The Rings of Saturn

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Africa, the Mediterranean, the Iberian peninsula, the Tuileries gardens, a suburb of Rouen, the Sahara. The Rings of Saturn ( German: Die Ringe des Saturn: Eine englische Wallfahrt - An English Pilgrimage) is a 1995 novel by the German writer W. G. Sebald. Its first-person narrative arc is the account by a nameless narrator (who resembles the author in typical Sebaldian fashion [1]) on a walking tour of Suffolk. In addition to describing the places he sees and people he encounters, including translator Michael Hamburger, Sebald discusses various episodes of history and literature, including the introduction of silkworm cultivation to Europe, and the writings of Thomas Browne, which attach in some way to the larger text. The book was published in English in 1998.

That odd youthful pastime of mine is no doubt why I was so strongly affected by a certain passage toward the end of a novel called The Rings of Saturn, originally published in 1995 as Die Ringe des Saturn, by the late W. G. Sebald, the German writer who had emigrated in the sixties to the United Kingdom, where he spent the rest of his life and which is the setting for much of his writing. It was in England that Sebald wrote his dissertation, in English, on another German writer, Alfred Döblin, author of the masterwork Berlin Alexanderplatz and a Jewish refugee from Hitler—just as was, for example, the great scholar Erich Auerbach, whose magisterial study Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature begins with an analysis of the looping, digressive style, known as ring composition, that is found in Homer’s Odyssey. Döblin and Auerbach, in fact, died within weeks of each other, in 1957: the kind of near-coincidence beloved of Sebald, as we shall see.

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So, yes, on one level, a man takes a walk around Suffolk and takes a lot of mental digressions as he does so. Psychogeography.

And for what terrible triviality they destroy. I very much enjoyed, though never, ever, envied, the author's account of staying in the awful sort of old British three star (?) hotel that proved why Fawlty Towers was closer to documentary than anyone would wish. Certainly these places abounded in the 80s and 90s, but now have perhaps been displaced by Travelodges and the like, whose supermarket homogeneity is simply, sadly, more comfortable than enduring the following: There seem to be lessons in these passages about misdirection, mutability, shifting perceptions, fiction and reality. They strike me as a useful guide to reading The Rings of Saturn. But I’m wary of pushing things too far – I expect that as we fall deeper into the book, plenty of other ways of reading and seeing the book will suggest themselves. Come quello con Alec Garrard che ha smesso di occuparsi delle sue terre e ridotto al minimo i capi da allevare, si dimentica persino di riscuotere dagli affittuari, e dedica tutto il suo tempo e la sua energia a costruire, all’interno di una stalla senza riscaldamento, un modello in scala (dieci metri quadri) del tempio di Gerusalemme, che rimase in piedi circa cento anni, mentre la sua riproduzione si augura il bricoleur possa reggere più a lungo: migliaia di persone, centinaia di colonne, pannelli di un centimetro quadro per rivestire il soffitto, fregi, tutto modellato e dipinto a mano, in scala rigorosa. Sebald, I think, possesses many of the qualities which I have come to think are essential for anyone writing a travel essay/memoir of this sort. He has the capability to be a critic of what he sees, the interest and determination to pursue further research of anything that seems worth it, the sort of active minds that allows him to keep thinking and associating and being present even after walking a dozen or more miles, and the passion to convey the why of what he is doing. His clearly extensive education, international experience and perspective, and his little circle of equally passionate, interesting acquaintances add additional richness to the book and give its wandering nature clear purpose.

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L’appetito vien mangiando, e di questo viandante e dei suoi racconti e divagazioni non si riesce più a fare a meno, se ne vorrebbero sempre altri. Dunwich, with its towers and many thousand souls, has dissolved into water, sand and thin air. If you look out from the cliff-top across the sea towards where the town must one have been, you can sense the immense power of emptiness. Perhaps it was for this reason that Dunwich became a place of pilgrimage for melancholy poets in the Victorian age." Perhaps it's inevitable that among the grab-bag of topics infused in Sebald's work, one settles on favourites with which one already has an affinity. Many of mine are about landscape and loss or the passing of time. The title of the book may be associated with thematic content contained in the two passages–one appearing as part of the book's epigraph, the other in the fourth chapter, which mentions Saturn–hinting at both astronomical and mythological associations for Sebald's use of the word:

There are many more obscure subjects on which I did learn something from The Rings of Saturn. Roger Casement, merely a name mentioned occasionally in the news when I was growing up, and now I can't understand why he isn't a great hero to so many of those who criticise colonialism: someone - a gay man - who had a modicum of power in the Imperial civil service who really did try to do something about the abuses in the Congo, Peru, Colombia and Brazil, and would not be mollified by flattering "promotions" to other locations or appeased by a knighthood, whose story shows how large a system it was and how difficult it was really to help. As with the story of the Miners' Strike, where I've only realised in adulthood how biased the 1980s BBC take was, a version I'd once absorbed as definitive truth, the saga of Casement's embroilment in the Irish independence movement and downfall reads now like one who had a just cause and laudable motives, even if some of the means might have gone too far at times. Such is the way causes can be portrayed differently by history once they are no longer dangerous hot buttons. The denial of time, so the tract on Orbius Tertius tells us, is one of the key tenets of the philosophical schools of Tlön. According to this principle, the future exists only in the shape of our present apprehensions and hopes, and the past merely as memory. In a different view, the world and everything now living in it was created only moments ago, together with its complete but illusory pre-history. A third school of thought variously describes our earth as a cul-de-sac in the great city of God, a dark cave crowded with incomprehensible images, or a hazy aura surrounding a better sun. Sebald’dan okuduğum bu dördüncü kitap (Vertigo, Hava Savaşı ve Edebiyat, Kır Evinde İkamet) bence en iyisi. Lütfen okuyun.

cînd a apărut eseul narativ Inelele lui Saturn, în originalul lui cît se poate de nemțesc*, exegeții au pretins că nu-i pot atribui un gen literar precis. Ar fi o lucrare prea ciudată. În această privință au avut dreptate.

Firstly, that might explain my struggle to review the book. Because “crammed” is a bit of an understatement, actually. Secondly, how can you not want to read a book like that? A few weeks ago, I made a decision. It was time, I thought, that I filled in some of what I perceive to be the many gaps in my reading. So I bought a copy of The Rings of Saturn because I have never read Sebald but have wanted to for a long time.Satürn’ün Halkaları” için modern çağın Binbirgece Masalları diyebiliriz. Kelebek misali bir masaldan öbür masala uçuluyor. Onlarca farklı hikaye, okunurken şiirsel ve yumuşak, okunduktan sonra ise demir gibi sert mesajı olan cümleleriyle 10 ana başlıkta toplanarak anlatılmış. Aralara yazarın seçimiyle konulan fotoğraflar ile okuyucu kitabın içine davet ediliyor. Bazıları gerçek bazıları düş olan anlatılarda geçmiş ile bugün, karşılıklı tutulan ayna görüntüleri gibi iç içe geçiyor, üst üste biniyor. Ya da eskiden gezegenin çok yakınlarında bulunan ve etkisinde kaldığı gelgit nedeniyle yok olan bir uydunun parçaları olan Satürn halkalarına dönüyor. Fra gli incontri virtuali, trovo notevole quello con lo scrittore Edward Fitzgerald, vissuto nell’Ottocento, che nel suo romitaggio passava la maggior parte del tempo a leggere sregolatamente nelle più diverse lingue, a scrivere lettere su lettere, a prendere appunti per un lessico dei luoghi comuni [il Dictionnaire des idées reçues?], a raccogliere parole e locuzioni per un glossario esaustivo di nautica e di vita marinara, nonché a realizzare scrapbooks di ogni genere possibile e immaginabile. Amava in particolare sprofondarsi nella lettura degli epistolari dei tempi passati, ad esempio in quello di Madame de Sévigné, una persona per lui molto più reale dei suoi amici ancora in vita. Aș mai menționa că textul lui Sebald este întrerupt de numeroase fotografii greu descifrabile (așa e și în original, din cîte am văzut), de tăieturi din ziare, de hărți etc. E greu de găsit o unitate în Inelele lui Saturn, principiul narativ este asociația aproape liberă de idei, digresiunea. Cred că este singurul lucru care evocă obiceiurile lui Sterne: „Stînd acum să mă mai gîndesc, îmi vine în minte faptul că pe vremuri...” (p.300). I've read that a number of the men and women considered the great minds of the last few centuries were famous walkers, who were notorious for being unable to work out knotty problems while sitting down. Count Sebald's work as another variation that proves the theme. This is an idea I’ve come across a few times in my reading. In Proust, for example—the patch of yellow wall in Vermeer’s “View of Delft” that kills Bergotte—and in Wojnarowicz: