harris (2001) - memory and photography in w.g. sebald's die ausgewanderten

7/27/2019 Harris (2001) - Memory and Photography in W.G. Sebald's Die Ausgewanderten

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The Return of the Dead: Memory and Photography in W.G. Sebald's Die AusgewandertenAuthor(s): Stefanie HarrisSource: The German Quarterly, Vol. 74, No. 4, Sites of Memory, (Autumn, 2001), pp. 379-391Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Association of Teachers ofGermanStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3072632Accessed: 18/08/2008 04:24

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STEFANIEHARRISNorthwesternUniversity

The Return of the Dead: Memory and Photography inW.G.Sebald's Die AusgewandertenW.G.Sebald's Die Ausgewandertenbe-ginsat the end,with aphotographof a cem-etery in the shadow of an enormoustree.'Encounteringthis image, the readermayinitially assume that the photographper-haps presentsthe location nwhichthe nar-rative will unfold,and this assumptionap-pearsto bereinforcedwhen withinthe firstten lines of the work,the narratorrefersto"einemRasenfriedhof" A 8) and its trees.2However,one soonfinds that the graveyardis only peripheral n fixing the locationofthe narrator's eventual destination. No

scene willbeexplicitlyset in the graveyard,thus leavingus to wonderat its inclusion.As we continue to read, we may concluderetrospectivelythat the photograph hadprovisionallyannounced the subjectmat-ter pursued thematically in the book-namely,the deaths of the four men whosebiographieswill follow,and more broadlythose of all whoperished n the Holocaust.The photographwould thus serve to pre-pare us for the text, to underscoreperti-nent themes, and to illustrate abstractideas.Examiningthe picturemoreclosely,we note the visual details:the tombstonesareaskewand the grassis overgrown,pre-senting a scene of neglect, of a cemeterythat has been forgotten.This qualityof ne-glect certainly resonates throughout thepages of the text, for example in the de-scriptionsof the run-downEnglish estatein the first sectionor the accumulatingde-bris and disintegrationof the city of Man-chester found in the fourth section. Fur-ther,the photograph s laterdoubled n the

images of an overgrownJewish cemeterythat the narratorvisits towardthe end ofthe work (A 334-36). In a work that in-cludes so many photographic images-seventy-eightin the Germanedition-wemust ask,however,dothey merelyservetoillustrate the narrative?3Alternatively, stheir function only that of introducingamode of factuality into a narrative thatmight otherwise be read as fiction?Or istheresomething nthe natureofphotogra-phy,in the temporaland spatial frame ofthe photographicimage, that presents aparticular elationshipo deathandtomem-orythat exceedsthe symbolicmodeof thelinguistictext in whichthe imagesareem-bedded?Sebaldwill includevisual imagesnotbecause heyunderscorehe writtennar-rativebut becausethey presentthe readerwiththat whichthe text alonecannot.In a recentinterview,Sebaldaddressesthe questionconcerningthe difficultclas-sificationof his booksbysaying:"Factsaretroublesome.The idea is to make it seemfactual,though some of it mightbe inven-ted"(Atlas282).Here,Sebaldseems to ac-knowledge he problematicpositionof aes-thetics in relationshipto the representa-tion of the Holocaust introduced at leastsinceAdorno.Seen in this light, one couldconclude hat Sebaldemploysphotographsinhisworksnot fortheirpictorialvaluebutonly their referentialcharacter-in otherwords, the photographs verify somethingin the world, or to borrow from RolandBarthes, they are the "certificateof pres-ence" for the thing that has been there

The German Quarterly 74.4 (Fall 2001) 379


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THEGERMANUARTERLY(87).4The photos would thus serve as in-controvertibleevidence of the past (as dothejournalanddiaryentries that are bothphotographed and transcribed into thebook'spages),andwouldseem to add thatelement of "factuality."However, he nar-rator also includes a photograph hat is aknownforgery, ndquestionsat timeswhe-ther "dieseBilder nicht triigen"(A 72). Incontrast to what we have cometo know as"documentaryiterature,"Sebald both ex-ploits and denies the documentarystatusof the photograph,promptingus to lookbe-yond the simple reading of these photo-graphsasmerelyenhancing he non-fiction-al elementsof the text and to ask how theymight functionwith and against the lan-guageof the text itselfin order o communi-cate a particular elationship o the past.This first photograph s dominatedbythe imposingcentral figure of a tree thatcasts its dark shadowover the scene (A7).Its livid centercannotbe read as we mightread a text. It resists intelligibility,which is to say that it cannot be de-coded in the prescribedways whichculture provides.As a lacuna in thework,the image presents"dieLaguneder Erinnerungslosigkeit" A 259) or"dievon blinde Flecken durchsetzteVergangenheit" A 80) that afflictnotonly the narrator'ssubjectsbut alsothe narrator'sand our own relation-shipto the past. The firstphotographthus bringstogetherthe fundamentalissues of the novel-the imperativeofmemory and forgetfulness, the rela-tionship to death and the past-thatthe linguistic text alone is unable toreconstitute.Sebald'sbook, publishedin 1992,is made up "vier lange Erzdhlungen"of the lives of four men, told in a mannerthat becomes increasingly detailed andmore complex with each account. In allfourcases,the narratorhas hadapersonalencounter, f onlybriefly,with the primarysubject- the retireddoctorHenry Selwyn,

the former schoolteacher Paul Bereyter,the narrator's own great-uncleAmbroseAdelwarth,and the painterMax Aurach.5All exiled from their countries of birth(whetherphysically,psychologicallyor incombination), he fourmen share feelingsof intense isolation anddespair, he resultof a tragic historythat, if not the direct ef-fect, is at least tangentiallyrelated to theHolocaust. Having escaped death duringthe war,they are hauntedby intense mel-ancholyandhomesickness, loss, exile and,eventually, suicide. All suffer, in otherwords, a total severing of ties "in dersogenanntenwirklichenWelt" A 161).Bi-ographiesof the four men emergethroughthe narrator'svoicevia the narrator'sownmemories of these meetings;by way of in-formation he narrator s providedby oth-ers (notablythree female informants,onefor each of the lastthreestories); he narra-tor'sarchivalresearchandtravels;and notleast,by wayofphotographsand otherdoc-

umentsreproducednthe text. The work sthus as muchastoryof the narratorandhisattemptto writethese storiesas it is a tell-ing of the stories themselves. That is, theworkis an interrogationof how these his-tories are to be representedandtold. As a

