Ajan sisäkkäiset tilat. Arkkitehtuuri, valokuva ja menneisyyden esittäminen W. G. Sebaldin romaanissa Austerlitz

In her thesis, Kaisa Kaakinen analyzes how the German emigrant author W. G. Sebald (1944-2001) uses architecture and photography in his last novel "Austerlitz" to represent time, history and remembering. Sebald describes time in spatial terms: it is like a building, the rooms and chambers of which are connected to each other. The poetics of spatial time manifests itself on multiple levels of the text. Kaakinen traces it in architectural representations, photographic images, intertextuality, as well as in the form of the text, using the concept of spatial form by Joseph Frank. Architectural and photographic representations serve as meeting points for different aspects and angles of the novel and illustrate the idea of a layered present that has multiple connections to the past. The novel tells a story of Jacques Austerlitz, who as a small child was sent from Prague to Britain in one of the so-called Kindertransports that saved children from Central Europe occupied by the National Socialists. Only gradually he remembers his Jewish parents, who have most likely perished in Nazi concentration camps. The novel brings the problematic of writing about another person's past to the fore by the fact that Austerlitz's story is told by an anonymous narrator, Austerlitz's interlocutor, who listens to and writes down Austerlitz's story. Kaakinen devotes the final part of her thesis to study the demands of representing a historical trauma, drawing on authors such as Dominick LaCapra and Michael Rothberg. Through the analysis of architectural and photographic representations in the novel, she demonstrates how Austerlitz highlights the sense of singularity and inaccessibility of memories of an individual, while also stressing the necessity - and therefore a certain kind of possibility - of passing these memories to another person. The coexistence of traumatic narrowness and of the infinity of history is reflected in ambivalent buildings. Some buildings in the novel resemble reversible figures: they can be perceived simultaneously as ruins and as construction sites. Buildings are also shown to be able to both cover and preserve memories - an idea that also is repeated in the use of photography, which tends to both replace memories and cause an experience of the presence of an absent thing. Commenting and critisizing some recent studies on Sebald, the author develops a reading which stresses the ambivalence inherent in Sebald's view on history and historiography. Austerlitz shows the need to recognize the inevitable absence of the past as well as the distance from the experiences of others. Equally important, however, is the refusal to give up narrating the past: Sebald's novel stresses the necessity to preserve the sites of the past, which carry silent traces of vanished life. The poetics of Austerlitz reflects the paradox of the simultaneous impossibility and indispensability of writing history.

'Das Land das/man nur barfuss betreten darf':zu W.G. Sebalds Lyrik

This essay aims at an overview of W. G. Sebald's lyrical production, a hitherto neglected area of research. The article examines poetry's role in the works of Sebald and focuses in particular on texts published posthumously from his literary estate, as well as on pieces printed in various scattered sources from 1964 up to his death in 2001. The main thematic focus in this cross-section of Sebald's lyrical writings is a motif that likewise typified his fictional works: the topic of travel. In addition my survey of Sebald's poetry is complemented by a study of those texts revolving around the motif of insomnia. Death, a dominant theme in Sebald's lyrical works, as it was in his fiction, concludes my essay. © 2014 John Wiley and Sons Ltd.

Sleepwalking certainties: agency, aesthetics, and incapacity in W.G. Sebald’s 'Austerlitz' and Hermann Broch’s 'The Sleepwalkers'

When we first encounter the narrator of Austerlitz, he is wandering around the unfamiliar town of Antwerp with, he tells us, “unsicheren Schritten” (1; 9). As well as reflecting the unfamiliarity of the locale, these “uncertain steps” evince a proud modesty characteristic of the classic Sebaldian narrator, a wanderer who discreetly relays the stories of the people and places he is privileged to encounter. Although Sebald does not use the phrase, steps of this sort, unpurposed yet unerring, are made with what is commonly known in German as somnambule Sicherheit: the legendary surefootedness of the sleepwalker. The convergence of sleepwalking and certainty in a single phrase poses an interesting challenge to one of the central tenets of the English-language canonization of Sebald, for his writing has been most highly valued for its ability to move the reader through apparent certainties towards a salutary uncertainty. But somnambule Sicherheit also presents the possibility that the current may be reversed, that narrative may move under cover of uncertainty towards certainty. That Sebald criticism has not been more troubled by this possibility is in no small part due to the fact that it tends to deploy the notion of sleepwalking with a minimum of reflection on its theoretical ramifications. To evoke some of the complexities of this matter, I first offer a brief cultural history of sleepwalking, as well as a brief account of the topic of uncertainty in Sebald criticism. Most of my argument, however, involves an extended comparative analysis of sleepwalking in Sebald's Austerlitz and Hermann Broch's 1933 trilogy The Sleepwalkers. Although these writers have not previously been the object of any sustained comparison, sleepwalking in Broch's novels illuminates much that is left implicit on the topic in Sebald's fiction and points toward some difficult questions regarding the role of aesthetics and agency in Sebald's work.

