W. G. Sebald

Across the Land and the Water: Selected Poems, 1964-2001

Translator’s Introduction

“My medium is prose,” W. G. Sebald once declared in an interview, a statement that is easily misconstrued if a subtle distinction the German author added is overlooked: “… not the novel.” Far from disavowing his attraction to poetic forms, Sebald’s sworn allegiance to what he called “prose” deliberately placed his work at arm’s length from the generic exactions (plot, character development, dialogue) levied by the more conventional modes of writing fiction. Indeed, it is perhaps only in reading Sebald’s poetry — whose breathing and tone, especially in the later poems, frequently recall the timbre of the narrative voices in Vertigo, The Emigrants, and The Rings of Saturn—that we may begin to sense the poetic consistency of his literary prose itself, and also that of his writing as a whole. Reversing the focus, readers of Sebald’s prose fiction who are coming to his shorter poetry for the first time may be surprised to find that many of the concerns of his acclaimed later prose works are prefigured in his earliest, most lyrical poems: borders, journeys, archives, landscapes, reading, time, memory, myth, legend, and the “median state” (Edward Said) of the exile, who is neither fully integrated into the new system nor fully free of the old. Following the development of the poetry from its lyrical beginnings to the later narrative forms, we can trace the trajectory of the author’s gradual reach for the epic scope of his work in the 1990s, a quest that, I argue, initially culminated in the tripartite, book-length, narrative poem Nach der Natur (After Nature, 1988). On the way, we will discover poems to value for their singular artistic achievements: some puzzling, some dazzlingly hermetic, others deceptively slight or simple, several witty or ironic, each in its different way an encounter with life’s unresolved questions and mysteries, each gazing into the abyss of twentieth-century European history.

W. G. Sebald began publishing poetry as a student in the 1960s, and he continued to write poems throughout his life, publishing many in German and Austrian literary magazines. Among the work he had prepared for publication shortly before his untimely death in 2001 were the volumes For Years Now and Unerzählt (Unrecounted), while a host of shorter poems that he had intended to publish in the 1970s and 1980s did not come to light until after their posthumous removal to the German Literature Archive in Marbach. Before completing his first major literary work, Nach der Natur, in the mid-1980s, Sebald had prepared and paginated, apparently for publication, two collections of shorter poems—“Schullatein” (“School Latin”), and “Über das Land und das Wasser” (“Across the Land and the Water”), consisting altogether of some ninety poems — neither of which would find its way into print. Leaving aside work that has already appeared in English in the volumes After Nature, Unrecounted, and For Years Now, the present selection of Sebald’s poetry offers a representative viewing of work from the two unpublished volumes, while at the same time collecting almost all the shorter poems published in books and journals during his lifetime, including, in an appendix, two poems written by the author in English and published, in 2000, in the Norwich-based literary journal Pretext. Readers may be curious to compare Sebald’s own English poems with those which have found their way into English through translation, setting the author’s writing in a foreign tongue against foreign translations from his mother tongue.

The present volume presents Sebald’s poetic production from the poems and publications of his student years (“Poemtrees”), across the two unpublished volumes already mentioned, and through the narrative forms of the 1990s and the turn of the millennium (gathered in the section “The Year Before Last”). Of the eighty-eight poems published here in translation for the first time, thirty-three draw on unpublished[1] manuscripts deposited for the Estate of W. G. Sebald at the German Literature Archive, while fifty-five are translations of poems in the German volume Über das Land und das Wasser (Across the Land and the Water), edited by Sven Meyer in 2008. The question that naturally arises is why Sebald did not publish “School Latin” or “Across the Land and the Water” after their completion — probably in 1975 and 1984 respectively. There may be no single answer to this question, but one explanation points to what could be called an “epic” or “narrative” turn in Sebald’s writing during the mid-1980s. In order to understand how this came about, it is necessary to briefly describe the sequence and composition of some of the manuscripts deposited in the writer’s archive in Marbach.

Sebald’s papers, as we shall see, reveal the movement of his poetic work since the mid-1960s as a kind of “rolling” project or cascade, culminating in the publication of Nach der Natur (After Nature) in 1988. Significantly, however, the three sections of this volume were completed somewhat earlier, with the middle section completed by 1984. It is likely that this and the next year were decisive, marking both the moment of Sebald’s turn to longer narrative forms and, simultaneously, the provisional curtailment of his plan to publish a volume of shorter poems. The three sections of Nach der Natur first appeared in the Austrian journal Manuskripte: “And If I Remained by the Outermost Sea” (October 1984); “As the Snow on the Alps” (June 1986); and “Dark Night Sallies Forth” (March 1987). Michael Hamburger’s English translation After Nature, whose three sections I have cited here, was published in 2002.

What the papers in the Marbach archive show us is that Sebald’s typescript volume “School Latin” inherited poems from an even earlier, albeit more fragmentary, file: “Poemtrees,” more a loose bundle of poems than a collection. Twelve poems from this earliest grouping, which are included in the present volume as the first twelve translations in the section “Poemtrees,” represent Sebald’s earliest publications, appearing in a Freiburg students’ magazine (1964–65). The collection “School Latin” supplied seventeen poems, many of them in revised versions — to the subsequent collection “Across the Land and the Water.” Similarly, the final section of this volume, consisting of the full text of “And If I Remained by the Outermost Sea,” went on to form the second of the three sections of After Nature. Furthermore, the third and final section of After Nature (“Dark Night Sallies Forth”) incorporates at least eighteen shorter poems, half of them in their entirety and all of them cut from the typescript of “Across the Land and the Water.” Whole poems that Sebald pasted verbatim into the final section of After Nature have not been included in the present volume.

In conclusion, Sebald’s decision, in 1984, to publish the final section of “Across the Land and the Water” in Manuskripte, and — possibly in the same year — to allow “Dark Night Sallies Forth” to “cannibalize” the shorter poems of “Across the Land and the Water,” heralded the beginning of an entirely new poetic project and paved the way for the completed typescript of the tripartite narrative poem Nach der Natur to be sent to various publishers in November of 1985. At the same time, however, the concomitant attenuation of the “Über das Land und das Wasser” typescript effectively ended any plans the author may have harbored to publish a collection of poems based on the material assembled since “Poemtrees.” Some readers may agree with W. G. Sebald that prose was the medium to which his hand was best suited. Poems written after the mid-1980s, however, not only make it clear that poetry remained an important medium to Sebald until the end of his life (as volumes such as For Years Now and Unerzählt [Unrecounted] attest) but also suggest that, had events unfolded differently, he might have returned to the project of assembling a volume — one that would surely have included many of the later poems in the present collection.

W. G. Sebald’s poems present the translator with a number of quandaries, at least one of which does not derive from disparities between the English and the German languages, or directly from the poet’s wide-ranging allusiveness. The problem I am referring to arises because the translation — in bodying forth a poem that claims to address exactly the same subject that the poem does in German, and even to represent the author’s language — has no choice but to turn itself into a vehicle of the very difficulties that may have prompted Sebald’s poem in the first place. This is most evident in relation to two of the poet’s perennial and interrelated concerns: reading and memory. Many of Sebald’s poems, for example, address elisions, or repression and suppression of memory, texts, and other forms of discourse. However sincerely motivated, however close to the source, the translation of a poem “perpetrates” just such elision. For in order to offer the best possible guidance to a text in the course of its transformation in the new hermeneutic environment, the translator must change not merely a few items but every single word of the poem. Even names — Kunigunde, Badenweiler, Landsberg, Hindenburg — have a different sound, with different connotations, and are likely to be read from a different perspective in the target language.

Entry to a new cultural context transfigures the poem and evidently regenerates its testimony. It may be argued, however, that this difficulty merely leads to a frequently visited aporia — that logical cul-de-sac whose sole outcome is to posit the impossibility of translation — and that by redefining the boundaries of the problem we can liberate the translator from the cavil of misrepresentation. For does not the poem itself — which the translation, by some sleight of hand, actually pretends to be, and whose movement it purports to reenact — construct perspectives from which it will be read, opening certain routes to the understanding of its world and, consequently, eliding others? The translation, inventing the original word by word (for without a translation there is no original), follows the “hard act” of the poem, rebuilding its place in a new terrain. In so doing, it harbors the hope that as many new readings of the poem will be added as those which, inevitably, have been lost. For in the end, the survival and continuing promise of the poem depend on just such access to new and engaging environments of intellectual sophistication and skillful acts of reading.

“Reading” in Sebald’s poetry, however, is a process that not only responds to text. His poems read paintings, towns, buildings, landscapes, dreams, and historical figures. The result is an encyclopedic wealth of literary allusion and cultural reference, much of which may not be named in the text itself. Sebald’s sentences can not only contain pitfalls but thread an uncomfortably narrow ledge along the abyss of what, in one poem, he calls “the history / of torture à travers les âges” (“Bleston”). The difficulties this creates for the translator are self-evident. Words are by nature as precise as they are ambiguous, and the translator must in each case explore the field of reference, resonance, and determination in the source text and language before deciding on one word rather than another. With Sebald’s poems, such explorations can prove long and complex, leading the explorer to a plethora of attendant historical and cultural “dark matter,” in relation to which the poem itself may appear deceptively straightforward and even slight. Sometimes this dark matter — however aware the translator needs to be of its existence — does not, in the end, affect the words of a translation in any pivotal way.

Allow me to offer an example that will take us into the heart of the difficulty of translating Sebald’s poetry. Many of the poems in this volume — which opens with a train journey — reenact travel “across” various kinds of land and water (even if the latter is only the fluid of dreams). Indeed, several, as the writer’s archive reveals, were actually written “on the road,” penned on hotel stationery, menus, the backs of theatre programs, in cities that Sebald visited. Train journeys constitute the most frequently recorded mode of travel. The following poem may refer to one such journey. “Irgendwo,” translated in English as “Somewhere,” was probably written in the late 1990s and originally belonged to the sequence of “micropoems” that provided the material for Sebald’s posthumous collection Unerzählt (Unrecounted), published in 2003:

Somewhere

behind Türkenfeld

a spruce nursery

a pond in the

moor on which

the March ice

is slowly melting

With its evocation of a wintry landscape and the suggestion that a thaw is on its way, this apparently simple poem seems nothing short of idyllic. The invitation to research possible frames of reference is expressed solely by the place name Türkenfeld: a small town — indeed, hardly more than a village — in the Fürstenfeldbruck area of Upper Bavaria, on the so-called Allgäu line, a route that Sebald would have taken often enough between Sonthofen and Munich. However, it is well for a translator to be aware that landscapes in Sebald’s work are rarely as innocent as they seem. The phrase “behind Türkenfeld” is itself already an indication of “how hard it is”—in the words of what could almost be read as a programmatic poem opening the present collection—“to understand the landscape / as you pass in a train / from here to there / and mutely it / watches you vanish.” In this metaphorical sense, the poem puts the traveler’s gaze itself at the center of its encounter with a cryptic landscape, exploring the difficulty of inciting a historical topography to return that gaze by divulging its secrets. Many of Sebald’s poems enact the battle of the intellect and senses with the hermetic or repellent face of history’s surface layers. The impression is one of traveling across a land in which the catastrophic events of the twentieth century have left a pattern of shallow graves under the almost pathologically hygienic and tidy upper stratum of civilization. What, then, is “behind” Türkenfeld?

The only thing this “mute” landscape divulges to the traveler-reader is its name, a sign linking the idyll of the poem to the “dark matter” of its cultural-historical ambience. The poem shows us only the unsettled gaze. To the close reader of landscapes, however, the name itself is enough to admit the “cold draught” (the title of another poem more visibly “freighted” than this one) of a relatively recent yet already almost forgotten history into the space of the poem. Research tells us that one of the ninety-four sub-camps linked to Dachau was constructed in Türkenfeld, though it was never used. The surrounding landscape is the site of the eleven external camps of the Kaufering network of satellite camps. These were set up to facilitate arms manufacture in underground caverns and caves in an effort to evade Allied bombing, the geological composition of the Landsberg area proving favorable to construction of massive underground installations. Türkenfeld was formerly a station on the Allgäubahn, and the railway linking Dachau with Kaufering and Landsberg, known as the Blutbahn (“the blood track”), passed through Türkenfeld. As many as 28,838 Jewish prisoners were transported along this line from Auschwitz and Dachau to Kaufering to work as slaves on the construction of the underground aircraft plants Diana II and Walnuß II. Some 14,500 died in the plant or were transported, when they had become too weak to work, back through Türkenfeld to the gas chambers. Our first unknowing reading of the poem, and with it the poem’s own translation of an unruffled, apparently unremarkable landscape “mutely” watching us “vanish,” points to the perilous consequences of our loss of cultural memory. “To perceive the aura of an object we look at,” wrote Walter Benjamin, referring more to the work of art than to landscapes, “means to invest it with the ability to look at us in return.” Our struggle to “understand” the mute historical holdings of Sebald’s poetic landscapes in passing — a form of engagement that his poems frequently invite the reader to explore — brings us face to face with our failure to make the crucial investment that Benjamin describes.

