Winfried Sebald - Campo Santo

54 Neue Geschichten , p. 35.

55 Ibid., p. 37.

56 Ibid., p. 39.

57 Ibid., p. 49.

58 This and the following quotation: ibid., p. 53.

59 Cf. Wuppertal 1945 , by Robert Wolfgang Schnel, in Vaterland, Muttersprache — Deutsche Schriftsteller und ihr Staat seit 1945 , ed. K. Wagenbach, W. Stephan, and M. Krüger (Berlin: 1979), p. 29f., which quotes this comment by Brecht in a context that is relevant here. Stanislaw Lem, Imaginäre Grösse (Frankfurt: 1981), p. 74; Eng., Imaginary Magnitude , tr. Marc E. Heine (London: 1985).

60 Neue Geschichten , p. 59.

61 Ibid., pp. 63, 69.

62 Ibid., p. 79.

63 Interview mit dem Tode , p. 121.

64 Andrew Bowie, Problems of Historical Understanding in the Modern Novel , typewritten diss., Norwich, Eng., 1979, an outstanding work that studies Kluge in its closing chapter.

65 Neue Geschichten , pp. 38, 54.

66 Problems of Historical Understanding , p. 295f.

67 Neue Geschichten , p. 106f.

CONSTRUCTS OF MOURNING

1 Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich, Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern , Munich, 1967, p. 9.

2 An almost entirely dismantled and deindustrialized Germany such as the Morgenthau Plan envisaged would hardly have been in any state to rehabilitate itself, and Robert Burton’s description of melancholy states where the land lies uncultivated, desolate, full of swamps, marshes, wildernesses, and the like, where cities fall into decay, towns are depressed and poor, villages are deserted, and the population is dirty, ugly, and uncivilized, would probably have been very relevant to Germany.

3 This and the following three quotations are from Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern , p. 35.

4 Hans Erich Nossack, Pseudoautobiographische Glossen (Frankfurt: 1971).

5 Hans Erich Nossack, Der Untergang . In Interview mit dem Tode , Frankfurt, 1972, p. 249.

6 Act I, scene 2.

7 Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern , p. 47.

8 Ibid., p. 48.

9 Ibid., p. 56.

10 Ibid., p. 57.

11 Ibid., p. 28.

12 Heinrich Böll, Frankfurter Vorlesungen , Munich, 1968, p. 8.

13 Ibid., p. 9.

14 Die Unföhigkeit zu trauern , pp. 19, 18.

15 Günter Grass, Tagebuch einer Schnecke , Reinbek, 1974, p. 80; Eng., From the Diary of a Snail , tr. Ralph Manheim, London, 1974, p. 112.

16 Ibid., p. 27; Eng., p. 34. Lichtenstein’s book did not appear until 1973. In the foreword to his monograph, Erwin Lichtenstein comments that Grass, in his own latest book, refers “to accounts and news reports as well as much factual material that he had from me.” And he continues: “The reader of Diary of a Snail will find my information expressed in the chapters of Günter Grass’s book tracing the final period of the history of the Jews in Danzig” (E. Lichtenstein, Die Juden der freien Stadt Danzig under der Herrschaft des Nationalsozialismus , Tübingen, 1973, p. viii). We have here a clear indication that there had been no research by local historians into the fate of the Jewish communities on the German side, and that little had changed in the state of affairs deplored by Jean Paul as “Christian neglect of the study of the Jews.”

17 Günter Grass, Katz und Maus , Reinbek, 1963, p. 35; Eng., Cat and Mouse , tr. Ralph Manheim, London.

18 See “Rede auf Hermann Broch,” in Elias Canetti, Aufzeichnungen 1942–1948 , Munich, 1969, p. 159f; Tagebuch einer Schnecke , p. 153; Eng., p. 223.

19 Walter Benjamin, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels , Frankfurt, 1963, p. 166; Eng., The Origin of German Tragic Drama , tr. John Osborne, London, 1977, p. 152.

20 Tagebuch einer Schnecke , p. 155; Eng., p. 223.

21 Ibid., p. 81.

22 Heinrich Böll, Der Zug war pünktlich , Munich, 1972, p. 34; Eng., The Train Was on Time , tr. Leila Vennewitz, London, 1970, p. 28.

