Thompson explores three works of W.G. Sebald through the lens of phenomenology: The Rings of Saturn, The Emigrants, and Austerlitz.
‘“A walker’s approach [. . .] is a phenomenological one”: W.G. Sebald and the Instant’
Monatshefte (September 1, 2020 vol. 112 no. 3)
Paul Thompson, University of St Andrews
This article employs a phenomenological approach to appreciate three works of W.G. Sebald in English translation—The Rings of Saturn, The Emigrants, and Austerlitz. Max van Manen’s concentration on the “pre-reflective” nature of lived experiences (Qualitative Health Research 27.6 [2017]: 812) and Gaston Bachelard’s focus on the disruptive instant provide an insight into threshold experiences in Sebald. In The Rings of Saturn, the step-by-step progress of the Wallfahrt, Bergsonian durée, and the concentricity of planetary rings are disrupted by immediate experience. In The Emigrants, eidetic memory is shown to be a product of the present, not a recollection of the past, and encounters with the “Butterfly Man” to be more important than his identity, whilst in Austerlitz memory is theatrical or cinematic. As a result of this analysis, it emerges that phenomenological concepts of place, event, object, and vector express how Sebald’s narrator and denizens encounter reality.
Check out Thompson’s article at Monatshefte: http://mon.uwpress.org/content/112/3/411.short