ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses W. G. Sebald’s creative writing from the ‘Elementargedicht’: Nach der Natur (1988) to his ‘englische Wallfahrt’: Die Ringe des Saturn (1995) and takes account also of Luftkrieg und Literatur (1999), the volume which contains the edited version of his 1997 ‘Zürcher Vorlesungen’ together with his discussion of reactions to them. The level of integration and complementarity Isenschmid properly identifies is characteristic both of individual works and of Sebald’s oeuvre to date, but Isenschmid is wrong about the lack of relevance to Germany today; nothing in Sebald’s work can be properly understood without this connection. All of Sebald’s creative writing relies on movement which results from the historical and cultural forces to which he is subjected. Neither the writer nor his figures are at home where their roots lie; his peregrinations take him across boundaries in genre as well as in time and in space.