The Winged Vertebrates of Prehistory: Personal and Collective Memories in W.G.

Sebalds After Nature Elizabeth Barrios After Nature, by W.G. Sebald, begins with a description of the Isenheim Altar (fig. 1) crafted in the sixteenth century by the artist Matthaeus Grnewald. This initial focus on a work of art evolves into a fictionalization of the painters life based on his work as well as the few known facts about him. Likewise, the second section of the text attempts to reconstruct the life of the Arctic explorer Georg Wilhelm Steller through a few historical records in addition to Stellers publications on natural history. While the first two sections reconstruct events in the 16th and 19th centuries, the third and final section looks at the life of W.G. Sebald and in the more immediate past. Given this division of time, critics such as Ruth Franklin assume that the first two sections consist of historical reconstructions, while the third deals with personal memories (36). Such classification of the text, however, fails to take into account the creative process involved in reconstructing the past. The text, in fact, shows that reconstructions are not purely historical, for they require narrativisation, while memories are not simply personal as they involve the experiences of others. The creative vision needed to recreate the past is emphasized in the third section, as Sebald not only recalls his own personal experiences but also describes old photographs and paintings to evoke events he cannot remember, such as the marriage of his grandparents and the World War II bombings of Dresden and Nrnberg.. As he continually ties this imagery of the past with his own memories, Sebald attempts to better understand his life and identity. Thus, rather than depicting a series of personal memories, the third section of After Nature highlights the process and significance of creating memories by infusing meaning into the remnants of the past. The term memory generally implies a mental preservation of a moment in timeparticularly a personal experience or the impressions obtained from it. As a result,

2 the idea of an individual creating a memory of an event not directly experienced may at first seem problematic. However, as Wulf Kansteiner notes in his study of collective memory, Physical and social proximity to past events and their subsequent rationalization and memorization do not have to coincide. There is no natural, direct connection between the real and the remembered (190). Although Kansteiner admits the difficulty of defining the concept of collective memory, he declares that it works by subsuming individual experiences under cultural schemes that make them comprehensible and, therefore, meaningful (189), further noting that in spite of the implications of its label, collective memory only manifests itself in the actions and statements of individuals (180). In this respect, After Nature can easily be considered a text of collective memories insofar as Sebald envisions the inner lives of the painter Matthaeus Grnewald in the 1500s and the arctic explorer Georg Wilhelm Steller in the 1800s through the artifacts they left behindin particular paintings and a book written by the explorer. The third section, on the other hand, does not only depict a series of personal and collective memories but self-reflexively exhibits the process of creating them. Before exploring the final and more personal section of the text, however, it is worth looking at the reconstruction of a remote past in the first two sections, as the invocation of past images exemplifies the significance of making historythe more official form of looking at the pastpersonal through collective memory. The two opening sections comprise a historical discourse providing a series of dates and facts, in the midst of poetical illustrations of the mens inner lives. The historical discourse, which would seem more apt in a piece of academic writing, provides information about documented events. Among these is Grnewalds marriage: on December 17th 1512/for twenty-three guilders/twelve shillings, already,/the documents record, he has taken/to wife the baptized Anna (15). Similarly, the section on Stellers life begins in a dry tone: Georg Wilhelm Steller/born at Windsheim, in

3 Franconia/while pursuing his studies at the University of Halle/repeatedly came across/news items in journals (43). This impersonal, factual tone contrasts greatly with some of the passionate re-enactments of the mens lives. For instance, a particular painting that Grnewald possibly painted leads to speculations about the emotions behind the creation of the piece: The martyrdom depicted is/the representation, to be sensed/even in the rims of the wounds, of a male friendship wavering/between horror and loyalty (19). Likewise, the chapters about Steller often connect his writings about the natural world to tremendous feelings of despair feltthough not personally describedby the explorer: When he wrote these down he felt some comfort/although he knew [] that even these would not/arrest the slow corrosion/that had entered his soul (55). These particular sensationsthe mens horror, loyalty, comfort and corrosion, however, cannot be objectively accounted for. Rather, they prove to be the projection of the authors own imaginings, yet within the text they do not seem any less real than the listings of factual information. Thus, the disparity between the historical and the poetic discourses draws attention to the possible ways of depicting and understanding the past. On the one hand, the past can be relegated to records and artifacts, without possessing greater meaning than a general historical and cultural value. Nonetheless, this signification of past lives and events through dry facts or mere artifacts proves insufficient for it can amount to little more than a chart of signs barely/to be deciphered (95). As exemplified by the passages cited above, some of the most poignant moments in the text come from the infusion of meaning and pathos into these charts of signs. Admittedly, this is possible only by destabilizing the historical discourse through narrativisation and fictionalization, since the invocation of undocumented emotions and sensory details does not correspond to a factual text. Nevertheless, these added elements transform the historical into a comprehensible and meaningful (Kanstainer 189)

