35 Unexplored ZET, SL, H. t.i.tle: "Unexplored" suggests the white areas that once represented unexplored regions of old maps. horoscope, heptagram, malefic houses: Sebald returns again and again to magic, astrology, alchemy, and the like. photoset: a development in typesetting that allowed characters to be projected onto film for offset printing. The technique had its heyday in the 1960s, when the poem was probably written. The technique may have been the state of the art, and yet the "malefic houses" were still ignored (unexplored). In an earlier version of the poem, the "evil houses" have been whited out and replaced by "white zones" in the school historical atlas.
36 Elizabethan PT, SL, uLW, ZET, H. a baker"s daughter: see Hamlet, act 4, scene 5. Ophelia: "They say the owl was a baker"s daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be." Sheikh Subir: doubts about Shakespeare"s authorship of the plays are recurrent. In one version, it was claimed that he was a Muslim called Sheykh Zubayr (see Muhammad Mustafa Badawi, Modern Arabic Literature, London: 1985, p.191).
37 Baroque Psalter SL. One of several "found" poems by W. G. Sebald, this is taken almost verbatim from a review by Heinz Ludwig Arnold, in Die Zeit (30 June 1972), of the Baroque poet Quirinus Kuhlmann"s (165189) so-called Kuhlpsalter of 1684: "Nach zahlreichen Bekehrungsreisen nach Paris, Genf, Smyrna und Konstantinopel wurde Kuhlmann in Moskau als politischer Aufruhrer verbrannt."
38 Cold Draught PT, uLW, H. t.i.tle: the German Zug can mean, among other things, a train, a draft in the sense of an outline or sketch, the action of drawing air, smoke or liquid, or a current of air. The poem describes a train journey, but the primary sense of the t.i.tle is probably the icy cultural draft that blows through the narrator"s sensibility as he returns to the scenes of his childhood and place of origin. Sebald"s landscapes are never innocent. Landsberg housed the headquarters of the Kaufering complex of eleven concentration camps, the largest such complex within Germany, and was itself the site of KZ-Auenlage Kaufering I. Kauf beuren was the site of a psychiatric hospital in which the mentally ill were murdered under the n.a.z.i euthanasia program. Between 1939 and 1945, some two thousand patients from Kauf beuren and the nearby Irsee Abbey were deported to their deaths. The Riederloh II camp housed forced laborers who worked at the DAG munitions factory in Kauf beuren. Landsberg is also significant for its prison, where Hitler was incarcerated and allegedly wrote Mein Kampf, and where 275 n.a.z.i war criminals were executed between 1945 and 1951. Could Sebald have been mistaken about Saint Elizabeth? It was not St. Elizabeth but St. Kunigunde of Luxemburg-whose husband was Heinrich II and the last Holy Roman Emperor of the Ottonian dynasty-who walked over red-hot plowshares unscathed to prove her innocence. Her veil, according to another legend, was said to have prevented the Allies from successfully bombing Bamberg, where she was buried in 1040.
39 Near Crailsheim uLW. t.i.tle: to set an example, Crailsheim was razed by the Americans at the end of the war. The town suffered some ninety percent damage as a result of the bombing after the Germans had successfully retaken it from the Americans in a battle in April 1945. After its destruction, the town was not rebuilt according to historical principles (as was often the case in German restoration) but employing architectural ideas of the 1940s. The descriptions of landscape in the poem exude Sebald"s antipathy for what he would later describe (e.g., in the description of a train journey in the last chapter of Vertigo, or pa.s.sim in The Natural History of Destruction) as a repressive German tidiness during the postwar decades, an outward reversal of moral devastation, avoidance of memory, and the inability to mourn. Jehoshaphat: Hebrew, meaning "Jehovah has judged." For the valley of Jehoshaphat, see Joel: 3, especially verses 2 and 19. The valley, which is also mentioned in After Nature, London: Penguin, 2003 (p. 90), is referred to as the "valley of decision" (Joel 3:14). It is where the Lord a.s.sembled those who had afflicted Judah, and wreaked upon them his judgment.
40 Poor Summer in Franconia uLW. Colorado beetle: by 1936 the westward spread of the Colorado potato beetle through continental Europe had reached Germany, destroying crops as it went. Widespread infestation continued until the 1950s. Five lines of the poem are incorporated into the final section of After Nature, op. cit. (p. 89).
