Austerlitz

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I have never read a book that provides such a powerful account of the devastation wrought by the dispersal of the Jews from Prague and their treatment by the Nazis. Austerlitz fails to make sense of his brutalised young life while wandering round the concentration camp at Terezen, where his mother was confined, which causes him to break down when he later remembers what happened. Smith, Dinitia (12 March 2002). "National Book Critics Circle Honors 'Austerlitz' ". The New York Times . Retrieved 22 April 2012. E.G.Sebald her eserinde beni şaşırtmaya devam ediyor. Asla kendini tekrarlamıyor. Bu kez 4 paragraflık bir kurgu ile birbirine son derece yumuşak geçiş yapan upuzun cümlelerle öykülerini bir anlatıcı (kendisi ?) ağzından, bir romana ismini veren kahramanımız Austerlitz’in ağzından anlatıyor. Tabii kendi tanımıyla hiçbir hayvanlar ansiklopedisinde anlatılmayan özel bir hayvan türü olan “insanı” odağına alarak. Yazarın çocukluk travması olan savaşın yıkımını bu kez Austerlitz’in gözünden okuyoruz. They were all as timeless as that moment of rescue, perpetuated but forever just occurring, these ornaments, utensils, and mementos stranded in the Terezín bazaar, objects that for reasons one could never know had outlived their former owners and survived the process of destruction, so that I could now see my own faint shadow image barely perceptible among them.” Not least I would recommend reading Austerlitz's account of trying to find out what happened to his father in the new Bibliothèque Nationale and failing to do so because its design appears calculated to frustrate the aspirations of its readers, such that one realises that the mentality which led to the concentration camp at Terezen is perfectly capable of designing comparable buildings in the present.

Opera ardita, che si spinge in alto, come la torre di Babele: e forse proprio questo ha determinato il caos e l’inconcludenza di questo mio commento.

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The effect of this quintessentially Sebaldian passage is like that of a dream in which a lecturer is speaking drily about sericulture but also, somehow, about Auschwitz. That place and what it has come to represent is a vast and blank presence at the periphery—and yet somehow at the center—of narrative vision in Sebald’s work. He was born in Bavaria in 1944, and so grew up in the immediate aftermath of the war. His father, he learned much later, had served in the Army and had been among the troops who invaded Poland in 1939. Like so many German men of his generation, Sebald’s father refused to speak about his war experiences, and this reticence, with that of post-war Germany as a whole, is what impels Sebald’s narratives of shame and historical occlusion. Austerlitz will transport you to the depths of human soul. This is a compelling narrative into time and reality that brilliantly encapsulates the depths of the ephemera and the apogee of the eternal in postmodern fiction. Memory and presence converge into an abstract reality. The scintillating photographs spread throughout the novel give a harrowing approach to the emotionally charged storyline. Sebald’s writing is fresh and seductive, with a unique attitude to immerse you into the limelight of humanity and deconstruct your deepest fears into simple factual realities. A song that never ends…

La dimensione più congeniale al protagonista è quella austera e solitaria, in cui "prendere le distanze se qualcuno mi veniva troppo vicino" e non veder "altro intorno a me se non misteri e segni".

The narrative, if it is true, is a remarkable one. The hero of the book, or more properly the anti-hero since he essentially does nothing especially useful with his life, was born in Prague, the son of a moderately successful opera singer and the manager of a small slipper-making factory who was also active in left-wing politics. An exciting book, which "deserves," not easy to read and follow ... sometimes destabilizing. However, the narrators intersect, their words support each other, and their knowledge of Jacques mingles with the narrator or people they meet.

Smith, Charles Saumarez (29 September 2001). "Observer review: Austerlitz by WG Sebald". The Observer . Retrieved 11 April 2013. It seems to me then as if all the moments of our life occupy the same space, as if future events already existed and were only waiting for us to find our way to them at last… And might it not be, continued Austerlitz, that we also have appointments to keep in the past, in what has gone before and is for the most part extinguished, and must go there in search of places and people who have some connection with us on the far side of time, so to speak?” Translated from the French into English, with a very well done translation that can make or break a good book, this was an incredibly readable, if not entirely scholarly, look at the War of the Third Coalition. Although Claude Manceron is indeed quite French, he is not a Bonapartist, nor a Republican over much, but an honest, largely unbiased observer, which is what a historian should be. (Admittedly, I was expecting a bit of Bonapartism going into this one, silly American expectations and all).A medida que Austerlitz narra la búsqueda de sus orígenes perdidos en las ruinas de un continente arrasado por la guerra, la novela se mueve, de un modo delicado y sutil, entre lo trascendente y lo cotidiano, entre la realidad y la ficción. Los acontecimientos históricos relatados por Sebald están dotados de una dimensión irreal, casi de cuento de hadas. Episodios como el campo de trabajo de concentración de Terezín y la película de propaganda que los nazis filmaron allí para mostrar al mundo que centros de exterminio y guetos eran agradables lugares de retiro para trabajadores judíos y sus familias, son mucho más difíciles de creer que las historias imaginarias con las que comparten página. Al mismo tiempo, los personajes ficticios son tan reales que, aunque es poco probable que Austerlitz haya existido fuera de la mente del autor, el lector se niega a creerlo. There are so many wonderfully written passages to quote, but the ones that are lingering in my memories this morning are the ones that involve loss. ”I remember, said Austerlitz, how Alphonso once told his great-nephew and me that everything was fading before our eyes, and that many of the loveliest of colors had already disappeared, or existed only where no one saw them, in the submarine gardens fathoms deep below the surface of the sea.” There is certainly a nostalgia for the past being felt by Alphonso, but to even think about the loss of colors from the modern age that will never be seen again is a disconcerting thought. We’ll never see the world the same way as Alphonso did, and neither will our children see the same world we did. Maybe the color isn’t gone though, maybe it has just faded from his own eyes? Austerlitz by Claude Manceron is a lively, dramatic narrative history which relates the story of Napoleon’s 1805 campaign and, in particular, its climatic conclusion at the battle of Austerlitz on December 2nd. What distinguishes this book from other histories of this campaign is the author’s style of narrative. Manceron writes as though he is telling a story. He does this by developing the historical personalities, bringing them to life through his selection and sequence of scenes and by delving into the dialogue, thoughts, and feelings of some of the principal figures. In this book, Claude Manceron recreates Austerlitz minute by minute, hour by hour. The reader becomes a privileged witness; we are in the headquarters of the Emperors as they prepare to trap the Grande Armee; in the bivouac of Napoleon where his plan, elaborated bit by bit, changes the trap into a countertrap. We stand on the hill with Soult; charge with the Imperial Guard. Update: As Geoff Dyer gently but firmly points out below, my remark about Sebald’s influence on his work is pretty roundly contradicted by the chronology of publication. Sebald’s “The Emigrants” didn’t appear in English until 1996, by which point Dyer had published “The Missing of the Somme” and had finished writing “Out of Sheer Rage.” The latter book in particular was on my mind when I mentioned Dyer’s being “inspired” by Sebald. I have to come out with my hands up on this point: what I initially described as Sebald’s influence on Dyer is much closer to an affinity, and perhaps has more to do with the shared influence of Thomas Bernhard. (As Dyer points out in his comment, he wrote “Out of Sheer Rage” during a period of “chronic Bernhard addiction”.)