In translating this volume, I have enjoyed the advice, experience, and expertise of several people I should like to thank here. First and foremost among these is Sven Meyer, the editor of the German volume Über das Land und das Wasser, published by Hanser Verlag in Munich, whose groundbreaking work paved my own path to the Marbach archives. I have discussed aspects of W. G. Sebald’s poetry and writing life with a number of the author’s friends and colleagues, including Philippa Comber; Thomas Honickel; the late Michael Hamburger; Anne Beresford; Albrecht Rasche, the author’s friend during his Freiburg student days; Reinbert Tabbert, the young poet’s colleague at the University of Manchester in 1966 and 1967; and Jo Catling, his later colleague at the University of East Anglia. I am indebted to all of them for their helpful, and often extensive, responses to my queries. I am grateful to Volkmar Vogt of the Archiv Soziale Bewegung for supplying me with copies of Sebald’s early publications in the journal Freiburger Studenten-Zeitung; to the Estate of W. G. Sebald and the staff of the German Literature Archive in Marbach for giving their support to this project; and to the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities in Edinburgh, where some of the initial work for this volume was undertaken. Last but not least, I owe a special debt to Karen Leeder, who kindly provided critical comments, invaluable to me, on early drafts of the translations that follow.

Iain Galbraith

A Note on the Text

In the translations that follow, punctuation and orthography (e.g., in proper nouns) are generally consistent with the author’s typescripts, as held in the W. G. Sebald Archive at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach, or, in the case of material already published in German, with the texts of poems in journals and books, as sourced in the notes that conclude this volume. Accordingly, occasional irregularities or punctuational inconsistencies in the source texts have been retained in the present edition. Words and phrases that appear in English in the German poems are identified in the endnotes.

Poemtrees

“For how hard it is”

For how hard it is

to understand the landscape

as you pass in a train

from here to there

and mutely it

watches you vanish.

“A colony of allotments”

A colony of allotments

uphill into the fall.

Dead leaves swept

into heaps.

Soon — on Saturday—

a man will

set them alight.

“Smoke will stir”

Smoke will stir

no more, no more

the trees, now

evening closes

on the colors of the village.

An end is come

to the workings of shadow.

The response of the landscape

expects no answer.

“The intention is sealed”

The intention is sealed

of preserved signs.

Come through rain

the address has smudged.

Suppose the “return”

at the end of the letter!

Sometimes, held to the light,

it reads: “of the soul.”

Nymphenburg

Hedges have grown

over palace and court.

A forgotten era

of fountains and chandeliers

behind façades,

serenades and strings,

the colors of the mauves.

The guides mutter

through sandalwood halls

of the Wishing Table

in the libraries

of princes past.

Epitaph

On duty

on a stretch in the Alpine foothills

the railway clerk considers the essence

of the tear-off calendar.

With bowed back

Rosary Hour

waits outside

for admittance to the house

The clerk knows:

he must take home

this interval

without delay

Schattwald in Tyrol

The signs are gathered

settled at dusk’s edge

carved in wood

bled and blackened

printed on the mountain

Hawthorn in the hedgerow

along a length of path

black against winter’s papyrus

the Rosetta stone

In the house of shadows

where the legend rises

the deciphering begins

Things are different

from the way they seem

Confusion

among fellow travelers

was ever the norm

Hang up your hat

in the halfway house

Remembered Triptych of a Journey from Brussels

White over the vineyard by Sankt Georgen

white falls the snow across the courtyard and on

the label of an orange-crate from Palestine.

White over black is the blossom of the trees

near Meran in Ezra’s hanging garden.

Autumn in mind April waits

in the memory painted on walnut

like the life of Francis of Assisi.

At the end of September on the

battlefield at Waterloo fallow grass grows

over the blood of the lost Marie-Louises

of Empereur Bonaparte

you can get there by bus

at the Petite-Espinette stop

change for Huizingen

a stately home, sheltered by ivy, transformed

into the Belgian Royal Ornithological

Research and Observation Unit

of the University of Brussels.

On the steps I met Monsieur Serge Creuve,

painter, and his wife Dunja—

he does portraits in red chalk on rough paper

of rich people’s children

from Genesius-Rhode. — Lures them into the house

with the unique WC, well-known

to neighbors. — One does like to visit an artist.

“Shall we buy the ferme in Genappe?”

In the evening at Rhode-St. Genèse

a timid vegetable man carries his wares

up garden paths past savage dogs

to the gate, for instance, of the Marquise of O.’s villa.

A woman’s mouth is always killed

by roses.

As a lodger on the third floor—

the red sisal only goes up to the second—

of Mme. Müller’s Cafeteria

five minutes’ walk from the Bois de la Cambre

I’m the successor to Robert Stehmer

student from Marshall Missouri.

Gold-rimmed jug-and-bowl on the dresser

a hunting scene over the Vertiko cabinet

door to an east-facing balcony. — At night

noises on the road to Charleroi.

Chestnuts fell from their husks

in the rain.

I saw them in the morning

glossy on the sand of the patio.

I saw them in the morning—

taking tea and Cook Swiss

to be eaten with a knife and fork.

I saw them in the morning

waiting behind the curtain

for a trip to town

in quest of Brueghel

at the Musée Royal.

Départ quai huit minuit seize

le train pour Milan via St. Gotthard

I recognized Luxemburg by the leaves on its trees

then came industrie chimique near Thionville,

light above the heavenly vaults

Bahnhof von Metz, Strasbourg Cathedral

bien éclairée. — Between thresholds

lines from Gregorius, the guote sündaere,

from Au near Freiburg, rechtsrheinisch,

not visible from Colmar — Haut Rhin.

Early morning in Basel, printed on

hand-made Rhine-washed lumpy paper

under the supervision of Erasmus of Rotterdam

by Froben & Company, fifteen hundred and six.

Men on military service bound for Balsthal in the Jura

shaved and cropped, several smoking,

outside all changed.

Route of all images

light gray river-sand

ruddy hair minding

swollen shadows

lances and willows

White leaf, you

Green leaf, me

Rafael, Yoknapatawpha,

Light in August

between leaves

anxious mellowing

before birth

as a shadow

over the sunny road

Go to the Aegean

to Santorini

Land of basalt

phosphorescence on the rudder

Hold the water

in your hand:

it glows — at night—

aubergines in front of the house

shadowy in the dark

against the whitewashed wall

bright green in daytime purple

raffia-threaded

in the sun.

Life Is Beautiful

Days when

At the crack of dawn

The early bird

Squats in my kitchen.

It shows me the worm

Which sooner than later

Will lead me up the garden path.

I’ve already bought

My pig in a poke

It’s all Tom or dick

Kids or caboodle

In the home and castle.

My day is truly

Wrecked.

Matins for G

There he stood

In the early morn

And wanted in.

It’s warm

In front of the fire.

Lug a-cock

The man waited

For some response

To his knock.

Came a bawl from within:

Jesus Mary

A pain in the neck

In the early morn.

Where no kitchen

There no cook.

We don’t need no

King.

The man has heard

As much before.

He has heard enough.

Right then: all or nothing.

Winter Poem

The valley resounds

With the sound of the stars

With the vast stillness

Over snow and forest.

The cows are in their byre.

God is in his heaven.

Child Jesus in Flanders.

Believe and be saved.

The Three Wise Men

Are walking the earth.

Lines for an Album

Quick as a wink, a star

Falls from heaven

Like nothing

That grows on trees.

Now make a wish

But don’t tell a soul

Or it won’t come true

Ready or not

Here I come!

Bleston: A Mancunian Cantical

I. Fête nocturne

I know there exists

A shuttered world mute

And without image but for example

The starlings have forgotten their old life

No longer flying back to the south

Staying in Bleston all winter

In the snowless lightless month

Of December swarming during the day

From soot-covered trees, thousands of them

In the sky over All Saints Park

Screaming at night in the heart

In the brain of the city huddled together

Sleepless on the sills of Lewis’s Big Warehouse

Between Victorian patterns

And roses life was a matter

Of death and cast its shadows

Now that death is all of life

I wish to inquire

Into the whereabouts of the dead

Animals none of which I have ever seen

II. Consensus Omnium

In eternity perhaps

All we experience

Becomes bitter Bleston

Founded by Cn. Agricola

Between seventy and eighty A.D.

