Campo Santo

by W.G. Sebald

“W. G. Sebald exemplified the best kind of cosmopolitan literary intelligence–humane, digressive, deeply erudite, unassuming and tinged with melancholy. . . . In [Campo Santo] Sebald reveals his distinctive tone, as his winding sentences gradually mingle together curiosity and plangency, learning and self-revelation. . . . [Readers will] be rewarded with unexpected illuminations.”
–The Washington Post Book World

This final collection of essays by W. G. Sebald offers profound ruminations on many themes common to his work–the power of memory and personal histories, the connections between images in the arts and life, the presence of ghosts in places and artifacts. Some of these pieces pay homage to the Mediterranean island of Corsica, weaving elegiacally between past and present, examining, among other things, the island’s formative effect on its most famous citizen, Napoleon. In others, Sebald examines how the works of Günter Grass and Heinrich Böll reveal “the grave and lasting deformities in the emotional lives” of postwar Germans; how Kafka echoes Sebald’s own interest in spirit presences among mortal beings; and how literature can be an attempt at restitution for the injustices of the real world.
Dazzling in its erudition, accessible in its deep emotion, Campo Santo confirms Sebald’s status as one of the great modern writers who divined and expressed the invisible connections that determine our lives.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, German Literature, Germany, Travel, Literature, History

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Winfried Georg Maximilian Sebald was a German writer and academic. His works are largely concerned with the themes of memory, loss of memory, and identity (both personal and collective) and decay (of civilizations, traditions or physical objects). They are, in particular, attempts to reconcile himself with, and deal in literary terms with, the trauma of the Second World War and its effect on the German people.

At the time of his death at the age of only 57, he was being cited by many literary critics as one of the greatest living authors, and was tipped as a possible future recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Reviews

[Luís · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this collection of short prose, which takes the pretext of a stay in Corsica and includes limpid critical articles, Sebald's talent is diffused with its usual melancholic charm. So far from constituting funds of drawers, Sebald continues reflecting on memory and its ghosts.

[Brodolomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Volim kako mi, kada čitam Zebalda, dođe i da činim dečji poskok jer mi se čini da ne postoji ništa čudesnije od života, a i da presečem grkljan jer od života ne postoji ništa tužnije. Neki duboki uzdah od punoće.

Campo santo je više knjiga za obožavaoce Zebalda, nikako knjiga za upoznavanje sa autorom. U njoj su sabrana četiri teksta nezavršenog rukopisa o Korzici (tridesetak stranica), dok veći deo knjige čine 13 eseja. Pošto su eseji u zbirci poređani vremenski kako su objavljivani u periodici od 1975. do 2001. u njima se može pratiti autorova stilska transformacija i oslobađanje od konvencija - od učenog i više akademskog eseja o Handkeovoj drami do fluidnih (Zebald bi rekao promiskuitetnih) eseja o recimo Nabokovu, Brusu Četvinu ili Kafki, koji izgledaju kao izostavljena poglavlja Saturnovih prstenova tj. kao ona proza koju danas prepoznajemo kao zebaldovsku i koja je poslednjih godina usled njenih brojnih manirista postala gotovo poseban žanr za sebe.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finishing the four Corsican fragments of Campo Santo, I felt the same melancholia that I experienced on reading the eleven completed chapters of 53 Days. Like Perec, Sebald was taken from us while still at the height of his intellectual and creative powers. Neither book was to be completed, giving rise to those elegiac 'might-have-beens'. Perec at least indicated in notes where his manuscript was headed. There is no such guidance on Sebald's fragment. The references to blood feuds and banditry put me in mind of Ismail Kadare's Broken April, a favourite work of mine. Ah, well...

Exploring his customary concerns, and vital ones they are too - hunting and extirpation, deforestation, suppression of local cultures - Sebald writes with great moral authority. Campo Santo is an elegy for a vanished world. The cover photo of my Penguin edition perfectly captures the strangeness of the atmosphere invoked.

The remainder of the book - which is in fact the majority of it - is made up of essays, articles and the text of speeches, ordered chronologically. The early essays are very demanding on the reader, written in a more formal academic style. It didn't help that the first of the essays concerned a play I have neither seen nor read, Kaspar by the controversial Austrian playwright, Peter Handke. We might say my understanding was Handke-capped. I'm only aware of his co-writing of the filmscript for the sublime Wings of Desire. Still, it aroused my interest in exploring the work of the Nobel laureate (two of his books have winged their way to me to sate this desire).

Sebald displayed an uncanny knack for writing about writers whose reputations would subsequently become tarnished. There is an essay here citing Gunter Grass as a moral authority on the Nazi experience. It would later transpire that he was a former member of the Waffen-SS and had kept quiet about it for sixty years. In this essay, Sebald investigates how German literature might have responded to the atrocities committed in that country's name and finds that it came up short, for the most part. Analysing Wolfgang Hildesheimer's novel Tynset, which he adjudges unjustly neglected, he writes:

The story of the first-person narrator of this lengthy monologue, who is tormented by insomnia and melancholia and is never clearly perceived as a character, only as a voice, begins at a time (somewhere in the post-war years) when he was still trying to live in Germany...

Now who does that remind us of?

There is also an analysis of German literature's response to the carpet bombing of the country's towns and cities. Again, he finds it lacking. Obviously, this piece is related to his own On the Natural History of Destruction. I read this some fifteen years ago and no longer recall the specifics of it so I couldn't say how far it re-treads the same territory.

