Winfried Sebald - Across the Land and the Water - Selected Poems, 1964-2001

64 Trigonometry of the SpheresÜLW, 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 Nachlaß 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 ReturnÜLW, H. Title: original text in English. tatzelwurm: fabled Alpine dragon with a long, snakelike body. the Hunter Gracchus: the title 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 ashore 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 passage 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 JourneyÜLW, H. Title: original text in English. Several passages 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. 72–73, 80–81, and 88–89). 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 LastDK, 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. 290–92, 299–300). 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 entitled “Marienbad” in Heinrich Laube’s Reisenovellen , vol. 1, Leipzig: 1834 (pp. 426–38). Several passages 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, München: 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’année dernière à 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 entitled Rosmer —possibly a reference to Ibsen’s Rosmersholm (1886), among whose characters are Rosmer and Rebecca — at the beginning of L’année dernière à Marienbad , which closes with the (the play’s) character Rebekka’s words: “Voilà … maintenant … je suis à 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 DreamJPT, H. Title: 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 Dörmann and Leopold Jacobson, who based their work on Hans Müller’s Das Buch der Abenteuer . Straus adapted the score for The Smiling Lieutenant , a 1931 Hollywood film. The title of Jan Peter Tripp’s picture of 1990 is The Land of Smiles , a reference to Franz Lehár’s operetta Das Land des Lächelns . 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. 78–94). 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 DonderdagGG1. Title: 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 passages 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 passing “in a train / from here to there,” across the land and the water. Translations of passages 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 clientèle: 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.