Appears in the ensuing

Era to have been

A bleak and forsaken place

Bleston knows an hour

Between summer and winter

Which never passes and that

Is my plan for a time

Without beginning or end

Bleston Mamucium Place of

Breast-like hills

The weather changes

It is late in our year

Dis Manibus Mamucium

Hoc faciendum curavi

III. The Sound of Music

An unfamiliar lament

And the astonishment that

Sadness exists — one’s own

Never the other of those who suffer

Of those whose right it really is

Life is uncomplaining in view of the history

Of torture à travers les âges Bleston

Uncomplaining is this mythology without gods

The mere shadow of a feast-day phantom

Of a defunct feast-day Bleston

From time to time the howls

Of animals in the zoological

Department reach my ears

While I hold in my hands

The burnt husks of burnt chestnuts

The silence of revelation

Sharon’s Full Gospel — the sick are

Miraculously healed before our eyes

The ships lie offshore

Waiting in the fog

IV. Lingua Mortua

He couldn’t help it Kebad Kenya

If the years of all humanity lay

Strewn about him in their thousands debris

Erratic and glacial white in the moonlight

Reclining in silence on the river of time

Hipasos of Metapontum by the Gulf of Tarentum

Made bronze disks of varying thickness ring out

Five hundred years before Christ

Et pulsae referent ad sidera valles—

It was Pythagoras however of whom it was said

He possessed the secret of listening to the stars

The valleys of Bleston do not echo

And with them is no more returning

Word without answer fil d’Ariane until your blood

Hunts you down with opgekilte schottns

Alma quies optata veni nam sic sine vita

Vivere quam suave est sic sine morte mori

Only in the wasteland does Rapunzel find bliss

With the blind man Bleston my ashes

In the wind of your dreams

V. Perdu dans ces filaments

But the certitude nonetheless

That a human heart

Can be crushed — Eli Eli

The choice between Talmud and Torah

Is hard and there is no relying

On Bleston’s libraries

Where for years now I have sought

With my hands and eyes the misplaced

Books which so they say Mr. Dewey’s

International classification system

With all its numbers still cannot record

A World Bibliography of Bibliographies

On ne doit plus dormir says Pascal

A revision of all books at the core

Of the volcano has been long overdue

In this cave within a cave

No glance back to the future survives

Reading star-signs in winter one must

Cut from pollard willows on snowless fields

Flutes of death for Bleston

Didsbury

Sunday was fed

Up to the teeth

With church bells

Summer hats

Gardening

Birds were squabbling

Over Lord knows what

Among the withered

Chestnut blossom

The presbyter went

To his May devotions

And it took

A long time

To get dark

Before it did

The birds made

A din

In the trees

Giulietta’s Birthday

The French windows

Are open still

As if in the theatre

People wait

On the colors of the carpet

In the cadence of dusk

Irony it is said

Is a form of humility

Glass in hand

They come and go

Stop still and expect

The metamorphosis of hawthorn

In the garden outside

Time measures

Nothing but itself

In the courtyard of a monastery in Holland

My name escaped me

Early in life according to Scott

Swift had acquired the habit

Of celebrating his birthday

In dejection

One leaves behind one’s portrait

Without intent

Time Signal at Twelve

for Lejzer Ajchenrand

His eyes

Home in

On the real

There is

Skulduggery

Afoot

A raven alights

At God’s ear

Tidings he brings

Of the battlefield

Father has gone to war

The monk from Melk

Sleeps in his quiet grave

The snow

Falls on his house

If no one asks him

He knows

But if someone asks him

He knows not

When the Weisers

Will meet

Something not a soul

Has ever seen

Children’s Song

for little Solveig

Fieldwards goes the day

Mildew grows in the garden

Measles cover the man

Like a thousand butterflies

Fieldwards goes the day

Long long ago

Studded with stars was the sky

A thousand butterflies

Come from the fields is a day

A coachman stands at the bone-house

Holding in his hands

The thousand butterflies

School latin

Votive Tablet

Weary of always

the same trees and

a country far from crossed

the legionnaire rests

in fancy’s meagre holding

Revolving around him by turns

his life and a bloom of tobacco

smoked by the wayside

The hammered out sections

show him whenever he moves

which of his organs

alas are sick

Cheerful after all

humbly sat on his shield

he bids us good day

the one-eyed

king of the blind

Legacy

Our memories are quite similar

but pickled alive

in a poison which

accompanies objects too

as a part of this emptiness

The heartening message

that Pythagoras once

would listen to the stars

barely comes down to us now

Then let us hope

our children are learning

to dance in the dark

Sarassani

With borrowed voices

the ventriloquist renders

others’ pipe-dreams

A gentleman disguised

as a moth pulls

tropical birds from a hat

The gaudiest parrot

weighs a memorized

word destiny

in his hand

As accustomed dupes

the local fowls

sit in the cheap seats

thrilling to the da capo

Day’s Residue

Dialectically thrashed out campaigns

and drafts from days

pending wasted battles

Like every evening

the set task is left

undone in the sandpit

Heeding a dubious silence

I sleep at night

with my ear to the ground

Its distant sounds

spell out

the lessons of a lighter world

Border Crosser

My beard grows overnight

every time

like a dead man’s

I have even begun

to speak in foreign tongues

roaming like a nomad in my own

town weighing the witch’s

thaler in my hand

It would seem to be time

to apply to the outworks

and register what

we have forgotten

Once there

given the superior outlook

my poor sedentariness

will pass

Lay of Ill Luck

In honor of my canny schoolmate

and god of wonders

I had promised a

Chinese fable

In crow’s-feet characters

the black bird

translated itself

nimbly to my page

The little vixen however

escaped and tumbled

in the grass and all

but laughed herself to death

So all I have left

is this monosyllabic

creature on my shoulder

Memorandum of the Divan

The mightiest however

seem those kings

who have never lived

Even today

they tempt us

on tours

to Soliman’s garden

on a horse

with clipped wings

To comfort the bereaved

it is advisable that reports of such trips

be prepared in advance

For it will often have proved

far too lovely to return

in any calculable future

Il ritorno d’Ulisse

Returning from a lengthy trip

he was astonished to find

he had strayed to a country

not his place of origin

For all his encounters in scattered spots

with the black paper hearts of men

shot by the arquebuse

his bow-and-arrow story

did not happen

Then there was Penelope’s

Castilian grandmother

blocking his entry at the garden gate

wordless and busy with embroidery

Sure, the grandchildren

are smiling in the background

apparently better disposed

towards foreigners

Their furtive hopes

still almost too small

for the naked eye

(But the idea is good

and the noise far away

even the building)

For a Northern Reader

Until the light has

failed as if bereft

the white mist

barely infiltrating

the trees

and as if they were painted

on a green landscape the animals

descending to their black shelters

come to a standstill

at the edge of our gaze

resolute

half his journey done

our ailing neighbor too

pauses

reckoning the distance left

Florean Exercise

The band was playing

and singing a little Turkish

marching song, with ensigns

shouldered they filed out

onto the plain at their ease

to where their ships lay

concealed beneath the cliffs

Their camp has long

been abandoned the soldiers

long ago returning to an older

post in a different time

But in Northamptonshire

their legacy has remained

green acanthus and orchards

houses inhabited still

by the Roman gaze

Guarding what once

was brought here

safely from afar

the Dardanian gods

Scythian Journey

Faced with the deep shadows

of the mountains of growing darkness

we had to break our journey

Making ourselves at home

high in the canopy of the forest

with the birds and fishes

Discussing the dragging winter

and maybe blowing a tune

on the Berecyntian horn

Savoring our dawdling

the poor Penates

smile among themselves

Saumur, selon Valéry

The beginners have concluded

an exercise in the accomplishment

of elaborate figures

as part of their training

in advanced impromptus

Abandoned now

the sand-track curves

into the lengthening shadows

Then, slipping through subito

from some other place an apparition

crosses our field of vision

at an astonishingly measured tread

Démonstration, Messieurs,

the zenith of my art,

riding, at a walk, and

that without flaw

or flourish

Says almost imperceptibly

bending down towards us

prior to vanishing

at the other side

Chiron the old centaur

L’instruction du roy

The real disaster

so they say are the consolations

the garde bourgeoise

in the republic of our dreams

Repetition once mere play

a five-finger exercise suddenly

a repertorial must

for intractable pupils

To cheer people up

they shift the scenes now and then

in our moral institutions

The mountain backcloth sinks

into the waves and time sheds

its skin every year

Out of sorts in the stalls

the Troubadour beholds

the panoptic spectacle while

poised at the entrance

Malatesta forks out for his ticket

Festifal

Setting:

On the Sandwich Islands

the Dictaean Grotto

Personae:

Basil the Rainmaker

and the coiled polar dragon

Plot:

Somnia, terrores magicos,

miracula, sagas, nocturnos

lemures portentaque Thessala

Intermezzo:

Acts of negligence in accordance

with relative beauty

strength or wit

ex. gratis: The plump Etruscan,

the ivory flute

and Latin song

aut:

Proteus sub aqua submersus

putting ugly cattle to pasture

aut etiam:

The Sphinx

fleeing toward Libya

Final Tableau:

Victorious Basil

earns the sobriquet Fifty

Analysis:

Salomo Schellenkönig the skilled

basket weaver counts his coppers

Balance:

A small

fortune

Pneumatological[2] Prose

Recently seen

in the vicinity of Flore

Northants, the rhinoceros

appeared this morning

in my garden

With a sly look albeit somewhat

nonplussed it stood in the herbs

wreaking as it shifted its weight

from one foot to the other

considerable havoc

The animal is a victor

the elephant’s mortal foe

for when he comes upon it

the beast will charge headfirst

between its front legs

They also say

the rhinoceros

is quick joyful and

lusty too

Odd to say it did not retire

to the bushes after its wont

but with its head arrogantly

cocked on one side ascended

skywards in a gaily embroidered

Californian moored balloon[3]

A monotheistical

creature it would seem

while the elephant

as Pliny tells us

is clever and just

and worships the sun

and the moon

Comic Opera

The program enlists the turqueries

of a newly lapsed century

a potpourri with bells and cymbals

orchestrated obscenities

Masked players swell

the plot in a green theatre

their true faces overwritten

Rather than greater virtue

the happy ending proposes

more trivial vices

The hedges rustle with applause

and the bygone ladies

of the court return

below the lawns

Back to reading

cubist

novels

Timetable

Grown sheepish

by morning I study

the grounds of my coffee

At midday I cut

a slice for myself

from the hollow pumpkin of summer

And not until dark do I risk again

the Cretan trick

of leaping between the horns

Unexplored

Great-grandfather

in his gay jacket

casting a horoscope

A perfect

heptagram omitting

the malefic houses

Those white areas

photoset and printed

in my historical atlas

Elizabethan

As you know

the owl was only

a baker’s daughter

And Sheikh Subir

a professor expelled

from Persia

Baroque Psalter

After numerous

proselytizing expeditions

to Paris

Geneva Smyrna and

Constantinople

he was burned at the stake

in Moscow

Across the land and the water

Cold Draught

Surrounded by German

mothers and conscript

sons homeward on the

Bundesbahn: the leaning

tower by Landsberg

the murder at Hotel Hahn

the Buchloe cheese factory

the lunatics of Kauf beuren

the abbey school windows

the abyss of childhood

And in the dark

lifting her skirts

Saint Elizabeth

stepping daintily

over glowing ploughshares

Near Crailsheim

Precisely undulated fields

little globular trees

sculpted and dark green

pedantically aligned

rows of maize

Thereabove to the west

God’s pleasure

pink candyfloss

from the recent funfair

Mumbling the enigma of their

crosswords pensioners sit

on the express, limbs benumbed

in the quicksilver of their angst

Already the shadows are smoking

in the valley of Jehoshaphat

Here comes the railwayman

his lamp bouncing on his bib

Poor Summer in Franconia

The poster in the village shop

recalls the yellowed terror

of the Colorado beetle

In the backroom behind her

the shopkeeper’s children sit glued

to the nation’s wooden eye

Windfalls lie leaden in the garden

and blue in the crayfish-stream

flow the suds from the washing machine

The Moor on the hill

peeps from an American tank

among the dying spruces

In the afternoon

my crazy grandfather

torches the fields

My last aspirin

dissolves gently

in a glass

As the pain subsides

I hear once more

the call of the distant posthorn

Solnhofen

White fields

in winter sometimes

strewn with ash

The high shoulders of the hill

stunted conifers

juniper shrubs

rock tombs

one-eyed sheep

Overtaken by ruin

a Wilhelmine artisan mill

reflects the breadlessness

of the passing trains

Deposited between layers

lie the winged

vertebrates

of prehistory

Leaving Bavaria

Glacial in the early morning

the train station at Bamberg

a Reichspost stamp

overprinted for hyperinflation

Hindenburg’s gray-green millions

history’s null ouvert

penny panic

in the poor souls of commuters

Beyond the tracks

moored in the half light

the brickwork brewery

a German airship

At the gondola window

Saint Dionysius

a lonely passenger

with his head under his arm

Something in My Ear

Falling asleep

on the sofa

I hear from a distance

geese on the radio

whetting their beaks

to pass the verdict

The mildew grows

in the garden paralysis

spreads

a long succession

of minute shocks

I feel the blood

at the roots

of my teeth

As I awake

sudden cardiac

death waves

from the other side

of the abyss

Panacea

A snip of the scissors

a thimble

a needle’s eye

A place of pilgrimage

a memory stone

a mountain moved

A club moss

and a cube of ice

tinted with a jot

of Berlin blue

Mithraic

Nine thousand nine hundred

and ninety-nine years

Zarvan murmured

to get a son

And now his descendants

are flogging off

the houses of heaven

and the five coasts of the earth

With his sea-goat ready

for departure the mythologist

beholds once again

the shattered world egg

Memo

Build fire and read

the future in smoke

Carry out ash and

scatter over head

Be sure

not to look back

Attempt

the art of metamorphosis

Paint face

with cinnabar

As a sign

of grief

Barometer Reading

Nothing can be inferred

from the forecasts

Tree frogs

are ignoring their ladders

Changeable weather tests the patience

of the rheumatic soul

The slightest gust makes it flutter

first this way then that

Meanwhile Propertius

waits faithfully in his folding boat

One oar in the water

the other skimming the sand at the edge

K.’s Emigration

His personal effects

are ready to leave

Entered

well in advance

the calligraphic endorsement

an analphabetic cipher

valid for a single journey

Pictures sent

en route greetings

from Bohemian Switzerland

and a group photo

in front of the High Tatras

Didn’t you

have your

photograph taken

in Franzensbad too

Through Holland in the Dark

The cucumbers

lurk in their greenhouses

The customs official

borrows my evening paper

A wet hand

casts no shadow

Kaiser Willem

is still smoking his cigars

No sign

of the reclaimed land

Abandoned

like Kafka’s essay

on Goethe’s abominable

nature

Mölkerbastei

Beethoven’s room

is tidy now

The pictures straightened

the curtains washed

and week for week the floors

polished anew

But the chair

for the grand

has been taken away

He still comes in at night sometimes

and composes something

standing up

The proviso is

it be audible only

with an ear-trumpet

A Galley Lies off Helsingborg

Such desolation

in Harwich Harbor

when I am here

it always seems to me

as if we were

in the throes of a silent war

The hollow barges

all that bulky

worn-out iron

the oil-green water

and the ever stiller

county of Essex

round about

The poor travelers

with their woe-begone

faces oppressed

hapless folk

standing here waiting

on the Red Sea shore

Nobody tells them

where the ferries are heading for

tonight

Holkham Gap

A green zone

for field glasses

and camouflaged

ornithologists

Beyond it the bay

its sweep broader

than the furthest

horizon

The Home Guard

waited here

for the sea lion

to appear

When the monster didn’t

show the marram

was permitted to reoccupy

the fortified strip

But Uncle Toby

doesn’t entirely

trust the peace

Stuffing his pillow

with sand he wishes

the deluge would begin

Norfolk

Sailing backwards

as a passenger with

banished time

A Louisianian

landscape populated

by invisible windmillers

Where the Egyptian

in his painted boat

sails between fields

Crossing the Water

In early November 1980

walking across

the Bridge of Peace I almost

went out of my mind

Natural History

In Man it is

the Quadruped

in Woman the Amphibian

who has the upper Hand

Ballad

Is Carl Löwe’s

heart

really

immured

in a column

in the Church of St. James

in Stettin?

