Austerlitz

Por W.G. Sebald

En la oscura nave de la estación de Amberes ?así empieza su historia el narrador? había un hombre joven, rubio, con pesadas botas de excursionista, pantalones de faena azules y una vieja mochila, ocupado intensamente en tomar notas y hacer dibujos en un cuaderno. El narrador lo observa fascinado y comienza entonces una relación que se desarrolla durante decenios. Jacques Austerlitz se llama el enigmático extranjero. Vive en Londres desde hace muchos años pero no es inglés. En los años cuarenta, siendo un niño judío refugiado, llegó a Gales y se crió en casa del párroco de un pequeño pueblo, con el predicador y su mujer, personas mayores y tristes. El chico crece solitario y cuando conoce su verdadero origen y su nombre verdadero, sabe también por qué se siente extranjero entre los hombres. Sebald recoge en este libro la historia de un ser trastornado, desarraigado. Busca en el pasado, que revive una vez más en el denso lenguaje de uno de los narradores más importantes y originales de nuestro tiempo.

• Idioma: Español
• Editorial: Editorial Anagrama
• Fecha de lanzamiento: 18 abr 2006
• ISBN: 9788433944405

W.G. Sebald

W. G. Sebald (1944-2001) nació en Wertach, Alemania. Después de acabar sus estudios universitarios vivió en Suiza, y luego se trasladó a Inglaterra. Desde 1970 fue profesor en Norwich. Entre sus galardones figuran el premio Joseph Breitbach, el Heinrich Heine y, en 2002, el Independent Foreign Fiction por Austerlitz. En Anagrama se han publicado Del natural, Vértigo, Pútrida patria, Los emigrados, Los anillos de Saturno, Sobre la historia natural de la destrucción, Austerlitz y Campo Santo.

Vista previa del libro

Índice

Portada

Austerlitz

Nota

Créditos

En la segunda mitad de los años sesenta, en parte por azones de estudio, en parte por otras razones para mí mis- o no totalmente claras, viajé repetidamente de Inglaterra a élgica, a veces para pasar sólo un día o dos y a veces para arias semanas. En una de esas excursiones belgas que, seún me parecía, me llevaban siempre muy lejos en el extranro, llegué, un radiante día de verano, a la ciudad de Ambees, que hasta entonces conocía únicamente de nombre. ada más llegar, mientras el tren entraba lentamente en la scura nave de la estación por el viaducto de curiosas torreillas puntiagudas a ambos lados, comencé a sentirme mal, esa sensación de estar indispuesto no desapareció en todo l tiempo que estuve aquella vez en Bélgica. Recuerdo aún is pasos inseguros al recorrer todo el centro de la ciudad or la Jeruzalemstraat, la Nachtegaalstraat, la Pelikaantraat, la Paradijsstraat, la Immerseelstraat y muchas otras alles y callejas, y cómo finalmente, atormentado por el dor de cabeza y pensamientos desagradables, me refugié en l zoológico, situado en la Astridsplein, al lado mismo de la entraal Station. Allí, hasta sentirme un poco mejor, estuve entado en un banco en penumbra, junto a un aviario en donde revoloteaban numerosos pinzones y luganos. Cuando se acercaba ya el mediodía, paseé por el parque y finalmente eché una ojeada aún al Nocturama, inaugurado hacía sólo unos meses. Necesité un buen rato para que mis ojos se acostumbraran a la semioscuridad artificial y pudieran reconocer los distintos animales que, tras los cristales, vivían sus vidas crepusculares, iluminadas por una luna pálida. No recuerdo ya exactamente qué animales vi en aquella ocasión en el Nocturama de Amberes. Probablemente fueron murciélagos y jerbos de Egipto o del desierto de Gobi, erizos, búhos y lechuzas nativos, zarigüeyas australianas, martas, lirones y lémures que saltaban de rama en rama, corrían velozmente de un lado a otro por el suelo de arena amarillo grisáceo o desaparecían de pronto en el bambú. La verdad es que sólo persiste en mi recuerdo el mapache, al que observé largo rato mientras él estaba con rostro serio junto a un riachuelo, lavando una y otra vez el mismo trozo de manzana, como si confiase en poder escapar mediante esos lavados, que iban mucho más allá de toda meticulosidad razonable, a aquel mundo falso al que, en cierto modo sin comerlo ni beberlo, había ido a parar. Por lo demás, de los animales que albergaba el Nocturama sólo recuerdo que varios de ellos tenían unos ojos sorprendentemente grandes y esa mirada fijamente penetrante que se encuentra en algunos pintores y filósofos que, por medio de la contemplación o del pensamiento puros, tratan de penetrar la oscuridad que nos rodea. Además, creo que me rondaba también por la cabeza la pregunta de si, al caer la verdadera noche, cuando el zoo se cerraba al público, encendían para los habitantes del Nocturama la luz eléctrica, a fin de que, al hacerse de día sobre su universo en miniatura invertido, pudieran dormir con cierta tranquilidad... Con el paso de los años, las imágenes del interior del Nocturama se han mezclado con las que he guardado de la llamada Salle des pas perdus de la Centraal Station de Amberes. Si hoy trato de evocar esa sala de espera veo enseguida el Nocturama y, si pienso en el Nocturama, me viene a la mente la sala de espera, probablemente porque aquel día, al salir del zoo, fui directamente a la estación o, para ser exacto, estuve primero un rato en la plaza, delante de la estación, mirando la fachada del fantástico edificio, que por la mañana, al llegar, sólo había percibido vagamente. Ahora, sin embargo, veía cuánto excedía aquel edificio construido con el patrocinio del rey Leopoldo de lo puramente funcional, y me admiraba el muchacho negro totalmente cubierto de cardenillo que, desde hace ya un siglo, se alza solo contra el cielo de Flandes con su dromedario, como monumento al mundo de los animales y los pueblos indígenas, en lo alto de un mirador, a la izquierda de la fachada de la estación. Cuando entré en la gran sala de la Centraal Station, cubierta por una cúpula de más de sesenta metros de altura, mi primer pensamiento, provocado quizá por la visita al zoo y la vista del dromedario, fue que allí, en aquel vestíbulo espléndido aunque entonces bastante venido a menos, hubiera debido haber jaulas para leones y leopardos empotradas en los nichos de mármol y acuarios para tiburones, pulpos y cocodrilos, lo mismo que en algunos zoos, a la inversa, hay trenecitos con los que se puede viajar a los continentes más lejanos. Probablemente por esa clase de ideas, que en Amberes, por decirlo así, surgían por sí solas, esa sala de espera, que hoy, como sé, sirve de cantina al personal, me pareció otro Nocturama, una superposición que, naturalmente, podría deberse también a que, precisamente cuando entré en la sala de espera, el sol se estaba hundiendo tras los tejados de la ciudad. No se había extinguido todavía por completo el resplandor de oro y plata de los gigantescos espejos semioscurecidos del muro que había frente a las ventanas cuando la sala se llenó de un crepúsculo de inframundo, en el que algunos viajeros se sentaban muy distantes, inmóviles y silenciosos. Como los animales del Nocturama, entre los que, llamativamente, había habido muchas razas enanas, diminutos fenecs, liebres saltadoras y hámsters, también aquellos viajeros me parecían de algún modo empequeñecidos, ya fuera por la insólita altura del techo de la sala, ya por la oscuridad que se iba haciendo más densa, y supongo que por eso me rozó el pensamiento, en sí absurdo, de que se trataba de los últimos miembros de un pueblo reducido, expulsado de su país o en extinción, y de que aquéllos, por ser los únicos supervivientes, tenían la misma expresión apesadumbrada de los animales del zoo...

