Across the Land and the Water: Selected Poems, 1964-2001

by W. G. Sebald

  14 Didsbury PT, H. Title: the author lived in Didsbury, a suburb of Manchester, from January 1967 until his departure in 1968 to teach at a school in St. Gallen, Switzerland, initially sharing a flat with Reinbert Tabbert. The poem was among a small number of items, including “Giulietta’s Birthday” and “Time Signal at Twelve,” collected in a Festschrift put together in the summer of 1967 by Tabbert and Sebald for Idris Parry (1916–2008), a professor of German at the University of Manchester and Sebald’s later supervisor for his M.A. dissertation (1968) on the German writer Carl Sternheim. An earlier version of the poem is entitled “Weekend.”

  15 Giulietta’s Birthday PT, H. See note on “Didsbury” above.

  16 Time Signal at Twelve PT, AK50. See note on “Didsbury” above. Lejzer Ajchenrand: a Jewish poet born in Demblin (Poland) in 1911 who emigrated to France in 1937 and served in a French volunteer battalion. He was interned under the Vichy regime and, in 1942, fled to Switzerland, where he was again interned. Although Ajchenrand spent the rest of his life in Switzerland, he was never granted citizenship. He died in the town of Küsnacht, on Lake Zürich. His mother and sister were murdered by the Nazis, and the Shoah remained the subject of a poetic oeuvre composed entirely in Yiddish. Several of his poems appeared in the German literary magazine Akzente. The best known of his nine books of poems is Aus der Tiefe (De Profundis, 1957), first published in Paris in 1953 and reprinted with German translations in 1998. Melk: a town in Lower Austria and the site of a famous Benedictine abbey, founded in 1089. Between April 1944 and May 1945, 14,390 mainly Jewish prisoners were deported to the Melk concentration camp, a sub-camp of KZMauthausen. It is thought that some five thousand prisoners were murdered there. The crematorium is all that remains of the camp today. If no one asks him … knows not: The phrasing of the fifth stanza echoes a passage in Augustine’s Confessiones (XI, 14) in which the author ruminates on the nature of time, its absence, and eternity. “Quid ergo tempus est?” (“What then is time?”) he asks, and continues, “si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio” (“if no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it to him who asks, I know not”).

  17 Children’s Song PT, AK50. The poem, dedicated to Sebald’s niece, was first published in Reinbert Tabbert’s reminiscence of his friendship with Sebald in the magazine Akzente. It later appeared in a second article by Tabbert in a journal called Literatur in Bayern (no. 97, September 2009), this time with a short commentary linking the poem to the topography and mood of Sebald’s childhood memories of his daily route to school in his native Wertach.

  18 Votive Tablet SL.

  19 Legacy SL.

  20 Sarassani SL. Title: Sebald’s spelling may be incorrect, but only if the title refers to the Sarrasani Circus, founded by Hans Stosch (alias Giovanni Sarrasani) in Meißen in 1902, and still in family hands.

  21 Day’s Residue PT, SL. Title: a psychoanalytic term (German: Tagesrest) coined by Sigmund Freud in his book on the interpretation of dreams, Die Traumdeutung (1900). The term describes the way the residual material of a day’s experience—thoughts, impressions, and unfinished tasks—may trigger the “dream work” of the following night.

  22 Border Crosser SL. witch’s thaler: a gold or silver coin whose currency magically alters in accordance with the mint of the country in which its owner is a resident.

  23 Lay of Ill Luck SL, H. black bird: the combination of fox and crow (or, in German, Rabe: raven) is likely to be associated in the reader’s mind with Aesop’s ancient Greek fable “The Fox and the Crow,” or with its later French version by Jean de La Fontaine. However, it is in Leoš Janáček’s opera The Cunning Little Vixen (German: Das schlaue Füchslein; in Sebald’s poem the fox is also a “Füchslein”) that the “little vixen” escapes. The “monosyllabic creature” of the translation is, in German, einsilbig, which can also, figuratively at least, mean “taciturn.” “Monosyllabic” at least captures Mistress Crow’s “Caw!” which lost her the cheese in the fable. The final stanza, however, may contain a nod to the taciturn “black bird” in Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven”: possibly a figure closer to Sebald’s own melancholy muse.