4 collective memory. Some may claim that this reinterpretation of historical events presents a problem, in so much as it grants individuals the power to give any desired meaning to history, putting narrativisation above truth. Although legitimate, such a concern works under the assumption that the past can be objectively presented and understood in the present through an empirical historical view. Nonetheless, After Nature, shows an instance in which the State tampers with history as a book about the historical/Grnewald (14, italics mine); written in Germany in 1938, it omits his marriage to Anna, a Jewish woman, for obvious political reasons. The reference to the book and this historical Grnewaldas if a different character in his own rightshows that even official history does not necessarily present an absolute vision of the past for it too reflects the interests and ideology of individuals. For this reason, cultural critics such as Peter Burke question the impartiality of history, noting that neither memories nor histories seem objective any longer. In both cases we are learning to take account of conscious and unconscious selection, interpretation and distortion (Kansteiner 184). This is not to say, however, that history and memory are intrinsically similar, as their purpose, scope and viewpoint often differ. Instead, acknowledging that history is a particular type of representation, reminds us of the value of memorybe it personal or collectivein helping create a more comprehensive image of the past. As already noted, the initial sections of the text fill the gaps left by the conventional artifacts of history with collective memories. The third section appears to accomplish a similar objective, as it also invokes events that occurred before the authors birth. However, in these latter chapters, the gaps of official history take a secondary role to a more pressing absence: that of collective memories in post-war Germany. To this end, this final section of the text opens by stating, For it is hard to discover/The winged vertebrates of prehistory/Embedded in the tablets of slate (83). These lines express the texts continual attempt to find life (the winged vertebrates) embedded in the physical remnants of the past (tablets of slate), thus

5 providing a thematic transition from the previous historical sections to this more personal chapter. This opening, however, contrasts with the relatively recent past Sebald revives soon after, as he asks, How far, in any case, must one go back/to find the beginning (83). His beginning does not take him to prehistory, or even to the lives of Grnewald and Steller as in previous chapters, but to that morning of January 9th, 1905 (83), when his grandparents married. Sebald wonders what was in their minds (84) during the events of that day; soon after, he repeats the question while looking at two pictures of his parents taken in 1917 and 1943. The latter photograph was taken a few days before the bombings of Nrnberg, which his mother saw from a distance while pregnant with him. Years later, Sebald asks her to describe the flames of the city, and his father to recall the beauty of Dresden before the Allied bombings in 1945. Their memories, however, retain no trace (86) of these sights. Significantly, the text reflects this absence of memories by not explicitly mentioning the names of Nrnberg and Dresden or the bombings of World War II again. Rather, these places and events reappear through allusions that tie the past events with the authors life. Sebalds parents, in their unwillingness to remember the catastrophes of World War II, reflect a more general loss of memory explored by Sebald in a previous (non-fiction) book, On the Natural History of Destruction, which documents a cultural amnesia afflicting Germany after World War II: in an attempt to forget a harrowing past, the German people rebuilt their bombed cities without properly addressing the trauma caused by the destruction that had taken place. Sebald writes, Even in later years, when local and amateur war historians began documenting the fall of the German cities, their studies did not alter the fact that the images of this horrifying chapter of our history have never really crossed the threshold of the national consciousness (11). The effects of such unattended trauma haunt After Nature as the text continually alludes to a ubiquitous sense of despair and decaya silent catastrophe that