Una de las personas que esperaban en la Salle des pas perdus era Austerlitz, un hombre que entonces, en 1967, parecía casi joven, con el pelo rubio y extrañamente rizado, como sólo había visto antes en Sigfrido, el héroe alemán de Los Nibelungos de Fritz Lang. Lo mismo que en nuestros últimos encuentros, Austerlitz llevaba pesadas botas de excursionista, una especie de pantalones de faena de algodón descoloridos y una chaqueta de vestir, hecha a medida pero hacía tiempo pasada de moda, y con independencia de esos rasgos exteriores se distinguía también de los restantes viajeros en que era el único que no miraba con indiferencia al vacío sino que se ocupaba en tomar notas y hacer dibujos, evidentemente en relación con aquella sala espléndida, en mi opinión más pensada para alguna ceremonia oficial que para aguardar la siguiente conexión de París o de Ostende, en la que los dos nos sentábamos, porque, cuando no estaba escribiendo algo, su atención se dirigía a menudo largo rato a la hilera de ventanas, las pilastras acanaladas u otras partes o detalles estructurales. Una vez, Austerlitz sacó de su mochila una cámara fotográfica, una vieja Ensign de fuelle, e hizo varias fotos de los espejos, entretanto totalmente oscurecidos, fotos que sin embargo no he podido encontrar hasta ahora entre los varios centenares, en su mayoría sin clasificar, que me confió después de encontrarnos de nuevo en el invierno de 1996. Cuando finalmente abordé a Austerlitz con una pregunta relativa a su evidente interés por la sala de espera, sin sorprenderse en absoluto por mi franqueza, la respondió enseguida sin el menor titubeo, de la misma forma que he podido comprobar desde entonces con frecuencia en quienes viajan solos, que por lo general agradecen que se les hable después de haber pasado a veces días enteros de silencio ininterrumpido. A veces ha resultado incluso, en esas ocasiones, que estaban dispuestos a abrirse sin reservas a un extraño. No ocurrió así en la Salle des pas perdus con Austerlitz, quien tampoco después me dijo apenas nada sobre sus orígenes y su vida. Nuestras conversaciones de Amberes, como a veces las llamó más tarde, giraron ante todo, de acuerdo con sus asombrosos conocimientos especializados, sobre cuestiones de historia de la arquitectura, y también fue así en aquella velada en que estuvimos sentados juntos hasta cerca de la medianoche en la sala de espera, en el restaurante situado al otro lado, exactamente frente a la gran sala abovedada. Los escasos clientes que permanecieron allí hasta hora tardía fueron desapareciendo poco a poco, hasta que estuvimos solos en el bufé, cuya disposición se parecía en todo a la de sala de espera como una imagen refleja, con un solitario bebedor de fernet y la señora del bufé que, con las piernas cruzadas, reinaba en un taburete tras el mostrador y, con entrega y concentración totales, se limaba las uñas. De aquella señora, cuyo cabello rubio oxigenado se amontonaba en nido de pájaro, Austerlitz dijo de paso que era una diosa de otros tiempos. De hecho, detrás de ella había en la pared, bajo el escudo del león del reino de Bélgica y como pieza principal del bufé, un poderoso reloj, en cuya esfera, en otro tiempo dorada pero ahora ennegrecida por el hollín de los trenes y el humo del tabaco, giraba una aguja de unos seis pies. Durante las pausas que se producían en nuestra conversación, los dos nos dábamos cuenta de lo interminable que era el tiempo hasta que pasaba otro minuto, y qué terrible nos parecía cada vez, aunque lo esperáramos, el movimiento de aquella aguja, semejante a la espada del verdugo, cuando cortaba del futuro la sexagésima parte de una hora con un temblor tan amenazador, al detenerse, que a uno se le paraba casi el corazón... Hacia finales del siglo XIX, así había comenzado Austerlitz a responder a mi pregunta sobre la historia del origen de la estación de Amberes, cuando Bélgica, una manchita amarilla grisácea apenas visible en el mapamundi, se extendió con sus empresas coloniales al continente africano, cuando en los mercados de capital y las bolsas de materias primas se hacían los negocios más vertiginosos y los ciudadanos belgas, animados por un optimismo sin límites, creían que su país, durante tanto tiempo humillado por la dominación extranjera, dividido y mal avenido, estaba a punto de convertirse en una nueva gran potencia económica, en aquella época ya remota que sin embargo determina hasta hoy nuestra vida, fue deseo personal del rey Leopoldo, bajo cuyo patrocinio se producía aquel progreso aparentemente inexorable, utilizar aquel dinero del que se disponía en abundancia para construir edificios públicos, que debían dar renombre mundial a su floreciente Estado. Uno de esos proyectos iniciados por la autoridad más alta fue el de la estación central de la metrópolis flamenca en que ahora nos sentábamos, diseñada por Louis Delacenserie e inaugurada en el verano de 1905, en presencia del monarca, después de diez años de planificación y construcción, dijo Austerlitz. El modelo recomendado por Leopoldo a su arquitecto fue la nueva estación de Lucerna, en la que le cautivaba especialmente la concepción de la cúpula,* que tan espectacularmente excedía de la escasa altura habitual en las estaciones de ferrocarril, una concepción adoptada por Delacenserie en su construcción inspirada por el Panteón romano, de una forma tan impresionante, que incluso hoy, dijo Austerlitz, exactamente como era la intención del arquitecto, al entrar en la sala nos sentíamos como si, más allá de todo lo profano, nos encontrásemos en una catedral consagrada al comercio y el tráfico mundiales.

Delacenserie tomó de los palacios del Renacimiento italiano los principales elementos de su monumental edificio, dijo Austerlitz, pero había también reminiscencias bizantinas y moriscas, y quizá hubiera visto yo al llegar las redondas torrecillas de granito blanco y gris, cuyo único fin era despertar en el viajero asociaciones medievales. El eclecticismo de Delacenserie, en sí ridículo, que en la Centraal Station, en el vestíbulo de escaleras de mármol y en el techo de acero y cristal de las plataformas reunía pasado y futuro, era en realidad el medio estilístico consecuente de la nueva época, dijo Austerlitz, y por ello, continuó, resultaba apropiado que en los lugares elevados, desde los que, en el Panteón Romano, los dioses miraban a los visitantes, en la estación de Amberes se mostraran, en orden jerárquico, las divinidades del siglo XIX: la Minería, la Industria, el Transporte, el Comercio y el Capital. En torno al vestíbulo de entrada, como debía de haber visto yo, había a media altura escudos de piedra con símbolos como gavillas de trigo, martillos cruzados, ruedas aladas y otros análogos, en los que, por cierto, el motivo heráldico de la colmena de abejas no representaba, como se hubiera podido creer al principio, la Naturaleza al servicio del hombre, ni la laboriosidad como virtud social, sino el principio de la acumulación de capital. Y entre todos esos símbolos, dijo Austerlitz, en el lugar más alto estaba el tiempo, representado por aguja y esfera. El reloj, a unos veinte metros sobre la escalera en cruz que unía el vestíbulo con los andenes, único elemento barroco de todo el conjunto, se encontraba exactamente donde, en el Panteón, como prolongación directa del portal, podía verse el retrato del Emperador; en su calidad de gobernador de la nueva omnipotencia, estaba situado aún más alto que el escudo del Rey y el lema Eendracht maakt macht. Desde el punto central que ocupaba el mecanismo del reloj en la estación de Amberes se podía vigilar los movimientos de todos los viajeros y, a la inversa, todos los viajeros debían levantar la vista hacia el reloj y ajustar sus actividades por él. De hecho, dijo Austerlitz, hasta que se sincronizaron los horarios de ferrocarril, los relojes de Lille o Lieja no iban de acuerdo con los de Gante o Amberes, y sólo desde su armonización hacia mediados del XIX reinó el tiempo en el mundo de una forma indiscutida. Únicamente ateniéndonos al curso que el tiempo prescribía podíamos apresurarnos a través de los gigantescos espacios que nos separaban. Desde luego, dijo Austerlitz al cabo de un rato, la relación entre espacio y tiempo, tal como se experimenta al viajar, tiene hasta hoy algo de ilusionista e ilusoria, por lo que, cada vez que volvemos del extranjero, nunca estamos seguros de si hemos estado fuera realmente... Desde el principio me asombró cómo elaboraba Austerlitz sus ideas mientras hablaba; cómo, por decirlo así, partiendo de la distracción, podía desarrollar las frases más equilibradas, y cómo, para él, la transmisión narrativa de sus conocimientos especializados era una aproximación gradual a una especie de metafísica de la historia, en la que lo recordado cobraba vida de nuevo. Así, nunca olvidaré que terminó sus explicaciones del proceso utilizado para la fabricación de los altos espejos de la sala de espera preguntándose a sí mismo, mientras al irse levantaba otra vez la vista hacia aquellas superficies débilmente resplandecientes, combien des ouvriers périrent, lors de la manufacture de tels miroirs, de malignes et funestes affectations à la suite de l’inhalation des vapeurs de mercure et de cyanide. Y lo mismo que había terminado aquella primera velada, Austerlitz continuó sus observaciones al día siguiente, para el que habíamos concertado una cita en la terraza de paseo junto al Escalda. Señalando el agua extensa que centelleaba al sol de la mañana, dijo que, en un cuadro pintado por Lucas van Valckenborch hacia mediados del XVI, durante la llamada pequeña época glaciar, se podía ver el Escalda helado desde la orilla opuesta y, detrás de él, muy oscura, la ciudad de Amberes y una franja de tierra llana que se extiende hasta la costa. Del sombrío cielo que hay sobre la torre de la catedral de Nuestra Señora está cayendo una nevada y allá en el río, al que miramos trescientos años después, dijo Austerlitz, los habitantes de Amberes se divierten sobre el hielo, gente corriente con trajes de color terroso y personas distinguidas de capa negra y gorguera de encaje blanco. En primer plano, hacia el margen derecho del cuadro, una señora se ha caído. Lleva un vestido amarillo canario; el caballero que se inclina solícito hacia ella, unos pantalones rojos, muy llamativos a la pálida luz. Cuando lo miro ahora y pienso en ese cuadro y sus diminutas figuras, me parece como si el momento representado por Lucas van Valckenborch nunca hubiera terminado, como si la señora de amarillo canario acabara de caerse o desmayarse, y se le hubiera ladeado de la cabeza la cofia de terciopelo negro, como si el pequeño accidente, que sin duda no han notado la mayoría de los espectadores, volviera a repetirse una y otra vez, como si no cesara ni pudiera remediarse ya, ni por nada ni por nadie. Aquel día, Austerlitz, después de que hubiéramos dejado nuestros puestos aventajados en la terraza y paseado por el centro de la ciudad, habló largo rato de las huellas del dolor que, como él decía saber, atravesaban la historia en finas líneas innumerables. En sus estudios de la arquitectura de las estaciones de ferrocarril, dijo cuando, a últimas horas de la tarde, cansados de tanto andar, nos sentamos en un café del Mercado de los Guantes, no podía quitarse de la cabeza el tormento de las despedidas y el miedo al extranjero, aunque esas ideas no formaran parte de la historia de la arquitectura. Desde luego, precisamente nuestros proyectos más poderosos eran los que traicionaban de forma más evidente nuestro grado de inseguridad. Así, la construcción de fortalezas, de la que Amberes era uno de los ejemplos más destacados, mostraba bien cómo, para tomar precauciones contra toda incursión de potencias enemigas, nos veíamos obligados a rodearnos cada vez más de defensas, en etapas sucesivas, hasta que la idea de unos cercos concéntricos que se iban ampliando tropezaba con sus límites naturales. Si se estudiaba el desarrollo de la construcción de fortificaciones de Floriani, da Capri y San Micheli a Montalembert y Vauban, pasando por Rusenstein, Burgsdorff, Coehorn y Klengel, resultaba sorprendente, dijo Austerlitz, la persistencia con que generaciones de maestros de la arquitectura militar, a pesar de su talento indudablemente extraordinario, se aferraban a una idea que, como hoy puede verse fácilmente, era básicamente equivocada: la de que mediante la elaboración de un tracé ideal de baluartes romos y revellines muy salientes, que permitía batir con los cañones de la fortaleza toda la zona de despliegue ante los muros, se podía hacer una ciudad tan segura como podía estar seguro algo en el mundo. Nadie tenía hoy, dijo Austerlitz, una idea siquiera aproximada de la desmesura de la literatura sobre la construcción de fortificaciones, del carácter fantástico de los cálculos geométricos, trigonométricos y logísticos en ella recogidos y de los hipertróficos excesos del lenguaje especializado del arte de la fortificación y del asedio, ni entendía los términos más sencillos, como escarpa y cortina, falsabraga, reducto o glacis, aunque incluso desde nuestro punto de vista actual podemos darnos cuenta de que, hacia finales del XVII, los distintos sistemas cristalizaron finalmente en el dodecágono en forma de estrella con fosos delanteros, como diseño preferido: un modelo típico ideal, derivado por así decirlo de la sección áurea y que, de hecho, como podía comprenderse muy bien contemplando los intrincados planos de fortificaciones como las de Coevorden, Neuf-Brisach y Saarlouis, incluso para el profano resultaba enseguida convincente como emblema del poder absoluto y de la ingeniosidad de los ingenieros que estaban a su servicio. Sin embargo, en la práctica bélica, las fortalezas en estrella, que durante el siglo XVIII se construyeron y perfeccionaron por todas partes, no cumplían su finalidad, porque, al estar centrado como se estaba en ese esquema, se había olvidado que, como era natural, las mayores fortalezas atraían también el mayor poder enemigo, de forma que, en la medida en que uno se atrincheraba cada vez más, se situaba cada vez más hondamente a la defensiva y por ello, en fin de cuentas, podía verse obligado a contemplar impotente, desde una plaza fortificada por todos los medios, cómo las tropas enemigas, al trasladarse a un terreno elegido por ellas en otra parte, dejaban sencillamente de lado aquellas fortalezas convertidas en verdaderos arsenales, erizadas de cañones y abarrotadas de hombres.

Por eso había ocurrido con frecuencia que, precisamente por la adopción de medidas de fortificación –las cuales, dijo Austerlitz, se caracterizaban básicamente por la tendencia a una elaboración paranoide–, se había mostrado el punto débil decisivo, abriendo la puerta al enemigo, por no hablar del hecho de que, al complicarse cada vez más los planes de construcción, aumentaba también el tiempo necesario para realizarlos y, con ello, la probabilidad de que, ya al acabarse si es que no antes, las fortalezas hubieran sido superadas por la evolución de la artillería y los conceptos estratégicos, que tenían en cuenta la comprensión creciente de que todo se decidía en el movimiento y no en la inmovilidad. Y cuando realmente se quería poner a prueba la resistencia de una fortaleza, tras un monstruoso derroche de material bélico, dijo, el resultado solía ser más o menos indeciso. En ninguna parte se había visto tan claramente, dijo Austerlitz, como allí en Amberes, donde en 1832, durante las negociaciones sobre partes del territorio belga que continuaron después de la instauración del nuevo reino, la ciudadela construida por Pacciolo, que el duque de Wellington protegió además con un cerco de defensas y estaba ocupada en aquellos momentos por los holandeses, fue asediada por un ejército francés de cincuenta mil hombres, antes de que, a mediados de diciembre, éste consiguiera, desde el ya ocupado fuerte Montebello, tomar por asalto la semiderruida defensa de la luneta St. Laurent y avanzar con baterías de brecha hasta debajo mismo de los muros. El sitio de Amberes, tanto por su costo como por su vehemencia, dijo Austerlitz, fue único, al menos durante unos años, en la historia de la guerra; y alcanzó su memorable culminación cuando, con los gigantescos morteros inventados por el coronel Paihans, se lanzaron contra la ciudadela setenta mil bombas de mil libras que lo destruyeron todo, salvo algunas casamatas. El barón De Chassé, general holandés, anciano comandante del montón de piedras que quedaba de la fortaleza, había hecho colocar ya la mina para saltar por los aires con aquel monumento a su lealtad y su heroísmo, cuando le llegó un mensaje de su rey, justamente a tiempo, autorizándolo a rendirse. Aunque con la toma de Amberes, dijo Austerlitz, se puso de manifiesto toda la insensatez de la ciencia de la fortificación y el asedio, incomprensiblemente sólo se extrajo la enseñanza de que las defensas que rodeaban la ciudad debían reconstruirse de forma mucho más poderosa y desplazarse más lejos aún. En consecuencia, en 1859 la vieja ciudadela y la mayoría de los fuertes exteriores fueron arrasados y se emprendió la construcción de una nueva enceinte de diez millas de longitud y de ocho fuertes, situados a más de media hora de camino ante esa enceinte, proyecto que, sin embargo, resultó inadecuado antes de transcurrir siquiera veinte años, en vista del alcance entretanto superior de los cañones y del creciente poder destructor de los explosivos, de forma que, obedeciendo a la misma lógica, se comenzó a construir de seis a

Comentarios para Austerlitz

[steve02476 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Bewildering and kind of hypnotic. It took me until halfway through the book to get engaged with it, and then I really was hooked although I felt like I was comprehending only half of what I was reading.

[markm2315 · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

I hadn't read Sebald before. I came to this novel after reading a review of a recent biography. I see that this book was very moving for a lot of the reviewers, and although the part of the book about the Holocaust is certainly moving, I didn't feel that what the author was trying to do clicked for me. It is a sort of pseudo-history in which someone's appropriated story is fictionalized but also illustrated with a set of found fey photographs. It seemed sometimes that the author must have written the text specifically for the photographs. I'm new to this author and he certainly has a massive reputation, so I might come around to more stars if I cogitate over it - but not today.

[jonbrammer-788089 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

This is a novel about memory. The central mystery lies in Austerlitz's childhood; at five years old, he was transported from Prague to Britain to escape the Nazi protectorate.

The narrator is Austerlitz's interlocutor, giving the memories a layer of uncertainty and indirectness. Austerlitz's stories form an impressionistic tapestry, his interest in architectural history woven in with his suppressed childhood memories.

If there is a thesis here, it is that we never find wholeness without understanding our personal histories. We are forgetting the horrors of the Shoah, as many countries tip back towards right-wing nationalism. This is the reason why history is cyclical; the lessons we learn are not permanent before we lapse back into savagery.

This is the second novel I've read recently that deals with the German occupation of Czechoslovaka, only one episode in the larger genocide of European Jews. HHhH by Laurent Binet is the other; both remind us that narrative is our only tool to speak about the unspeakable.

[b.masonjudy · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

"Austerlitz" is a wonderful exploration of memory and also identity. Austerlitz, the character, relays his story to the narrator, pictures are frequent in the novel and the whole form of the book acts as a sort of historical document. Sebald chooses to ruminate many times on the nature of memory and the assaults of the past that frequently assail Austerlitz are examples of the lack of control and consistency an individual has in the present. The prose is lucid, although it meanders at times, and grand in the descriptions of trauma and Austerlitz's accounts of his episode to the narrator. The one issue I did have was with the character of Austerlitz. There's a degree of emotional despondency that doesn't really get resolved in a way that one can fully relate to the character more quizzically observe as a sort of emotional oddity or living ghost.

[datrappert · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Austerlitz is an odd, old-fashioned book. Its narrator encounters the title character. He then repeats the story Austerlitz tells, and in Austerlitz's own story, sometimes he tells the stories of others. So the entire narration is at least once and often twice-removed. I don't think there is any actual dialogue anywhere in the book. Just first person narrative. The paragraphs go on forever, and there is one famous sentence that takes up over 7 pages (apparently 9 in the original German). But despite these obstacles, the book is highly readable. Even when it ranges over time and distance again and again without a break, the narrative keeps its hold on you and makes you keep reading. You really don't want to put this book down. The black and white photographs interspersed throughout the text are an essential part of the experience, also. Sometimes they are clearly referred to in the text, sometimes not.The story itself concern's Austerlitz's exploration of his own past, trying to track down what became of the parents who put him on a train from Czechoslovakia in 1939 when he is 4 years old to escape the coming Nazi invasion. He ends up in Wales, with a minister and his wife, who give him little love and no information about his true identity, which he only discovers as a teenager--or at least he discovers his real name. Only later does he face up to the task of discovering the truth behind his life. This comes well into the book, however. In the earlier sections Austerlitz speaks to the narrator about architecture, but as we will see, everything is related. Some reviews compare this book to the work of Borges, whom Sebald admired, and in the way it mixes fact and history into a work of fiction, that is true enough, but this novel doesn't contain the sense of the fantastic that much of Borges' work does. Even the dreams and visions that plague Austerlitz, narrated in great detail, are still firmly grounded in reality.It is wonderful to see old memories awakening in Austerlitz as he visits Prague and other places, and as he learns more, he begins to understand some of his own past behavior and period of depression. As an academic, he struggles through a long work in German to better understand the Theresienstadt ghetto/concentration where his mother was sent. But while the Holocaust is at the center of the book, it isn't the main focus in my opinion. Rather, it is a book about how the past affects us in ways we may not even understand. In that sense, the book is more Faulknerian than Borgesian. ("The past is never dead. ... Actually, it's not even past.") Austerlitz, like the rest of us, will never find all the answers he seeks. But Sebald has brought this fragile, complicated character to life and given us a glimpse of real and psychological horrors that cannot--and must not--be forgotten.

[ucla70 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

This is the second time I’ve read this novel; the first time was soon after its publication in rh U.S. The book haunted me for reasons I couldn’t articulate. So, I thought it would be a good choice for my book club under the theme of “Memory." It proved to be the most controversial book in my three years of moderating this group.The unnamed narrator is a man without a country, wandering through Europe studying architecture. In a railway station, he makes an acquaintance with a man who introduces himself as Austerlitz. Sebald does away with plot, characterization, dialogue, and events leading to other events. What we get is the unmediated expression of a pure and seemingly disembodied voice. Austerlitz is on a quest to find out who he is. What he recounts to the narrator is a reconstructive odyssey in search of himself. The two men encounter each other, seemingly by coincidence, again and again in their respective travels, always discussing architecture and history, but sharing nothing of their personal lives until 1996 when their conversation finally turns to Austerlitz’s life history. The incredible power of this book is how Sebald tells the story and layers the subtext to a point that it requires re-reading with intense attention to every detail. Sebald combats the erasure of history on the collective level as well as the individual. What the Nazis take from Austerlitz is not his life or property but his essential personhood. The traumatic effects of separation are not felt by Austerlitz until the distractions of study and career are cleared away, exposing the emptiness of his disconnected, dislocated existence.The photographs, unannotated throughout, are part of what makes this novel so powerful and haunting, perhaps because photographs are so evocative and unaffected by the passage of time—except for the fading. The photos give us the impression of a memoir, but some of them have no connection to the prose, yet we, as the reader, are always looking for the pattern. The Nocturama and its accompanying photos of the monkey, the owl, Wittgenstein, and another man set the tone for the conceit of fake realities, which include the false reality of Austerlitz’s own childhood, the horrific distortion of reality by the Nazis, and the false universe of the Holocaust. Sebald says, “This recourse to peripherality (the photographs) arises partly as a narrative strategy to cope with the inherent unrepresentability of that which occurred in the Nazi concentration camps.”Central to understanding this novel is the reader's understanding that Sebald is German but not Jewish. He is the narrator; he is not Austerlitz. He writes as he does to cope with the “conspiracy of silence” that surrounded him growing up in Germany. His father worked in the Nazi machine. Sebald’s conviction: “This is not so much a way of understanding the Holocaust, so much as it is a way of making us think about how we can’t understand the Holocaust.” This book is a combination of memoir, fiction, travelogue, history, and biography.