Obscure Passage

Aristotle did not

apprehend at all

the word he found

in Archytas

Poetry for an Album

Feelings my friend

wrote Schumann

are stars which guide us

only when the sky is clear

but reason is a

magnetic needle

driving our ship on

till it shatters on the rocks

It was when my palsied

finger stopped me playing

the piano that calamity

came upon me

If you knew every cranny

of my heart

you would yet be ignorant

of the pain my happy

memories bring

Carnaval time for the children

with friends dressed up

as Ormuzd and Ariman

fleecy clouds of gold

melting in the pure ether

For years now I’ve had

this same whistling

sound in my ears

and it troubles me greatly

Walking by the Rhine

I know I shall steer

for the North I have yearned for

though it be colder there

even than the ice on

geometry’s intersecting lines

Eerie Effects of the

Hell Valley Wind on My Nerves

In the cathedral square

of a town he left

many years ago

the emigrant sits

reading the secret history

of Judge Dr. Daniel Paul Schreber

Events of war within

a life cracks

across the Order of the World

spreading from Cassiopeia

a diffuse pain reaching into

the upturned leaves on the trees

The black holes

of ghosts flying about

in the sky above

conceal as I know

li più reconditi principii

della naturale filosofia

Come lacklustre times, you

in the midst of beauty

of obscenity my nights

will help you remember

a pale block of ice

slowly melting

The judge speaks

I am the stony guest

come from afar

and I think I am dead

Open these pages, he says,

and step smartly

into hell

Unidentified Flying Objects

Late last night

I was standing in the garden

when a space ship

sparkling with lights

passed incredibly

slowly

over our roof

What can you do

but watch the ocean giant

pull away beyond the trees

and head for another galaxy

In sixty-nine

on Pwllheli beach

in Wales I saw a small

glimmering object

sink gently humming

in the air as it floated

down from the top

of a mountain that was printed

entirely in Japanese colors

finally vanishing

over the vast sea

What on earth it was

or what that ship was

yesterday in the sky

I cannot imagine

perhaps it was the soul

of the Welsh prince

slain by his brother

by the lake of Idwal

over which no bird

has flown since

The Sky at Night

A belated excursion to

the stone collection

of our feelings

Little left here

worth showing

alas

Is there

from an anthropological perspective

a need for love

Or merely for

yearnings easy

to disappoint

Which stars

go down

as white dwarfs

What relation

does a heavy heart bear

to the art of comedy

Does the hunter

Orion have answers

to such questions

Or are they

too closely guarded

by the Dog Star

A Peaceable Kingdom

Like an early geographer

I paint a lion or two

or some other

wild animal

in my white

memory fields

Porcupine, chameleon

flounder and grouse

jackal and unicorn

xanthos and mouse

Outside with the real

birds screaming in the dark

they stand guard

figuring with their

tiny heads what is

still to come

before the sun

goes out

Crocodile, monkey

buffalo, hare

dromedary, leopard

mud turtle, bear

Is it enough

to be overcome

by feeling

at a few words

in our children’s

school primer

Are these the emblems

of our love

Trigonometry of the Spheres

In his year of mourning

Grandfather moved

the piano to the attic

and never brought it

down again

With his brass telescope

he now explores

the arcs of the heavens instead

His logbook records

a comet with a tail

and the categorical proposition

that the moon is the earth’s work of art

From him I also know

of the holy man who sits

where night turns to day

roaring like a lion

And once he said do not forget

the north wind brings

light from the house of Aries

to the apple trees

Day Return

I

Feeding carefully through the junctions

the early train slips

through the station precincts

a tatzelwurm en route for the city

Riveted gray of the iron bridges

and coming through mist

a peaceful canal

with a barque

from which the Hunter Gracchus

has already stepped ashore

Views to the rear

of inferior housing

wooden sheds tin roofs

dog kennels gutted

cars and tiny

home-made crystal palaces

hung with tomato plants

last year’s hopes

The power station in the outskirts

lying on its back

a sick elephant

still just breathing

through its trunk

The little gold-toothed priest

facing me buries himself

in the news of the day

the ink of the godless

staining the little pink fingers

of a furry day-blind animal

Who scrawled the warning

Hands off Caroline

across the fire-wall

in Ipswich who knows the names

of our brothers the ducks

under the willow on the island

in Chelmsford Park pond

Who knows the noises

made by the animals

in Romford at night

and who will teach

the King’s starling

to whistle a new song

Pulling into the north-easterly

quarters of the metropolis

Gilderson’s Funeral Service

Merton’s Rubbish Disposal

the A1 Wastepaper Company

Stratford the forest of Arden

and the first colonists

on the platform at Maryland

heavenly Jerusalem

skyline of the City

brick-wall catacombs

Liverpool Street Station

II

The city sinks behind me

as I head home in the evening

reading Samuel Pepys’s diary

of the Great Fire of London

People taking to boats

many pigeons killed

panic on the river

looting near Lincoln’s Inn

Bishop Baybrooke’s corpse exposed

fragments blown to Windsor Park

The tatzelwurm passes through the country

nightly shadows hedges and fields

and in the darkness gently

glowing the elephant now

so utterly different

New Jersey Journey

Spent two hours at the end of December

on the Garden State Highway

In the ancient Ford’s trunk

nothing but my heart grown

heavier year by year

A protracted catastrophe:

the constant river of traffic

the endless business of overtaking

vicious eye-contact

with total strangers

in the adjacent lane

Driven by yearning

for its prehistoric brothers

a Jumbo climbs out of Newark

airport over marshes and lagoons

a giant smoking

mountain of rubbish

and the countless lights

of the refineries

Mile after mile of stunted trees

telegraph poles fields of blueberries

a Siberian countryside

colonized then run to seed

with moribund supermarkets

abandoned poultry farms

haunted by millions and millions

of breakfast eggs

harboring the undeciphered sighs

of an entire nation

Near the retirement town of Lakehurst

a safari park soundless

under its coat of frost

cemeteries as spacious

as the world war killing fields

funeral parlors dubious

antique shops and a bus station

for last trips

to Atlantic City

In the twilight of the settlement itself

ten square miles of faintly

luminous bungalows

lawns dwarf-conifers

Christmas decorations

Santa Rudolph the Reindeer

and in front of one of the houses

my uncle feeding the songbirds

Drinking schnapps

he later tells me

of the conquest of New York

Drinking schnapps I consider

the ramifications of our calamity

and the meaning of the picture

that shows him, my uncle

as a tinsmith’s assistant in ’23

on the new copper roof

of the Augsburg synagogue

those were the days

Next day we drive out to the coast

Seaside Park Avenue at noon

the boardwalks deserted

boarded up diners

Alpine-style summerhouses

with circulating draughts

yachts rattling in the cold

the sub-urban migration of dunes

With the brown house-high waves

in the background my uncle

leaning forward into the wind

snapped me again

with his Polaroid

Do we really die

only once

The Year Before Last

The Year Before Last

For some time

we crossed a low plateau.

Our eyes took in

the distant landscape,

elegant touring cars

flew past

and a motor-cyclist

with a gun

over his shoulder

appeared again and again

in our mirror.

Soon our road curved down

swiftly into a basin and

Marienbad lay suddenly before us,

a petrified magical city.

Black spruces thronged

to the edge of the outer buildings,

Siberian chervil and eight-foot

giant hogweed in the gardens.

Behind the drab, yellow façades:

Old German furniture,

hat boxes, the strains of a pianola,

an inkling of poison and bile.

It was like driving

into an old-time theatre.

We had a fire made up in the hotel

although it was still mid-summer.

Later, wrapped in heavy

Scottish dressing-gowns we gazed

through the open windows

and gloomy rain outside

into a dusky otherworld.

Is not the world here still,

you asked; do banks of green

no longer follow the river

through bush and lea? Does

not the harvest ripen? Do

holy shades

no longer hang

upon the cliffs? Is this

drawing-in

the gray stain of night?

Next day we sat in the café

beneath a painting of water-lilies. Or

perhaps they were even flamingos.

Do you remember the waiter?

His closely cropped white hair,

his turn-of-the-century

frock-coat and taffeta bow?

The way he kept touching

his left temple with his fingers?

Remember the Cuban cigarettes

he brought me? The fine blue

smoke rose straight as a candle.

A good sign, no doubt.

And indeed, outside it had turned

brighter. Reduced aristocrats

swished past in dust-cloaks

bound for the refectory.

The Rabbi of Belz, plastic

beaker in hand, walked to the well.

A bride and groom were posing

for a photograph on the promenade.

Harquebused suffering

hearts lay about

on the shorn lawns.

Returning to the hotel

we saw Dr K, half-obscured

by a red flag, sitting

at his balcony table,

busy with a portion

of smoked pork much

too big for him

The match game

was meant to decide everything.

The gleaming parquet floor

stretched before us. All round us

were mirrors, guests, motionless—

and in the middle you

in your feather boa. Hadn’t

we met once before?

In a taxus maze?

On a stage? The perspectival

prospect, pruned hedges,

little round trees and balustrades,

the palace in the background?

You were supposed to say, I

am wholly yours, nothing

but these words;

and you did say them,

while strangely not

coming an inch

closer.

During the journey home

fantasies of a fatal accident.

Unspectacular woodlands

and hills flanking our route

through the countryside.

The motor-cyclist

turns up again in our rear.

Not a soul on the streets

of Eger. I see only

one woman shoveling coal

through a cellar hatch.

A deserted house,

the icy cold here,

the corridors and chambers,

the flight from the alcove,

the blind window-pane,

the flash of a lance,

the barely audible cry of horror.

And at the end of the act

they carry the pierced

corpse across the stage

in a piece of crimson tapestry.

A Waltz Dream

The traveler

has finally arrived

at the border post

A customs official

has untied his laces

removed his shoes

His luggage rests

abandoned on the

planed floorboards

His pigskin suitcase

gapes, his poor

soul has flown

His body, last

of his personal effects

awaits meticulous scrutiny

Dr. Tulp will soon be here

in his black hat, prosectorial

instruments in hand

Or is the body already

hollow and weightless,

floating, barely

guided by fingertips,

across to the land

one may only enter barefoot?

Jan Peter Tripp

Das Land des Lächelns (1990)

Donderdag

23 Februari 1995

between Schiphol

& Frankfurt at ten

thousand feet

in the air

I read a

report in the

paper about

the so-called

carnavalsmoorden

van Venlo all

about the strange

quarter of Genooy

where in the van

Postelstraat

right among

the respectable

condos stands

a row of

whorehouses

where white & colored

women sit

behind the

windows & where

a few guys from

the koffieshop

branche: Frankie

Hacibey & Suleyman

drive out

one evening to an

execution on the banks

of the Maas. There is

talk of a

bludgeon & a

bread knife of

a jar containing

thirty-five

thousand guilder

& of the married

couple Sjeng &

Freda van Rijn who

as the carnival

surged through

the town center

were lying at home

twee oude mensen

met doorgesneden

keel op de grund

a dark tale which

so they say has much

to do with hashish

dealing turkse

gemeenschap &

duitse clientèle

with greed & ven

geance violence

een zwarte Merce

des een rode BMW

& twee kogels van

dichtbij in het hoofd.

The secrets

of the Universe,

Patriotic Tales and

Memorabilia,

A Germanic

Hall of Fame,

The Neudamm

Forester’s Primer,

Register of

Germany’s

Protected Species,

Social Hygiene

in Hamburg

and The Mushrooms

of our Region—

all informative

work assembled

by chance

in the display

of a junk shop

near a railway

underpass in

Oldenburg I

think or Osnabrück

or in some

other town

30. ix.95

On 9 June 1904

according to the Julian

calendar, on 22 June

according to our own,

Anton Pavlovich and

Olga Leonardovna reach

the spa at Badenweiler.

The tariff is sixteen marks

for board and lodging

at the Villa Friederike

but the spelt porridge

and creamy cocoa

bring no improvement.

Suffering from emphysema

he spends all day

in a reclining chair

in the garden marveling

again and again at how

oddly quiet it is indoors.

Later in the month the weather

is unusually hot, not

a breath of wind, the woods

on the hills utterly still,

the distant river valley

in a milky haze.

On the 28th Olga travels

to Freiburg specially

to buy a light flannel

suit. At the Angelus hour

of the following day

he has his first attack, the

second the following night.

The dying man, already

buried deep in his pillows,

mutters that German

women have such

abominable taste in dress.

As dawn breaks

the doctor, placing

ice on his heart,

prescribes morphine

and a glass of champagne.

