HORIZONTALS AND VERTICALS

"Three or four miles south of Lowestoft the coastline curves gently into the land. From the footpath that runs along the grassy dunes and low cliffs one can see, at any time of the day or night and at any time of the year, as i have often found, all manner of tent-like shelters made of poles and cordage, sailcloth and oilskin, along the pebble beach. They are strung out in a long line on the margin of the sea, at regular intervals. It is as if the last stragglers of some nomadic people had settled there, at the outermost limit of the earth, in expectation of the miracle which would for since time immemorial, the miracle which justify all their erstwhile privations and wanderings."

The Rings of Saturn
W. G. Sebald.
1998, The Harvill Press

If one were to have bumped into W. G. Sebald on one of his walks through the towns and countryside of East Anglia, perhaps staring out to sea or up at the architecture of a stately home or leafing through the yellowed pages of antique manuscripts in a small out of the way museum, or rambling across fields to reach the birth place of Thomas Browne, one would be well advised to be cautious in what questions one might ask. He may seem as though he were passing time, wondering casually around in no definate direction, almost lost, but in reality he will be building a narrative so vast and full of the richness of time that you would more than likely be transported with him through the darkness and beauty of his historical details, to travel in your mind through a strange and dark historical world and then to land again upon the wet reclaimed Anglia soil with a completely different set of eyes.

Sebald makes time almost palpable to the hands. Every object that he focuses upon grows its own interlinked narrative. You realise that Sebald only appears to be walking across the Southwold sands, through the various towns and villages fixed to the eastern edges of Britain, he is in fact piecing together in his mind a country that doesn't exist on any map. He is expanding on his personal explorations into lost information that perhaps never was exactly as he tells them but instead only points towards a world that remains lost and mysterious. He Reminds us of the way the past satuarates everything in life. The architecture and physiology of the area achieve new significance as the intrepid Sebald leads us on his own personal historical tour, covering such unlikely subjects as silkworms, the herring industry, the history of country house landscaping, Conrad, Swinburne, Chateaubrand, evoking cultures past and present, weaving an intricate web that seduces the reader even along the most seemingly fruitless trails. In this mixture of fiction, Autobiography and essay writing Sebald reclaims his lost subjects from the drab and dishevelled present and uncovers the trajectory of their demise, unearthing the most unlikely treasures.