  24 Memorandum of the Divan SL.

  25 Il ritorno d’Ulisse SL. Title: probably a reference to Claudio Monteverdi’s opera of 1640, whose full title is Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria. The title of the final section (“Il ritorno in patria”) of Sebald’s prose work Schwindel. Gefühle (1990; Eng. trans. Vertigo, 1999) also appears to echo the title of Monteverdi’s opera. in scattered spots with the black paper hearts of men shot by the arquebuse: the German (“an zerstreueten Orten waren schwarze Papierherzen arkebusierter Menschen”) is from Jean Paul Richter’s novel Titan (vol. 1), in Sämtliche Werke. Bd. 2, Berlin: 1827 (p. 115); translated into English by Charles T. Brooks as “in scattered spots were the black paper hearts of men shot by the arquebuse,” in Titan. A Romance, London: 1863 (p. 36).

  26 For a Northern Reader SL.

  27 Florean Exercise SL. Title: there is more than one reference in Sebald’s work to the name of the Northamptonshire village Flore. In the second chapter of The Rings of Saturn, for example, the narrator’s neighbor Frederick Farrar is sent in 1914 to a prep school near Flore in Northamptonshire. Flore is also mentioned in the poem “Pneumatalogical Prose,” in this volume. the Dardanian gods: the final lines cite an Etruscan inscription discovered in North Africa by the French Latinist and Etruscan scholar Jacques Heurgon. The Dardanoi formed one of the two royal houses of ancient Troy, and the rulers of Rome would sometimes claim, through their founder Aeneas, Dardanian descent. In this poem, then, the apparently unremarkable village of Flore emerges as the unexpected repository of a genealogical current that arose in mythical northwestern Anatolia, passed through Troy, Carthage, and Rome, and that continues to exert metaphysical pressure on the imagination in twentieth-century Northamptonshire, one and a half millennia after the Romans left.

  28 Scythian Journey SL. Title: in classical antiquity Scythia was the area to the north of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. with the birds and fishes: reminiscent of lines in the second poem in book 1 of Horace’s Odes: “omne cum Proteus pecus egit altos visera montis, / piscium et summa genus haesit ulmo, / nota quae sedes fuerat columbis” (“when Proteus drove all his herd to visit the high mountains / and the race of fishes lodged in the elm-tops / which once were known as the haunt of doves”). Berecyntian horn: mentioned in Horace’s Odes (bk. 1, ode 18), but also to be found in Catullus, Ovid, and other classical writers. Berecyntus was the name of a mountain in Phrygia, sacred to Cybele. Penates: guardian deities of the household and the state.

  29 Saumur, selon Valéry SL. Title: Saumur, as seen by Valéry. There is a National Equestrian Academy at Saumur, home to the world-renowned Cadre Noir. In his Cahiers (Notebooks), the French poet Paul Valéry compares mental and aesthetic training with the equestrian art of dressage: he aims to write a treatise on “le dressage de l’esprit” (“dressage of the mind”), to be called “Gladiator.” In the Cahiers (6, 901), he also mentions the mythical centaur as a model of perfect control. Another model was the Saumur equestrian instructor François Baucher (1796–1873), of whom Valéry, in his essay “Autour de Corbot,” recites an anecdote with which Sebald was evidently acquainted. Baucher dazzled one of his favorite pupils at Saumur by appearing as “un Centaure parfait” (a perfect centaur): “Voilà … Je ne fais pas d’esbroufe. Je suis au sommet de mon art: Marcher sans une faute” (“There … I’m not showing off. I have reached the summit of my art: Walking without error”), in Paul Valéry, Œuvres 2, Paris: 1960 (p. 1311).

  30 L’instruction du roy PT, SL, H. Title: probably a reference to the posthumously published L’instruction du roy en l’exercise de monter à cheval (1625), by Antoine de Pluvinel (1555–1620). The book was one of the earliest equestrian manuals and is conceived in the form of a conversation between the author, Louis XIII, and Monsieur Le Grand, the King’s Master of the Horse.

  31 Festifal PT. the Dictaean G
rotto: the Diktaion Andron on Crete, traditionally the birthplace of Zeus. polar dragon: according to Lemprière’s classical dictionary this was the guardian of the apples of the Hesperides; see: J. Lemprière, Bibliotheca Classica, London: 1811 (p. 340). As Ladon, the dragon is depicted coiling around the apple tree; in (ancient Egyptian) celestial atlases he is coiled around the pole of heaven. Could Sebald have been aware of W. B. Yeats’s lines “And though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and wept, / The Polar Dragon slept, / His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep”? (“The Poet Pleads with the Elemental Powers.”) Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas, / nocturnos lemures portentaque Thessala rides? are lines from the second book of Horace’s Epistles (ll. 208–9), which Philip Francis, cited by Robert Burton in the Anatomy of Melancholy, translates as “Say, can you laugh indignant at the schemes / Of magic terrors, visionary dreams, / Portentous wonders, witching imps of Hell, / the nightly goblin, and enchanting spell?” See The Works of the English Poets from Chaucer to Cowper, vol. 8, London: 1810 (p. 742). The plump Etruscan blows on an ivory flute in Virgil, Georgics, 2, l. 193, trans. C. Day Lewis, Oxford: 1999 (p. 75). Proteus: an ancient sea god and herdsman of Poseidon’s seal herds. The Sphinx fleeing toward Libya: “I have seen the Sphinx fleeing toward Libya.” See The Letters of Gustave Flaubert 1830–57, ed. Francis Steegmuller, Harvard: 1980 (p. 112).