He was thinking of returning

home with Austrian

Lloyd via Marseille

and Odessa. Instead

they will have him transferred

in a green, refrigerated

freight car marked

FOR OYSTERS

in big letters. Thus has

he fallen among dead

mollusks, like them packed

in a box, dumbly rolling

across the continent.

When the corpse arrives

at Nikolayevsky Station

in Moscow a band

is playing a Janissary

piece in front of

General Keller’s

coffin, also newly

arrived from Manchuria,

and the poet’s relatives

and friends, a small

circle of mourners,

which from a distance

resembles a black

velvet caterpillar,

move off, as many

recalled, to the strains

of a slow march

in the wrong direction.

Ninety years later

on a Sunday after —

noon in the month

of November I drove

south from Freiburg

across the foothills

of the Black Forest.

All the way down

to the Belfort Gap

low motionless clouds

above a landscape

deep in shadow,

the hatched patterning

of vineyards on the slopes.

Badenweiler looks

depopulated after

some virulent summer

epidemic. Silent

hemorrhaging in every

house, I guess, and

now not a living

soul about, even

the parking lot

near the facilities empty.

Only in the arboretum

under giant

sequoias do I meet

a solitary lady

smelling of patchouli

and carrying a white

Pomeranian in her arms.

As the evening

draws in the sun

sinks in the West

between the clouds

and the skyline of

the Vosges hills

the last of the

fading light flooding

the Rhine plain

which shimmers and quivers

like the salty shore

of a dried-out lake.

In Bamberg

I lie sleepless

in a stone-built

house. The last

revelers have

abandoned the streets

and, save for

the Regnitz rushing

over the weir

there is hush.

Whirlpools drag me

under the water

and I roll along

the bed of the river

with the stones

a gasping fish

I return to the

surface, my eyes

wide with fear.

The passage of dreams

is haunted by ghosts

the Little Hunchback

for example standing

by the sluice hut

on the Ludwig Canal. He

wears glasses

with uncannily

thick lenses and

a blue baseball

cap

with the logo

MARTINIQUE

back to front

on his head.

Empress Kunigunde

has been waiting

for ever

at the foot

of the Katzenberg

and on the bridge over

to the old Town Hall

of which an oleograph

always hung

in our sitting-room

the dog Berganza

crosses my path

for the third time.

A little way

further upstream

up at the Hain

Park Schorsch

and Rosa are taking

a stroll one August

afternoon in ’43

she in a light

dust-cloak he

with his traditional jacket

slung over his

shoulder. They

both seem happy

to me, carefree

at least and a good

deal younger than

I am now.

Thus, thinks

Kara Ben Nemsi

son of the German,

floweth time

a ruby red

cipher leaping

from digit to digit

trickling

in silence

from the dark

of night

to the gray

of dawn

just as sand

once ran

through

the hour

glass.

Mai 1996

Mai 1997

Marienbad Elegy

I can see him now

striding through the suite

of three south-westerly

facing rooms in his

cinnamon-colored

coat pondering

diverse matters

for example his long —

harbored plan

for a treatise on clouds

& yet somewhat

troubled too

& testy on account of

his passion for Ulrike

who is the reason

for his third visit

to this up-&-coming

resort. He looks

out at the little

rotund trees

evenly spaced around

the square in front of

the Kebelsberg Palais,

sees a gardener

pushing a barrow

uphill, a pair of blackbirds

on the lawn. He has slept

badly in the narrow

bed & felt like some

beetle or other strange

creature till outside

dawn spread

its wings & he could

rise & continue

his work. True, he’d

give anything now to

rest again but any

minute now they would

call him to table.

Perhaps they’ll serve

a pike, then escalope

& to finish a compote

of wild berries.

Bohemians know a thing

or two about cooking:

the sweet dumplings with

his morning coffee were a joy

& his dearest beloved seemed

so gentle again, of such

delicate humor &

fondness for himself he

all but died of

loving hope & felt his

heart throb in his throat.

Thus the days pass.

He gazes into

her eyes & twists

his finely embroidered

napkin wallet

once to the left

once to the right.

When his request for

her daughter’s hand

is met with reluctance

by her mother & after

the last cruelly sweet

kiss he departs

in a sombre mood

through the mountains &

still in his coach composes

the famous elegy

of twenty-three stanzas

which in the manner

of his own telling

is said to have leapt from

a tempest of feeling

the ripest creation

of his old age.

As for me however

I have never really

liked this gorgeous

braid of interwoven desires

which the poet upon

arriving home

had transcribed in his

most elegant hand

& personally bound

in a cover of red

morocco tied

around with a ribbon

of silk. I saw its

facsimile in the Marienbad

Museum this morning

along with several other

objects which meant

much more to me

& among which was

a wick trimmer

& a set of sealing

waxes, a little

papier-mâché tray

& an ink drawing

on pasteboard by Ulrike

showing in somewhat uncertain

perspective the North —

Bohemian village of

Trebívlice where she lived

as a spinster until her

death. Further

a China-yellow

tulip-poplar leaf

from her herbarium

inscribed in black ink

across its thin veins

then the sad remains

of black lace to which

Czech gives the lovely

name krajky, a kind of

choker or cravat &

two wristlets not

unlike muffetees &

so narrow that her wrist

cannot have been

much stronger than

a small child’s. Then

there is a steel engraving

showing Fräulein

Levetzow in her declining

years. By now her

former suitor has

long lain under the soil

& here she stands

in a gray taffeta

dress next to a book

table, with an abominable

bonnet-ful of

corkscrew curls &

a ghostly-white face.

Marienbad, 14. viii. 99

The Year Before Last

At the edge

of its vision

the dog still sees

everything as it was

in the beginning

And always

towards the East

the corn

blindingly white

like a firn-field

at home

How silvery

on that

January morning

the towers

of Frankfurt

soared

into the ice-cold

air

Somewhere

behind Türkenfeld

a spruce nursery

a pond in the

moor on which

the March ice

is slowly melting

In the sleepless

small hours

of Sunday 16th

January last

year in the hideously

rustic Hotel

Columbus in Bremer

haven I was set

upon with whoops

& squawks by the four

Town Musicians. The

terror still in my

limbs I sat on

the dot of eight

alone but for my

morning coffee &

jaundiced by the light

coming in through

the bull’s-eye panes

of the guest house.

Past the window

on the wet cobbles

outside filed the

shadows of emigrants

with their bundles & packages

people from Kaunas

& Bromberg from the

Hunsrück & Upper

Palatinate. Over the

loudspeaker came the soft

strains of that same

old accordion the

same old singer’s

voice quavering

with emotion forgotten

poesy of our people

the home star &

the sailor’s heart. Later

from the train the Powder

Tower from Nibelung

days the coffee

silos block-hoards of

brown gold on the

horizon a satellite

town before it a colony

of allotments once

maybe known as Roseneck

Samoa or Boer’s

Land. And over

the North German

plains motionless for

weeks now these

low blue-black

clouds the Weser

flooding its banks

& somewhere around

Osnabrück or Oldenburg

on a patch of grass

in front of a farm

a lone goose

slowly twisting its

neck to follow

the Intercity

careering past.

Room 645

Hotel Schweizer

hof, in Hinüber

Straße Hannover

a table-top

composed like a jig —

saw of various

exotic & home —

grown timbers

finished with a cover

of marbled faux

leather. On the walls

greenish dotted

textured paper &

a picture composition

by Karsten Krebs with

Sogni di Venezia

beneath it in silver

script. The carpet

is spotted with midnight

blue the velvet

curtain is claret the

sofa ultra

marine the bedspread

calyx motif

turquoise with a

dizzying arabesque

in lilac & violet

on the bedside rugs.

Through the gray

net curtain the

view of an ugly

tower block the

TV-tower

the coal-black

Sparkasse-building

its top story

with the S-logo

& saver’s penny.

Nothing happens

all day until

towards evening

stretched across

the entire re

inforced glass

window a ragged

flight of crows

makes wing

to its roost.

My ICE Rail-Planner

Herrenhausen is offering

a cruise to Denmark two

visits to the seawater wave —

bath thrown in someone

will be waiting at the station

& will say how nice

to meet you & how

about a Fitness-Week

in Eckernförde. Outside

the light is thinning the

ribbon of a road glistening

in the drizzle black

patches of forest & off

white farmsteads

pass, in a lime

works over the hills

stone is being ground to

dust. We are wired

I read to the vital nerves

of our national economy

radio, transmission &

defense systems

office communications

railways & building components

ready & waiting for you.

Simply phone or fax

us this coupon. At some

point during the hour

between Fulda & Frankfurt

it had started to get dark

& where a moment before

there had been blue

landscape I saw in their

rows beside me the

reflections of the heads

of my tired fellow

travelers gliding

on through the night. Thus

spake the angel of

the Lord: Fear not

for our house is kept to

the highest standards

& has a pleasant

ambience. Gall-bladder

liver stomach

intestines metabolic

disorders overweight

aging impairments

rheumatism please

write for our prospectus

& ask your chemist for

the energy-vitamin for

executives especially

those over forty.

One Sunday in Autumn 94

I am in the unmanned

station in Wolfenbüttel

waiting for the railcar

from Göttingen to

Brunswick. Fleecy

clouds fleck the sky

sporadic leaves spin

from the trees an old —

timer in brown breeches

rides a lady’s bike

across the tracks. Hearing

the bells ring I recall

the cathedral at Naumburg

the minsters of Ulm &

Freiburg the Church of Our

Dear Lady in Munich

long-forgotten Hogmanays

& other catastrophes.

The Herzog August Video

Rental a one-window-fits —

all semolina-colored

establishment is closed but

the kiosk between the donershop

& the Wellaform

hair-salon is open

to anyone in a hurry

to purchase the Bild —

Zeitung or a porn mag.

In the yard in front

by a lattice fence

overgrown with

pink roses stands

a small gathering of

all-weather drinkers

in beards & baseball —

caps like gold diggers

from the Australian outback.

Their bottle of Chantré

does the rounds while

from an election poster

on an advertising column

the Father of the German

Nation gazes anxiously

on his reunified country.

Calm November weather

in Germany persistently

foggy & dull. Bottom temperatures

from zero to three degrees

with low cloud cover

over Brandenburg & Berlin.

A cold sea breeze from

the north sweeps across

the square where once

the Lustgarten lay with

its symmetry of Prussian

precision a fountain

to left & right, white

diagonal gravel paths

an equestrian monument

at the exact center & lawns

that are out of bounds.

That says my guide

is the cathedral

sixteen Hohenzollerns

lie under the sand

in fact this ground

is steeped in history

they find corpses

every time they dig.

The ravens on yonder

grass patch know what

they are after. The S-Bahn

winds out of the chasm

between the Pergamon

& Bode Museums

a bright streak high

on the bridge another

below in the dark

waters of the Spree.

At the train station

which is wrapped in

plastic sheeting we

say goodbye. She returns

to Brüderstraße while

I set off to Wannsee

there to stay

the night at the literary

villa & for the very

first time ever

witness a living

Greenlandic

poet in the flesh.

Called Jessie

Kleemann she stands

in a blaze of

floodlights in

her red velvet suit

her pale oriental —

looking face in

front of the penumbral

figures of the audience

her lips whispering

into the microphone

forming sounds

that consist it

seems to me of

nothing but double

vowels & double

vees sliding up &

down the scale the

sounds of her feathery

language taavvi

jjuaq she says the

great darkness &

lifting her arm

qaavmaaq the

shimmering light.

Unchanged for years

now these inter —

regional catering

clichés the full

buffet breakfast

the sliced cheese

the boiled ham

the scrambled eggs

the nutty nougat

crème the stew of

the day the hearty

goulash the Nuremberg

Bratwurst the potato

salad the burger

with bread-roll

grandma’s beef

olives your favorite

choc-bar the salted

peanut De Beukelaer’s

chocolate-filled

cookies the Nordhäuser

Doppelkorn the oldest

Asbach the finesses of

Gau Köngernheimer

Vogelsang &

the Rotkäppchen

dry.

In the Summer of 1836

said the guide

Friedrich Chopin

stayed here at the White

Swan Inn. It had

taken him nine

days from Paris by coach

to reach his beloved

Marie Wodzinka. He

gave frequent recitals

on the piano to a small

circle who gathered in

the evenings. The peaks

of the blue Bohemian

mountains grow

ever darker through

the window. The cold

damp weather weighs

on his chest the doctor

mumbles something about

incipient tuberculosis. At

the beginning of November

their engagement is shattered

her father in Dresden has

put his foot down.