[moniica_1 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Synopsis: Austerlitz is sitting a school exam when his teacher informs him of his formal identity which must be used for exam purposes. It is then he learns that he was transported as a child in order to evade the war. As an adult, Austerlitz became fixated with architecture and the narrator (who remains unnamed throughout) decides to retrace his past.My Opinion: The first 100 pages are a little bit confusing, but once you learn who is who and what is happening, the story becomes easier to read. I was about ready to give up on this book as I couldn't get into it despite its positive reviews online. The unraveling of the past doesn't really begin until about 200 pages in; the first 200 pages are focused on Austerlitz in the present day and his interest in architecture.There is a lot of symbolism throughout with the architecture and animals, however I found myself skim reading a significant portion of the book. Additionally, there are no chapters which makes the passing of time slightly confusing and disjointed as a reader.A very eery read. From reading other reviews I can infer that other people took more out of this than what I did. I think had the discovering-of-the-past unfolded earlier on, the descriptive language would have intrigued me slightly more than it did.

[labfs39 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Structurally this novel is quite interesting. The two main characters meet by chance in a railway station and strike up a conversation about architectural history. The narrator of the novel is a nameless scholar entranced by the man he meets, Jacques Austerlitz, whose narration of his life is the substance of the book. Hence the entire book is a story within a story. Another unusual structural device is the inclusion of photographs, maps, and the like; both creating a sense that the novel is nonfiction and also reflecting the interest Austerlitz has in photography. This method of "fixing" the story in reality and history contradicts the surreal and detached atmosphere of the narration. Finally the physical structure of the language used to tell the story is unhampered by paragraphs and sentence length. Instead the story flows uninterrupted. The plot is the story of Austerlitz's life as his repressed memories slowly unfold. In a sense, the reader discovers the story of his life at the same time as the man himself does. A child brought to England on a Kindertransport from mainland Europe in 1939, Austerlitz is raised by a strict Welsh minister and his wife, who do not encourage the boy to remember his former life. Eventually, the boy remembers nothing of who he is. It is only as a middle-aged adult that fleeting memories begin to return, and Austerlitz wanders down the path to his own identity. In simple terms, the novel is a reflection on the Holocaust and its effects on the people who survived it. Because of its unusual structure and surreal atmosphere, however, the book is not one to appeal to every reader, even those interested in the Holocaust. One has to detach from expectations and history itself in order to flow with the narration. I found it to be an unusual reading experience.

[sprainedbrain · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

I feel like I should have liked this book more than I did. Austerlitz is ultimately about identity, and the story is compelling—the main character was one of the children sent away on Kindertransport before WWII—but I never really felt like I connected with this book. The writing is very good, and I actually liked all of the architectural discussion, but I wasn’t crazy about the style. Maybe I’m doing it wrong? Oh well.

[bookomaniac-1 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Oppervlakkig beschouwd is dit boek een eindeloze opeenvolging van afstandelijke observaties, een lange ketting van puur visuele beschrijvingen, door de auteur zelf (tenminste als we ervan uit gaan dat de verteller Sebald is) en vooral door zijn wat mysterieuze vriend Jacques Austerlitz. Dat lijkt niet erg aanlokkelijk, en het wordt ook niet bevorderd door de monotone en trage vertelstijl die heel het boek door volgehouden wordt. Ik kan begrijpen dat veel mensen het boek na enkele tientallen pagina’s dichtsmijten. Maar tegelijk is die vertelstijl net wat het boven alle andere literatuur doet uitsteken. Je kan het erg vergelijken met de stijl van Marcel Proust: lange meanderende zinnen waarin vooral de uiterlijke kant van de dingen beschreven wordt, ook erg visueel dus en met een opeenstapeling van details. Net als in zijn vorige romans heeft Sebald weer tientallen, eerder onbestemde, zwartwit-foto’s opgenomen die het realistisch karakter van de vertelling moeten onderstrepen (maar daardoor juist onzeker maken). Ook het voortdurende gebruik van de indirecte rede (op bijna elke pagina staat er“zei Austerlitz”en in het tweede derde van het boek wordt daar zelfs een dubbele indirecte rede van maakt, “zei Vera, zei Austerlitz” als hij de woorden van het vroegere kindermeisje van Austerlitz weergeeft), versterkt het bezwerende, hypnotiserende effect, alsof je (in het gezelschap van Austerlitz) permanent half wakend door een droomlandschap loopt. Ik vermoed dat Sebald daarmee ook bewust het effect van een zekere tijdeloosheid beoogde.En daarmee zijn we bij de metafictionele onderlaag van dit boek: het gaat in essentie over de tijd en over hoe wij als individu in of buiten die tijd staan, ermee worstelen, er geen greep op krijgen en er ook niet van los kunnen komen. Dat is in een notendop de tragiek van het levensverhaal van Austerlitz: deze geïsoleerde, hyperintroverte man, deze beschouwer van de buitenkant van de dingen (in het begin van het boek vertelt hij tot in den treure over de architecteur en bouwgeschiedenis van wat hij om zich heen ziet), leeft aanvankelijk eigenlijk buiten de tijd; maar in zijn langgerekte vertelling geeft hij weer hoe hij tot zijn ontzetting heeft moeten vaststellen dat hij onlosmakelijk verbonden is met een wel heel heftige episode van de menselijke geschiedenis, namelijk met de Holocaust. Die ontdekkingstocht wordt weergegeven als een heel langzaam afschrapen van zijn geheugen, van zijn herinneringen, als een archeoloog, tot hij op het punt komt dat hij uitkomt bij datgene wat hij blijkbaar heel zijn leven heeft verdrongen, en ontkend heeft. Ronduit meesterlijk is het, de manier waarop Sebald dit verhaal brengt. De door de schrijfstijl gesuggereerde tijdeloosheid, culmineert in een lange zin van 9 bladzijden waarin de onmenselijke machine van het concentratiekamp/getto van Theresienstadt tot leven wordt gebracht, ogenschijnlijk ingehouden-afstandelijk maar daardoor net hallucinant-gruwelijk.Austerlitz is voor mij één van de meesterwerken van de recente literatuur. Het is echt tragisch dat W.G. Sebald enkele maanden na het afwerken van dit boek in een verkeersongeval om het leven kwam. PS. Bonus voor de Vlaamse/Belgische lezer is dat het boek begint en eindigt in Antwerpen en Breendonk, waarmee ook het vernuftige spiegelspel dat in deze roman steekt onderstreept wordt.

[sometimeunderwater · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

Just didn't take to it. Thought it meandering and ponderous. (Which were the exact reasons I loved Rings of Saturn.) Maybe it was over-hyped.

[suesbooks · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

The writing in this book was so perfect I had to read it very closely. It was such a worthwhile read and always kept my interest. However, and I blame myself, I was expecting some twist or something more, so the ending took me by surprise. This is an author I want to read more of.