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result, the book is difficult to classify interms of traditional genre, but is rathercomposed of heterogeneous elements, a hy-brid of non-fiction and fiction, fact andimagination, photographs and text, biogra-phy and autobiography. Indeed towardsthe beginning of the section on Paul Berey-ter, the narrator criticizes the potential forflights of fancy and the faculty of the imagi-nation in his reconstruction of the past:

Solche Versucheder Vergegenwartigungbrachten michjedoch,wie ich mir einge-stehen muBte, dem Paul nicht naher,hochstens augenblicksweise, n gewissenAusuferungen des Gefiihls, wie sie mirunzulissig erscheinen und zu deren Ver-meidung ich jetzt aufgeschrieben habe,was ich von Paul Bereyter weil3und imVerlaufmeinerErkundungen iberihn inErfahrungbringenkonnte. (A 45)

In a sense, Sebald's entire work is a self-conscious examination of this problem ofthe narrator's "wrongful trespass"-howdoes one tell the story of the past, an-other's past, without lapsing into senti-mentality, or worse, distorting any com-prehension of the past altogether?6 (Wenote, for example, that at least one of thestories is explicitly written in reactionagainst an obituary which had ignored thissame narrative demand). How does one, asthe author regrets toward the end of thenovel, adequately represent the subject ofthe narrative after having recognized "dieFragwurdigkeit der Schriftstellerei iiber-haupt" (A 345)? These are, of course, notquestions being raised for the first time inresponse to German literature that enga-ges a re-examination of the past and morespecifically, German-Jewish relations be-fore, during, and after the Holocaust. How-ever, in Sebald's text we find a provocativestrategy whereby the language of the nar-rative is complemented by and juxtaposedwith photographs-photographs of cities,buildings, graveyards and people. Whatfollows will not be an argument that Se-bald valorizes the photograph over lan-

guage in the representation of the past,but rather he employs the two media intandem precisely in order to address ques-tions of representability more generally.In the growing critical literature on Se-bald, surprisingly little attention is given toa detailed examination of the photographsthat are interwoven with the text. The pho-tographs are thus generally subordinatedto a reading that addresses only its lin-guistic cues. In these otherwise thoughtfulanalyses, the photographs serve merely to"illustrate" the stories narrated linguisti-cally (Parry 418) or model the ambivalentstatus of fact and fiction in the texts(Schlank 225). Although Arthur Williamsbriefly foregrounds the photograph in hisessay, it is only within the context of Se-bald's "post-modern aesthetics" (85). Heretoo, however,a discussion of the photographsinevitably serves to highlight Sebald'sprose through which the meaninglessnessof the photographs is ultimately "transcen-ded" (Williams 87). In other words, mean-ing would not only be possible but fully at-tainable in the prose alone. Sebald's com-plex work resists the inherent duality ofthis reading, however. We might insteadborrow Andreas Huyssen's description of"twilight memories" to better formulatethe stakes motivating the mutual play ofthe two media in Die Ausgewanderten:

The twilight of memory, hen, is not justthe result ofa somehow naturalgenerati-on of forgettingthat could be counterac-ted throughsome formof a more reliablerepresentation.Rather,it is given in thevery structures of representation itself.The obsessions with memory in contem-poraryculture must be read in terms ofthis doubleproblematic.Twilightmemo-ries are both: generationalmemories onthe wane due to the passing of time andthe continuingspeedoftechnologicalmo-dernization, and memories that reflectthe twilight status of memoryitself. (3)

Sebald will explicitly address the struc-ture of representation, proposing an alter-

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THE GERMANQUARTERLYnative to either image or text in isolation."So also kehren sie wieder, die Toten"(A 36). Thus concludes the first of the fourstories ofwhich DieAusgewanderten is com-posed.Although we may read this statementin many different ways, that the dead re-turn to us by way of our memory of themand their continued presence in our emo-tional lives, or that they are made presentto us again in our minds by our recountingof stories past, this statement is, not leastof all, to be read quite literally. For here thestatement refers to the cadaver of an oldfriend of the protagonist of the first story, amountaineer who disappeared into an Al-pine crevasse at the outbreak of WWI, andwhose body was "released" from the gla-cier some seventy-two years later, almostto the day: "die Uberreste der Leiche [...]vom Oberaargletscher wieder zutage ge-bracht worden waren" (A 36). As thiscorpse, only provisionally buried, announ-ces, the dead are never put to rest, never re-deemed. The dead do not only return in theform of bones discharged by glaciers, how-ever, but also through photographs:

Einmal ums andere,vorwartsund riick-warts durchblatterte ch dieses [Foto]Al-bum an jenem Nachmittag und habe esseither immer wieder von neuem durch-blattert,weil es mirbeimBetrachtenderdarin enthaltenen Bilder tatsachlichschien undnachwie vorscheint,als kehr-ten dieTotenzuriick oder als stiindenwirim Begriff, einzugehen zu ihnen. (A68-69)

The narrator's insistence on this motif-the return of the dead and our relationshipto the dead, which can be read simulta-neously as the relationship to the past-informs the discussion that follows.