The later pieces are in Sebald's mature, compelling style. He writes with such conviction about his subjects that he instantly makes one wish to read their work too. I have never been tempted by Bruce Chatwin's travel writing but Sebald very nearly makes a convert of me. He writes about Nabokov's narrative technique and lesser known aspects of Kafka's life. And he conjures a few vignettes about the role that music played in his life. His brief tales of Grundig radios, zither playing and miserable and charismatic music teachers are beautifully described.

All in all, this is a highly entertaining and thought-provoking read.

[Bogdan Panajotovski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kad porastem želim da budem Zebald.

[Erick Abanto López · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5. Me parece una puntuación adecuada y justa para una compilación póstuma. Hay de todo y para todos los gustos, organizados en dos partes: narrativa y ensayo.

La nota editorial al final del libro aclara muchas cosas de la parte narrativa, pero aún así no evita que sea la más floja del volumen. La carnecita está en los denominados "ensayos", y en especial, en el orden cronológico en el que están presentados, pues grosso modo nos ofrece una buena panorámica de la evolución del estilo de Sebald, desde una crítica académica y sesgada hacia la metafísica, muy comprometida aún con desentrañar los significados de la ficción ajena y enlazarlos con alguna ocurrencia histórica (el texto sobre una pieza de Peter Handke, por ejemplo, o la exploración somera de la literatura alemana de posguerra, de Grass a Kluge) hasta una estilo ya propiamente «sebaldiano», esto es, enfocado en la descripción y en la vinculación de detalles del paisaje y la naturaleza (objetos, materiales) con detalles del pasado y de los libros (historias, lenguajes) para sugerir una atmósfera que torne visible, y completamente real y presente, durante y después de la lectura, el peso del tiempo y la herida de lo fugaz.

El editor del volumen, Sven Meyer, recuerda en la nota final que alguna vez, en una entrevista, Sebald dijo: «Mi medio es la prosa, no la novela».

Exactamente esa aclaración es la que podemos corroborar en este conjunto de textos, pues si bien la parte narrativa explora, bajo la perspectiva de un narrador en primera persona, los azarosos vínculos, tácitos, invisibles, o inesperados, entre materia y lenguaje, paisaje y cultura, historia natural e historia, nunca ofrece elementos inequívocos, técnicos, temáticos o estéticos, que prueben o sugieran su raíz ficticia.

Ambos, tanto los relatos como los denominados "ensayos", están urdidos con la misma aspiración de construir una prosa exhuberante y a la vez fluida que párrafo a párrafo desplace, hasta la irrelevancia, la tensión entre verdad y ficción.

Todos los elementos del entorno y del tema, todos los rasgos, los detalles, las anécdotas, los datos, e incluso los subtemas que estos evocan, son fagocitados por la pluma de Sebald y convertidos en piezas armónicas y coloridas de un rompecabezas milimétricamente construido.

Tanto igual que un coleccionista de mariposas, Sebald caza los residuos que el pasado ha dejado fuera y dentro de él y los fija en palabras y frases que, ya inmóviles para siempre en la tinta impresa, aún puedan evocar el color, la energía y el movimiento de lo que refieren.

De modo que el eje sobre el cual se desarrollan estos textos nunca está definido por la necesidad de maniobrar en función de lo verosímil (y su estrategia retórica, la persuasión) o en virtud de lo concluyente (y sus formas sutiles, la parábola, la metáfora, la rigurosidad).

Sebald no pretende dejar un mensaje o componer una alegoría de algo. Sus relatos, al igual que sus ensayos, no persiguen la definición, el punto final, la proclama. Buscan y se hunden sólo en la aproximación, en lo más o menos claro, en lo aún borroso, en las pocas formas que permite ver la niebla.

Aun cuando se trata de un discurso o de la reseña de un libro recientemente aparecido, Sebald no deja de insistir en la imposibilidad de zanjar un tema.

Y quizá por eso nunca lo expresa en esos términos, pues decirlo así, escribir que la conclusión es imposible, es ya de por sí concluir algo.

Sebald expresa esa insistencia de otro modo. En el tono, no en la palabra.

Por eso, además de la obvia separación visual, sabemos que hemos terminado la parte narrativa o que hemos empezado los "ensayos", cuando el tono ha virado, apenas perceptible, de una melancolía que iba engordando conforme el narrador se movía y descubría más cosas, a una nostalgia que se condensa más conforme el investigador encuentra y conecta más datos.

Lamentablemente, la incorporación, por parte de los editores, de algunos textos intrascendentes o inoportunos, disminuye un poco el efecto final.


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De todos los textos, me llevo para siempre dos de los denominados "ensayos": «Texturas oníricas», un texto dedicado con mucho orgullo a Nabokov, y «El misterio de la piel caoba: aproximación a Bruce Chatwin», una semblanza llena de admiración sobre la vida y obra del escritor/viajero Bruce Chatwin.
Hay otro texto que no me pareció tan bueno, pero que dejó un efecto en mí y que pienso revisar otra vez en algún momento, por todo lo que allí se dice: «El remordimiento del corazón: sobre memoria y crueldad en la obra de Peter Weiss»

Por último, de los pocos epígrafes que Sebald incluye, me quedo con este de un poemario de Jean Améry:

«Crujir y crepitar y silbar. ¿Qué decían?
Cuidado, o arderás en llamas. En, llamas.
Que arda mi desgracia y se extinga en el fuego»


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Léanla con una lata de Heineken 🍺 y esuchando una y otra vez «The more you live, the more you love» de la banda inglesa A flock of seagulls 🎶


