, more than studying events and science, to get things back to the way they were.
Writer W.G. Sebald’s character is Jacques Austerlitz; but it could be Herminio Martinez, Jose Armolea or Josefina Stubbs, Antolin before he got married: all of them left Santurtzi Port on 23rd May, 1937 on the Habana, fleeing from the war to Southampton, England. Or, without looking any further, they could be Josefina Zubialdia, this article’s writer’s maternal grandmother. And now I realise we have few customs to remember and, on the contrary, we make a particular effort not to remember anything.
Sebald is concerned about memory, individual memory: “the progressive disappearance of our ability to remember, which comes with the proliferation of information”. The same is true of collective memory. While we were not yet sure whether to address the issue of historical memory or not, people were already criticising Sebald. From 1999: “The main problem with saying what’s happened during a life is its insufficiency, the obvious lack of reliability and a peculiar vacuum; the ability to churn out clichés, to always repeat the same things”. Which may be why he positions his characters in what has been called “post memory”: dominated by tales from before birth, their own stories are void of meaning, because the traumatic experiences of previous generations make it impossible for them to understand and recreate. So Sebald’s work is to continually re-examine memory.
But not just that. His work is not only a simple examination of memory: documentaries, archives, genres, fakes, witnesses’ accounts, disasters, families, journeys, needs. And then the great subjects of the 20th century: migrations, historical arguments, political violence. He takes Benjamin, Walser, Wittgenstein and Bernhard and hangs them on the walls of his office at East Anglia University. The extermination of the European Jews beats on every page of Sebald’s work. Each page is documentary and fiction at the same time. Autobiographies which build towards collective history. Poetic, nostalgic prose. He puts his texts together like nets, leaving his tracks on it, one quote after another. It’s DIY. Literature which tries to show the complexity of the world in its smallest details. Long sentences, countless diversions, ceaseless bends in the plot. He puts in photographs even though, as well as believing that writing promotes memory, like Barthes and Sontag, he thinks that taking photos promotes oblivion. He doesn’t believe that we can try to get literature by itself, more than studying events and science, to get things back to the way they were.
Writer W.G. Sebald’s character is Jacques Austerlitz; but it could be Herminio Martinez, Jose Armolea or Josefina Stubbs, Antolin before he got married: all of them left Santurtzi Port on 23rd May, 1937 on the Habana, fleeing from the war to Southampton, England. Or, without looking any further, they could be Josefina Zubialdia, this article’s writer’s maternal grandmother. And now I realise we have few customs to remember and, on the contrary, we make a particular effort not to remember anything.