In Picture Theory, his study of the rela-tionship of words and images, WJ.T.Mitch-ell works to replace the binary construc-tion that typifies most theorizations of that

relationship with a dialectical picture, orwhat he calls "the figure of the 'imagetext"'(9). By focusing on what he calls "textualpictures" (109) and "pictorial texts" (209),Mitchell provides an alternative to the tra-ditional view of a division of labor betweenimages and texts which has generally in-volved a clear subordination of one medi-um to the other. Thus for example, in a textwith illustrations or photographs the im-ages generally serve to illustrate, exempli-fy, clarify, ground, or otherwise documentthe text (the initial assumption perhaps ofthe reader of Sebald's work); and in a bookof captioned pictures, the texts serve to ex-plain, narrate, describe, label, that is tospeak for the otherwise illegible images.Mitchell turns his attention specifically tothe relationship of language and photogra-phy in a detailed analysis of four examplesof what he calls "photographic essays"(281). As opposed to a division of labor, theformal requirements for the "photographicessay" are predominantly marked by theinterrelationship of the two media, thusneither is merely illustrative of the otherbut rather photographs and text are-asJames Agee already stated in the introduc-tory text to his own photographic essay, LetUs Now Praise Famous Men (1939), pro-duced in collaboration with the photogra-pher Walker Evans- "coequal, mutuallyindependent and fully collaborative" (qtd.in Mitchell 290). Mitchell's justification ofthis compound term, as opposed to, say,photographic narratives or, more broadly,photographic texts, is pertinent to how onemight talk about the relationship of thesetwo media in Sebald's text. For the photo-graph and the essay are linked by somecommon attributes, including their rela-tionship to a common referential reality,the emphasis on a private point of view andtheir necessary incompleteness. If Mitch-ell's primary question is: What is the rela-tion of photography and language? Myquestion is, more specifically: How is thisparticular relation employed in the repre-

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HARRIS:The Return of the Deadsentation of memory, and particularlytraumatic memory or a memory of loss?Through the juxtaposition of media, Se-bald'shybridnovel raises questionsaboutthe roleofphotographyn the mediationofprivateand public memory.7However,be-yond this, the photographssuggest an al-ternative modelof culturalmemory tself.Myreflectionsof an author'suse ofpho-tography in a work that addresses trau-matic memoryis made within the contextof a tradition of photographictheory inwhichphotographysexplicitly inkedbothto a modern "loss of experience,"as evi-dencedby WalterBenjamin'scomparisonof the productionof the photographic m-age, and more specifically its temporalstructure, with the disruptive and trau-maticshockdescribedbyFreud(Benjamin,"Motive"),and to a reformulation of his-tory that involves the evacuation of tradi-tional conceptionsof meaningfulnessandcoherence,as in SiegfriedKracauer'swork.Kracauer'sssay,"DiePhotographie"1927),forexample,contrasts hephotographicm-age and what he terms the "Gedachtnis-bild" on the order of their relationshiptothe referent and to time (Kracauer25):

Die Photographie bewahrt nicht dietransparenten Ziigeeines Gegenstandes,sondern nimmtihn vonbeliebigenStand-orten als raumliches Kontinuumauf. Dasletzte Gedachtnisbilduberdauert seinerUnvergeBlichkeitwegendieZeit;diePho-tographie, die es nicht meint und faBt,muBwesentlich demZeitpunkt hrer Ent-stehung zugeordnetsein.(28-29)

If, for Kracauer, he memory image main-tains its significance through its attach-ment to a transparent truth value-orwhat hewillultimatelycall aperson's"Ge-schichte"or"Monogramm"Kracauer25-26,Kracauer'stalics)-the photographn-terrupts this unifying force. As a result,this lack of temporalor spatial context onthe part of the photograph leads to the"Vorldufigkeitllergegebenen Konfigura-

tionen" (Kracauer 39). In this sense, thecaption that Sebald's character Paul Be-reyterwrites on the backof aphotographofhimself, shirtless and in sunglasses,bask-ing in the light, would seem to pertain toall photographs:"zirka2000 km Luftlinieweit entfernt-aber von wo?" (A 83). InKracauer'sdescriptions,photographsareghostly,"unerl6st[e]" mages (32) in theirpresentation of a past which was at onetime present:Nun geistert das Bild wie die SchloB3-

frau durch die Gegenwart.Nur an Orten,an deneneineschlimmeTatbegangenwor-den ist, gehen Spukerscheinungen um.Die Photographie wird zum Gespenst,weil dieKostumpuppegelebthat. [...] DieschlimmeVerbindung,die in der Photo-graphieandauert,erweckt den Schauder.(31-32)Seemingly ripped from the clutches ofdeath because ofthe mannerinwhich timeis immortalized in the photograph, "inWirklichkeitst sie ihmpreisgegeben"Kra-cauer35).This evocationof"Spukerscheinungen"and "schlimmeTat[en]"and the "Schau-der" hey evoke is not only a responseto apast that can no longer be retrieved butsimultaneouslythe manner in which thephotographannounces the immolation ofthe subjectpictured.8To some extent, Se-bald evokes this shudder with all the im-ages reproduced n his book of those whowill, whether tangentially or directly,bevictims of the Holocaust. As MarianneHirsch states in Family Frames-a richandsubtleinvestigationoftherelationshipofphotography,memoryand anamnesis-the powerand silence of family photos ofHolocaust victims is particularlyacute inthat nothingon the surfaceof the picturesthemselves "revealsthe complicatedhis-tory of loss and destructionto which theytestify"(13).Wenote this, for example,inthe shysmileofBereyter's girlfriendHelenHollaender (A 71) who along with her