23 Tagebuch einer Schnecke , p. 155; Eng., p. 96.

24 Ibid., p. 70; Eng., p. 97.

25 Ibid., p. 37; Eng., p. 49.

26 In Tagebuch einer Schnecke (From the Diary of a Snail) , Grass tells his children: “It’s true: you’re innocent. I, too, born almost late enough, am held to be free from guilt. Only if I wanted to forget, if you were unwilling to learn how it slowly happened, only then might words of one syllable catch up with us: words like guilt and shame; they, too, resolute snails, impossible to stop” (p. 13; Eng., p. 13). The most notable feature of this passage is the less than convincing logic of the last couple of lines.

27 Tagebuch einer Schnecke , p. 130; Eng., p. 188.

28 Ibid., p. 189; Eng., p. 274.

29 Ibid., p. 203; Eng., p. 294.

30 Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Tynset , Frankfurt, 1965, p. 30.

31 Ibid., p. 39.

32 Ibid., p. 46.

33 Ibid., p. 155f.

34 Act I, scene 1.

35 Franz Kafka, Briefe an Felice , Frankfurt, 1967, p. 283.

36 Quoted from F. P. Wilson, Seventeenth-Century Prose , Cambridge, Eng., 1960, p. 45.

37 Ibid., p. 27.

38 Sir Thomas Browne, Hydriothapia. Urne-Burial; or, A Brief Discourse of the Sepulchrall Urnes lately found in Norfolk , London, 1658. In The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne , New York and London, 1968, p. 281.

39 Tynset , p. 185.

40 See Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels , p. 164; Eng., p. 150.

41 Hamlet , Act IV, scene 5.

42 Tynset , p. 87.

43 Theodor W. Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie , Frankfurt, 1970, p. 66.; Eng., Aesthetic Theory , tr. Robert Hullot-Kentor, London, 1997, p. 39f.

44 Tynset , p. 186.

45 Ibid., p. 79; Hamlet , Act I, scene 5.

46 Tynset , p. 265.

47 Ibid., p. 14.

48 Wolfgang Hildesheimer, “Brief an Max über den Stand der Dinge und Anderes,” in Manuskripte. Zeitschrift für Literatur 76 (1982), p. 44.

49 Lucifers Königreich und Seelengejäidt: Oder Narrenhatz. In acht Theil Abgetheilet … Durch Aegidium Albertinum, Fürstl.: Durchl: in Bayrn Secretarium, zusammen getragen , Munich, 1617, p. 411 (quoted in Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels , p. 156).

PROSE

“A Little Excursion to Ajaccio” ( Kleine Exkursion nach Agaccio). Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , 10 August 1996.

“Campo Santo” ( Campo Santo). Akzente 1 (2003), pp. 3–14.

“The Alps in the Sea” (Die Alpen im Meer ). Literaturen 1 (2001), pp. 30–33.

“ La cour de l’ancienne école ” ( La cour de l’ancienne école ). In: Quint Buchholz, ed., BuchBilderBuch , stories about pictures, Zürich, 1997, pp. 13–15.

ESSAYS

“Strangeness, Integration, and Crisis. On Peter Handke’s Play Kaspar ” ( Fremdheit, Integration und Krise. Über Peter Handkes Stück Kaspar ). Literatur und Kritik 10 (1975), pp. 152–58.

“Between History and Natural History: On the Literary Description of Total Destruction” ( Zwischen Geschichte und Naturgeschichte. Über die literarische Beschreibung totaler Zerstörung ). Orbis litterarum 37 (1982), pp. 345–66.

“Constructs of Mourning: Günter Grass and Wolfgang Hildesheimer” ( Konstruktionen der Trauer. Günter Grass und Wolfgang Hildesheimer ). Deutschunterricht 35 (1983), 5, pp. 32–46.

“Des Häschens Kind, der kleine Has (“The Little Hare, Child of the Hare”): On the Poet Ernst Herbeck’s Totem Animal” ( Des Häschens Kind, der kleine Has. Über das Totemtier des Lyrikers Ernst Herbeck ). Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , 8 December 1992.