Thirteen years later

a packet of faded

letters is found in the

deceased pianist’s

residence. Tied with

ribbon it carries the

inscription: Moja

Bieda — My sorrow.

In Alfermée

late in November

the rain sweeps

down from the Jura

throughout the night

Threading sleep

letter by letter

comes a language

you do not understand

The exhausted eyes

of the writer the fingers

of one hand on the

keys of her machine

Darkness lifts

from the earth in the morning

leaving no difference

between lake & air

Along the shore

is a row of poplars

behind them a lone boat

at a buoy

Beyond the gray

water invisible

through swaths of mist

the village of Sutz

a few lights

going out &

a column of snow —

white smoke

On the Eve of

All Hallows

nineteen hundred

and ninety-seven at

Schiphol Airport

among globetrotters

from Seoul & Saõ Paulo

Singapore & Seattle.

There they sit

with neon-blue

faces slumped

down on the benches

rummaging now

and then distractedly

in their luggage not

one of them uttering

a spoken word. With

the witching hour

past they lie

stretched out under

blue blankets

asleep while outside

the fog gradually

shifts revealing

once again

through the darkness

the runways & lit

steps the enormous

bodies & tail

fins of the vessels

lying at anchor

at their quays. Not

a single movement

around me now

only the sparrows

who have survived

for years in this

part of the terminal

whirr back &

forth across the hall

& up & down

the arcade settling

in the green palms

& ficus trees

jerking their little

heads this way &

that looking out

between the artificial

leaves with their shiny

black eyes &

chattering raucously among

themselves as if something

were not quite right.

In the Paradise Landscape

of the younger Brueghel

on a surface roughly

thirty by forty

centimeters in size

before which I stood

for a time at the Städel

Museum all manner

of beasts & birds

have come together

in peace an eagle

owl with horned

ears an ostrich

with button eyes &

a strangely flat

beak a billy

goat & a few sheep

two polecats or martens

a wolf a horse

a peacock a turkey

& in the foreground

at the bottom edge

two spectacled

monkeys one of which

is gingerly plucking

strawberries from a little

shrub while on the right

roses climb

an apple or pomegranate

tree & tulips

in full blossom

& spring stars &

lilies & hyacinths

& somewhat in the background

in a choice act

of man-manly

procreation our Lord

& Creator a tiny

& obscure figure

barely visible

to the naked eye

bends over

Adam sleeping

on a grassy bank

& cuts from his side

his bride to be.

Appendix: Two poems written in English by W. G. Sebald

I remember

the day in

the year after

the fall of the

Soviet Empire

I shared a cabin

on the ferry

to the Hoek

of Holland with

a lorry driver

from Wolverhampton.

He & twenty

others were

taking super —

annuated trucks

to Russia but

other than that

he had no idea

where they were

heading. The gaffer

was in control &

anyway it was

an adventure

good money & all

the driver said

smoking a Golden

Holborn in the upper

bunk before

going to sleep.

I can still hear

him softly snoring

through the night,

see him at dawn

climb down the

ladder: big gut

black underpants,

put on his sweat —

shirt, baseball

hat, get into

jeans & trainers,

zip up his

plastic holdall,

rub his stubbled

face with both his

hands ready

for the journey.

I’ll have a

wash in Russia

he said. I

wished him the

best of British. He

replied been good

to meet you Max.

October Heat Wave

From the flyover

that leads down

to the Holland

Tunnel I saw

the red disk

of the sun

rising over the

promised city.

By the early

afternoon the

thermometer

reached eighty —

five & a steel

blue haze

hung about the

shimmering towers

whilst at the White

House Conference

on Climate the

President listened

to experts talking

about converting

green algae into

clean fuel & I lay

in my darkened

hotel room near

Gramercy Park

dreaming through

the roar of Manhattan

of a great river

rushing into

a cataract.

In the evening

at a reception

I stood by an open

French window

& pitied the

crippled tree

that grew in a

tub in the yard.

Practically defoliated

it was

of an uncertain

species, its trunk

& its branches

wound round with

strings of tiny

electric bulbs.

A young woman

came up to me

& said that although

on vacation

she had spent

all day at

the office

which unlike

her apartment was

air-conditioned &

as cold as the

morgue. There,

she said, I am

happy like an

opened up oyster

on a bed of ice.

Notes

The notes that follow cannot be comprehensive, nor do they propose to “explain” the poems or disclose their secrets. Their purpose is twofold: to show the textual sources on which the present volume draws and to throw light on some of Sebald’s allusions to landscapes, works of art or literature, and other matters of historical interest. Points of reference and connotation inevitably inform a translator’s decisions as he goes about the business of rebuilding a poem in a different language. Even after considerable research, however, many details have remained obscure. Readers better acquainted than I am with the life and work of W. G. Sebald will recognize echoes, overtones, and contexts that I have overlooked.

In indicating the source of a poem, the following abbreviations will apply: FSZ (Freiburger Studentenzeitung); ZET (Das Zeichenheft für Literatur und Grafik); PT (Collection “Poemtrees. Lyrisches Lesebuch für Fortgeschrittene und Zurückgebliebene,” Folders 1 & 2, in The Papers of W. G. Sebald, Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach); H (Hanser Verlag volume Über das Land und das Wasser, ed. Sven Meyer: 2008); SL (Folder 1: “Schullatein,” in collection “Über das Land und das Wasser,” in The Papers of W. G. Sebald, Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach); ÜLW (Folder 2: “Über das Land und das Wasser,” in collection “Über das Land und das Wasser,” in The Papers of W. G. Sebald, Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach); VVJ (Folder 3: “Das vorvergange Jahr,” in collection “Über das Land und das Wasser,” in The Papers of W. G. Sebald, Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach); GG1 (File “Gedichte und Gedichtentwürfe,” Folder 1, in The Papers of W. G. Sebald, Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach); DK (Der Komet. Almanach der Anderen Bibliothek auf das Jahr 1991, Frankfurt am Main: 1991); WS (Weltwoche Supplement: Juni 1996); JPT (Jan Peter Tripp, Die Aufzählung der Schwierigkeiten: Arbeiten von 1985–92, Offenburg, 1993); FL (Franz Loquai, W. G. Sebald, Eggingen, 1997); NZZ (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Nr 256, 13 November 1999); AK48 (Akzente 48 J., 2001); AK50 (Akzente 50 J., 2003); K&C (Konterbande und Camouflage. Szenen aus der Vor- und Nachgeschichte von Heinrich Heines marranischer Schreibweise. Berlin, 2002); P (Pretext, vol. 2: Autumn 2000); FYN (Collection “For Years Now,” in The Papers of W. G. Sebald, Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach).

1 “For how hard it is” PT, FSZ 14 (1964), H.

2 “A colony of allotments” PT, FSZ 14 (1964), H.

3 “Smoke will stir” PT, FSZ 14 (1964), H.

4 “The intention is sealed” FSZ 14 (1964), H.

5 Nymphenburg PT, FSZ 14 (1964), H. Title: the gardens and interiors of the Baroque Nymphenburg Palace, formerly the summer residence of Bavaria’s ruling Wittelsbach dynasty, are among Munich’s most frequently visited attractions. mauves: French for “mallows.” Wishing Table: the poem invokes the Brothers Grimm’s tales “Dornröschen” (“Sleeping Beauty,” or “Briar Rose”) and “Tischchen deck dich, Goldesel und Knüppel aus dem Sack” (“The Wishing Table, the Gold Ass and the Cudgel in the Sack”), in which a table, on command, sets and spreads its own surface with food and drink.

6 Epitaph FSZ 15 (1965), H.

7 Schattwald in Tyrol PT, FSZ 15 (1965), H. Title: Tyrolean village to the east of Oberjoch, from which the narrator of the final section (“Il ritorno in patria”) of Sebald’s Schwindel. Gefühle (1990; Eng. trans. Vertigo, 1999) walks to Wertach, the author’s place of birth. Rosetta stone: an ancient Egyptian stele of black granodiorite, inscribed with the so-called Memphis decree, issued in three languages in 196 BCE. Its discovery contributed to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics. In an earlier version of the poem, the second stanza reads: “Am Anfang der Legende / brachte die Botschaft / der Engel des Herrn / ins Haus aus Schatten” (At the beginning of the legend / the Angel of the Lord / brought the tidings / to the House of Shadows”).

8 Remembered Triptych of a Journey from Brussels PT, FSZ 15 (1965), H. near Meran in Ezra’s hanging garden: from 1958, after his release from St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., Ezra Pound stayed at Castle Brunnenburg near Meran in northern Italy, the home of his daughter Mary de Rachewiltz. battlefield at Waterloo: Sebald’s narrator describes visits to Waterloo in the passage entitled (in the contents) “The Panorama of Waterloo,” in the fifth chapter of The Rings of Saturn, including a visit in December 1964, when he stayed at a hotel near the Bois de la Cambre and visited a bar in Rhode St. Genèse. Marie-Louises: young soldiers of the Napoleonic army in 1814, many of them between fourteen and fifteen years old, who had been conscripted during the regency of Empress Marie-Louise, Napoleon’s wife, during her husband’s absence for the German campaign of 1813–14. ferme in Genappe: the farmhouse was Napoleon’s headquarters on the night of June 17, 1815, the eve of the Battle of Waterloo. Marquise of O.: the reference to the eponymous protagonist of Heinrich von Kleist’s story is obscure, but see note on Light in August below. A woman’s mouth … roses: in English in the German text. Départ … Milan via St. Gotthard: the train for Milan via St. Gotthard departs from platform 8 at 00.16 hours. industrie chimique: chemical industry. light above the heavenly vaults: in English in the German text. Bahnhof von Metz: Metz train station. bien éclairée: well illuminated. Gregorius, the guote sündaere (Gregorius, the good sinner): a medieval verse epic by Hartmann von der Aue (died ca. 1210). Au near Freiburg: one of the municipalities of that name which claim association with the poet. rechtsrheinisch: on the right (eastern) side of the Rhine. Froben & Company: the humanist Johann Froben (1460–1527), a friend of Erasmus of Rotterdam, set up a successful printing business in Basel in 1491. Light in August: title of a novel (1932) by William Faulkner (1897–1962). One of the characters is Lena Grove, who, like the pregnant Marquise of O. in Heinrich von Kleist’s story, mentioned earlier in the poem, is trying to find the father of her unborn child. To do so, she walks a long distance to Jefferson, in Yoknapatawpha, the fictional setting of several of Faulkner’s novels.

9 Life Is Beautiful PT, FSZ 15 (1965), H.

10 Matins for G. PT, FSZ 15 (1965), H. Where no kitchen/There no cook: As Leon, in Act 1 of Franz Grillparzer’s drama Weh dem, der lügt! (Woe to Him Who Lies!), Vienna: 1840 (p. 6), exclaims, “Wo keine Küche, ist kein Koch.”

11 Winter Poem PT, FSZ 15 (1965), H. Child Jesus in Flanders: the German translation of the Flemish writer Felix Timmermans’s novel (Het Kindeken Jezus in Vlaanderen, 1917), published in 1919 under the title Das Jesuskind in Flandern, was immensely popular in Germany between the wars and during the 1950s. Its plot sets the birth of Christ in rural Flanders. Another story, “Jésus-Christ en Flandre” (1831) by Honoré de Balzac, is apparently based on a medieval folktale. The Christ-child theme recalls the nativity scenes of Dutch Masters. Believe and be saved: see Mark 16: 16. A handwritten comment on the PT typescript claims there is too great a discrepancy in the poem between the ironic tone of the second stanza and the apparent naïveté of the first.