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THEGERMANUARTERLYmother was likelymurderedat Theresien-stadt, or Aurach's parents murdered atRiga (A 325, 326). The traumatic effect ofthe photograph is not limited to a functionof the specific magethat it presents,how-ever,but is an essential componentof itstemporalstructure.The relationshipof the photographtodeath and mourning is echoed in bothAndreBazin's and SusanSontag'scompar-ison of the photographto a death mask(Bazin 14; Sontag 154). But it is perhapsmostexplicitlypursued nRolandBarthes'smeditationon the ontologyofphotographyinhis shortbook,CameraLucida[Lacham-breclaire,1980].Throughhisreflectionsonphotography, tagedfirstthroughageneralexaminationof the mediumand then moreparticularlyas an attempt to speak of hismother's death through a photographofher,Barthesopens upthe problemsboth ofhow to representhistory and the peculiarrelationship to death announced by thephotograph.Foras Barthes states (andSe-bald's narratorechoes),thereis a "terriblething which is there in everyphotograph:the return of the dead" (Barthes 9).Barthes's initial question is: What essen-tial featuredistinguishesphotographyromthe communityof images?To this he an-swers that because of its unique relation-shiptothe referent,aphotographs the ab-solute Particular,the sovereign Contin-gency (and thereby,outside of meaning).Therefore, although one may examine aphotograph,onecannotspeakofthephoto-graph, whereby his initial question con-cerning a general theory of photographyappears to be invalidated. Two thingsemergefrom this conceptionof photogra-phy:one, the mannerin which the photo-graphserves to authenticate an existentialsingularity,or a non-repeatableevent;andtwo, the mannerin which this singularity,or absoluteparticularity, esists our abili-ties to talk about a photograph n an ab-stractwaybecauseeachphotographbearsa distinct and unique message. In other

words, the essential feature of photogra-phy complicatesthe very possibility thatwriting, or language more generally,canaddressits specificreferentiality.Further,therelationship o the referentsuggestsaninherent contrast between language andphotography,n that language is fictionalby nature due to its arbitraryrelation tothe referent, wherebya photographdoesnot invent but is "authentication itself"(Barthes 87). Thus there is always some-thing of the photograph hat is in excess ofnarrative,somethingthat elides the scru-tiny of the observer, or it is uncoded andthereforearrests nterpretationor the abil-ity to name it-Barthes's punctum. Thepunctum,offeredby chance,is that whichinterruptsthe gaze, breaks or punctuatesthe studium (generalfieldof interest).As distinct from memory or imagina-tion,the inimitable eature ofphotographyis the that-has-been.However,as Barthesmaintains, "by attesting that the objecthas been real, the photograph surrepti-tiouslyinducesbelief that it is alive[...] butbyshiftingthis realityto the past,the pho-tograph suggests that it is alreadydead"(79).Inotherwords,the past is madepres-ent as in Kracauer'sghosts. An equiva-lenceemergesbetween the absolutepastofthe photographicposeand deathin the fu-ture. Photography's"certainty" esults inan "arrestof interpretation" 107), there-fore one cannot "penetrate"the photo-graph (106), a quality of the photographthat Barthes refers to as "flatdeath"(92)andthat, as Elissa Marderhas shown, is adepictionof a death that can never be as-similated,transcendedorputto work.Dueto the peculiar status of the photographwith relationto its referent,the that-has-beenattached to all photographssuggestsan implicittrauma because of its irretriev-able "past-ness"andthe mourningof thatloss. However, a photograph does notmerelycause us to mournthe loss of a pastthat can neveragainberecuperatedbut si-multaneously announces our own death,

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HARRIS:The Return of the Deadas Sebald's narratoralso recognizes:"alsstunden wir im Begriff,einzugehen zu ih-nen" (A 69).As Kaja Silverman suggests in TheThresholdof the VisibleWorld, his recog-nition, particularly as a function of theunintelligibilityof thepunctum, mayopenupthe possibilityof an ethicalrelationshipbetween the viewer and the photograph.The "prick"of Barthes'spunctum resultsfrom the eye lookingfrom apositionthat isnot assigned or culturallyvalidatedin ad-vance, whereby "an otherwise insignifi-cant componentof the screen comes intocontact with one's own mnemic reserve"(Silverman 182). This is not to suggest,however,that one recuperatesthe photo-graph for one's own ends but rather pro-poses that through this contact we might"begiven the psychicwherewithalto par-ticipate in the desires, struggles, and suf-fering of the other,and to do so in a waywhich redounds o hisorher,ratherthan toour own, 'credit"' (Silverman 185). Thephotograph s thus neithercapturedbytheviewer as voyeur,nor is it integrated intothe storyof ourowncatharticredemption,but confronts us and touches us with thespecificityof loss.

The graveyard n the first photographof Sebald's workis not the only necropolisor city of the dead that we findpictured nthese pages.Manchester, he setting of thefourthsection, is describedas a cityof sin-gulardesolation-isolated, empty,still, de-caying-and inthis way,reifies the descrip-tive modifiersfoundthroughoutthe bookas a whole:deserted,overgrown,neglected,decaying, empty, rundown, a wasteland,hollow to the core, abandoned-"ein Ge-biet vontausendQuadratkilometern ber-ziehende, aus unzahligen Ziegelnerbauteund von Millionen von toten und leben-digenSeelenbewohnte Stadt"(A221).Al-