41 Solnhofen uLW. t.i.tle: a small town in Franconia (a region of Bavaria). The Solnhofen limestone lagerstatte (sedimentary deposit) has supplied some of the most significant fossils ever found, including the Jura.s.sic Archaeopteryx, the so-called Urvogel, or "first bird." See also the first lines of "Dark Night Sallies Forth," in After Nature, op. cit. (p. 81).
42 Leaving Bavaria uLW, H. Hindenberg"s gray-green millions: by November 1923, hyperinflation had rendered the German reichsmark valueless and postage stamps had to be overprinted daily with surcharges of up to ten billion marks. The term null ouvert derives from the popular German card game Skat. Null Ouvert is the only game where the "declarer" wins if he manages to lose every trick. gondola: the term for the cabin of an airship. Dionysius: the patron saint of Paris, St. Denis, whose tradition and martyrdom involve his carrying his head under one arm, is known in German as St. Dionysius. There is a statue commemorating St. Dionysius in Bamberg Cathedral, probably because Pope Clemens II, who is buried there, died on St. Denis"s commemoration day.
43 Something in My Ear SL, uLW, H.
44 Panacea SL, ZET, uLW, H. Much of this poem occurs in the second section of "Dark Night Sallies Forth" in After Nature, London: 2003 (p. 88).
45 Mithraic SL, ZET, uLW, H. t.i.tle: Mithra was a Zoroastrian divinity of the oath. Zarvan: the Zoroastrian time-father creator, the father too of Ahriman and Ormuzd, recurring figures in Sebald"s work. The Zurvanist creation myth holds that Zurvan, or Zarvan, promised to sacrifice, or pray, for a thousand years for descendants (who would then be able to create everything in the world). Before the period was finished, however, he began to have doubts that his wishes would be fulfilled, and at that moment he conceived the twins Ahriman (for doubt) and Ormuzd (for sacrifice). The sea-goat is Capricorn, created when Pan leaped into the sea to escape the t.i.tan Typhon, growing a fish"s tail as he did so. The sea-goat is a symbol of renewed vitality and new beginnings. The oldest world egg myth, a symbol for the beginning of all things, goes back to the Sanskrit scriptures.
46 Memo SL, ZET, uLW, H.
47 Barometer Reading SL, uLW, H. ignoring their ladders: weather frogs (tree frogs) were kept in preserve gla.s.ses with some water in the bottom and a small ladder. If the weather was changing for the better, the frog would climb the ladder; if rain was imminent, the frog descended the ladder. Propertius: s.e.xtus Propertius, Latin poet (ca. 5015 BCE). In book 3 of his Elegies, Phoebus advises the poet: "Why have your pages left their set course? / Do not overload the boat of your skill. / With one oar skim the water, with the other the sand. / You will be safe: the storm is out at sea" (my translation).
48 K."s Emigration SL, ZET, uLW, H. Bohemian Switzerland, the High Tatras, and Franzensbad are all places frequented by Kaf ka. The final stanza cites a postcard, written by Kafka (dated June 1921) from Matliary in the High Tatras, to his parents, who were taking a Kur in Franzensbad. The postcard picture shows Kaf ka surrounded by fellow patients and staff. The "you" and "your"-at least in the context of Kaf ka"s postcard-addresses Kaf ka"s parents.
49 Through Holland in the Dark PT, uLW, H. Kaiser Wilhelm II, sometimes referred to colloquially as "Kaiser Willem," abdicated as German emperor and king of Prussia in November 1918 and went into exile in the Netherlands, where he lived in the town of Doorn until his death in 1941. The "Willem II" brand of cigars, however, was named after Prince William II of Orange (162650).
50 Abandoned uLW. Goethe"s abominable nature: entry for January 31, 1912, in Kaf ka"s diary: "Wrote nothing. Weltsch brings books on Goethe that leave me in a distracted and useless state of excitement. Plan for an essay: "Goethe"s Abominable Nature." Fear of the two-hour walk I"ve started taking in the evenings" (my translation).
51 Molkerbastei SL, ZET, uLW, H. t.i.tle: Beethoven lived in the Pasqualati House, at Molkerbastei 8 in Vienna. polished: a pun is lost in translation; the German has gewienert, "polished," which contains the word wienern, to speak with a Viennese accent. chair: Beethoven sat at the piano in a chair, not on a piano stool. From the tidy room, through the missing chair to the proviso, it is clear that the museum must not be disturbed. History must be kept tidy. Beethoven is allowed in at night, provided his compositions are more or less inaudible.
