The Anatomist of Melancholy: Essays in Memory of W. G. Sebald (review)

Abstract

572 Reviews in relation to Jens Sparschuh's Der Zimmerspringbrunnen(i, 384-94) or the problematics of 'Ich' and the 'Wende' (1, 248-328), does Grub achieve any analytical depth. Most of the time the discussion consists of relating the events of the play or novel con? cerned, and tracing, albeit briefly,its reception in the media. This is not to deny that Grub's study is enormously well researched. The footnotes, as well as the main body of text, are packed with useful information for furtherreading. And the bibliography which makes up the entire second volume will be essential for any library wishing to provide students of German with an up-to-date overview of literature relating to the 'Wende'. The virtue of this bibliography is that, in line with Grub's broad understanding of 'Wendeliteratur', it includes not just works of 'Belletristik' but also biographies, volumes of diaries, letters,and essays, and a fineselection ofhistorical and psychological texts on the 'Wende' and the unification/post-unification period. The bibliography is also very useful because Grub provides after the main primary texts, such as Grass's Ein weitesFeld, a judiciously chosen selection of secondary literature. Ultimately, though, this study is a disappointment because it avoids what would have been the most interesting challenge: namely, seeking to identify how literature as literature has handled the theme of the 'Wende'. Grub, in fact, seems to read texts largely as social and political commentaries. But in works such as Maron's Animal Triste (1996), or Sparschuh's Eins zu Eins, to name but two examples, the 'Wende' has a metaphorical resonance. In other novels it is part of a structural framework, acting as a pivotal moment, and many authors explore rupture-lines in the personal biographies of their characters, lines that often run parallel to the fault-lines of the 'Wende'. Equally, continuities are a subject for literary investigation. For the literary imagination, 'Wende' is a rich term endowed with more meaning than the purely factual one of 1989-90. It is a pity that Grub has passed over the opportunity to explore these deeper aspects. Nottingham Trent University Bill Niven The Anatomist of Melancholy: Essays in Memory of W. G. Sebald. Ed. by Rudiger Gorner. Munich: iudicium. 2003. 93 pp. ?8. ISBN 3-89129-774-2. This collection of essays derives from a 'memorial day' held early in 2003 to commemorate W. G. Sebald and his work. The contributors draw on a knowledge not only of the writings but of the life. The melancholy invoked in the title thus recurs not just as a motif of Sebald's works but, understandably, as an attitude of the tributes themselves. At either end of the book stand two short overtly commemorative pieces, one by Michael Hamburger which recollects Sebald's funeral, and, at the end, some verses by Will Stone imagining Sebald in the grave. In the middle come six very differentreflections on aspects of Sebald's writing. The first,by Anthea Bell, the translator of Austerlitz and Luftkrieg und Literatur, is one of the most interesting because the work of translation benefited from constant consultation between the two parties, some ofwhich she makes us privy to. She tells us that 'here and there [. . .] he did some rewriting forthe English edition [ofAusterlitzY (p. 13) and includes as one example the list of moths given by Austerlitz when remem? bering the night he and his childhood friend Gerald are taken out moth-gathering by Gerald's great-uncle Alphonso. Sebald was more interested in the 'general effect' than in the precise translation of the moth names he had come up with in German, and picked the English names from a list she sent him. The Totenkopfewere left out altogether because death's-head hawkmoths, he felt,'sounded too sinister in English, more so than the German' (p. 17). Bell also reveals that Sebald was unsure about ?*u. ~i_,T_ MLRy 100.2, 2005 573 'return[s] the narrative [. . .] to the home key' (p. 12). In another contribution Martin Swales picks up on this 'incantatory refrain' and identifies it as one of the aspects of the novel that recall Thomas Bernhard, especially Ausloschung (p. 82...