admonitio ad Principes Edgartum ac Joannem, orientalis Phrysiae Comites, de pace et amicitia cum aliis Imperii Principibus ineunda ad refraenandam reprimendamque singularem Philippi II. Hispaniarum Regis audaciam : authore W. G.

DD. de Bethune

Voucher #7 from the Engineer Department of Port Dalhousie and Thorold Railway Extension to W.G. Thompson accompanied by an abstract of vouchers and summaries of account paid by W.G. Thompson for surveys, Jan. 31, 1857

Voucher #7 from the Engineer Department of Port Dalhousie and Thorold Railway Extension to W.G. Thompson accompanied by an abstract of vouchers and summaries of account paid by W.G. Thompson for surveys, Jan. 31, 1857.

Voucher #9 from the Engineer Department of Port Dalhousie and Thorold Railway Extension to W. G. Thompson accompanied by an abstract of vouchers for surveys, Feb. 28, 1857

Voucher #9 from the Engineer Department of Port Dalhousie and Thorold Railway Extension to W. G. Thompson accompanied by an abstract of vouchers for surveys, Feb. 28, 1857

Pay roll voucher #13 from the Engineer Department of Port Dalhousie and Thorold Railway Extension for the Northern Division for the month of April, 1857 approved by F. Shanly, chief engineer and W.G. Thompson, assistant engineer, April 27, 1857

Pay roll voucher #13 from the Engineer Department of Port Dalhousie and Thorold Railway Extension for the Northern Division for the month of April, 1857 approved by F. Shanly, chief engineer and W.G. Thompson, assistant engineer, April 27, 1857.

Pay roll voucher # 17 from the Engineer Department of Port Dalhousie and Thorold Railway Extension, for the Northern Division for the month of May, 1857, approved by F. Shanly, chief engineer and W.G. Thompson, assistant engineer, May 27, 1857

Pay roll voucher # 17 from the Engineer Department of Port Dalhousie and Thorold Railway Extension, for the Northern Division for the month of May, 1857, approved by F. Shanly, chief engineer and W.G. Thompson, assistant engineer, May 27, 1857.

Voucher from the Engineer Department of Port Dalhousie and Thorold Railway Extension for W.G. Thompson for the Northern Division. There are attached notes from the Welland Railway Company to John Mitchell for putting up shelves; to William Waud, staff; and to William Martin to repair the office (copy), June 10, 1857

Voucher from the Engineer Department of Port Dalhousie and Thorold Railway Extension for W.G. Thompson for the Northern Division. There are attached notes from the Welland Railway Company to John Mitchell for putting up shelves; to William Waud, staff; and to William Martin to repair the office (copy), June 10, 1857.

Pay roll voucher #20 from the Engineer Department of Port Dalhousie and Thorold Railway Extension, for the Northern Division approved by F. Shanly, chief engineer and W.G. Thompson, assistant engineer (copy) June 1857

Pay roll voucher #20 from the Engineer Department of Port Dalhousie and Thorold Railway Extension, for the Northern Division approved by F. Shanly, chief engineer and W.G. Thompson, assistant engineer (copy) June 1857.

Voucher from the Engineer Department of Port Dalhousie and Thorold Railway Extension to W.G. Thompson regarding horse hire (copy), Jul. 30, 1857

Voucher from the Engineer Department of Port Dalhousie and Thorold Railway Extension to W.G. Thompson regarding horse hire (copy), Jul. 30, 1857.

Pay roll voucher #25 from the Engineer Department of Port Dalhousie and Thorold Railway Extension, for the Northern Division, for the month of July, 1857 approved by F. Shanly, chief engineer and W. G. Thompson (copy), July 30, 1857

Pay roll voucher #25 from the Engineer Department of Port Dalhousie and Thorold Railway Extension, for the Northern Division, for the month of July, 1857 approved by F. Shanly, chief engineer and W. G. Thompson (copy), July 30, 1857.