52 A Galley Lies off Helsingborg uLW. t.i.tle ("Liegt eine Galeere bei Helsingborg"): Sebald is quoting a quotation. Heinrich von Kleist cites an entry from no. 997 of the "Privilegierte Liste der Borsenhalle" (12 October 1810) in his curious article ent.i.tled "Miscellen" ("Miscellany"), published in the Berliner Abendblatter (15 October 1810), a daily newspaper of which he was editor. One of three short entries in the "Miscellen" ran as follows: "Se. Hoheit der Kronprinz von Schweden ist in Hamburg angekommen, und es liegt eine Galleere (sic) bei Helsingborg, um ihn zugleich bei der uberfahrt zu begruen" ("His Highness the Crown Prince of Sweden has arrived in Hamburg, and a galley lies off Helsingborg to welcome him when he crosses"). Kleist"s reduction of an official announcement in a Hamburg newspaper to a seemingly absurd detail deliberately placed out of context had satirical intent. See also Roland Borgards: "Experimentelle Aeronautik. Chemie, Meteorologie und Kleists Luftschiffkunst in den "Berliner Abendblattern," " in Kleist-Jahrbuch 2005, ed. Gunter Bamberger und Ingo Breuer, Stuttgart: 2005 (p. 156). The port of Helsingborg in Sweden faces the Danish town of Helsingr, the Elsinore of Shakespeare"s Hamlet, across the oresund Strait.
53 Holkham Gap PT, SL, uLW, H. t.i.tle: on the Norfolk coast between Blakeney Point and Wells-next-the-Sea. The sea lion was Operation Sea Lion (1940), Hitler"s only serious plan for the invasion of Britain; following British success in the Battle of Britain, it was continually postponed. Uncle Toby wishes for war in chapter 32 of book 6 of Laurence Sterne"s Tristram Shandy.
54 Norfolk SL, ZET, uLW, H. The physical (or, rather, metaphysical) att.i.tude of the pa.s.senger, who is sailing backwards ... with banished time, is reminiscent of Walter Benjamin"s "angel of history": the "storm [from Paradise] irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward" (Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn, London: 1973 [p. 260]). The reason for the poem"s description of Norfolk as a Louisianian landscape is obscure. If the adjective refers to the U.S. state Louisiana, the comparison is not entirely unfounded; the American state has some six thousand miles of navigable waterway, including three thousand miles of ca.n.a.ls, while the 1961 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (published five to ten years before the poem was written) states that the "low regions" of Louisiana, consisting largely of alluvial lands and reclaimable swampland, make up half of the entire state. Egyptian: Many years after the poem was written, the narrator in chapter 4 of Sebald"s East Anglian peregrination The Rings of Saturn would remember Denis Diderot"s description of Holland as "the Egypt of Europe," where one could sail through the fields in a boat. Perhaps Sebald had in mind the renowned Norfolk "wherry" Hathor, designed in 1905 using Egyptian hieroglyphics and mythological images. Wherries, of which only half a dozen survive today, may be said to resemble Egyptian feluccas.
55 Crossing the Water uLW. The poem, with the exception of the date, is almost identical to lines at the end of section 1 of "Dark Night Sallies Forth," in After Nature, op. cit. (p. 85). In Michael Hamburger"s translation, the pa.s.sage reads: "and a little later, / crossing to Floridsdorf / on the Bridge of Peace, / I nearly went out of my mind." The German (in Nach der Natur) is: "und wenig spater hatte ich / bei einem Gang uber / die Friedensbrucke fast / den Verstand verloren," in Nach der Natur, Frankfurt am Main: 2004 (p. 75). Did Sebald ask Michael Hamburger to insert Floridsdorf? Interestingly, various bridges do cross the Donau to Floridsdorf, but the Friedensbrucke (Bridge of Peace), which crosses the Donau-Ka.n.a.l more or less from the Franz-Josefs-Bahnhof in Alsergrund to Brigittenau, is not one of them.
56 Natural History SL, uLW. t.i.tle: in English in the German text. Another of Sebald"s "found" poems, taken verbatim from Johann Wilhelm Ritter"s Fragmente aus dem Nachla eines jungen Physikers, Bd. 2, Heidelberg: 1810 (p. 61); see also note on "Trigonometry of the Spheres" below. Ritter explains the position of Man in relation to the other "quarters" of the world: birds, worms, fishes, insects. Man is at the center of a cross formed by the intersection of lines joining these four regions of being. However ironic, Sebald"s use of the found material ill.u.s.trates the continuity of his fascination with matters arcane, alchemical, and astrological.