[ffortsa · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Some books come right to the point and you are one with the characters from the beginning. Not this one. Sebald does all he can to put obstacles between the reader and the nominal protagonist, both by style and character.A nameless narrator stands between the reader and Jacques Austerlitz, recounting how they meet by accident and then seem to keep meeting until a sort of friendship is formed. At first, Austerlitz talks only of architecture; eventually, he reveals a story of lost identity and emotional starvation as part of the World War II Kindertransport, and how he manages through sudden memories and hints of memory to find his way to his real history.Sebald's style is not easy. There are no chapters, and no paragraphs, and the prose, translated from the German, contains some extraordinarily lengthy sentences that stretch for pages. In addition, the convention of Austerlitz telling our narrator a story (which of course he is telling to us), and of others telling Austerlitz stories which he in turn tells the narrator, creates a feeling of mirrors within mirrors and requires close attention.Sebald leavens this prose with many photographic images of what is mentioned in the text, all of them documentary style black-and-white. They add to the bleakness of the story.And yet - I can't help feeling that this novel will only get richer on subsequent readings. The language is meticulous and often the descriptions are vivid, far more than the photographs. The emotions inherent in the story can be found in some of the most restrained prose. As soon as I finished it, I started it again, to see how I would react to the style once more, and I was hard pressed to put it down.One of the members of our reading group called it a fever dream, and it has some of that dreamlike quality, disjunct and often involving memories, dreams, and the stories of others, someof whom are long gone. It's not for everyone, surely. I would not call it 'entertaining' - but striking, and significant.Note also that Sebald is a German of the generation after the war, and that he wrote this in German, speaking to his fellows at least, using an oblique angle to illuminate the damage caused by a now-familiar horror.

[ted_newell-1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Haunting. Especially the qualities of everyday life covering deep hurts and desires.

[leslie398 · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

Really just 2½ stars for me. I rounded up because Sebald gave me plenty to think about. However, I found the style of very long sentences and paragraphs that went on for 5 or 10 pages tiring. I also missed the use of quotation marks to distinguish what was narrative being told by Austerlitz to the unnamed narrator & what was being told to Austerlitz & what was the unnamed narrator's thoughts. Surprisingly, the change in voice in the middle of sentences worked well, once I got used to it. For example (my underlining):"In the first few weeks after his return from Bohemia, Austerlitz continued his tale as we walked on, he had learnt by heart the names and dates of birth and death of those buried here, he had taken home pebbles and ivy leaves and on one occasion a stone rose, and the stone hand broken off one of the angels, but however much my walks in Tower Hamlets might soothe me during the day, said Austerlitz, at night I was plagued by the most frightful anxiety attacks which sometimes lasted for hours on end."The sentence starts out from the unnamed narrator's perspective and switches midstream to Austerlitz's perspective, yet it is perfectly clear.

[browner56 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Jacques Austerlitz is trying to regain his past in order to find out who he really is. As one of the countless innocent victims of the atrocities associated with World War II, the five-year old Austerlitz was separated from his Czech-born Jewish parents, who put him on a kindertransport to Great Britain in order to save his life. Raised by Welsh foster parents, he lives a fairly ordinary early existence with no apparent memories of (or interest in) his heritage. Only after a mid-life nervous breakdown does Austerlitz seek to recover as much information about his parents and their divergent fates as possible. However, given that this quest begins decades after those fates were sealed, Austerlitz is left to piece together what information he can through visits to research archives, historical sites, and conversations with elderly survivors who were first-hand observers of the horrific events surrounding the Holocaust. Ultimately, Austerlitz is a book that explores how we remember the people, places, and things that give us our identities but are gradually receding into the past. The protagonist’s journey serves as a perfect metaphor for how, as time passes and eye witnesses to any particular occurrence pass on, those memories must be reconstructed from the libraries, museums, and written and media records where they reside. However, how accurate and complete are those “gatekeepers” of our shared histories ever able to be? That question becomes particularly poignant with regard to what occurred in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s since, more than 70 years later, so few people who lived those experiences are still around today to bear witness directly. As compelling as I found the theme of Austerlitz to be, I actually had a somewhat conflicted reaction to the novel itself. I admire the author’s sense of invention in how the tale is told; Sebald uses an almost stream-of-consciousness style that effectively combines the fictional and historical elements of the story. Further, some of the prose is absolutely stunning in its beauty. In contrast, though, there were some elements of the book’s structure that struck me as awkward: the use of the unnamed narrator created an unnecessary distraction in how many of the sentences had to be phrased, the paucity of paragraphs made it difficult to maintain focus, and the use of so many photographs became a bit of an indulgence as considerable effort was sometimes given to describing a picture that was otherwise irrelevant to the story. So, on balance, while I can certainly recommend this book for the important ideas it develops, that is an endorsement that must unfortunately come with some reservations.

[stillatim · Calificación: 1 de 5 estrellas]

I couldn't do it. I really wanted to finish this book. I finish every book I start, and even if I hate them, I enjoy writing scathing reviews. But as my wife pointed out, life is too short. It's not just the execrable prose style, which I'm sure is intentional and has some theoretical justification. It's not the photos- I quite like the idea of photos in novels. It's not just the idiotic attempts to be highbrow, by referencing Wittgenstein (whom the narrator thinks is a 'dark thinker'!) And it's not just the hype, which is nauseating (*this* is meant to stand up next to Kafka and Proust?) All of these things together, it's true, would give me pause. But what is truly insulting is the sub-liberal-guilt posture the narrator and Austerlitz assume: in this novel's world, all 'great' undertakings are merely hubristic and doomed to failure; all ambition for improving the world is bound to end up with the panopticon; and everything, everything, everything is in some sort of relationship to the holocaust.
I figure this 'great idea' is the source of the book's popularity (my copy proudly proclaims 'NATIONAL BESTSELLER'). If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that the holocaust sucked balls. In the middle ages, almost everyone could agree that 'God is great.' The literature expressing this claim was profoundly, profoundly dull. Similarly, literature which tells us that the holocaust sucked balls is profoundly, profoundly dull. This is not deep thinking, this is platitude wrapped in an extraordinarily un-inventive form.
All that said, maybe the second half is really great, mind-blowing even. I'll never know.

[kingarooski · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Austerlitz is not an easy read. A book that spans over 400 pages, with no chapter breaks or paragraphs. It's one long stream of consciousness, except that it's not. But it is a book that benefits from long, uninterrupted reads. Reads that I do not get. So that's my only quibble with the book; a quibble that's more due to my life than the book itself.

Austerlitz follows the encounter of our unnamed narrator with Jacques Austerlitz, one of the children on the kindertransport out of war-torn Europe to the relative safety of the UK. As soon as the four year-old Austerlitz gets to his British family, in Wales, they strip him of his identity and give him a new name. Growing up in the cold (both physically and emotionally) house in Bala with two distant adults for company, Austerlitz stagnates. Only the escape to a boarding school brings him some satisfaction, to the point where the loathes going home at holidays. It's during his time at the boarding school that he first finds out that his actual name is very different from the one he has been using for much of his life.

Our narrator encounters Austerlitz infrequently, but each time the story picks up without introductions or unnecessary small talk. Slowly, through the meandering tale that he tells, we find out about his past. Or rather, what Austerlitz found out about his past. The tangents and extra information are wonderful snippets of a great mind, but I can see how these would be irritating to some readers.

We find out parts of his past gradually, but there's no happy ending there. I preferred it that way; a happy ending in such a book would seem forced and fake. Instead, some of the threads are left open with hints as to what happened.

This is a brilliant book, but it isn't for everyone. The lack of structure, or the seeming lack of structure, will put some people off. I really wished that I could have gone away for a few days, sat down and read the book without the interruptions that my life contains. It would have been a far more satisfying way of reading the book.

[amelish · Calificación: 2 de 5 estrellas]

Sorry Ed--I'm never going to finish this one. I kept laughing at it, when I probably shouldn't have been.

[winterpages-1 · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

is there a possible star inbetween "it was okay" to "liked it"? sort of like "it was written beautifully but was agonizing to read"?

[hadriantheblind · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Why the hell did I decide to read Holocaust fiction on Christmas Eve? Granted, this was a breathtaking book, but still.

Page long sentences, reflections on memory, the past, architecture, ruins, history, atrocity, etc., etc. It's really good. Don't take my word for it with this review and just read it. Although preferably in a time when you can afford to be melancholy and brooding.