most onequarterof the photographs n thebook are of the exteriors of buildings ortheir interiors, in which no living personappears.A large portionof these are mas-sive structures such as hotels, that areseeminglyon the vergeof collapse.Othersare markedbybrokenwindowsorthe over-grownvegetation obscuringtheir view.Assuch, they presentus not onlywith an im-age of decay but also prompt us to ask:Where areall of the souls who once inhab-ited these structures? One is reminded,here,of the photographsof the earlytwen-tiethcenturyFrenchphotographer, ugeneAtget, of whose images Benjamin oncewrote: "Nicht umsonst hat man Aufnah-men vonAtgetmitdenen eines Tatortsver-glichen" ("Kleine Geschichte" 385). Al-thoughwe mightpursuethe "criminal" l-ement to be traced in the photographicimages that Sebald includes, more inter-esting in this context is Atget's self-pro-fessed motivation behind the selection ofhis images, namely to create a photogra-phicarchiveof preciselythose elements ofthe old Paris that weredisappearingundermodernization. ndeedhewasoccasionallyknown to attacha note to his photographsstating: "will disappear" (Eugene Atget,Pantheon).As such, the photographsbearwitness to a past that is about to be erasedfrom the topographyof the city.9Sebald uses photographsnot only forwhat can be shown but also to give evi-dence of that which can no longerbe seen.In otherwords,they providean imageof apast that has been clearedawayor coveredup. Two examples which highlight thismost stronglyare foundin the fourthsec-tion of the work. The first is an aerial viewof the cityof Manchester(A 232) on whichcan be seen the orderedgridof streets androwuponrow ofhouses-that is exceptforthe gapingblankspacein the center of theimage,the formerJewishquarterthat hadbeen a center for Manchester's argeJew-ish community duringthe inter-waryearsbeforethosewho lived therelater movedto

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THE GERMANQUARTERLYthe suburbs. In this vacated zone-anotherlacuna or "lagoon"-almost all traces of theformer houses which had occupied thisspace are gone. Only the perpendicularstreets framing open space and a single rowof empty houses remain, as if to give wit-ness to a past that has been swept away.This space that is left unfilled is perhapsless distressing to the narrator, however,than his experience upon visiting the townof Bad Kissingen, the home of Max Au-rach's mother during her adolescent years.Intending to visit the synagogue, he learnsthat it was destroyed during the devasta-tion of Kristallnacht and the rubble even-tually removed. In its place now stands anundistinguished municipal office building,a photographof which is reproduced(A332).The photograph cannot, however,be consid-ered merely a photograph of this buildingbut is simultaneously a photograph of theabsence of the synagogue which can neveragain be photographed. In other words, itis a photograph of an irretrievable pastand an irrecoverable loss, a photograph of apast consigned to oblivion. The narratorconcludes this section, remarking:

[Ich]spurte dochin zunehmendenMaB,daB die rings mich umgebende Geistes-verarmungund ErinnerungslosigkeitderDeutschen, das Geschick,mit dem manalles bereinigt hatte, mir Kopfund Ner-ven anzugreifenbegann. (A338)This cleaning up must be understood as aloss of material specificity. Looming be-hind this statement, however, is the threatthat the narrator's text itself would "cleanup" the uncodable specificity of the eventthat the photograph, by contrast, continu-ally asserts.Because of the high degree of struc-tural, narrative and visual repetition builtinto the four accounts, one could profitablyengage a reading of any of the four, or,across all four of the sections. However, Iwill focus the remainder of what follows onthe fourth section of Sebald's work, which

details the narrator's encounter with MaxAurach. The Aurach account is perhapsthe most illustrative in terms of questionsof representation and representability inboth image and text since these issues areexplicitly addressed here, not only by wayof a description of the painter's method,but also the narrator's own perceived fail-ure at portraying his subject adequately.Aurach, whose character is largely based onthe painter Frank Auerbach, is a solitaryartist whom the narrator befriends whenhe first moves to the city ofManchester as ayoung man. Through a series of meetingsover two decades, Aurach's story emergesas a kind of reverse chronology of frag-ments: from his adult life in Manchester, tothe story of his emigration from Germanyas a child, his mother's memoirs before thebirth of her son, and the narrator's ownvisits to the towns of his mother's youth. Asa child, Aurach was sent away from Mu-nich by his parents to the care of an uncle inLondon, and is later orphaned, his parentsvictims of the Holocaust. Aurach's recogni-tion of their death is a belated one, how-ever, and in this belatedness takes on thestructure of a trauma that is never satisfac-torily incorporated into his psychologicallife. Initially able to correspond with hisparents from the English boarding schoolto which he is sent, he tells the narrator:

Als die immermuhseligerwerdendeKor-respondenz m November1941abriB,warich zunachst,auf eine mir selbst straflicherscheinendeArt,erleichtert.DaB ch denBriefwechselnie mehrwiirdeaufnehmenkonnen, das ist mir erst allmahlichklar-geworden, a, um die Wahrheitzu sagen,ich weiB mmernochnicht,ob ich es ganzschonbegriffenhabe.Es erscheintmirje-dochheute,als sei mein Lebenbisin seineauBersten Verzweigungen hinein be-stimmt gewesen von der Verschleppungmeiner Eltern nicht nur, sondern auchvon der Verspdtung und Verzogerung, mitder die zunachst unglaubhafte Todes-nachricht bei mir eintraf und in ihrernicht zu fassenden Bedeutung nach und

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HARRIS:The Return of the Deadnach erst in mir aufgegangen st. (A285,my emphasis)

This description,particularlyin terms ofits relationshipto temporality,s similartothe model of traumatic experiencewhichFreud delineates in Jenseits des Lustprin-zips. Here, Freud defines trauma as abreach between mind andmemory,where-in "dasBewuBtseinentstehe an Stelle derErinnerungsspur" 25)- aphrase,wewillrecall,that Benjaminemployed n his owndiscussionof the paradigmaticmediumofmodernity, namely photography ("Mo-tive"612f., 629f.).10The traumaticexperi-ence is that which overwhelms memory,that which can never be effectively andfully integratedorinscribed n memory.Assuch, trauma acts as an interruption ofmeaningfulness in that the event is nevergivenpsychicmeaning through incorpora-tion into narrativememory.This, then, isthe breach that arises because the trau-matic event is present in the mind as apresent time of the present (that is, freefloating or uncathected) without beingpresentin memoryas apresenttimeofthepast. Aurach's description of his ownthoughtsconfirms his temporalproblem:

die Zeit [...] ist ein unzuverlassigerMal3stab,a, sie ist nichtsals das Rumo-renderSeele.Esgibtweder ineVergan-genheit noch eine Zukunft.Jedenfallsnicht urmich.Diebruchstiickhaftenr-innerungsbilder,on denen ich heimge-suchtwerde,haben den Charakter onZwangsvorstellungen.A270)