✌🏽

[Asclepiade · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ho comperato questo libro di Sebald, come si suol dire, a scatola chiusa, confidando nel fatto che le altre opere dello scrittore tedesco mi erano sempre piaciute; d’altra parte, se pure lo avessi sfogliato prima di acquistarlo, non avrei forse avuto grandi ragioni per lasciarlo sul bancone della libreria, perché mi sarei potuto imbattere in qualche passo non significativo dal punto di vista del valore. Premetto che anche i libri scritti da Sebald come lavori organici (questo è invece costituito da una raccolta di scritti e articoli eterogenei) alla lunga un po’ stancano, perché si rassomigliano tutti, e girano sempre attorno a poche idee ossessive: ma leggendoli a gran distanza l’uno dall’altro affascinano coi loro viaggi erratici tra geografia e storia, fra immagini e riflessioni. Nella raccolta di scritti minori edita da Adelphi (alcuni dei quali già stampati singolarmente dall’editore milanese in precedenza, nei volumetti minuscoli d’un’altra collana) prendono posto articoli per giornali e riviste, i frammenti d’un libro sulla Corsica rimasto a livello di abbozzo, e altri scritti d’occasione. Fanno, per dimensioni, la parte del leone le pagine sulla letteratura tedesca (della Germania ovest) del dopoguerra, in ispecie relative alla distruzione delle città germaniche per opera dell’aviazione britannica e americana: ma per un lettore italiano di normale cultura e istruzione come il sottoscritto sono decine di pagine che lasciano il tempo che trovano, discettando spesso su autori da noi mai tradotti e ignoti. Ne viene fuori, tuttavia, un corollario curioso e di sicuro non preveduto da Sebald. È un luogo comune nostrano, giornalistico a dir il vero, che l’Italia non avrebbe fatto i conti col proprio passato, mentre i tedeschi sarebbero stati bravissimi, e codesti misteriosi conti li avrebbero fatti a mo’ del più solerte scolaretto: Sebald però in sostanza ci racconta che i conti non li hanno fatti neanche loro, e la cosa lo irrita oltremodo (a dir il vero, non loda invece i conti fatti ad unguem dagl’italiani: forse perché i tedeschi non hanno l’esterofilia facile come noialtri); insomma, ciascuno sembra costernato dai mancati conti e dai mancati pentimenti di casa sua: da lettore tardigrado quale sono, in realtà, non ho mai capito perché o di che cosa, come italiano nato nel 1968, mi dovrei pentire, o perché ci sarebbero da fare altri conti diversi da quelli che, per ogni tempo e luogo, fa e rivede e corregge con, si spera, onestà ed acribia l’indagine dello storico. Ma io, appunto, non sono un raffinato intellettuale, sicché certe sottigliezze contabili mi sfuggono. Altra cosa che nei libri precedenti di Sebald non avevo notato e qui viceversa balza subito all’occhio, forse perché alcuni sono scritti più spiccatamente personali, è che lo scrittore tedesco fu persona dai disgusti facili e dalla nevrosi sempre in agguato: una combinazione micidiale, che lo conduce spesso e volentieri a circonfondere con un’aura fosca e tragica realtà, tutto sommato, piuttosto innocue; ad esempio egli ha in orrore la caccia (naturalmente, mi viene da dire), e un cacciatore nel quale incappa sui monti della Corsica è dipinto come una sorta d’orco laconico e scorbutico, una quintessenza della cattiveria: ma perché non figurarselo, piuttosto, come un povero seguace di Diana cui la mancanza di prede ha messo la luna di traverso, o lo sciagurato passaggio del rumoroso gitante forestiero ha fatto scappare il cinghiale che ormai era certo di portarsi a casa, da trasformare in filze di salamini e tegami di spezzatino da imbandire a familiari, casigliani e paesani? Sei lì che ti pregusti una bella mangiata, la fragorosa camminata ursina di questo turista importuno ti fa scappare il cinghialotto pasciuto e ingenuo che stavi per impallinare, e per giunta il turista giuggiolone ti si para davanti a domandare col suo accento teutonico “Kosa Lei kacia, signor Kaciatore?” “Sanglier!” gli sibili verde di rabbia, e lo vorresti prendere a sberle: ma è uno straniero, penserebbe poi che i còrsi davvero siano selvatici e mezzi banditi, e stai zitto, sperando che non attacchi bottone ma si tolga presto di torno. E quello, niente; se ne va, sì, ma poi ti fa la caricatura del montanaro sanguinario. E la musica popolare bavarese? Che orrore! Sembra che in questi ritmi alpestri, che a tutti rammentano balli a ginocchia alzate di bonarî valligiani biondicci e atticciati, coi calzoni di cuoio e il cappello adorno di piume, nelle orecchie di Sebald ci carichino di chissà quali truci aure lugubri: peggio d’una sinfonia di Mahler; un po’ come se a uno scrittore italiano il liscio rievocasse, anziché spiagge romagnole, massaie procaci e aie padane, che so... le bombe sui treni, o perlomeno i governi balneari, l’inflazione galoppante, la crisi petrolifera con le domeniche a targhe alterne. Perfino di Nabokov, autore molto amato da Sebald, questi dà un ritratto unilaterale, tutto virato al nero: e gli rende involontariamente poca giustizia, perché sembrano sfuggirgli tutta la multiforme ricchezza dello scrittore russo, la sua ironia, le sue sparse, sottili levità. Il fatto è che, a mio modesto parere, queste pagine minori andavano pubblicate come tali all’interno d’un’eventuale edizione dell’opera omnia di Sebald; stampate così, da sole (come Adelphi fece, anni or sono, altresì con un’orripilante raccolta di articoletti della Szymborska), prestano un pessimo servizio anzitutto a Sebald, sui cui un lettore novizio e ignaro si potrebbe formare un’idea del tutto sbagliata.

