On The Natural History Of Destruction [Paperback]

Sebald contemplates the different causes for this persistent silence. For example, basing himself on a range of contemporary sources, he confronts the reader with a detailed description of the Hamburg firestorm. As disturbing as his account is, Sebald’s reflective style makes it readable. His objective reporting neither criticises the Allies’ campaign nor does he apologise for German actions leading to the war. He wonders, though, whether the depth of the traumatic experiences of this and other air attacks may have left many people numb and dazed, unable to express their reactions for a long time. The account of a young mother wandering through the station confused and stunned is one of several examples. Her suitcase suddenly opens onto the platform revealing the charcoaled remains of her baby.

Sebald’s intent is not to shock but to explain the deep sense of loss that must have been felt by people like her. He further contends that at that time in the war, the growing acceptance of guilt for the Nazi’s atrocities led in many civilians to an acknowledgment of justified punishment by the Allied forces. Last, not least, after the war many Germans experienced a ‘lifting of a heavy burden’ that they felt they had lived under during the Nazi regime. Concentrating on building the new Germany focused their minds on a better future. The publication (in German) of his Lectures in 1997 resulted in a range of reactions from readers. He reflects their varied views and comments in a postscript, thereby adding a fascinating 1990’s dimension to his “rough-and-ready collection of various observations, materials, and theses”.

The three authors who are the subject of the essays in this volume may be better known to students of German literature and culture. They represent a fine example of Sebald’s skill as a contemplative and sensitive literary critic. At the same time, these essays complement Sebald’s Lectures in a more fundamental way. In terms of coming to terms with the Nazi period and its atrocities, each one represents a specific type of German with his own means and ways of dealing with the recent past. Alfred Andersch is presented as having reinterpreted his personal history to fit his vision of self-importance in post-war Germany. Jean Amery, of half Jewish parentage, suffered through SS torture and survived various concentration camps. For the rest of his life, which he ended himself, he did not lose the nightmares of his torment. It was not until the mid-sixties, that he found his voice to impart his experiences in the form of essays on exile, genocide and resistance. Peter Weiss, who had lived in exile most of his life, found his self-expression mainly through painting and theatre productions until he published late in life his major fiction work, Aesthetics of Resistance.

This collection of “mediations on natural guilt, national victimhood, and the universal consequences of denying the past” is a significant socio-political document. Its importance for today’s reader goes beyond the concrete German situation. As it addresses more fundamental issues of dealing with a society’s traumatic past experiences, Sebald also confronts the need to develop the capacity to heal while learning and sharing the lessons from that past. Friederike Knabe, Ottawa Ontario

The book gets its title from a report by Solly Zuckerman, who had visited Cologne in the immediate aftermath of the war, and was overwhelmed by the devastation he saw. Sebald, many years later, tries to sift through the various writings on the subject and sort out the most trenchant observations of the war. But, he found this exceedingly difficult since most Germans tended to avoid the subject or treat it in overtly melodramatic tones. But, it was in such novels as Heinrich Boll's "The Silent Angel" and Hermann Kasack's "The City across the River," that Sebald found what he was looking for -- honest depictions of the massive bombing campaign and the impact it had on the German psyche.

In three additional essays, Sebald looks at writers who approached the subject. The first being Alfred Andersch, who he takes to task for his melodramatic depictions of WWII that seemed more an effort to compensate for his own shortcomings than in exploring the depths of the war. Andersch enjoyed wide spread popularity in Germany as a writer. Criticism tended to be muted. Not so with Sebald, who illustrates how Andersch reinvented himself, which served as a parable for the typical German after the war.

Sebald then looks at the writings of Amery and Weiss, who were survivors, and struggled throughout their lives to reconcile their feelings regarding the Holocaust. Sebald looks most closely at Amery whose writings were stripped of any heroic pretensions and gave readers an unvarnished look at the concentration camps. Weiss tried to explore the Holocaust through painting, but then turned to writing in an effort to give his experiences the full weight that bore down on his tortured soul. It is in these two essays that one sees the nexis for Sebald's more extensive book on the subject, "The Emigrants."

The essays are loosely written. The first was a series of lectures he presented in Zurich, and the others serve more as book reviews. But, in them one finds much food for thought as Sebald was one of the more probing writers of our time.