  32 Pneumatological Prose SL. Flore: see note on “Florean Exercise” above. The animal is a victor: the indented passage is cited from the legend in Dürer’s 1515 woodcut of a rhinoceros. The passage in Sebald’s German text reads: “Das da ein Sieg Thir ist / des Heilffandten Todtfeindt / den wo es Ihn ankompt / so laufft ihm das Thir mit dem Kopff / zwischen die fordern bayn // Sie sagen auch / das der Rhinocerus / schnellfraytig und auch lustig sey.” The legend in Dürer’s woodcut reads: “das da ein Sieg Thir ist / des Heilffandten Todtfeyndt. Der Heilffandt fürchts fast ubel / den wo es Ihn ankompt / so laufft Ihm das Thir mit dem kopff zwischen die fordern bayn / und reist den Heilffandten unten am bauch auff / und er würget ihn / des mag er sich nicht erwehren. dann das Thier ist also gewapnet / das ihm der Jeilffandt nichts Thun kan / Sie sagen auch / das der Rhinocerus / Schnell / fraytig / und auch Lustig / sey.” Footnote: Messrs. H. and C. Artmann: a pun on the name of the Viennese poet H. C. Artmann (1921–2000). as Pliny tells us: Pliny, in book 8 of Naturalis Historia, discusses the character and virtues of the elephant. This passage recurs in modified form in Unrecounted, London: 2004 (p. 13). Footnotes 1 and 2: the footnotes in the German text are reprinted verbatim in the translation.

  33 Comic Opera SL. Title: comic opera (komische Oper) can be opera buffa, with its beginnings in the Italian eighteenth century, or the often more serious, or satirical, opéra comique. green theatre: théâtre de verdure, a garden or hedge theatre.

  34 Timetable ZET, SL, H. Cretan trick: an acrobatic feat of bull-leaping or somersaulting over or between a bull’s horns. Depictions of the ritual, possibly once a rite of passage for young men, have been found in ancient Minoan artwork.

  35 Unexplored ZET, SL, H. Title: “Unexplored” suggests the white areas that once represented unexplored regions of old maps. horoscope, heptagram, malefic houses: Sebald returns again and again to magic, astrology, alchemy, and the like. photoset: a development in typesetting that allowed characters to be projected onto film for offset printing. The technique had its heyday in the 1960s, when the poem was probably written. The technique may have been the state of the art, and yet the “malefic houses” were still ignored (unexplored). In an earlier version of the poem, the “evil houses” have been whited out and replaced by “white zones” in the school historical atlas.

  36 Elizabethan PT, SL, ÜLW, ZET, H. a baker’s daughter: see Hamlet, act 4, scene 5. Ophelia: “They say the owl was a baker’s daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.” Sheikh Subir: doubts about Shakespeare’s authorship of the plays are recurrent. In one version, it was claimed that he was a Muslim called Sheykh Zubayr (see Muhammad Mustafá Badawi, Modern Arabic Literature, London: 1985, p.191).

  37 Baroque Psalter SL. One of several “found” poems by W. G. Sebald, this is taken almost verbatim from a review by Heinz Ludwig Arnold, in Die Zeit (30 June 1972), of the Baroque poet Quirinus Kuhlmann’s (1651–89) so-called Kühlpsalter of 1684: “Nach zahlreichen Bekehrungsreisen nach Paris, Genf, Smyrna und Konstantinopel wurde Kuhlmann in Moskau als politischer Aufrührer verbrannt.”