[Vendedor de rápida · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una de las obsesiones de Sebald es el bombardeo sistemático de ciudades alemanas en la II Guerra Mundial, o mejor, la ausencia de relatos y descripciones de los mismos en la literatura alemana de la posguerra. No entraré en el misterio pero me ha impresionado mucho la descripción del novelista alemán Hans Erich Nosseck, que, siendo un adolescente, el 21 de julio de 1943, el día el ataque a Hamburgo se encontraba sólo a 15 kilómetros de la ciudad, pasando una temporada en el campo, y lo mira desde lejos. Sebald dice que el relato le remite al mundo de los cuentos de hadas pero a mí me recuerda más a los videojuegos o, pero aún, a las pesadillas: “la destrucción que se inicia de la ciudad parece un espectáculo de la naturaleza. Las sirenas aúllan entremezcladas, ‘como gatos en algún lado, en los pueblos lejanos’, el ruido de las nubes de bombarderos que llega flota ‘entre el claro cielo estrellado y la oscura tierra’, los ‘abetos’ que caen del cielo parecen ‘gotas de metal ardiente que corren’ sobre la ciudad, hasta desaparecer luego en una nube de humo, ‘la cual, por el fuego (…) es rojizamente iluminada desde abajo”.

Pero más me ha sorprendido lo que Sebald deduce de la masiva avalancha de personas, animales, vehículos y utensilios que empieza a salir de la ciudad pocos minutos después: según él la guerra acaba de instituir un nuevo nomadeo de poblaciones que hasta ahora estaban asentadas en un movimiento que ya no para y que acaba dando lugar a una nueva pasión por viajar y al turismo masivo contemporáneo.

[Nick Grammos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes, I read it, but can anyone say they 'read' a book that was never finished. We just pick over the words. Some of the excerpts were building up their layers of Sebaldian meaning and detail, only to stop, unfinished. They missed their opportunity. I can only stare at the cover, wonder what's inside, though I've read it, I know it contains something that I never quite found. A tragic death, far too early.

[Stephen Howell · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading his four novels, I was hungry for more, that’s the type of great writer Sebald is/was. So, this was a more than necessary purchase. A great start to the book, very similar in vein to his novels, a difficult middle, with quite a few of his essays going over my head and then a great finish with so many subjects, people and things that I could relate to. Will now have to buy his other collected pieces and essays.

[Oscar · Rating 3 out of 5]

En 2001, un trágico accidente de tráfico nos privó de uno de los más grandes escritores europeos, W.G. Sebald, cuya obra empezaba a ser reconocida ampliamente. Justo ese año, 2001, salió a la luz su última novela, la celebrada ‘Austerlitz’, que lo consagraría finalmente. Sebald, alemán de nacimiento, vivió posteriormente en Suiza, para trasladarse después a Inglaterra, donde se dedicó a la docencia y a la publicación de ensayos, siendo su paso a la ficción bastante tardío. Pero Sebald cultivaba todos los géneros: la poesía en ‘Del natural’, los relatos en ‘Los emigrados’, los ensayos en ‘Pútrida patria’, la novela en ‘Austerlitz’, y sus queridos libros de viajes en ‘Los anillos de Saturno’ y ‘Vértigo’; y todos ellos acompañados de fotografías para acentuar los textos, realizadas con su inseparable cámara. En sus últimos escritos, el límite entre géneros es difícil de distinguir, como reconoció el propio Sebald en una entrevista: ”Mi medio es la prosa, no la novela”. Los temas de Sebald son la posguerra europea, la destrucción de su país, el exterminio, la observación en sus viajes, convirtiéndose en memoria y conciencia de un país, Alemania.

En ’Campo Santo’, el editor Sven Mayer reunió los últimos escritos del autor, una páginas dedicadas a un viaje a Córcega que realizó a mediados de la década de 1990, que formaban parte de un trabajo que Sebald dejó aparcado. En estas páginas, divididas en cuatro capítulos, Sebald describe lugares, paisajes y personas con la prosa poética que le caracteriza, impregnada de cierta nostalgia, donde reflexiona sobre la muerte y la decadencia. El viaje al pasado y la persistencia de los muertos están muy presentes en estos textos; sus paseos por museos y casas antiguas, en ‘Pequeña excursión a Ajaccio’; una visita al cementerio de Piana, con sus lápidas rotas, reflejo del abandono por parte de los vivos, en ‘Campo Santo’; sus reflexiones sobre antiguos y majestuosos bosques, fuente de destrucción, en ‘Los Alpes en el mar’; y finalmente, '”La tour de l’ancienne école”', donde Sebald recuerda la malaria que diezmo la isla.