[widsith_1 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Austerlitz fascinated me, but I couldn't say I loved it. Reading this book gave me the feeling of being jet-lagged somewhere in a strange city at three o'clock in the morning, having strange revelations that would seem bizarre in the daylight. Not a feeling I dislike, by any means. Sebald's attempts to find a prose style to match his explorations of memory and loss are beautiful and haunting, but for me at least the effect was more soporific than exhilarating. Maybe ‘hypnotic’ is a better word. The sentences ramble carefully, the sense reaching you faintly through a multiple-framing effect whereby the story is told by Jacques Austerlitz, to our distant, Sebaldesque narrator, meaning the sentences have a characteristic double-tagging device for reported speech which gives them a steady, sleepy rhythm:Can't you tell me the reason, she asked, said Austerlitz…Sometimes, so Lemoine told me, said Austerlitz…One sentence near the end sprawls across eight or nine pages, the clauses fading in and out of each other dreamily, like an interesting train of thought that goes through your mind just before you drop off to sleep. The number of paragraph breaks in the whole book can be counted on one hand. All this is in the service of recreating the effects of memory, as Sebald sees it: its unreliability, its fluidity compared to the rigid unchangeability of actual past events.Especially past tragedy. Because what Austerlitz is remembering is something he has spent his life trying to repress: his early childhood as part of a Jewish family in Prague in the 1930s. Hence, his meditations on architecture or natural history in the early part of the book all seem to be skirting round something else, as yet unnamed; and when finally he begins to trace the fate of his parents, there are a series of complex and rewarding thematic call-backs which tie the novel together very beautifully: an illustration seen in a Welsh children's Bible, for instance, of Israelites camped out in the desert, is echoed later by a description of a Nazi encampment in central Europe. Austerlitz's own name seems to be working hard, with its associations of war; and indeed it's only a few central letters away from the most infamous Holocaust site of all – one that's never mentioned in this book but which can be intimated from comments about family members ‘sent east’.This is not a ‘Holocaust novel’ in the usual sense, though – its real subject is not exactly what happened in the middle of the last century, but rather how Europe can and should remember it (Europe as a whole – this is a novel that deliberately ranges over cities, and languages, from across the whole continent). The vital importance of remembering, and also the complete futility of trying. And the futility also of expressing what we feel about it, because for Sebald language is always at best a poor approximation of reality, ‘something which we use, in the same way as many sea plants and animals use their tentacles, to grope blindly through the darkness enveloping us’. I disagree with this assessment, and I think Sebald's novel is in itself a weighty counter-argument. But nevertheless it's a very moving thesis written with a great deal of artistry, and if I felt more admiration than affection for it, that's perhaps just because I read it in a state of cold wonder at what he was managing to describe – ‘a kind of wonder,’ as Sebald says elsewhere, ‘which is in itself a form of dawning horror.’

[veronicah3 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Sebald's work is haunting. There are images and passages that will stay with you forever after reading them. It is very difficult to summarize Sebald's books as they cover so many different things in a meandering, seemingly ramdom manner. With Sebald, however, nothing is ever random. This is perhaps more apparent in The Rings of Saturn, which starts and ends, in a way, with Thomas Browne's Urn Burial. The Amazon.com summary will tell you that this is a story of a man named Austerlitz who was put on a train in 1939 in Prague to escape Jewish persecution and was adopted by a Welsh family, who told him nothing of his true identity. The book is Austerlitz's discovery of himself, his past, and his parents told through the lens of an unnamed narrator. All of that is true. But this book is so much more than that. Instead of summarizing Austerlitz, I'll give some of the topics, which are generally common themes in his work. The first is memory; how it changes, what it is, what it means, and tied directly to it: loss. In a more general sense, Sebald is concerned with the past and its role in our present. One of the most beautiful sections of this book deals with a train station and a WWII Jewish ghetto in Antwerp. Another common theme of Sebald's is walking and experiencing the land. In Austerlitz, Sebald describes (though this is really an inadequate term for what he does) an area of Wales, along the British coastline. One main feature of this area is a house which becomes, in essence, a natural history museum. Another section, near the end, deals with the Bibliotheque National of France, which has just undergone an enormous transformation and relocation. His description of the housing and accessing of the past is both lyrical, and for lack of a better word, heartbreaking. Thinking about it now, I am reminded of the architectural scenes in Terrence Malick's Tree of Life. There is an air of great melancholy and great loneliness in Sebald's prose; yet it is achingly beautiful. All of Sebald's books incorporate photographs; some relate to the material being discussed in the given passage, others do not. The most haunting of these, in Auzterlitz, is a still of a film which shows a blurry image of a woman's face half in shadow. Austerlitz believes this may be his mother. This book will stay with you, it will haunt you. It will touch your jaded, modern, cynical, heart. It may make you want to weep. He is one of the most powerful writers of this century. Let Sebald take you on a journey; I promise you, you will not regret it.

[kant1066 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Many reviewers have cited the difficulty of the prose in "Austeritz," but I find this difficult to comprehend. Have they never read Proust? Joyce? Faulkner? Once one has survived these trials by fire, Sebald's prose is comparatively accessible. Still others have claimed that this is a "Holocaust novel," and I find this equally perplexing. Certainly, while Austerlitz's childhood experience of being sent to England via Kindertransport away from his parents forms a locus for what little narrative drive there is, the themes of memory, contemporary European identity, and its peculiarly unique aesthetic vision are much more important as Austerlitz recounts his story.It may be the case that the perennial complaint of difficulty rests in the fact that its themes are so deeply intertwined with its pensive inwardness, its brooding style. The short, pithy declarative quality of Hemingway or J. M. Coetzee could not effectively evoke the complex anamnestic matrix that Sebald is so concerned with constructing. It is no coincidence that Austerlitz is never seen without his trusty rucksack. It points directly to Austerlitz's emotional, intellectual, and geographical exile, that he is at home both everywhere and nowhere.These imbricated variations on exile, more than anything else, inform Austerlitz. His near-autistic attention to the details of architecture are, at their heart, the inept attempts of a man who has been cut off from history to radically place himself within it, to entangle himself in some sort of web of meaning in and through which we find ourselves so often complacent. This novel is so resonant because Austerlitz's experience is not the singular, independent story that it seems to be. He is an Everyman who goads us into a probing search of our own lost histories, the "architecture" of lived everydayness of life that goes unnoticed. At the same time, Sebald knows that our experience with history is a dynamic one in that it shapes us as much as we shape it. In the end, Austerlitz's search for personal belonging and (to use Heidegger's word) "Sorge," incites us all to set out in our own revelatory search.