However, as already suggested, thisbreach or rupture, or discontinuous tem-poralstructure,is also consistent with thestructureof the photograph.As John Ber-ger describes in his collaborationwith thephotographer eanMohr,"Allphotographsare of the past, yet in them an instant ofthe past is arrested so that, unlike a livedpast, it can never lead to the present. Ev-eryphotographpresentsus with two mes-

sages: a message concerning the eventphotographedand another concerning ashockof discontinuity" (BergerandMohr86). Thus Berger asserts that the narra-tive time ofaphotograph s not identicaltothat ofcinema,norIwouldargueis it iden-tical to that of the linguistic text, becausethe narrativetime of the photograph s not"anticipatory" r "moving nexorablyfor-ward," but is rather "discontinuous"(Bergerand Mohr280). Tellingly,Aurachis not able to integrate this event into hislife'snarrative,not least ofall because of alinguistic loss. "[Es] hangt [...] mit dieserEinbuBe oder Verschuttungder Sprachezusammen" (A 271)- having stoppedspeakinghis mothertongue, the languageis buried alive, much like the lost moun-taineer of the first narrative.The photographwith which the bookopensreturns in slightlydifferentguise inthe midst of the Aurachsection,when thenarrator revisits the artist's studio aftermany years and finds him studying a re-production of Courbet's "Die Eiche desVercingetorix"A 268).We as readers can-not helpbut view the photographnot onlyas the reproductionof this nineteenth cen-tury masterpiecebut also as a visual echoof the first photographthe text presents.As if through a kind of double-exposure,Courbet'soak is now growingout of thisovergrown, country graveyard.And Au-rach seems to confirm this when he re-veals:

dasUngluckmeinesjugendlichenovizi-ats hattesotiefWurzel efaBtnmir,daBes spaterdochwiederaufschieBen,6seBliiten treiben und das giftige Blatter-dachubermiraufwolbenkonnte,dasmei-ne letztenJahre o sehr iberschattet ndverdunkelt hat (A 285-86)-a statement that couldhave come fromany of the subjects found in the book.These hauntings in his memories arepre-sented to us in the photographs found inthe text, in his descriptionsof his adoptive

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THEGERMANUARTERLYcity- the necropolis, Manchester-and inhis own drawings.The small room with its "seltsamenLichtverhaltnisse"(A 236) in which Au-rach works is layered with the material re-mains of the artist's media-paint andcharcoal-and decades of dust. His partic-ular method consists of sketching live mod-els rapidly and heavily with charcoal sticks,only to rub out the image with a rag andstart again in subsequent sittings, until thecanvas becomes worn through and has tobe patched.

EntschloB sich Aurach,nachdem er viel-leicht vierzigVariantenverworfenbezie-hungsweisein dasPapierzuruckgeriebenund durch weitere Entwiirfe iiberdeckthatte, das Bild, weniger in der Uberzeu-gung,es fertiggestelltzuhaben,alsaus ei-nem Gefiihl der Ermattung,endlich ausder Hand zugeben,sohatte es fiirden Be-trachter den Anschein,als sei es hervor-gegangen aus einer langen Ahnenreihegrauer,eingeascherter, n dem zerschun-denen Papier nach wie vor herumgeis-ternderGesichter.(A239-40)1

Aurach's portraits as palimpsests wouldseem to present an extreme contrast withthe instantaneous process of photography-but are perhaps more in keeping withthe long exposure time of the daguerreo-type, and not least of all because of the sus-picion of occult practices that surroundedthe early medium. In Robert Hughes'smonograph of the artist Frank Auerbach,this sketching method is portrayed in fortyphotographs of the progression of the draw-ing (200-01). As opposed to time-lapse pho-tography which preserves discrete mo-ments of continuous movement, this seriesof images presents the gradual capturingof the still model. The image thus presentsthe fortuitous elements of its lengthy ex-posure. In his "Kleine Geschichte der Pho-tographie," Walter Benjamin described theeffect of looking at a daguerreotype as fol-lows:

Aller Kunstfertigkeitdes Photographenund aller Planmafiigkeitin der Haltungseines Modells zum Trotz fiihlt der Be-schauer unwiderstehlichden Zwang, insolchem Bild das winzige Fiinkchen Zu-fall,HierundJetzt,zusuchen,mitdem dieWirklichkeitdenBildcharakter leichsamdurchgesengthat, dieunscheinbareStellezu finden, in welcher, im Sosein jenerlangstvergangenenMinute das Kunftigenoch heut und so beredt nistet, da3 wir,riickblickend, s entdeckenkonnen.(371)

And so it is perhaps not surprising thatAurach is likened to the earliest photogra-phers when, sitting together in a caf6 oneday, the narrator notices that Aurach iscovered with a metallic sheen as a result ofthe massive amounts of charcoal dustfloating around his studio-and his beingcovered in dust reminds Aurach of a news-paper article he once read, describing aphotographer's assistant, whose body af-ter so many years in the trade had ab-sorbed enough of the silver compounds,daB3r zu einer Art fotografischerPlattegeworden war, was sich [...] daran zeigte,daBdas Gesichtund die Handedieses La-boranten bei starkem Lichteinfall blauanliefen, sich also sozusagen entwickel-ten. (A 244)

