by W. G. Sebald
First published 2014
Sebald examines six creative figures whose lives and work influenced his own literary development. He visits the island of St. Pierre where Jean-Jacques Rousseau once hid from his critics, taking rooms next to where the philosopher stayed two centuries earlier. The author traces Johann Peter Hebel's delicate nature writing and Gottfried Keller's insights into a Germany where self-interest increasingly trumped common good. He reconstructs the struggles of Eduard Morike, a Romantic poet battling depression and mood swings, and Robert Walser, whose nearly illegible handwriting seemed an attempt to disappear beneath language itself. Sebald notes how Walser's appearance and death year matched his own grandfather's. Finally, he considers painter Jan Peter Tripp's precise reproductions of life and their acknowledgment of mortality. Through these portraits, Sebald weaves together place, memory, and creativity while revealing his own artistic development. The book includes over 40 art pieces and 6 gatefolds that Sebald selected and arranged himself.
Genres: biography, essays, 20th-century, biography-memoir, criticism, 21st-century, art-history, academic
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: character-study, literary-fiction
Setting: St. Pierre, Germany
Period: 19th-century, 20th-century
ebook · Random House