12 Lines for an Album PT, FSZ 15 (1965), H.

13 Bleston: A Mancunian Cantical PT, H. Title: in English in the original text. Bleston is the name given to Manchester in the 1957 novel L’Emploi du temps (translated into English as Passing Time) by the French writer Michel Butor (b. 1926). Like Sebald (1966–68), Butor had been an assistant teacher at Manchester University (1951–53). The final section (“Max Ferber”) of W. G. Sebald’s prose work The Emigrants is set in Manchester, as is the fourth part of “Dark Night Sallies Forth,” the final section of After Nature. Sebald finished writing the poem on or shortly before January 26, 1967 (according to a letter that he wrote to his friend Albrecht Rasche). The poem presents a labyrinth of allusions, and the reader who attempts to follow them risks becoming “Perdu dans ces filaments” (lost in these filaments), a fate of which the title of the fifth part of the poem appears to warn us. Fête nocturne: night party. Big Warehouse: in English in the German text. Lewis’s was a former Manchester department store, opened in 1877. “Warehouse” is probably a Germanicism, an Englishing of the German “Warenhaus” (department store). Consensus Omnium: agreement of all. Place of Breast-like hills: in English in the German text. Dis … curavi: “Dis Manibus” is found on Roman gravestones and means “for the spirits of the ancestors”; in this case, “for the spirits of the ancestors I have arranged for the building of this Mamucium [Manchester].” à travers les âges: through the ages. Sharon’s Full Gospel … before our eyes: in English in the German text. According to the website of the Sharon Full Gospel Church, the church “began with a gospel mission in a tent in Pontypool Park during 1936. Many local people were … miraculously healed.” There is an SFG church in South Manchester. Lingua Mortua: dead language. Kebad Kenya: a character in an episode in the first volume (Das Holzschiff) of Hans Henny Jahnn’s novel Fluß ohne Ufer (1949). The story has appeared in English in a translation by Gerda Jordan-Peterson in The Ship (1961) and Thirteen Uncanny Stories (1984). Briefly, Kebad decides to eat himself, fails to die, attempts to become one with his mare, lies down as if dead, is buried, witnesses the corruption of the flesh, is a revenant, takes possession of men’s bodies, and inflicts terror by stealing horses. Hipasos (sic) of Metapontum: Pythagorean philosopher who conducted experiments in musical theory. Hippasos claimed the discovery of concords with bronze disks of equal diameter and varying thickness. Et pulsae referunt ad sidera valles: and the valleys echoed the sounds to the stars (Virgil’s Eclogue 6.1.84). fil d’Ariane: Ariadne’s thread. The theme of Ariadne and Theseus, the labyrinth and the Minotaur, are ever present in Butor’s novel L’Emploi du temps: “that rope of words is like Ariadne’s thread (ce cordon des phrases est un fil d’Ariane), because I am in a labyrinth, because I am writing in order to find my way about in it … the labyrinth of my days in Bleston, incomparably more bewildering than that of the Cretan palace, since it grows and alters even while I explore it” (Passing Time, trans. Jean Stewart, New York: 1969, p. 195). opgekilte schottns: both words occur in the Yiddish lexicon, the second one more frequently as shotns. If Sebald intended the words to be recognized as Yiddish, they would mean something like “frozen shadows.” Perhaps they should be read in the context of “return,” albeit a return antithetical to the desired echo: the revenant murderous shadows of Kebad, or Theseus, who after abandoning Ariadne on Naxos forgot to change the black sail to white, thereby causing the death of his father, Aegeus. Alma quies optata veni nam sic sine vita / Vivere quam suave est sic sine morte mori: “How sweet, though lifeless, yet with life to lie, / And, without dying, O how sweet to die” (translation by John Walcott [1738–1813]). Authorship of the epigram appears to be obscure, with Georg Christoph Lichtenberg attributing the lines to Heinrich Meibom (1555–1625), while British critics have tended to see the poet laureate Thomas Wharton (1728–90) as the author. Rapunzel: In the fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, Rapunzel, exiled to the wilderness by the witch to live on her own, one day hears the voice of the prince, whom the witch has blinded by throwing him from the tower. They reunite, his sight is restored, and they live happily ever after. Perdu dans ces filaments: lost in these filaments. A quotation from Michel Butor’s novel L’Emploi du temps (Paris: 1956, p. 54) (Passing Time, op. cit., p. 41): “Thus I, a mere virus lost amidst its filaments, was able like a scientist armed with his microscope to study this huge cancerous growth.” Eli Eli (Mark 15: 34): “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” (“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”) Mr. Dewey’s International classification system: Melville Louis Kossuth Dewey (1851–1931) invented the Decimal Classification System, which revolutionized library cataloging in the 1870s and 1880s. On ne doit plus dormir: One must no longer sleep. The French dictum derives from Theodor W. Adorno’s essay “Commitment” (see New Left Review, First Series, no. 87–88, 1974, p. 85), first published in German in 1962: “The abundance of real suffering tolerates no forgetting; Pascal’s theological saying, On ne doit plus dormir, must be secularized.” Adorno, however, has adapted rather than cited Pascal, who wrote: “Jésus sera en agonie jusqu’à la fin du monde. Il ne faut pas dormir pendant ce temps-là” (“The agony of Jesus will last until the world ends. Until that time we must not sleep”), in Blaise Pascal, Pensées (919) (Texte établi par Louis Lafuma), Paris: 1963 (p. 378).

14 Didsbury PT, H. Title: the author lived in Didsbury, a suburb of Manchester, from January 1967 until his departure in 1968 to teach at a school in St. Gallen, Switzerland, initially sharing a flat with Reinbert Tabbert. The poem was among a small number of items, including “Giulietta’s Birthday” and “Time Signal at Twelve,” collected in a Festschrift put together in the summer of 1967 by Tabbert and Sebald for Idris Parry (1916–2008), a professor of German at the University of Manchester and Sebald’s later supervisor for his M.A. dissertation (1968) on the German writer Carl Sternheim. An earlier version of the poem is entitled “Weekend.”

15 Giulietta’s Birthday PT, H. See note on “Didsbury” above.

16 Time Signal at Twelve PT, AK50. See note on “Didsbury” above. Lejzer Ajchenrand: a Jewish poet born in Demblin (Poland) in 1911 who emigrated to France in 1937 and served in a French volunteer battalion. He was interned under the Vichy regime and, in 1942, fled to Switzerland, where he was again interned. Although Ajchenrand spent the rest of his life in Switzerland, he was never granted citizenship. He died in the town of Küsnacht, on Lake Zürich. His mother and sister were murdered by the Nazis, and the Shoah remained the subject of a poetic oeuvre composed entirely in Yiddish. Several of his poems appeared in the German literary magazine Akzente. The best known of his nine books of poems is Aus der Tiefe (De Profundis, 1957), first published in Paris in 1953 and reprinted with German translations in 1998. Melk: a town in Lower Austria and the site of a famous Benedictine abbey, founded in 1089. Between April 1944 and May 1945, 14,390 mainly Jewish prisoners were deported to the Melk concentration camp, a sub-camp of KZMauthausen. It is thought that some five thousand prisoners were murdered there. The crematorium is all that remains of the camp today. If no one asks him … knows not: The phrasing of the fifth stanza echoes a passage in Augustine’s Confessiones (XI, 14) in which the author ruminates on the nature of time, its absence, and eternity. “Quid ergo tempus est?” (“What then is time?”) he asks, and continues, “si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio” (“if no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it to him who asks, I know not”).

17 Children’s Song PT, AK50. The poem, dedicated to Sebald’s niece, was first published in Reinbert Tabbert’s reminiscence of his friendship with Sebald in the magazine Akzente. It later appeared in a second article by Tabbert in a journal called Literatur in Bayern (no. 97, September 2009), this time with a short commentary linking the poem to the topography and mood of Sebald’s childhood memories of his daily route to school in his native Wertach.

18 Votive Tablet SL.

19 Legacy SL.

20 Sarassani SL. Title: Sebald’s spelling may be incorrect, but only if the title refers to the Sarrasani Circus, founded by Hans Stosch (alias Giovanni Sarrasani) in Meißen in 1902, and still in family hands.

21 Day’s Residue PT, SL. Title: a psychoanalytic term (German: Tagesrest) coined by Sigmund Freud in his book on the interpretation of dreams, Die Traumdeutung (1900). The term describes the way the residual material of a day’s experience — thoughts, impressions, and unfinished tasks — may trigger the “dream work” of the following night.

22 Border Crosser SL. witch’s thaler: a gold or silver coin whose currency magically alters in accordance with the mint of the country in which its owner is a resident.

23 Lay of Ill Luck SL, H. black bird: the combination of fox and crow (or, in German, Rabe: raven) is likely to be associated in the reader’s mind with Aesop’s ancient Greek fable “The Fox and the Crow,” or with its later French version by Jean de La Fontaine. However, it is in Leoš Janáček’s opera The Cunning Little Vixen (German: Das schlaue Füchslein; in Sebald’s poem the fox is also a “Füchslein”) that the “little vixen” escapes. The “monosyllabic creature” of the translation is, in German, einsilbig, which can also, figuratively at least, mean “taciturn.” “Monosyllabic” at least captures Mistress Crow’s “Caw!” which lost her the cheese in the fable. The final stanza, however, may contain a nod to the taciturn “black bird” in Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven”: possibly a figure closer to Sebald’s own melancholy muse.

24 Memorandum of the Divan SL.

25 Il ritorno d’Ulisse SL. Title: probably a reference to Claudio Monteverdi’s opera of 1640, whose full title is Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria. The title of the final section (“Il ritorno in patria”) of Sebald’s prose work Schwindel. Gefühle (1990; Eng. trans. Vertigo, 1999) also appears to echo the title of Monteverdi’s opera. in scattered spots with the black paper hearts of men shot by the arquebuse: the German (“an zerstreueten Orten waren schwarze Papierherzen arkebusierter Menschen”) is from Jean Paul Richter’s novel Titan (vol. 1), in Sämtliche Werke. Bd. 2, Berlin: 1827 (p. 115); translated into English by Charles T. Brooks as “in scattered spots were the black paper hearts of men shot by the arquebuse,” in Titan. A Romance, London: 1863 (p. 36).

26 For a Northern Reader SL.

27 Florean Exercise SL. Title: there is more than one reference in Sebald’s work to the name of the Northamptonshire village Flore. In the second chapter of The Rings of Saturn, for example, the narrator’s neighbor Frederick Farrar is sent in 1914 to a prep school near Flore in Northamptonshire. Flore is also mentioned in the poem “Pneumatalogical Prose,” in this volume. the Dardanian gods: the final lines cite an Etruscan inscription discovered in North Africa by the French Latinist and Etruscan scholar Jacques Heurgon. The Dardanoi formed one of the two royal houses of ancient Troy, and the rulers of Rome would sometimes claim, through their founder Aeneas, Dardanian descent. In this poem, then, the apparently unremarkable village of Flore emerges as the unexpected repository of a genealogical current that arose in mythical northwestern Anatolia, passed through Troy, Carthage, and Rome, and that continues to exert metaphysical pressure on the imagination in twentieth-century Northamptonshire, one and a half millennia after the Romans left.

28 Scythian Journey SL. Title: in classical antiquity Scythia was the area to the north of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. with the birds and fishes: reminiscent of lines in the second poem in book 1 of Horace’s Odes: “omne cum Proteus pecus egit altos visera montis, / piscium et summa genus haesit ulmo, / nota quae sedes fuerat columbis” (“when Proteus drove all his herd to visit the high mountains / and the race of fishes lodged in the elm-tops / which once were known as the haunt of doves”). Berecyntian horn: mentioned in Horace’s Odes (bk. 1, ode 18), but also to be found in Catullus, Ovid, and other classical writers. Berecyntus was the name of a mountain in Phrygia, sacred to Cybele. Penates: guardian deities of the household and the state.

29 Saumur, selon Valéry SL. Title: Saumur, as seen by Valéry. There is a National Equestrian Academy at Saumur, home to the world-renowned Cadre Noir. In his Cahiers (Notebooks), the French poet Paul Valéry compares mental and aesthetic training with the equestrian art of dressage: he aims to write a treatise on “le dressage de l’esprit” (“dressage of the mind”), to be called “Gladiator.” In the Cahiers (6, 901), he also mentions the mythical centaur as a model of perfect control. Another model was the Saumur equestrian instructor François Baucher (1796–1873), of whom Valéry, in his essay “Autour de Corbot,” recites an anecdote with which Sebald was evidently acquainted. Baucher dazzled one of his favorite pupils at Saumur by appearing as “un Centaure parfait” (a perfect centaur): “Voilà … Je ne fais pas d’esbroufe. Je suis au sommet de mon art: Marcher sans une faute” (“There … I’m not showing off. I have reached the summit of my art: Walking without error”), in Paul Valéry, Œuvres 2, Paris: 1960 (p. 1311).

30 L’instruction du roy PT, SL, H. Title: probably a reference to the posthumously published L’instruction du roy en l’exercise de monter à cheval (1625), by Antoine de Pluvinel (1555–1620). The book was one of the earliest equestrian manuals and is conceived in the form of a conversation between the author, Louis XIII, and Monsieur Le Grand, the King’s Master of the Horse.