La segunda parte del libro está dedicada a diversos ensayos, que ya aparecieron en otras publicaciones. En ellos, Sebald alude a figuras como Kafka, Nabokov, Chatwin, Weiss o Améry, comentando obras como Kaspar, de Peter Handke, e incluyendo algún escrito autobiográfico, siendo el último ensayo su discurso de ingreso en el Colegio de la Academia. Todos estos textos (algunos de los cuáles se hacen difíciles de seguir si no se han leído los trabajos a los que alude el autor), nos hablan de soledad, destrucción y memoria, buscando la legitimación y restitución de su patria a través de la literatura, reivindicando el pasado para no olvidar y repetir en el futuro.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Campo Santo is a collection of W.G. Sebald's non-fiction writing, yet the style is hardly distinguishable from the novels of his that I've read. The first four essays are fragments of a book about Corsica that he was working on when he died. Most of the rest are concerned with German literature, which I have limited familiarity with. The experience was not wholly unlike The Arcades Project (which I'm currently reading), in that it was somewhat obscure and sometimes baffling, except concerned with Germany rather than France. Nonetheless, I appreciated the fluidity and elegance of Sebald's long sentences and found his thoughts on post-Second World War Germany fascinating. This comment reminded me of Gravity’s Rainbow, in which nobody can stay still and stop doing doing insane things for a single moment:

Victor Gollancz, who in the autumn of 1945 visited several cities in the British-occupied zone, including Hamburg, in order to make first-hand reports which would convince the British public of the necessity of rendering humanitarian aid, notes the same phenomenon. He describes a visit to the Jahn Gymnastics Hall, 'where mothers and children were spending the night. They were units in that homeless crowd that goes milling about Germany "to find relatives", they said, but really, or mainly, so I was told, because a restlessness has come over them that just won't let them settle down.' The extreme restlessness and mobility to which Gollancz testifies were the reactions of a species seeing itself cut off from its ways of escape, which biologically speaking always lay ahead of it, and as preconscious experience those reactions affected the whole new social dynamic developing out of the destruction.

Perhaps Pynchon read the very same reports? I found Sebald's reflections on German society the most memorable elements of the book, while the shorter pieces had less impact. His writing is beautiful, however this book is definitely a miscellany rather than a cohesive collection.

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rounding upwards, we should all push that direction towards the mute heavens. Yet our hearts remain shipwrecked.

There’s a lazy longing. This work is part meditation on Corsica but larded with essays on the German Miracle and the stewardship of postwar literature. There are pieces on Kafka and Nabokov. Sebald plunges deep into memory, pocketing chance discoveries for our benefit. I realized just now I’ve been reading Sebald for twenty years. I don’t believe I’ve traveled with him. Reading earlier today about the wildfires around Berlin and the consequent explosion of buried munitions, I thought about Thomas Browne and WG Sebald.

[Carlos Aymí · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hay momentos soberbios que salvan la aridez de algunos fragmentos y de muchas páginas. No apto para todo paladar, se requiere disciplina para pasar muchas páginas.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

W. G. Sebald's Campo Santo is a Jekyll-and-Hyde sort of book. The farther away the author is from the land of his birth—Germany—the more alive his writing becomes. Conversely, when he writes of Germany, it is as if he were examining tiny insects with an inadequate magnifier.

Of course, the Germany of Sebald's birth was practically destroyed by bombing during the Second World War. He tries to see how that impacts the postwar literature of Germany, but can only deal with writers who are wholly unknown in the rest of the world.

The best parts of Campo Santo are the essays about Corsica, Vladimir Nabokov, Bruce Chatwin, and two curious pieces about Franz Kafka. To these, I give five stars. To the articles on German literature, two or three at the most.

[Kobe Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

He really thought about stuff. I guess thats why he was a good writer

[Rhys · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having recently read and admired The Rings of Saturn it was inevitable I would pounce on any other Sebald books that happened to come my way. This volume is a collection of essays that include four pieces intended for a lengthy study about Corsica; but Sebald died while that study was in progress and these pieces are the only chapters he completed. They are fascinating and I wish he had lived to finish the study. As for the other essays in this collection: many are excellent (the two on Kafka in particular) but some of them went over my head. Maybe they shouldn't have gone over my head, perhaps I simply just wasn't concentrating hard enough, but there were occasions when I would read a passage and have almost no idea what Sebald was talking about. No matter! He is an author I intend to read more of in future.

[M. Sarki · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have totally changed my opinion of this book after reading it the second (this time in full) and after reading much other Sebald work and related material. By all means one of my very favorite writers now. This is an important collection of Sebald's and one I believe will get more legs as his respect is sure to grow.

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees · Rating 3 out of 5]

After discovering W. G. Sebald by way of his melancholy and powerful book 'The Emigrants', I was happy to find a copy of Campo Santo in the virtual bargain bin of an online bookseller. I ordered it on name recognition only, not knowing at the time (about eight years ago) that it was a posthumous collection of both critical essays and fragments of another novel begun around the same time that Rings of Saturn was published. As such, and after having read Austerlitz, Saturn and Vertigo, I would not recommend Santo to someone new to Sebald, and even those who already appreciate his work may feel ambivalent about this collection.

The trouble I've found with books like these, gathered together after the author's death, is that either the editor, through his selection and collating process, is too intrusive, or else we get everything but the kitchen sink--excerpts that the author may very well have wished to keep out of the spotlight are brought out for scrutiny. Fortunately, Campo Santo suffers from neither of these problems--for one thing, these separate essays have already been published in one form or another (though perhaps not in English). Another positive note is that the editor, Sven Meyer, makes no effort to impose his image of Sebald onto the reader by manipulating the ordering of the essays, as they are presented chronologically; and though we have to take on faith his choices for inclusion in this volume, it was my impression that his criteria was simply that they have not been collected in book form before.