57 Ballad PT, SL, uLW, H. t.i.tle: "Ballad" refers less to the poetic genre of Sebald"s poem than to the preferred form of its subject"s compositions. Carl Lowe, or Carl Loewe, is known to have set several hundred ballads to music. The poem is an exercise in negotiating the Uncertainty Principle. It all seems simple-or even slight-at first, but the choice of words, the order in which they appear and the question form itself allow for a baffling range of variables. Is Carl Lowe"s (or Loewe"s) heart (or is it in fact his liver, or tongue, or indeed somebody else"s heart?) really immured (or has it been hung or buried?) in a column (or is it the pulpit?) of St. Jacob"s Church, or the Jacobus or Jacobi Church, or the Church of St. James, or the Cathedral Basilica of St. James the Apostle in Stettin, or, more politically correct, in Szczecin? Well, is it? Go and see (if you can see through stone, that is). If you can"t find the heart where the poem suggests it is, you might try searching for a recess in the great C-pipe of the organ. Loewe was the church organist at St. James"s for forty-six years.
58 Obscure Pa.s.sage SL, uLW, H. did not apprehend ... the word: readers who-as I have attempted to do and failed-wish to identify the source of misunderstanding or incomprehension the poem refers to may find it useful to know that "Wort"-here translated as word-can also mean "dictum" or "expression." It need not therefore be merely a single word we are looking for. Perhaps understanding itself is the key. In German verstehen not only stands for the cognitive process but may denote the physical act of comprehension, symbolically and actually located, at least partly, in the faculty of hearing. Archytas of Tarentum, who was active in the third century BCE, was one of the first and most influential cla.s.sical proponents of a theory of the limitations of hearing. Archytas maintained, for example, that harmony might be developed far beyond our limited physical apprehension of sound, and that its ultimate understanding could not therefore be attained via our senses, "for the great sounds do not steal into our hearing, just as nothing is poured into narrow-mouthed vessels, whenever someone pours a lot." See Carl A. Huffman, Archytas of Tarentum, Cambridge: 2005 (p. 107).
59 Poetry for an Alb.u.m uLW, H. The first stanza appears in different versions in Sebald"s volumes For Years Now, London: 2001 (p. 48) and Unrecounted, op. cit. (p. 23). It consists largely of a quotation from Jean Paul"s novel Flegeljahre (Uncouth Youth) (Jean Pauls Samtliche Werke, 26, Berlin: 1827 [p. 61]): "Gefuhle, sagt" er, sind Sterne, die blo bei h.e.l.lem Himmel leiten, aber die Vernunft ist eine Magnetnadel, die das Schiff noch ferner fuhrt, wenn jene auch verborgen sind und nicht mehr leuchten." ("Feelings, he said, are stars which guide us only when the sky is clear; but reason is the needle that carries on guiding the ship even when the former are hidden and no longer shine out.") palsied: Schumann suffered from digital paralysis. A revised version of the fourth stanza appears in After Nature, op. cit., p. 91. Carnaval (with this spelling) is a piano work (op. 9) by Schumann. For Ormuzd and Ariman, see note on "Mithraic" above. The conventional spelling is Ahriman. whistling sound: a slightly different version of these lines is found in For Years Now, op. cit. (p. 75).
60 Eerie Effects of the h.e.l.l Valley Wind on My Nerves uLW, H. t.i.tle: the Hollentaler, translated here as h.e.l.l Valley Wind, is an evening wind in Freiburg (where Sebald studied), blowing from east to west through the Hollental and Dreisam Valley. In a different context, perhaps, the word Hollental need not have been translated, but the poem requires the reader"s alertness to a notion of human h.e.l.l-the world of Daniel Paul Schreber. Schreber was a presiding judge in Dresden who was admitted to an asylum at the height of his career and believed G.o.d was turning him into a woman. Freud wrote on his case, as did C. G. Jung, Elias Canetti, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Lacan. Schreber wrote accounts (Memoirs of My Nervous Illness) of his various periods of treatment in asylums. In one, it is clear that some of his oppressors and the malevolent changes they made in the world were linked to Ca.s.siopeia. The phrase Order of the World is a quotation from Daniel Paul Schreber"s memoirs. li piu reconditi principii della naturale filosofia (the most secret principles of natural philosophy): from Prodomo (1670) by Francesco Lana de Terzi (163187), a Jesuit who proposed the idea of a vacuum airship and invented an early form of Braille. In his memoirs, Schreber describes himself as a stony guest who has returned from the distant past to a world grown unfamiliar. Open ... into h.e.l.l: English in the original text.