The narrator's perceived failure at hisability to portray Aurach adequately inwords takes on the characteristics of the vi-sual artist's own method:Dieser Skrupulantismus bezog sich so-wohl auf den Gegenstandmeiner Erzah-lung, dem ich, wie ich es auch anstellte,nichtgerechtzu werdenglaubte,als auchauf die Fragwiirdigkeitder Schriftstelle-reiiiberhaupt.HundertevonSeitenhatteichbedecktmitmeinemBleistift- undKu-gelschreibergekritzel.Weitausdasmeistedavon war durchgestrichen, verworfenoderbis zu Unleserlichkeitmit Zusatzenuberschmiert.Selbstdas,was ich schlieB3-lich fur die "endgiiltige"Fassungrettenkonnte, erschien mir als ein mil3ratenesStuckwerk. (A 344-45)

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Thenarratorstopswriting,not because hehas successfully captured the essence ofhis subject,but ratherout of sheerexhaus-tion. In otherwords,he questionsthe verypossibility of representing the essentialquality of his subject-or what used to becalledthe soul-at least in the medium ofprint alone. Layered with scribbles andcrossings-out, the material accumulationof the text renders it illegible. Moreover,the passage is not unique, but only high-lights or callsattention to the torturedna-ture of the writingprocessfoundthrough-out the text. It is this conflict that isaccentuated in one of the few photogra-phicclose-upsfoundin Die Ausgewander-ten. The image is of a young boy leaningoverhis deskin apainfulpositionwhile hewrites (A255). The photographbringsto-gether the dual impulses of the work con-cerning the paradoxand, for Sebald, thestruggleofrepresentationsof the past.Forhow can the specificityof the photographcommunicateany intelligible mean-ing without recourse to culturalcodes that elide its specificity?Andhow would the abstractmode of thelinguistic symbol communicate thespecificity of an event without theimaginative element which alwaysrendersthat representationadistor-tion?The narrator is haunted by theghosts that demanda mode of repre-sentation that mightexceedthese di-chotomies. Sitting alone in an enor-mous virtually empty hotel on theverge of ruin, the narrator halluci-nates the sounds ofa ghostorchestra :,4-ireaching him, and imagines that inthe theater wings of this phantomhall arehung the photographshe once saw of theLitzmannstadtghetto in Lodz, an indus-trial center once known as polskiManczester.Likehis ownstories of thepast,the photographshad only been rediscov-ered in the mid-1980s in a small antiquedealer'sshopand were exhibited n Frank-

furt. Like so many of the photographsofManchesterreproduced n his own book,the photographsof the ghetto streets aredisquietinglyempty of the vast populacewho had populatedit. The final, long de-scriptive passage of Sebald's work is anekphrasisof one ghostly image that is de-scribedin detailbut never reproduced orus-something which perhaps calls tomindthe WinterGardenphotographat theheart of Roland Barthes's own book, aphotothat, as Barthessaid,is the centerofthe Labyrinth ormedbyallphotographs,aphotographthat couldfunction as the es-sence of the Photograph,but as such cannot be pictured for the casual viewer(Barthes73). The end of Sebald'stext de-scribesthreeyoungwomenas they sit at aloom,andalthoughtheir eyes areveiled tothe viewerbythe lighting in the room,thenarrator senses that they gaze directlyatthe viewer,who now takes the placeof thephotographer.

Die Weberin [...] auf der rechten Seite[siehtmich]so unverwandtund unerbitt-lich [an],daB ch es nicht langeaushaltenvermag. Ich iiberlege, wie die drei wohlgeheiBen haben-Roza, Luisa und LeaoderNona,DecumaundMorta,die Toch-ter derNacht, mit Spindelund FadenundSchere. (A 355)

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THE GERMANQUARTERLY

They present a loss that cannot be tran-scended and thus put to rest, will not stayburied, but will remain a haunting thatgazes relentlessly into the future, that re-turns again and again, that can not becleaned up or swept away.A past that mustbe passed on or else be consigned to obliv-ion, but that is threatened in the very act ofits communication. In their own collabora-tive work in image and text, John Bergerand Jean Mohr suggest that the two mediafunction as supplements:The photograph,irrefutable as evidencebut weak in meaning,is given a meaningby the words. And the words, which bythemselves remain at the level of genera-lisation,aregiven specificauthenticity bythe irrefutabilityof the photographs.To-gether the two them becomevery power-ful;anopenquestionappears o have beenfullyanswered.(Bergerand Mohr92)

That the question would be fully answeredis, I think, an impossible claim, but thatprovisional answers must be attempted is,as Sebald demonstrates, a necessity, lestthe past become forever consigned to thelagoons of oblivion.Notes

I amgratefulto theparticipantsoftheMLA2000 panel on "Sites of Memory,"especiallySusanne Baackmann,for their helpful com-ments on an earlierversion of this work.2Pagenumbersreferring o the photographsfrom Sebald's text describedin the essay arecitedparenthetically(A)throughout.3There areonly 76photographsreproducedin the English translation, The Emigrants(1996).4The combinationof photographand text isa componentofall of Sebald'sprosefiction,in-cludingSchwindel,Gefiihle;DieRingedes Sat-urn and his most recentAusterlitz,as well asnon-fictionworks such as the publicationof hisZurich ectures,Luftkriegund Literatur.5In the English translation,MaxAurach isMaxFerber.

