W. G. Sebald

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W.G. Sebald

W.G. Sebald
Born May 18, 1944(1944-05-18)
Wertach im Allgäu, Germany
Died December 14, 2001
Norfolk, England
Occupation writer, academic
Influences

W. G. (Winfred Georg Maximilian) Sebald (May 18, 1944, Wertach im Allgäu–December 14, 2001, Norfolk, England) was a German writer and academic. At the time of his early death at the age of 57, he was being cited by many literary critics as one of the greatest living authors, and had been tipped as a possible future winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature - in a 2007 interview the secretary of the Swedish Academy, Horace Engdahl, stated Sebald as one of three newly deceased writers who would have been worthy laureates along with Ryszard Kapuściński and Jacques Derrida.[1]

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[edit] Life

Sebald grew up in Wertach Bavaria, one of four children of Rosa and Georg Sebald. From 1948 to 1963 he lived in Sonthofen.[2] His father joined the Reichswehr in 1929 and remained in the Wehrmacht under the Nazis. His father remained a detached figure, a prisoner of war until 1947; a grandfather was the most important male presence in his early years. He was shown images of the Holocaust whilst at school in Oberstdorf and recalled that no one knew how to explain what they had just seen. The Holocaust and post-war Germany looms large in Sebald's work.

Sebald studied literature at the universities of Freiburg, Germany, Fribourg, Switzerland and Manchester. He became an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester in 1966 and settled in England permanently in 1970, joining the University of East Anglia (UEA). In 1987, he was appointed to a chair of European literature at UEA and, in 1989, became the founding director of the British Centre for Literary Translation. He lived at Wymondham and Poringland whilst at the UEA.

Sebald died in a car crash in 2001. He was driving together with his daughter, Anna, who survived the crash. He had married Ute in 1967. He is buried in St. Andrew's churchyard in Framingham Earl, close to where he lived.

[edit] Work

Sebald's works are largely concerned with the theme of memory, both personal and collective. They were in particular attempts to reconcile himself with, and deal in literary terms with, the trauma of the Second World War and its effect on the German people. In On the Natural History of Destruction he wrote a major essay on the wartime bombing of German cities, and the absence in German writing of any real response. His concern with the Holocaust is expressed in several books delicately tracing his own biographical connections with Jews.

His distinctive and innovative novels were written in German, but are well-known in excellent English translations which he supervised closely. They include Austerlitz, The Rings of Saturn, The Emigrants, and Vertigo. They are notable for their curious and wide-ranging mixture of fact (or apparent fact), recollection and fiction, often punctuated by indistinct black-and-white photographs, which are set in evocative counterpoint to the narrative rather than illustrating it directly. All of his novels are presented as observations and recollections made by Sebald while travelling around parts of Europe. They include a dry, mischievous sense of humour.

Sebald is also the author of three books of poetry: For Years Now (2001), After Nature (2002), and The Unrecounted (2004).

[edit] Influences

The works of Jorge Luis Borges were one of Sebald's influences, especially The Garden of Forking Paths and Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. Sebald references Tlön in The Rings of Saturn.[3]

Other influences included contemporary scientific writing and the following authors and books:

[edit] References

  1. ^ Tidningen Vi - STÄNDIGT DENNA HORACE!
  2. ^ W.G. Sebald, Schriftsteller und Schüler am Gymnasium Oberstdorfs
  3. ^ McCulloh, Mark Richard (2003). Understanding W. G. Sebald. University of South Carolina Press, 66. ISBN 1570035067. Retrieved on 2007-12-23. 
  • Reading W.G. Sebald: Adventure and Disobedience by Deane Blackler (Camden House 2007): an analysis of the reading practice Sebald's writing demands.
  • Christopher Bigsby – Remembering and Imagining the Holocaust: The Chain of Memory. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
  • J.J. Long (ed.), Anne Whitehead (ed.) – W.G. Sebald: A Critical Companion, Edinburgh University Press, 2006.
  • Scott Denham (ed.), Mark McCulloh (ed.) W.G. Sebald: History - Memory - Trauma, Walter de Gruyter, 2005.
  • Mark McCulloh – Understanding W.G.Sebald, University of South Carolina Press, 2003.
  • John Wylie - The spectral geographies of W.G. Sebald, Cultural Geographies, Vol. 14, No. 2, 171-188, 2007.
  • Heinz Ludwig Arnold (ed.): W. G. Sebald. München, 2003. (=Text + Kritik. Zeitschrift für Literatur. IV, 158). - Includes bibliography.
  • Long, J. J., W. G. Sebald: Image, Archive, Modernity

[edit] External links