61 Unidentified Flying Objects uLW. t.i.tle: in English in the German text. lake of Idwal: Llyn Idwal, a small lake overshadowed by the Glyders at the head of Ogwen Valley in Snowdonia. According to legend, the Welsh prince Idwal, a son of Owain Gwynedd, was murdered there.
62 The Sky at Night uLW. t.i.tle: in English in the German text.
63 A Peaceable Kingdom uLW. t.i.tle: in English in the German text. A number of works by the Quaker "naive" artist Edward Hicks (17801849) were known as the Peaceable Kingdom paintings, and based on Isaiah 11:6: "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them." The paintings are reminiscent of the Paradise Landscape works of Jan Brueghel; see note below on the final poem of "The Year Before Last" section, "In the Paradise Landscape." Parts of the text derive from the abecedarian "Shaker Manifesto" of 1882, republished as a preschool text in 1981 under the t.i.tle A Peaceable Kingdom: The Shaker Abecedarius, ill.u.s.trated by Alice and Martin Provensen. Crocodile ... bear: original text in English. Are these ... our love: original text in English.
64 Trigonometry of the Spheres uLW, H. the moon is the earth"s work of art: "Der Mond ist ein Kunstwerk der Erde" is cited from Johann Wilhelm Ritter"s Fragmente aus dem Nachla eines jungen Physikers, op. cit. (p. 142), where we also read: "Der Mond ist ein Thier" (the moon is an animal). See also note for "Natural History" above. The notion that a holy man sits where night turns to day ("wo die Nacht sich wendet") is adapted from the Talmud (Berachot 3a), whose German translation writes not of "ein Heiliger" (a holy man) but of "der Heilige": "At every watch the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He sits and roars like a lion."
65 Day Return uLW, H. t.i.tle: original text in English. tatzelwurm: fabled Alpine dragon with a long, snakelike body. the Hunter Gracchus: the t.i.tle of a story fragment by Franz Kaf ka. Gracchus, after his death, remains perpetually trapped between life and death, traveling from place to place in a small boat in search of the "beyond," occasionally going ash.o.r.e but never finding what he is looking for-a state of permanent exile. Gracchus is a recurrent figure in Sebald"s work, and is especially prominent in Vertigo. Hands off Caroline: original text in English. Who knows the noises ... whistle a new song: original text in English. People taking to boats ... Windsor Park: original text in English. Baybrooke: Sebald has dropped an "r"; the incident described in Pepys"s diary concerns Bishop Braybrooke. This pa.s.sage does not appear to be cited directly from Pepys"s diary for 1666 but from an entry in the Index Volume, edited by Robert Latham, of The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 11, Berkeley: 1983 (p. 105). The scene, pulling out of Liverpool Street Station while reading Samuel Pepys"s diary, recurs in the final pages of Vertigo.
66 New Jersey Journey uLW, H. t.i.tle: original text in English. Several pa.s.sages here later return in the chapter "Ambros Adelwarth" in The Emigrants, in which a visit to the narrator"s uncle Kasimir in the Lakehurst and Dover Beaches area is similarly described. See The Emigrants, trans. Michael Hulse, London: 1996 (pp. 7273, 8081, and 8889). The third stanza is echoed in part 4 of "Dark Night Sallies Forth," the final section of After Nature, op. cit. (p. 97).