6In his lecture celebrating"TheCentenaryofPhotography,"PaulValeryalsorefers to thedistinction between photographyand litera-ture,andmorespecifically,a splitthat has cer-tain consequencesfor a conceptionof history:

Since Historycan apprehendonly sensi-ble things,beingbasedon verbal testimo-ny relayedthroughwords,everythingonwhich it groundsits affirmations can bebrokendowninto things witnessed, intomoments that were caught in "quickta-kes"or couldhave been caughthad a ca-meraman,some star news photographerbeen on hand.All therest is literature.Allthat is left consists of those componentsofthe narrativeor of the thesis that origi-nate in the mind and are consequentlyimaginary,mere constructions,interpre-tations, bodiless things by nature invisi-ble to the photographiceye, inaudibletothe photographicear so that they couldnot have been observed and transmittedintact. (Valery196;Valery's talics).As I will argue, Sebald's work will inten-

tionallycomplicate his dichotomous ransmis-sion of the past,suggestingthat historyandlit-eraturemore thoroughlypermeateeach otherthan the accountfromValerywouldsuggest.7Seealso,Hirschand Silverman oraformu-lation of this relationship through differentcontexts.8As Pierre Bourdieusimilarlynotes in hisanalysisofamateurphotography:" P]hotogra-phy [...] is a matter of capturing the ephemeralandthe accidental,as it cannot save the fleet-

ing view fromcompletedisappearancewithoutconstitutingit as such"(191, n.8).9Seeespecially,the two letters Atget wroteto PaulLeon,DirecteurdesBeaux-Arts,n No-vember1920, n whichAtget urgesLeontopur-chase the photographic ollectionfor its archi-val value (EugeneAtget,Aperture7).Forif thephotosthemselves are not preserved, he indi-vidualgeographical ites of Paris will not onlyhave been lost fromthephysicalmapof the citybut also its public memory. In other words,these corners of Paris will be consignedto ob-livion.10For aninvestigationofBenjamin'srecourseto the languageof photography n his analysisof Modernity,see especially,Cadava."As both reviewers and critics of Sebald's

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HARRIS:The Return of the Deadtext have noted, the Aurach character is sub-stantiallybased on the Britishartist,FrankAu-erbach.In the Germaneditionof the work,oneof Auerbach's charcoal drawings, "Head ofCatherineLampertVI"(1980), is even repro-duced(A240; Hughes 186).Further,the simi-larity between the passages describingAurach'sstudio andmethodarestrikinglysim-ilar to the descriptions the art critic RobertHughes provides in his monographon Auer-bach. Indeed the degree of textual borrowingheresuggeststhat Sebald collects notonly pho-tographsforuse in his novels,but also textualfragments.

Works CitedAtlas,James A. "WG.Sebald:A Profile."ParisReview41 (1999):278-95.Barthes,Roland.CameraLucida:Reflections nPhotography.Trans. RichardHoward.NewYork:Hill &Wang,1981.Bazin,Andr6. "TheOntologyof the Photogra-phic Image."What s Cinema?Trans.HughGray Berkeley:U of CaliforniaP,1967.9-16.Benjamin,Walter."UbereinigeMotivebei Bau-delaire."GesammelteSchriften.1.2. Ed. RolfTiedemannandHermannSchweppenhauser.Frankfurt:Suhrkamp,1991. 605-53.. "KleineGeschichteder Photographie."Gesammeltechriften.I:1.Ed.RolfTiedemannand Hermann Schweppenhauser.Frankfurta.M.:Suhrkamp,1977.368-85.Berger,John, and Jean Mohr.AnotherWayofTelling.New York:Pantheon,1982.Bourdieu,Pierre, with Luc Boltanski, RobertCastel,Jean-ClaudeChamboredon nd Domi-niqueSchnapper.hotography: Middle-browArt.Trans.ShaunWhiteside.Cambridge:ol-ity,1990.Cadava,Eduardo.Words fLight:Theseson thePhotography fHistory.Princeton:PrincetonUI, 1997.EugeneAtget.ntro.Ben Lifson.New York:Aper-ture, 1980.EugeneAtget.Aselection fphotographsromthecollectionof theMuseeCarnavalet,Paris. In-tro. FrangoiseReynaud.Trans.GillBennett.New York:Pantheon,1984.

Freud,Sigmund.GesammelteWerke.Ed. AnnaFreudet al. Vol.13. London: mago,1940.Hirsch,Marianne.FamilyFrames:Photography,Narrativeand Postmemory.Cambridge,MA:HarvardU]E1997.Hughes, Robert.Frank Auerbach. New York:Thames &Hudson,1990.Huyssen,Andreas.TwilightMemories:MarkingTime n aCulture fAmnesia.NewYork:Rout-ledge,1995.Kracauer,Siegfried."Die Photographie."DasOrnament erMasse.Essays.Frankfurta.M.:Suhrkamp,1977.21-39.Marder,Elissa "Flat Death:Snapshotsof His-tory."Diacritics22.3-4 (1992):128-44.Mitchell,WJ.T.PictureTheory:Essayson VerbalandVisualRepresentation. hicago:U ofChi-cagoP,1994.Parry,Ann."Idiomsor heunrepresentable:ost-war fictionandthe Shoah."Journalof Euro-pean Studies 27.4 (1997):417-32.Schlant, Ernestine. The Language of Silence:WestGermanLiteratureand the Holocaust.New York:Routledge,1999.Sebald,W.G.Die Ausgewanderten.Vier langeErzahlungen.1992. Frankfurta.M.:Fischer,1994.Austerlitz.Muinchen:Hanser,2001. TheEmigrants.Trans.MichaelHulse.New York:NewDirections,1996..LuftkriegundLiteratur.MiteinemEssayzuAlfredAndersch.Miinchen:Hanser,1999.. Schwindel, Gefiihle. Frankfurt a.M.:Eichborn,1990..Die Ringe des Saturn. Eine englischeWallfahrt.Frankfurta.M.:Eichborn,1995.

Silverman,Kaja.The Thresholdof the VisibleWorld.NewYork:Routledge,1996.Sontag, Susan. On Photography.New York:Farrar, traus&Giroux,1977.Valery,Paul. "TheCentenaryof Photography."Classic Essays on Photography.Ed. AlanTrachtenberg.New Haven: Leete's Island,1980. 191-98.Williams,Arthur."TheElusiveFirstPersonPlu-ral:RealAbsencesnReinerKunze,Berd-Di-eterHiige,andWG.Sebald." Whose tory?'-Continuities n ContemporaryGerman-Lan-guageLiterature.Ed.ArthurWilliams,StuartParkes andJulian Preece. Bern:PeterLang,1998.85-113.

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