31 Festifal PT. the Dictaean Grotto: the Diktaion Andron on Crete, traditionally the birthplace of Zeus. polar dragon: according to Lemprière’s classical dictionary this was the guardian of the apples of the Hesperides; see: J. Lemprière, Bibliotheca Classica, London: 1811 (p. 340). As Ladon, the dragon is depicted coiling around the apple tree; in (ancient Egyptian) celestial atlases he is coiled around the pole of heaven. Could Sebald have been aware of W. B. Yeats’s lines “And though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and wept, / The Polar Dragon slept, / His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep”? (“The Poet Pleads with the Elemental Powers.”) Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas, / nocturnos lemures portentaque Thessala rides? are lines from the second book of Horace’s Epistles (ll. 208–9), which Philip Francis, cited by Robert Burton in the Anatomy of Melancholy, translates as “Say, can you laugh indignant at the schemes / Of magic terrors, visionary dreams, / Portentous wonders, witching imps of Hell, / the nightly goblin, and enchanting spell?” See The Works of the English Poets from Chaucer to Cowper, vol. 8, London: 1810 (p. 742). The plump Etruscan blows on an ivory flute in Virgil, Georgics, 2, l. 193, trans. C. Day Lewis, Oxford: 1999 (p. 75). Proteus: an ancient sea god and herdsman of Poseidon’s seal herds. The Sphinx fleeing toward Libya: “I have seen the Sphinx fleeing toward Libya.” See The Letters of Gustave Flaubert 1830–57, ed. Francis Steegmuller, Harvard: 1980 (p. 112).

32 Pneumatological Prose SL. Flore: see note on “Florean Exercise” above. The animal is a victor: the indented passage is cited from the legend in Dürer’s 1515 woodcut of a rhinoceros. The passage in Sebald’s German text reads: “Das da ein Sieg Thir ist / des Heilffandten Todtfeindt / den wo es Ihn ankompt / so laufft ihm das Thir mit dem Kopff / zwischen die fordern bayn // Sie sagen auch / das der Rhinocerus / schnellfraytig und auch lustig sey.” The legend in Dürer’s woodcut reads: “das da ein Sieg Thir ist / des Heilffandten Todtfeyndt. Der Heilffandt fürchts fast ubel / den wo es Ihn ankompt / so laufft Ihm das Thir mit dem kopff zwischen die fordern bayn / und reist den Heilffandten unten am bauch auff / und er würget ihn / des mag er sich nicht erwehren. dann das Thier ist also gewapnet / das ihm der Jeilffandt nichts Thun kan / Sie sagen auch / das der Rhinocerus / Schnell / fraytig / und auch Lustig / sey.” Footnote: Messrs. H. and C. Artmann: a pun on the name of the Viennese poet H. C. Artmann (1921–2000). as Pliny tells us: Pliny, in book 8 of Naturalis Historia, discusses the character and virtues of the elephant. This passage recurs in modified form in Unrecounted, London: 2004 (p. 13). Footnotes 1 and 2: the footnotes in the German text are reprinted verbatim in the translation.

33 Comic Opera SL. Title: comic opera (komische Oper) can be opera buffa, with its beginnings in the Italian eighteenth century, or the often more serious, or satirical, opéra comique. green theatre: théâtre de verdure, a garden or hedge theatre.

34 Timetable ZET, SL, H. Cretan trick: an acrobatic feat of bull-leaping or somersaulting over or between a bull’s horns. Depictions of the ritual, possibly once a rite of passage for young men, have been found in ancient Minoan artwork.

35 Unexplored ZET, SL, H. Title: “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, ÜLW, 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 Mustafá 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 (1651–89) so-called Kühlpsalter of 1684: “Nach zahlreichen Bekehrungsreisen nach Paris, Genf, Smyrna und Konstantinopel wurde Kuhlmann in Moskau als politischer Aufrührer verbrannt.”

38 Cold Draught PT, ÜLW, H. Title: 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 title 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-Außenlage Kaufering I. Kauf beuren was the site of a psychiatric hospital in which the mentally ill were murdered under the Nazi 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 Nazi 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 ÜLW. Title: 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 passim 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 assembled those who had afflicted Judah, and wreaked upon them his judgment.

40 Poor Summer in Franconia ÜLW. 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 ÜLW. Title: a small town in Franconia (a region of Bavaria). The Solnhofen limestone lagerstätte (sedimentary deposit) has supplied some of the most significant fossils ever found, including the Jurassic 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 ÜLW, 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, ÜLW, H.

44 Panacea SL, ZET, ÜLW, 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, ÜLW, H. Title: 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 Titan 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, ÜLW, H.

47 Barometer Reading SL, ÜLW, H. ignoring their ladders: weather frogs (tree frogs) were kept in preserve glasses 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: Sextus Propertius, Latin poet (ca. 50–15 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, ÜLW, 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, ÜLW, 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 (1626–50).

50 Abandoned ÜLW. 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 Mölkerbastei SL, ZET, ÜLW, H. Title: Beethoven lived in the Pasqualati House, at Mölkerbastei 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 ÜLW. Title (“Liegt eine Galeere bei Helsingborg”): Sebald is quoting a quotation. Heinrich von Kleist cites an entry from no. 997 of the “Privilegierte Liste der Börsenhalle” (12 October 1810) in his curious article entitled “Miscellen” (“Miscellany”), published in the Berliner Abendblätter (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 Überfahrt zu begrüßen” (“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 Abendblättern,’ ” in Kleist-Jahrbuch 2005, ed. Günter Bamberger und Ingo Breuer, Stuttgart: 2005 (p. 156). The port of Helsingborg in Sweden faces the Danish town of Helsingør, the Elsinore of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, across the Öresund Strait.

53 Holkham Gap PT, SL, ÜLW, H. Title: 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, ÜLW, H. The physical (or, rather, metaphysical) attitude of the passenger, 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 canals, 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 ÜLW. 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 passage 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 später hätte ich / bei einem Gang über / die Friedensbrücke 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 Friedensbrücke (Bridge of Peace), which crosses the Donau-Kanal more or less from the Franz-Josefs-Bahnhof in Alsergrund to Brigittenau, is not one of them.

56 Natural History SL, ÜLW. Title: in English in the German text. Another of Sebald’s “found” poems, taken verbatim from Johann Wilhelm Ritter’s Fragmente aus dem Nachlaß 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 illustrates the continuity of his fascination with matters arcane, alchemical, and astrological.

57 Ballad PT, SL, ÜLW, H. Title: “Ballad” refers less to the poetic genre of Sebald’s poem than to the preferred form of its subject’s compositions. Carl Löwe, 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 Löwe’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 Passage SL, ÜLW, 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 classical 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 Album ÜLW, 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 Sämtliche Werke, 26, Berlin: 1827 [p. 61]): “Gefühle, sagt’ er, sind Sterne, die bloß bei hellem Himmel leiten, aber die Vernunft ist eine Magnetnadel, die das Schiff noch ferner führt, 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 Hell Valley Wind on My Nerves ÜLW, H. Title: the Höllentäler, translated here as Hell Valley Wind, is an evening wind in Freiburg (where Sebald studied), blowing from east to west through the Höllental and Dreisam Valley. In a different context, perhaps, the word Höllental need not have been translated, but the poem requires the reader’s alertness to a notion of human hell — 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 God 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 Cassiopeia. The phrase Order of the World is a quotation from Daniel Paul Schreber’s memoirs. li più reconditi principii della naturale filosofia (the most secret principles of natural philosophy): from Prodomo (1670) by Francesco Lana de Terzi (1631–87), 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 hell: English in the original text.

61 Unidentified Flying Objects ÜLW. Title: 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 ÜLW. Title: in English in the German text.

63 A Peaceable Kingdom ÜLW. Title: in English in the German text. A number of works by the Quaker “naïve” artist Edward Hicks (1780–1849) 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 title A Peaceable Kingdom: The Shaker Abecedarius, illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen. Crocodile … bear: original text in English. Are these … our love: original text in English.

64 Trigonometry of the Spheres ÜLW, 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 Return ÜLW, 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 Journey ÜLW, 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 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. 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 Dream JPT, 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 Donderdag GG1. 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.

70 The secrets GG1. From a manuscript handwritten on the headed notepaper of the Hotel Schweizerhof in the Hinüberstraße, Hannover. See also “Room 645” below.

71 On 9 June 1904 VVJ, WS, H. Title: 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 Männlein”): a figure from the collection of folk poetry entitled Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1805–8), 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 1814–15, 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. Title: Like Wolfgang von Goethe’s “Marienbad Elegy,” from his “Trilogy of Passion” 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 title. Sebald’s detachment from the Dichterfürst (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.” Türkenfeld is a town on the Allgäubahn (Allgäu Railway). A brief discussion of the significance of Türkenfeld 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 Häftlinge aus den KZ-Außenlagern Landsberg/Kaufering auf dem Todesmarsch im April 1945 durch den Landkreis Fürstenfeldbruck nach Dachau: Arbeitskreis Mahnmal Fürstenfeldbrück, Fürstenfeldbrück, 2007; “Berichte von Zeitzeugen aus der Hölle von Kaufering,” in The European Holocaust Memorial: Bürgervereinigung 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 cockerel 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 hoardings, advertisements, or passages from newspaper articles — Sebald frequently integrated into his poems. radio, transmission … building components: advertisement 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 Höllerer in 1963 and one of the most important literary institutions 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 (Nordhäuser Doppelkorn is a spirit, Gau Köngernheimer Vogelsang a wine from the Rheinhessen region, and Rotkäppchen—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 Frédéric Chopin (1810–49) 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 Alfermée VVJ, K&C, H. Title: Alfermée 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: Alfermée is the home of the critic Heinz Schafroth, an expert on the work of the German poet Günter Eich, whose ashes were scattered by his wife, the writer Ilse Aichinger, in the vineyards of Alfermée. Sebald visited Schafroth’s house twice: once during the winter of 1997, when he was holding the lectures at the University of Zürich 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 (1948–2007), 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 Naturgemäß I (By Nature I) had appeared in five volumes in 1996, a year before Sebald’s second visit to Alfermée. The two parts of the Naturgemäß project (Naturgemäß 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 Städel 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. Title: an earlier title (recorded in a manuscript 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 Allgäu, 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.

Примечания

1

The hitherto unpublished German poems will appear in the journal Akzente (Munich) in December 2011.

2

Pneumatology: Geisterlehre (Germ.), or Doctrine of Inflatability.

3

Large and very handsome flying and sailing device constructed by Messrs. H. and C. Artmann, Royal Engineers/

Content

W. G. Sebald
Across the Land and the Water: Selected Poems, 1964-2001

Translator’s Introduction

A Note on the Text

Poemtrees

“For how hard it is”

“A colony of allotments”

“Smoke will stir”

“The intention is sealed”

Nymphenburg

Epitaph

Schattwald in Tyrol

Remembered Triptych of a Journey from Brussels

Life Is Beautiful

Matins for G

Winter Poem

Lines for an Album

Bleston: A Mancunian Cantical

I. Fête nocturne

II. Consensus Omnium

III. The Sound of Music

IV. Lingua Mortua

V. Perdu dans ces filaments

Didsbury

Giulietta’s Birthday

Time Signal at Twelve

Children’s Song

School latin

Votive Tablet

Legacy

Sarassani

Day’s Residue

Border Crosser

Lay of Ill Luck

Memorandum of the Divan

Il ritorno d’Ulisse

For a Northern Reader

Florean Exercise

Scythian Journey

Saumur, selon Valéry

L’instruction du roy

Festifal

Pneumatological Prose

Comic Opera

Timetable

Unexplored

Elizabethan

Baroque Psalter

Across the land and the water

Cold Draught

Near Crailsheim

Poor Summer in Franconia

Solnhofen

Leaving Bavaria

Something in My Ear

Panacea

Mithraic

Memo

Barometer Reading

K.’s Emigration

Through Holland in the Dark

Abandoned

Mölkerbastei

A Galley Lies off Helsingborg

Holkham Gap

Norfolk

Crossing the Water

Natural History

Ballad

Obscure Passage

Poetry for an Album

Eerie Effects of the

Unidentified Flying Objects

The Sky at Night

A Peaceable Kingdom

Trigonometry of the Spheres

Day Return

New Jersey Journey

The Year Before Last

The Year Before Last

A Waltz Dream

Donderdag

The secrets

On 9 June 1904

Ninety years later

In Bamberg

Marienbad Elegy

The Year Before Last

And always

How silvery

Somewhere

In the sleepless

Room 645

My ICE Rail-Planner

One Sunday in Autumn 94

Calm November weather

Unchanged for years

In the Summer of 1836

In Alfermée

On the Eve of

In the Paradise Landscape

Appendix: Two poems written in English by W. G. Sebald

I remember

October Heat Wave

Notes

About the author

Примечания