67 The Year Before Last DK, H. Some parallels (the motor-cyclist, the "firs growing all the way down to the outlying houses," the white-haired waiter bringing "Cuban cigarettes") may be found in Sebald"s prose work Austerlitz, trans. Anthea Bell, London: 2001; Penguin: 2002 (pp. 29092, 299300). It might therefore be inferred that these details traveled from the poem to the later prose work. While this may indeed be the case, the common ancestor of both works is undoubtedly a chapter ent.i.tled "Marienbad" in Heinrich Laube"s Reisenovellen, vol. 1, Leipzig: 1834 (pp. 42638). Several pa.s.sages and identical turns of phrase, as well as scenic structuring in Laube"s text, are cited in the present poem, references that reveal the former"s significance as a subtext (including foreshadowing of the themes of anti-Semitism and the Marie character) for the Marienbad episode in Austerlitz. "The Year Before Last" contains a number of additional references and quotations. pertrified magical city: from Novalis, Schriften, Berlin: 1837 (p. 149). Is not the world here still ... upon the cliffs? Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Marienbader Elegie," in Gedichte und Epen, band 1, Hamburger Ausgabe, Munchen: 1981/1996 (p. 382); Rabbi of Belz: in letters to Max Brod (17/18 July 1916) and Felix Weltsch (19 July 1916) Franz Kafka described his impressions of the Belzer Rabbi and his entourage. The match game ... an inch closer: Alain Robbe-Grillet and Alain Resnais, L"annee derniere a Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad): various scenes. I am wholly yours ("ich bin ganz dein"): Goethe wrote such words on several occasions (to Charlotte von Stein: November 1783 and 26 January 1786; to Christiane Vulpius: 25 August 1792), but a more likely source is the performance of a play ent.i.tled Rosmer-possibly a reference to Ibsen"s Rosmersholm (1886), among whose characters are Rosmer and Rebecca-at the beginning of L"annee derniere a Marienbad, which closes with the (the play"s) character Rebekka"s words: "Voila ... maintenant ... je suis a vous" ("That"s it ... now ... I am yours"), after which, however, she does not move "an inch closer" to Rosmer. the corridors ... crimson tapestry: Friedrich Schiller, Wallenstein"s Death (act 5, scene 11).
68 A Waltz Dream JPT, H. t.i.tle: Ein Walzertraum (A Waltz Dream) was one of Oscar Straus"s many operettas in the popular Viennese style. Completed in 1907, it was composed to a libretto by Felix Dormann and Leopold Jacobson, who based their work on Hans Muller"s Das Buch der Abenteuer. Straus adapted the score for The Smiling Lieutenant, a 1931 Hollywood film. The t.i.tle of Jan Peter Tripp"s picture of 1990 is The Land of Smiles, a reference to Franz Lehar"s operetta Das Land des Lachelns. Tripp, who lives in the Alsace region of France, had been Sebald"s friend since their schooldays in Oberstdorf in the early 1960s. They collaborated on the volume Unrecounted, and Sebald published a study of Tripp"s work in his volume of essays Logis in einem Landhaus (A House in the Country), 1998. The essay-"As Day and Night, Chalk and Cheese: On the Pictures of Jan Peter Tripp"-is included in Michael Hamburger"s English translation of Unrecounted, op. cit. (pp. 7894). Dr. Tulp is the surgeon at the center of Rembrandt"s painting The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632). The painting is reproduced in Sebald"s The Rings of Saturn.
69 Donderdag GG1. t.i.tle: the events referred to in "Donderdag," the activities of the notorious "Bende van Venlo" (the Venlo gang), were reported in various newspapers in the Netherlands in February 1995 and later at their trial. The pa.s.sages in Dutch are quotations from a report by Hans Moleman in the Volkskrant (23 February 1995). & Frankfurt: from approximately 1995-in a process completed by 1999-Sebald"s poems tend to prefer the ampersand to the more conventional conjunction "and." In these final years of his life, as a writer frequently invited to readings and other literary events, Sebald would sometimes jot down first drafts of his poems "on the road"-on menus or on hotel stationery. In his subsequent fair copies, however, the author generally retained the shorthand ampersand, apparently (and his penchant for the short, two-stressed, railroad-rhythmic line may be another instance of this) adapting poetic form to a life of pa.s.sing "in a train / from here to there," across the land and the water. Translations of pa.s.sages in Dutch: Donderdag: Thursday: carnavalsmoorden / van Venlo: the Venlo carnival murders; koffieshop branche: coffee-bar business; twee oude mensen / met doorgesneden / keel op de grund: two old people with their throats cut, lying on the ground; turkse / gemeenschap & / duitse clientele: Turkish community and German clients; een zwarte Merce / des een rode BMW / & twee kogels van / dichtbij in het hoofd: a black Mercedes, a red BMW, and two bullets in the head fired at close range.
70 The secrets GG1. From a ma.n.u.script handwritten on the headed notepaper of the Hotel Schweizerhof in the Hinuberstrae, Hannover. See also "Room 645" below.
71 On 9 June 1904 VVJ, WS, H. t.i.tle: On 3 June 1904, the Russian dramatist and short-story writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, suffering from tuberculosis, set off with his wife, Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, to the Black Forest spa resort of Badenweiler, where he died on July 1 by the Julian calendar, on July 15 by our own. Many of the details in the poem can be gleaned from Chekhov"s letters from Badenweiler to his sister, in the final two weeks of his life, or from his wife"s memoir.