  38 Cold Draught PT, ÜLW, H. Title: the German Zug can mean, among other things, a train, a draft in the sense of an outline or sketch, the action of drawing air, smoke or liquid, or a current of air. The poem describes a train journey, but the primary sense of the title is probably the icy cultural draft that blows through the narrator’s sensibility as he returns to the scenes of his childhood and place of origin. Sebald’s landscapes are never innocent. Landsberg housed the headquarters of the Kaufering complex of eleven concentration camps, the largest such complex within Germany, and was itself the site of KZ-Außenlage Kaufering I. Kauf beuren was the site of a psychiatric hospital in which the mentally ill were murdered under the Nazi euthanasia program. Between 1939 and 1945, some two thousand patients from Kauf beuren and the nearby Irsee Abbey were deported to their deaths. The Riederloh II camp housed forced laborers who worked at the DAG munitions factory in Kauf beuren. Landsberg is also significant for its prison, where Hitler was incarcerated and allegedly wrote Mein Kampf, and where 275 Nazi war criminals were executed between 1945 and 1951. Could Sebald have been mistaken about Saint Elizabeth? It was not St. Elizabeth but St. Kunigunde of Luxemburg—whose husband was Heinrich II and the last Holy Roman Emperor of the Ottonian dynasty—who walked over red-hot plowshares unscathed to prove her innocence. Her veil, according to another legend, was said to have prevented the Allies from successfully bombing Bamberg, where she was buried in 1040.

  39 Near Crailsheim ÜLW. Title: to set an example, Crailsheim was razed by the Americans at the end of the war. The town suffered some ninety percent damage as a result of the bombing after the Germans had successfully retaken it from the Americans in a battle in April 1945. After its destruction, the town was not rebuilt according to historical principles (as was often the case in German restoration) but employing architectural ideas of the 1940s. The descriptions of landscape in the poem exude Sebald’s antipathy for what he would later describe (e.g., in the description of a train journey in the last chapter of Vertigo, or passim in The Natural History of Destruction) as a repressive German tidiness during the postwar decades, an outward reversal of moral devastation, avoidance of memory, and the inability to mourn. Jehoshaphat: Hebrew, meaning “Jehovah has judged.” For the valley of Jehoshaphat, see Joel: 3, especially verses 2 and 19. The valley, which is also mentioned in After Nature, London: Penguin, 2003 (p. 90), is referred to as the “valley of decision” (Joel 3:14). It is where the Lord assembled those who had afflicted Judah, and wreaked upon them his judgment.

  40 Poor Summer in Franconia ÜLW. Colorado beetle: by 1936 the westward spread of the Colorado potato beetle through continental Europe had reached Germany, destroying crops as it went. Widespread infestation continued until the 1950s. Five lines of the poem are incorporated into the final section of After Nature, op. cit. (p. 89).

  41 Solnhofen ÜLW. Title: a small town in Franconia (a region of Bavaria). The Solnhofen limestone lagerstätte (sedimentary deposit) has supplied some of the most significant fossils ever found, including the Jurassic Archaeopteryx, the so-called Urvogel, or “first bird.” See also the first lines of “Dark Night Sallies Forth,” in After Nature, op. cit. (p. 81).

  42 Leaving Bavaria ÜLW, H. Hindenberg’s gray-green millions: by November 1923, hyperinflation had rendered the German reichsmark valueless and postage stamps had to be overprinted daily with surcharges of up to ten billion marks. The term null ouvert derives from the popular German card game Skat. Null Ouvert is the only game where the “declarer” wins if he manages to lose every trick. go
ndola: the term for the cabin of an airship. Dionysius: the patron saint of Paris, St. Denis, whose tradition and martyrdom involve his carrying his head under one arm, is known in German as St. Dionysius. There is a statue commemorating St. Dionysius in Bamberg Cathedral, probably because Pope Clemens II, who is buried there, died on St. Denis’s commemoration day.

  43 Something in My Ear SL, ÜLW, H.

  44 Panacea SL, ZET, ÜLW, H. Much of this poem occurs in the second section of “Dark Night Sallies Forth” in After Nature, London: 2003 (p. 88).

  45 Mithraic SL, ZET, ÜLW, H. Title: Mithra was a Zoroastrian divinity of the oath. Zarvan: the Zoroastrian time-father creator, the father too of Ahriman and Ormuzd, recurring figures in Sebald’s work. The Zurvanist creation myth holds that Zurvan, or Zarvan, promised to sacrifice, or pray, for a thousand years for descendants (who would then be able to create everything in the world). Before the period was finished, however, he began to have doubts that his wishes would be fulfilled, and at that moment he conceived the twins Ahriman (for doubt) and Ormuzd (for sacrifice). The sea-goat is Capricorn, created when Pan leaped into the sea to escape the Titan Typhon, growing a fish’s tail as he did so. The sea-goat is a symbol of renewed vitality and new beginnings. The oldest world egg myth, a symbol for the beginning of all things, goes back to the Sanskrit scriptures.