The book is divided into two section; Prose and Essays. The first consists of four chapters, complete in themselves, in which Sebald writes of a trip to Corsica, and which were evidently to be part of another major work, but instead were laid aside as he started working on Austerlitz. This section alone is well worth the price I paid. There is something about Sebald's polished work that is comforting--although not emotionally so, as the accumulated layers of implication in his work can sometimes be very dis-comforting. It is the comfort of following a sure mind at work, one that does not rely on cheap thrills or vulgar surprises with which to string the reader along. Although his peripatetic, wandering style of writing will probably only appeal to a small group--it requires attention and a prolonged denial of gratification--Sebald achieves a sort of delayed effect with it. Images, phrases and elicited emotional states from his work resurface periodically to slightly alter and to heighten the initial response. At least, this is how I felt after reading his other books, and although the overall outcome is muted with the smaller sample, I sensed that same effect after the short prose pieces of Campo Santo. Part history, part travelogue, and part rumination, they share that calm matter-of-factness, that inundation of detail that marked Sebald's other novels (if novel is even the right term).

The 'Essays' section attempts to illustrate the evolution of Sebald's critical side, with the first few examples extremely dry and academic, and the last few characteristic of the writing style with which I was already familiar. I felt these initial essays weighed down the entire book, and although the themes are intriguing, from the little I know of his later work, I believe Sebald returns to these ideas in a manner that is much easier to consume. These topics include the responsibilities (and failures) of German literature in the war's aftermath, and questions of how individuals integrate their senses and the world around us, as encapsulated, for example, by the story of Kaspar Hauser. These treatments are not poorly written, but are so ponderous and exhausting, especially in comparison to his other writing, that they were difficult for me to read through.

The book ends with a quick look at Jan Peter Tripp, Bruce Chatwin, some private ruminations and an acceptance speech to the Collegium of the German Academy - all of which are excellent, and, in the case of Chatwin, encourage me to explore further. Other topics include Kafka, the poet Ernst Herbeck, and Nabokov - fine for what they are, but not indicative of Sebald's later capability. Enthusiasts of W. G. Sebald will certainly find much that's interesting in Campo Santo, while those who have not enjoyed his writing in the past will probably see little to change their mind. For those who are looking at him for the first time, I would suggest skipping this one for now and beginning where I did, with The Emigrants.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't sure what to expect of this, as a collection of essays and other texts put together after Sebald's death, but it is excellent throughout. The four short pieces at the beginning of the book, all set on the island of Corsica, were apparently the beginnings of a full length novel that was put aside to finish Austerlitz. They are like a distillation of all that makes Sebald great: the solo amblings over loaded historical terrain, the strange coincidences, the scholarly digressions, the suggestion of a mind constantly on the verge of crisis, and thus productively unfettered.

The first story details Sebald's musings on the Bonaparte family, as he visits the small museums of Ajaccio. Pointing out the trecherous unpredictability of history, he questions the extent to which its study can really help us understand the forces that shape our lives. He relates the story of an amateur historian he once met who based his studies of Napoleon on the theory that the Emperor was colorblind, seeing the blood-stained battlefields of Europe in green, not red. "The more blood that flowed on the battlefield ... the greener Napoleon thought the grass was growing." Sebald concludes, in what could amount to a manifesto for his own work: "The most precise study of the past scarcely comes any closer to the unimaginable truth than, for instance ... this Belgian scholar..."

'Campo Santo', the second piece, is even better. After swimming far out to sea from an isolated beach on the island and feeling tempted to allow himself to drift on out to sea, he eventually turns back ("obeying the strange instinct that binds us to life") and scales the cliff again, ending up at an abandoned cemetery. What follows begins as an apparently straightforward historical discussion of the customs and superstitions surrounding death unique to the island, but gradually unfolds as a tour-de-force excavation of our impoverished contemporary funerary rites.

The 'essays' section of the book includes pieces on Kafka and Max Brod's visit to a brothel, poet Ernst Herbeck's hare lip, a meditation on the common mackerel, interspersed with typically free-ranging essays on authors and history that could easily be read as fragments from his novels, demonstrating again the truly original and essentially unclassifiable nature of his writing.

[Taylor Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of prose works and essays by the German author of The Rings of Saturn and Austerlitz is notable for two reasons; firstly, the four prose works that form a small continuum the concern of which is a Corsican trip woven, of course, into Sebald’s themes of human history, ephemerality, and natural destruction, constitute the unpublished material that would have formed the last novel upon which the writer was working, but from which, to finish his Austerlitz and other, disparate, material, he had taken a pause. Secondly, the remaining matter, some twelve mostly brief essays, are of interest for the reason that they chart the career of the writer, spanning some nearly thirty years and, most interestingly, capturing the evolution of Sebald’s writing style. The writing in his final essays is hardly distinguishable from that which characterizes his last, two great novels. One should be warned, however, that though the Corsican material and some of the essays will be of interest to a general reader, this collection, I think, will really only appeal to readers of Sebald who are particularly interested in the evolution of his oeuvre.

[Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

ten years ago, Sebald's Rings Of Saturn changed my mind about what a book could be. fact, fiction, academia and prose mingled to produce something i hadn't experienced before. i tried and abandoned Austerlitz (which i've heard is the closest of his works to conventional narrative) at times, this collection of prose and essays reaches the heights of Rings. the bits on Corsica (from an unfinished work) are superb, as is the section on Kafka, a writer he clearly had an affinity with. there are solid bits of prosey academia on postwar German writers here too but these seem 'necessary' rather than straight from Sebald's mournful heart. this collection is from 2003, gathering material from 75 to close to his untimely death in 2001

[Gerhard Schoeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The prose pieces and essays collected in this volume bear a striking resemblance to Walter Benjamin's writings. Finely crafted, deeply evocative and intensely focused: every thought and every meandering observation, glowing with "an aura of melancholy", spirals inwards and circles outwards - like "drifting smoke" in a clear blue sky. Yet the sun that illuminates every curving line, written in "a world which is no longer in a state of grace", is deepest black. Again and again, the reader experiences the ache of loss, specters of catastrophe, and, most centrally, the vanishing point of death. Sebald's writing is haunted by premonition and by ghosts - which remain among the living. Yet, as Sebald remarks most profoundly - even they won't last for much longer.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sebald wrote so well.

[João Cruz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fiquei a conhecer a estranheza da literatura alemã pós segunda guerra mundial em lidar com a devastação física e psicológica da Alemanha. Também me cativou a descrição do pensamento onírico de Nabokov e o "horror" de Kafka pela fotografia.

[Lachlan Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Early works from WG Sebald whose walking narratives around East Anglia and other places are wondrous dreamlike and insightful explorations of the lives of writers, builders, dreamers and inhabitants of these places. These works are earlier and still rely on many footnotes and references, almost like academic papers. His insights into the life of Campo Santo and its reprobates also highlights the work of Simon Schama in his work Landscape and Memory from 1996. Both works deal with the relationship of nature and its influence over the creative productivity of people enmeshed in a certain environment. For Sebald Camp Santo is a unique and wonderful place. One of his works deals with the cemetery near or of Ajaccio. Beautiful writing and lucid qualities in his exposure.

Another small piece is on the dreamlike works of Vladimir Nabokov.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed Sebald's travels in Corsica in the same way that I enjoyed his reflections on Norfolk in The Rings of Saturn.

Unfortunately, I wasn't competent to get much out of the more serious essays on German literature and German reactions to recent history, particularly as the essays had been translated from the German. And, as occasionally happens with Sebald, I found the reading too painful.

But this writer is always good for a quotation and, in the essay "Between History and Natural History: on the literary description of total destruction" I was moved by something written by Victor Gollancz in 1947:

"I drove through ruined Cologne late at dusk, with terror of the world and of men and of myself in my heart."

[Andrew]

Campo Santo contains all the great Sebald trademarks: morose travel tales, imagistic memories of childhood, meditations on the tenuousness of human memory, commentary on great writers past, and the ever-present nightmare of German history. Especially worth reading for the large section about the trip to Corsica, which is Sebald at hist best and most Sebaldish.

Some of the literary essays aren't especially stunning, at least for someone who hasn't read most of the authors he's referencing, not least because most of them have never been translated into English and I can't speak German. But this is a minor quibble. Pick this book up, and enjoy the hell out of it.

[Justin Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many good fiction writers, including some of my all time favorites, come across as fools when they can't hide their opinions and ideas behind the irony of literature. That is also the case of WGS. That said, some of the pieces here will be helpful for those seeking to understand his work, or who are just addicted to it.

[Theo Erasmus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, erudite, sophisticated. It'll expand your mind.