6 occurs/almost unperceived (89). The source of this trauma, however, does not appear until Sebald addresses his familys past and depicts the process in which the horrors of these events cross the threshold into his consciousness, becoming part of his collective memory and identity. As the repressed memories of the World War II bombings are kept from Sebald, he is compelled to create his own vision of the events. He does so in part by looking at the photographs and consciously trying to recapture the depicted moments. However, the depiction of the catastrophic bombingsalready evoked in the 1943 photois also displaced, reemerging in a seemingly unrelated image: a painting by Albrecht Altdorfer depicting the Biblical Lot and his daughters (fig. 2): As for the burning city, in the Vienna Art-Historical Museum there hangs a painting by Altdorfer depicting Lot with his daughters. On the horizon a terrible conflagration blazes devouring a large city [] In the middle ground there is a strip of idyllic green landscape and closest to the beholders eye the new generation of Moabites is conceived. When for the first time I saw this picture the year before last, I had the strange feeling of having seen all of it before, and a little later crossing to Floridsdorf on the Bridge of Peace I nearly went out of my mind. (86-87) On a literal level, the painting depicts the rebirth of a people after the fiery punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah. The opening line of the passage, however, clearly identifies the Biblical cities with those of Nazi Germany, heavily bombedwe might even say punishedby the Allies. More precisely, Sebald ties the image in the painting to the bombing of Nrnberg, which his pregnant mother saw from afar. By tying this image to his mothers

7 repressed memory, Sebald comes to hold a dual position in regards to the painting, for he sees himself mirrored in its subjects, while also being its viewer. He identifies with the figures in the painting because, like the new generation of/ Moabites, he was born soon after, and nearby, the catastrophic destruction of the city. He is part of a new generation of Germans, who, according to his own accounts, grew up knowing little about their countrys recent history (Janni). As he looks at the smoke and flames in the horizon and has the strange feelings of having seen all of it/before, he comes to replicate the role of his mother in her own past spectatorship. This splitting of roles infuses the last lineI nearly went out of my mindwith meaning beyond its obvious expression of distress and confusion. The line ultimately plays with the uncanny idea of literally leaving ones mind in order to think, see and remember as another, which Sebald does by envisioning an event once seen by his mother. That the bombing of Nrnberg emerges in Sebalds mind through visual representation resonates with a statement by historian Daniel J. Sherman on imagery and memories: Sight is the only sense powerful enough to bridge the gap between those who hold a memory rooted in bodily experience and those who, lacking such experience, nonetheless seek to share the memory (191). Indeed, the Altdorfer painting of Lot and His Daughters helps bridge1 the gap between his mothers experience of the event and his new conception of this memory. It is also worth noting that After Nature, even as a work of poetry, attempts to make sense of the past by incorporating other visual media. However, unlike other works by Sebald such as Austerlitz and The Emigrants, After Nature does not contain actual photographs. These are, instead, textually described. The physical absence of imagery, coupled with its allusion through description, highlights once more the process of creation.
An interesting word-choice by Sherman, given the last lines of Sebalds passage: crossing to Floridsdorf /on the Bridge of Peace/I nearly went out of my mind (87). This citation also works well with Sebalds statement in On the Natural History of Destruction, about history not crossing the threshold of national consciousness (11). In just three lines Sebald successfully incorporates these more abstract concepts into personal experience.
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8 Not only are particularwe might say collectivememories being created through associative imagery, but the paintings and photographs themselves are also remembered and verbally reconstructed. They too become an object of memory. However, as the image is, at times, emphasized above the event it evokesas is the case with the Altdorfer painting that reminds Sebald of World War IIwe get the sense that the reconstruction of the past can ultimately take precedence over the past itself as it becomes tangled in its subsequent representation. This is not to say, however, that the past loses its significance through its depiction; on the contrary, reinterpreting the past as Sebald does is an attempt to make it relevant to the concerns of the present by giving it new meaning. Indeed, Sebald attempts to come to terms with his national, familial and personal identity through grasping the horrors of the bombing of Nrnberg, an event that symbolically marked the beginning of his life. However, that reconstructions and allusions are his only way of making sense of this repressed past would have still been true had his mother shared her memory with him, for memoryas well as art and historyproves to be a crafted representation of a moment in time. As we speak of creating memories through beholding an image, what Ezra Pound called an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time, we must also recognize the significance of creating image itself. After all, the making of an imagebe it painting or photographrequires the capturing and freezing of a moment in time. It makes sense, then, that as After Nature deals with the attempt to comprehend the past through memory, it features not only paintings but the painters themselves, who become, as Wulf Kansteiner would call them, the memory makers (180). This idea is in fact alluded to in the fictionalized biography of Matthaeus Grnewald, as it describes the artists relationship to his work: To him, the painter, this is creation,/image of our insane presence/on the surface of the earth (26). As the image proves more stable than human life, the painting becomes an imprint left by the painter, an extension of his life that will outlast him. According to this view, the