72 Ninety years later VVJ, WS, H. Badenweiler: See note above.
73 In Bamberg VVJ, FL, H. Little Hunchback ("das bucklige Mannlein"): a figure from the collection of folk poetry ent.i.tled Des Knaben Wunderhorn (18058), collected by Clemens Brentano and Achim Arnim. Empress Kunigunde ... Katzenberg: see note for "Cold Draught" above. dog Berganza: a talking dog in E. T. A. Hoffmann"s story "Nachricht von den neuesten Schicksalen des Hundes Berganza" ("Report on the New Adventures of the Dog Berganza"), written in 181415, set in Bamberg, and based on Cervantes"s "Dialogue of the Dogs" (1613). Hoffmann lived in Bamberg from 1808 to 1813, and the story starts with the narrator, who has just crossed the river, meeting the talking dog in what is apparently the Hain Park, Bamberg"s oldest park. Schorsch and Rosa: Georg Sebald and Rosa (or Rosi) Egelhofer, the poet"s parents. The scene is probably based on the photograph described in "Dark Night Sallies Forth" (After Nature, op. cit., p. 83). Kara Ben Nemsi: fictional character and "cowboy of the Orient," in the works of the highly popular nineteenth-century German children"s writer Karl May.
74 Marienbad Elegy VVJ, NZZ, H. t.i.tle: Like Wolfgang von Goethe"s "Marienbad Elegy," from his "Trilogy of Pa.s.sion" sequence of 1823, Sebald"s poem consists of twenty-three six-line stanzas, and one might think any resemblance to Goethe"s metrically controlled rhyming "tempest of feeling" ended there, were it not for the t.i.tle. Sebald"s detachment from the Dichterfurst (prince of poets) is respectful in the mildness of its irony, and yet one senses that something about Ulrike"s personal effects, preserved in the Marienbad Museum, must have touched the twentieth-century author and inspired his own pensive elegy. The apparent subject of the poem is Goethe"s unrequited love, at the age of seventy-three, for the eighteen-year-old Ulrike von Levetzow, whom he had met at Marienbad a year earlier, and would see for the last time a year later in Karlsbad, on the occasion of his seventy-fourth birthday. Ulrike remained a spinster, and died in 1899 at the age of ninety-five. The poet Michael Hamburger, who did a translation of "Marienbad Elegy" not long after Sebald"s death, has written that Ulrike von Levetzow died "a full century and a half after her rejected lover"s birth. Somehow this almost macabre time span strikes me as relevant to the irony and pathos of a poem obsessed as its author was with transitoriness and the interweaving of seemingly unconnected phenomena and events." See Irish Pages, Autumn/Winter 2002/2003 (p. 132).
75 At the edge VVJ, H. This poem and the three that follow, from the ambit of what Sebald called his "micropoems," were not included in the volume For Years Now or in Unrecounted.
76 And always GG1. See note above.
77 How silvery GG1. See note for "At the edge."
78 Somewhere GG1. See note for "At the edge." Turkenfeld is a town on the Allgaubahn (Allgau Railway). A brief discussion of the significance of Turkenfeld and its surrounding region during the period of National Socialism appears in the Translator"s Introduction that prefaces this volume. Sources: Augenzeugen und Bilder berichten. Die Haftlinge aus den KZ-Auenlagern Landsberg/Kaufering auf dem Todesmarsch im April 1945 durch den Landkreis Furstenfeldbruck nach Dachau: Arbeitskreis Mahnmal Furstenfeldbruck, Furstenfeldbruck, 2007; "Berichte von Zeitzeugen aus der Holle von Kaufering," in The European Holocaust Memorial: Burgervereinigung Landsberg im 20. Jahrhundert e.V. (www.buergervereinigung-landsberg.org).
79 In the sleepless VVJ, AK48, H. Town Musicians: the Grimms" tale "The Town Musicians of Bremen," about a donkey, cat, dog, and c.o.c.kerel who attack a robber in the dark.
80 Room 645 VVJ, AK48, H.
81 My ICE Rail-Planner VVJ, AK48, H. The poem appears to contain a collage of so-called "found" material, elements of which-e.g., text from h.o.a.rdings, advertis.e.m.e.nts, or pa.s.sages from newspaper articles-Sebald frequently integrated into his poems. radio, transmission ... building components: advertis.e.m.e.nt by Alcatel Sel AG in Berliner Zeitung, Wirtschaft (19 November 1994).