[Marnix Verplancke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Toen W.G. Sebald midden jaren negentig aan Austerlitz begon, zijn roman over de Jodenvervolging die hem wereldberoemd zou maken en die er uiteindelijk zelfs voor zorgde dat zijn naam genoemd werd in Nobelprijskringen, legde hij daar een ander project voor opzij. Hij was toen immers bezig aan een boek over Corsica, het mediterrane eiland dat in zijn melange van Italiaans machismo en Frans flegma niemand minder dan Napoleon heeft voortgebracht. Het pas vertaalde Campo Santo brengt de delen die Sebald klaar had toen hij negen jaar geleden een hartaanval kreeg aan het stuur van zijn auto en dat met de dood bekocht bij elkaar, samen met een aantal andere essays.
Voor de in Beieren geboren Sebald die het grootste deel van zijn leven in Engeland doceerde bleek de Corsicaanse samenleving vreemd en fascinerend. Zo beschrijft hij de niet te stillen jachtlust van de bevolking die zowat alle wild dat er ooit zat heeft afgeschoten en grote delen van de bossen heeft gekapt. Hij bezoekt Ajaccio en treft er een oud, stoffig Bonapartemuseum met een suppooste die als twee druppels water op Napoleon lijkt. Maar het indrukwekkendst is toch het titelstuk van het boek, ‘Campo Santo’ dus, waarin hij schrijft over de gewelddadige levensloop van de Corsicanen, over hun voorliefde voor bloederige vetes en vooral over hun boeiende begrafenisrituelen, waarbij hij een mooi staaltje van zijn extra droge humor ten toon spreidt waneer hij het heeft over de grootte van de grafstenen. Het is opvallend, merkt hij op, dat hoe rijker de dode was, hoe zwaarder de steen is die hij op zijn graf krijgt, en dat is ook geen toeval. Wanneer die rijke zou weten hoe zijn erfgenamen met zijn kapitaal omspringen zou hij wel eens uit zijn graf willen klauteren, en dan ligt er maar beter een fiks blok op.
Maar ook om een andere reden is ‘Campo Santo’ een boeiend stuk. Sebald verlaat er immers Corsica in, om te kunnen focussen op de manier waarop we vandaag met onze doden omspringen. Wij hebben geen dodencultuur meer, schrijft hij, en wij maken geen tijd meer voor de doden. Omdat er te weinig plaats is op de kerkhoven worden graven al na korte tijd opgeruimd, of lijken worden gecremeerd en verstrooid, waarna we ze ook gauw weer vergeten zijn. Op die manier verliezen we niet alleen het besef van ons persoonlijk verleden, maar ook dat van de geschiedenis in zijn geheel. Wij zijn wellicht de eerste generatie die in een a-historische tijd leeft en daardoor niet allen gedesoriënteerd, maar bovenal ook ontmenselijkt is. Een duidelijke mening, maar wat hadden we anders verwacht van Sebald? Wie zijn werk een beetje kent, weet dat de geschiedenis, en dan vooral de Duitse geschiedenis met haar doodslag en geweld centraal staat in zijn boeken. We mogen het verleden niet negeren of vergeten, zei hij zijn hele leven lang, en daarmee maakte hij zich in Duitsland zelf niet altijd populair.
Het grootste deel van Campo Santo wordt ingenomen door een aantal essays die Sebald schreef over figuren die hem op intellectueel vlak na aan het hart lagen, zoals Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Peter Weiss en Jan Peter Tripp, stuk voor stuk bezwaarde schrijvers en schilders die met hun beide voeten in de Duitse geschiedenis stonden en gebukt gingen onder een immens zwaar schuldgevoel. Nogal eens laat hij deze figuren contrasteren met tijdgenoten die heel wat blinder en minder plichtsgetrouw te werk gingen, en daaruit leren we heel wat over het schuldige zwijgen dat na de oorlog bij onze oosterburen overheerste, bij de gewone burgers, maar ook bij de grote literatoren. In oppositie met Hildesheimers roman Tynset, ontstaan uit een diep besef van persoonlijke rouw, plaatst hij bijvoorbeeld Uit het dagboek van een slak, van Günter Grass. In dit boek beschrijft Grass de politieke toernee die hij in 1969 maakte doorheen de Bondsrepubliek om mensen te overhalen op de sociaal-democraten te stemmen. Niet alleen was dit zuivere propaganda die stelde dat alleen die partij voor vooruitgang kon zorgen, en dus een activiteit een groot schrijver onwaardig, bovendien werd er in dat boek ook geen enkele keer verwezen naar de geschiedenis van de sociaal-democratische partij en de rol die ze tussen de twee wereldoorlogen had gespeeld in het ondermijnen van het politieke bewustzijn, waarmee ze onrechtstreeks aan de basis lag van de opkomst van de nationaal-socialisten. Iedereen weet immers uit welke maatschappij het nazisme is voortgesproten en niemand kan aan zijn verantwoordelijkheid ontsnappen, aldus Sebald, want die is collectief. Het zijn spijkers met koppen die hij hier slaat, maar geen enkel weldenkend mens die het met hem oneens kan zijn.
Wie echter vermoedt dat we hier met een eenzijdige ‘landverrader’ te maken hebben, zoals Sebald in Duitsland wel eens beschreven werd, heeft het bij het verkeerde eind. In het essay ‘Tussen geschiedenis en natuurlijke historie; over de literaire beschrijving van de totale verwoesting’, een tekst die later zou uitgroeien tot het boek De natuurlijke historie van de verwoesting, klaagt hij bijvoorbeeld de tot in de puntjes rationele wijze aan waarop de geallieerden op het einde van de Tweede Wereldoorlog de Duitse steden platbombardeerden, allemaal, een voor een, ook al hadden ze geen enkele militaire of strategische waarde. Dit roekeloze geweld was onafwendbaar, citeert hij een Amerikaanse brigadier die meewerkte aan de verwoesting, “zo’n bom was immers duur spul dat je niet in de bergen ging droppen”. Eens de bommen gemaakt moesten ze dus gebruikt worden. Het rationele is hier dus in zijn tegendeel omgeslagen. Het gekke was dat deze bombardementen na de oorlog in Duitsland onbespreekbaar bleken. Wanneer ze voorkwamen in romans werden ze afgedaan als uitingen van het lot, alsof niemand er voor verantwoordelijk was, het oude regime niet, met zijn hakenkruisen en concentratiekampen, noch het nieuwe van de overwinnaars die je beter niet al te diep in de bek keek.
Sebald blijkt dus een luis te zijn die zich in iedere pels thuis voelt en die op zoek is naar nieuwe betekenissen achter oude gebeurtenissen. Hij doet dit door vanuit een nauwgezet historisch perspectief op het eerste zicht totaal verschillende zaken met elkaar in verband te brengen. En de literatuur lijkt daar het ideale middel voor. Er bestaan veel vormen van schrijven, zegt hij, maar alleen in het literaire schrijven gaat het over meer dan registreren. In het ideale geval gaat het ook over restitutie, en dan meer bepaald restitutie voor wat er is misgegaan in het verleden. Het hoeft dan ook niet te verbazen dat de Duitse schuld steeds weer opduikt, zelfs in een kort essay over de fascinerende, het grootste deel van zijn leven in een psychiatrische instelling opgesloten dichter Ernst Herbeck, de man die zich vereenzelvigde met een angstige, immer op de vlucht zijnde haas. Ook hier slaagt Sebald erin te wijzen op de gewelddadige, sinistere Duitse achtergrond. Waar het hart van vol is, loopt de mond van over, zeggen we dan, of zoals Nietzsche het in Die Genealogie der Moral schreef: “Misschien is er wel niets verschrikkelijker en luguberder aan de hele prehistorie van de mens dan zijn mnemotechniek. We branden iets in zodat we het onthouden: alleen wat niet ophoudt pijn te doen blijft in ons geheugen”.