[corinneblackmer · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

 It is hard to tell whether Austerlitz is a memoir, a biography, an autobiography, an excursion into a nearly lost world of 19th century European architecture, a philosophical meditation on memory, trauma, and historical disorientation in relation to the Holocaust, or, at last, an historical novel in which any effort to “novelistically historicize” the past is sternly resisted. In brief, Austerlitz is an original novel that repels our usual generic assumptionsIn this work of post-Holocaust witness literature Jacques Austerlitz, an academic historian of European architecture, tells his story to an unnamed narrator. This patient narrator might—or might not—be Sebold himself. Through this narrative form, Sebold explores traumatic aversions and inconclusive historical engagements of second generation Holocaust survivors. In doing so, the narrator gives voice to Jacque Austerlitz’s (and Sebold’s) profound concerns about a contemporary Europe that in its commercial aspirations, architectural monumentalism, and increasingly homogeneous culture attempts feverishly to forget its grim past and historical legacies. In attempting to forget the past, Europe stands in danger of repeating its lessons in a novel fashion—perhaps this time by becoming an irrelevant provincial backwater.Jacques Austerlitz was four years old when his mother arranged for him to escape through a kindertransport to England, where he is adopted by a melancholic Welsh minister and his wife, and knows himself only as Dafydd Elias. He learns his true name at boarding school, but Austerlitz does not begin the process of unearthing his past until the latter portion of his life, overwhelmed by what he will find and the inconclusive misery his memories will bring him. As he says, “It was obviously of little use that I had discovered the sources of my distress and, looking back over all the past years, could now see myself with the utmost clarity as that child suddenly cast out of his familiar surroundings: reason was powerless against the sense of rejection and annihilation which I had always suppressed.”Austerlitz finally remembers himself as a young boy standing on a train platform in London, having been separated from his Jewish family in Prague. Shortly before this event, he burns all the notes he has long accumulated on a work of the influence of capitalism on 19th century European architecture, which he literally cannot write. However, his work as an architectural historian is not in vain—for it enables him to understand the very material structures that fail in their intended missions, portend the cataclysm of the Holocaust, or, in the present, obstruct the work of remembrance.Austerlitz speaks of elaborate fortifications built and re-built despite their proven uselessness in defending against aggressors—including the Nazis. Indeed, their chief function has been to serve as prisons and to consign prisoners to near unimaginable slave labor in constructing them. The great train station in Antwerp where the narrator first meets Austerlitz is a monument to the destructive colonial aspirations of Belgium. A work he reads about the setting up of the Theresiestadt ghetto has “in its almost futuristic deformation of social life something incomprehensible and unreal about it.” However, the most important architectural observations—in tracking the history of European responses to the Holocaust and its own histories—occurs in Austerlitz’s experiences in the old and new Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. The old library had been a place for readers and, while it struck Austerlitz as a cross between a penal colony and an isle of the blest, he felt at home there. The new Bibliotheque Nationale, however, has disrupted the readers that had once haunted the old library and stands as a contemporary idol to the will to suppress memory and erect a monumental fortification against memory that shall prove as ineffectual as the earthen works of Belgium. Built to honor the memory of a late French president, the Bibliotheque has been built over (and near) an old Nazi camp, “in its outer appearance and inner constitution” it is “inimical to human beings” and the “requirements of any true reader.” An artificial garden of transplanted trees surrounds the heavily secured public reading room and, periodically, birds, confused by the presence of the trees, accidentally smash into the glass and fall to their death. This serves as a comment on the fact that in all his researches in the new Bibliotheque Nationale Austerlitz has yet to succeed in finding any trace of his father. Indeed, one day as the reading room is emptying out, Austerlitz has a conversation with his friend Lemoine, “about the dissolution, in line with the inexorable spread of processed data, of our capacity to remember” and the “collapse” that Lemoine already sees the Bibliotheque Nationale undergoing. Austerlitz does not lead a failed life, despite the fact that he fails to find traces of his father perhaps buried beneath the Bibliotheque Nationale. Had he not been in a kindertransport he might have, as one critic has noted, been little more than a backwater Welch farmer. Rather, his life, transmitted in a work that transcends our generic classifications, becomes a testament to the sufferings and struggles of second generation Holocaust survivors and, not the less, the creation of new architectural structures that, in their quest for perfection, are, as Austerlitz says, “an official manifestation of the increasingly importunate urge to break with everything which still had some living connection to the past.”

[annbury_1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

This is a brilliant book, but not for me at least an easy one. Several of the reviews below capture more of its extraordinary qualities than I can do: skip ahead. If you choose not to, the story is not complex, and emerges slowly - a remote intellectual learns late in life that he was sent to the UK as a five-year old in 1939, and undertakes a search for his own past which leads him to the horrors of the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The story may be simple, but the style is not. Sebald does not use paragraphs or chapters, his sentances can meander on at great lenght, and his narrative device -- monologues nested within monologues -- can be confusing. This took me quite a while to get used to (I fear that I am a Middlemarch girl at heart) though in time the style begins to resound with the substance of the novel, layering thought upon throught, memory upon memory. The layering (or perhaps more properly infusion) is illuminated with a wonderful use of language. The way in which the words and phrases and larger units are chosen and drift into one another is very beautiful in English: I wonder what it is like in German. Nor is the content of this extraordinary book simple, in any sense. It is about memory -- anyone's memory -- and how it interacts with "real life". It is about the dead and living, and the relationship between them. And it is about the European past, and European guilt, and civilization, and language -- at one point, Austerlitz compares a language to an old city, full of byways and monuments and hidden passages. Throughout the book, it seems to me, buildings and cities are metaphores for the past as well as embodiments of it. As many other readers note, this book at times feels more like a meditation (or a series of hallucinations) than a conventional novel, but it is painfully powerful in doing what conventional novels try to do -- make us feel the emotions of others. The description of the narrowing life of a Jew in Prague after the Nazi invasion was one of the most painful evocations I have ever read, though the horror we see directly is psychological, not physical. And in a way, perhaps there is more truth in a layered, shifting, permeable reality than in what we "objectively" experience every day. A very powerful experience. I have added "The Emigrants" to my reading list.

[jimmychanga · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

"At some time in the past, I thought, I must have made a mistake, and now I am living the wrong life." p.212A book about a man, Austerlitz, who is pictured on the cover as a boy looking very much like The Little Prince, trying to find his way back to his planet. Yes, it is about the holocaust, but it is not a futile exercise in despair. The writing is too good to allow that easy of a route. Instead, the hypnotic prose sustains us in a state of meditation. I've never read any other author who can do that. It slows your breath down. The language is easy, but serpentine, and to follow the thought is a lot of work, even though it is easy work, I find myself being carried away by it. It reminded me a lot of his other book, Emigrants, which is also excellent, but focuses on the story of just one man instead of several. I really don't know what else to say about this, it's always hard to write about Sebald. This is great stuff."It was obviously of little use that I had discovered the sources of my distress and, looking back over all the past years, could now see myself with the utmost clarity as that child suddenly cast out of his familiar surroundings: reason was powerless against the sense of rejection and annihilation which I had always suppressed, and which was now breaking through the walls of its confinement." p. 228

[chriswildman · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Prose without paragraphs yet close to dreaming and profoundly moving. An unforgetable experience, unique in its feeling and tone. Extremely recommended.

[fpdc_1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

A great work by the late German writer Winfried Georg Maximilian Sebald, killed in a tragic car accident in December 2001, in England, where he had been living, writing and teaching since 1966. In this long book, with only three paragraphs and a number of beautiful photographs, the narrator tells of his conversations with Jacques Austerlitz over the years, and of Austerlitz struggle to uncover his roots. Written in a contemplative mood, and progressing throught a series of disquisitions about art, architecture, military constructions, town planning, botany... the book let us picture the slowly growing inner doubts of the retired architectural historian Austerlitz about his own origins and the discovery of his past. This turns out to result in a long journey into traumatic events in recent european history, of which Austerlitz was part as a boy of five, transported from Prague to England in one of the kindertransport in the last days of peace in 1939, already after the invasion of Checoslovakia by the nazis, as he now rediscovers in his enquires in Belgium, London, Prague, Marienbad, Terezinbad, and Paris. Not a light reading, but certainly a compulsive one!

[popolll_1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

This is one of the most extraordinary books I have ever read. The translation is miraculous. New readers must not be put off by the lack of breaks or paragraphs or, in some places, full stops (periods). I noticed a sentence that went on for four pages. Nor must one be put off by the speeches within speeches. The style is sublime and carries one through the most extraordinary descriptions.It carries what must be one of the most poignant evocations of the misery of being a Jew in a country under Nazi occupation. I don’t know if the story is true. Grainy pictures from the collection of the eponymous Austerlitz give the feeling that it is. Even it is not, Austerlitz is a most extraordinary character with preoccupations quite unlike any I have ever come across. The story painstakingly brings him to life. His journeys through Europe and backwards in time never fail to intrigue.He will become the absorbing companion to any reader who latches on to his wavelength.