82 One Sunday in Autumn 94 VVJ, AK48, H. Father of the German Nation: This term casts Helmut Kohl, the first German chancellor after German reunification, in the role of the Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck.
83 Calm November weather VVJ, AK48, H. literary villa: founded by Walter Hollerer in 1963 and one of the most important literary inst.i.tutions in Berlin, indeed in Germany, the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin hosts a constant flow of readings, seminars, and discussions throughout the year and also functions as a guesthouse for writers-in-residence. Sebald visited the Colloquium on several occasions. On one such occasion, in November 1997, the Greenlandic poet Jessie Kleemann read from her work.
84 Unchanged for years VVJ, AK48, H. The list of common brand names in the second stanza (Nordhauser Doppelkorn is a spirit, Gau Kongernheimer Vogelsang a wine from the Rheinhessen region, and Rotkappchen-Little Red Riding Hood-a sparkling wine from East Germany) includes a pun on the name of a German brandy, Asbach Uralt, literally "Ancient Asbach." Instead of the brand name, however, Sebald playfully writes "der uralte Asbach," "the age-old Asbach."
85 In the Summer of 1836 VVJ, K&C, H. The composer Frederic Chopin (181049) fell in love with the sixteen-year-old Maria Wodzinska and, in July 1836, proposed marriage to her at the White Swan inn at Marienbad, where the Wodzinska family was staying. She accepted the engagement, but her mother, realizing that her husband was against the union, made secrecy the condition of her own consent. The family returned to Poland in 1837; the plans never came to fruition and indeed only came to light after Chopin"s death with the discovery among the composer"s papers of Maria"s letters, in an envelope marked "Moja Bieda" (my wretchedness).
86 In Alfermee VVJ, K&C, H. t.i.tle: Alfermee is a small village in the canton of Bern on the banks of Lake Biel (Bielersee, Lac de Bienne), in Switzerland. a language you do not understand: Alfermee is the home of the critic Heinz Schafroth, an expert on the work of the German poet Gunter Eich, whose ashes were scattered by his wife, the writer Ilse Aichinger, in the vineyards of Alfermee. Sebald visited Schafroth"s house twice: once during the winter of 1997, when he was holding the lectures at the University of Zurich on which he would base his book Luftkrieg und Libteratur (On the Natural History of Destruction); and once in the summer of the same year, when, accompanied by Heinz Schafroth, he visited St. Peter"s Island on Lake Biel, an expedition described in the second chapter of Sebald"s book of essays Logis in einem Landhaus (A Place in the Country), 1998. According to Schafroth, their conversation would certainly have included references to the Austrian writer Marianne Fritz (19482007), author of the three-volume, 3,400-page novel Dessen Sprache du nicht vertrehst (Whose Language You Do Not Understand), published in 1985. Fritz"s prose work Naturgema I (By Nature I) had appeared in five volumes in 1996, a year before Sebald"s second visit to Alfermee. The two parts of the Naturgema project (Naturgema II appearing in 1998) went on to make up some 7,000 pages. Heinz Schafroth has confirmed that it is "not going too far" to see Marianne Fritz behind the figure of the exhausted writer (described in German as "Schreiberin": a woman writer) in the third stanza of the poem (Heinz Schafroth: personal communication via Samuel Moser, March 1, 2011).
87 On the Eve of VVJ, K&C, H.
88 In the Paradise Landscape GG1. the younger Brueghel: Jan Brueghel the Younger, born in Antwerp in 1601, died in Antwerp 1678. The painting, in the Stadel Museum in Frankfurt am Main, is generally referred to as Paradise with the Creation of Eve. It was probably painted toward the end of the 1630s.
Appendix.
1 I remember P. Golden Holborn: presumably a conflation of Golden Virginia and Old Holborn, two rolling tobaccos.
2 October Heat Wave P. t.i.tle: an earlier t.i.tle (recorded in a ma.n.u.script version of the poem held in GG1 in the Sebald Archive) reads: "6 October 1997."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR.
W. G. SEBALD was born in Wertach im Allgau, Germany, in 1944. He studied German language and literature in Freiburg, Switzerland, and Manchester. He taught at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, for thirty years, becoming professor of European literature in 1987, and from 1989 to 1994 was the first director of the British Centre for Literary Translation. His books The Rings of Saturn, The Emigrants, Vertigo, and Austerlitz have won a number of international awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Berlin Literature Prize, and the Literatur Nord Prize. His other books include After Nature, Campo Santo, and On the Natural History of Destruction. He died in December 2001.
end.