9 creation of an image involves the assertion of the painters identity as he becomes the creator and re-interpreter of a moment in time. Furthermore, the paintings come to embody his otherwise fleeting vision of the world, which, through its physicality on the canvas, will potentially become a site for the collective memories of others. Although we noted earlier that collective memories fill some of the holes left by history and instill personal meaning into the past, these observations are perhaps the effects of the memories rather than the force behind their existence. The desire to share memories, be it through depicting ones own or by absorbing someone elses vision, ultimately stems from a need to connect with others. In this regard, it is perhaps worth expanding on Daniel J. Shermans statement about imagery and memories, for the wish to share someone elses bodily experience proves to be more than just a matter of collectivizing memories for the sake of knowledge because its ultimate goal consists of understanding and sympathizing with someone elses perspective. The significance of this act increases when individuals do not know each other, as connection with an absent other is at times only possible through collective memory. In After Nature, Sebald attributes this desire to connect as the principal reason behind Grnewald s artistic endeavors as well as the study his works: Indeed it seemed as though in such works of art Men had revered each other like brothers, and Often made monuments in each others Image where their paths had crossed. (6) 2 In his emotive depiction of the lives of Matthaeus Grnewald and Georg Steller, Sebald makes his own monument to their image. Through writing, he creates a space in which the lives of these men, who never knew one another, cross, as they become associated with a single text where the recurring themes of destruction, art, memory and isolation, create a thematic bond between them. However, as Sebald reconstructs the lives of the men and
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Interestingly, Altdorfers early work was heavily influenced by Grnewald (Pioch). If we were to infuse the past with our meaning we could easily imagine the two men revering each other like brothers through their art, much like Sebald reveres their art through his poetry.

10 projects his own visions into their representation, he also constructs a persona for himself: that of the artist and memory maker, extending his visions of the past into the page. Nonetheless, we must not forget that the most compelling moment of identification and reconstruction occurs when Sebald duplicates his mothers experience of watching Nrnberg in flames. By depicting his identification with his mother, Sebald illustrates that the necessity for collective memory manifests itself on the personal level, as it allows for the strengthening of the most basic human bonds. The narrativisation of past images throughout After Nature can perhaps best be explained within its lines: But if I see before me The nervature of past life In one image, I always think That this has something to do With truth. Our brains after all, Are always at work on some quivers of self-organization (83) According to this passage, one must look outside the confines of the self and the present moment in order to achieve a certain degree of self-organization. Or, to put differently, the individualin this case Sebald, but this could also apply to us as readersasserts his own identity by looking elsewhere. He looks in particular to a past that, although not directly experienced, potentially contains a narrative that helps explain the present moment. Thus, to look for life in the remnants of the past as Sebald does in After Nature, is not simply a matter of reviving or understanding historical events, but of finding a reflection of one's own self embedded in these artifacts. Yet, to see oneself reflected in the remnants of history one must see the human in the material: to visualize the experience of others as if it were our own. To do this however, is an implicit way of going out of our mindsto use Sebalds own wordsfor we come to view the world as somebody else. This empathy with the winged

11 vertebrates of prehistory is ultimately a way of expanding the life of an individual as it becomes linked to the lives of others.

Figures and Notes on the Figures

Figure I: Figure i: An interesting word-choice by Sherman, given the last lines of Sebalds passage: crossing to Floridsdorf /on the Bridge of Peace/I nearly went out of my mind (87). This citation also works well with Sebalds statement in On the Natural History of Destruction, about history not crossing the threshold of national consciousness (11). In just three lines Sebald successfully incorporates these more abstract concepts into personal experience.

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Figure ii: Interestingly, Altdorfers early work was heavily influenced by Grnewald (Pioch). If we were to infuse the past with our meaning we could easily imagine the two men revering each other like brothers through their art, much like Sebald reveres their art through his poetry.

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Works Cited Franklin, Ruth. Rings of Smoke. The New Republic 227.13 (2002) 32-9. Janni, Maya. W.G. Sebald: The Last Interview. The Guardian. 21 Dec. 2001. The Guardian Newspaper. 01 March 2009. <http://www.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/workshop/citmla.htm>. Kansteiner, Wulf. Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies. History and Theory 41.2 (2002) 179-197. Pioch, Nicholas. Albrecht Altdorfer: The Battle of Alexander at Issus. WebMuseum. 14 Oct. 2002. WebMuseum Paris. March 11, 2009. < http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/altdorfer/battle-issus/>. Sebald, W.G. On The Natural History of Destruction. New York: Random House, 2003.