Austerlitz

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And this brings us to the meta-fictional layer of this book: to me, it is essentially about time, and how we as individuals are in or out of time, are struggling with time, not getting a grip on it and also not able to get away from it. That, in a nutshell is the tragedy of the story of Jacques Austerlitz: this isolated, hyper introverted man, the observer of the outside of things (in the beginning of the book he talks incessantly about the architecture and construction history of what he sees around him), this man initially seems to live outside of time; but through his prolonged narrative he shows that – to his horror – he has discovered that he is inextricably linked to a very grave episode of human history, namely the Holocaust. This discovery is recounted through a process of slowly scraping his memory, like an archaeologist does, until he comes to the point where he is confronted with what he apparently has suppressed all his life (so there is quite a lot of Freud in this book too). Napoleon’s great counterstroke was to be delivered against the Pratzen Heights by the French center. This was composed of Soult’s corps, with Bernadotte’s in second line. On the left, around a fortified hill that the French had dubbed the Santon, was Jean Lannes’s corps, supported by the cavalry reserve under Joachim Murat. The general reserve consisted of the Imperial Guard and Nicolas Oudinot’s grenadiers. Battle of the Three Emperors Jacques Austerlitz, the main character of this WG Sebald book, is one of those scholars, a passionate philosopher, a man in search of his past, that of his family. What was his life like before the age of 4 and a half? Has he always called Austerlitz? Has he still lived in Wales, in a pastor's family? Austerlitz will transport you to the depths of human soul. This is a compelling narrative into time and reality that brilliantly encapsulates the depths of the ephemera and the apogee of the eternal in postmodern fiction. Memory and presence converge into an abstract reality. The scintillating photographs spread throughout the novel give a harrowing approach to the emotionally charged storyline. Sebald’s writing is fresh and seductive, with a unique attitude to immerse you into the limelight of humanity and deconstruct your deepest fears into simple factual realities. A song that never ends… But really, this “review” is simply an excuse to provide some links to a few Lieder ohne Worte- throughout my reading of Austerlitz this was the music floating through mind:

The French army had some 9,000 casualties in the Battle of Austerlitz, while Russian and Austrian allied forces had about 15,000 casualties. In addition, about 11,000 Russian and Austrian troops were captured. Translated from the French into English, with a very well done translation that can make or break a good book, this was an incredibly readable, if not entirely scholarly, look at the War of the Third Coalition. Although Claude Manceron is indeed quite French, he is not a Bonapartist, nor a Republican over much, but an honest, largely unbiased observer, which is what a historian should be. (Admittedly, I was expecting a bit of Bonapartism going into this one, silly American expectations and all).Austerlitz forces us to reflect on man's vanity and specific human constructions, fortresses obsolete and overcome by the progress they have been completing. Constructed to defend and ultimately used to kill innocent people, built modern libraries to promote the culture and leave a trace in the history of their initiator. And finally, unsuitable for promoting culture, a book made to recall a past that we seek to move aside, the importance of traces of spent not forgetting a message from a German anti-Nazi author. In this book, Claude Manceron recreates Austerlitz minute by minute, hour by hour. The reader becomes a privileged witness; we are in the headquarters of the Emperors as they prepare to trap the Grande Armee; in the bivouac of Napoleon where his plan, elaborated bit by bit, changes the trap into a countertrap. We stand on the hill with Soult; charge with the Imperial Guard. What are we to make of this? In some ways, the account is emblematic of many ostensibly ineffectual lives, of an academic intelligence wasted in a grandiose intellectual project that requires years of taking notes but never leads to the grand book that should have resulted from it, until the narrator decides to burn all the accumulation of material in a small bonfire in the garden of his terrace house. But, at the same time and in a way that is highly distinctive, the book provides a strangely transcendent and hypnotic sense of the power of history and of the relationship between an individual and the accidents of their life. Mesmeric, haunting and heartbreakingly tragic. Simply no other writer is writing or thinking on the same level as Sebald' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times With long, winding sentences and reported speech, it is written (and translated into English by the revered Anthea Bell) with a poetry and sensitivity that earn Sebald’s prose adjectives such as meditative, dreamlike and contemplative.

At first sight, Austerlitz is a story of a man who looks for traces of his lost family and struggles to reconstruct his past. I think it would be easier to enumerate the things this book is not than enlist what it is: a Holocaust testimony, a philosophical treaty on time, an essay on architecture, language, photography, nature and travelling, a fictional biography, a psychological study, a Bildungsroman, a historical fiction, an adoption story, to name just a few. The way the photos converse with the text is astonishing and the fact that they are fictional makes me admire W.G. Sebald’s creativity even more. Austerlitz has a distinctive hallucinatory feel about it, its seeping, overflowing pain making it both subdued and unforgettably compelling. You feel this narrative – its undercurrent of the most inextinguishable emotions of humankind – more so than reading it. En ese momento, contemplando las ruinas de la vieja estación, tiene una revelación: él ha estado allí, de niño. Puede verse a sí mismo con cuatro años, abrazando una vieja mochila, sentado en un banco, en un país que no conoce y rodeado de extraños a los que no entiende. Asustado, esperando a que vengan a recogerle. Esa primera revelación sobre su origen, ese pequeño hilo suelto en la tupida manta bajo la que se ha estado escondiendo del pasado durante toda su vida, le va a embarcar en una interminable investigación sobre sus raíces y su identidad. Tirando de ese hilo descubrirá poco a poco la verdad sobre su infancia y sobre el terrible destino del que escapó en 1939, pero al mismo tiempo va a ir deshaciendo la manta —que él creía que le protegía y que en realidad le estaba asfixiando— hasta quedar completamente desnudo ante la verdad. Le fotografie, bellissime, spezzano la lettura: e più ci si avvicina alla fine e più sembra che aumentino e compaiano anche le prime interruzioni, i primi spazi bianchi: proprio quando il libro sta per finire, e io non lo volevo affatto lasciare, volevo che continuasse, senza sosta.

This book received the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2019, it was ranked 5th on The Guardian's list of the 100 best books of the 21st century.***** Trevor Dupuy attended West Point, graduating in the class of 1938. During World War II he commanded a U.S. Army artillery battalion, a Chinese artillery group, and an artillery detachment from the British 36th Infantry Division. He was always proud of the fact that he had more combat time in Burma than any other American, and received decorations for service or valour from the U.S., British, and Chinese governments. After the war Dupuy served in the United States Department of Defense Operations Division[1] from 1945 to 1947, and as military assistant to the Under Secretary of the Army from 1947 to 1948. He was a member of the original Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) staff in Paris under Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower and Matthew Ridgway from 1950 to 1952. The narrator, who had Jacques Austerlitz as a teacher, talks with him. Jacques is now a lecturer at a London art history institute. But he has had so many other interests, so many different passions, so many other lives, so many other trades. Io sono stato rapito da subito, dalle descrizioni e divagazioni architettoniche, che con me trovano terreno fertile e lettore interessato, pronto a riconoscere la bellezza delle parole e dei mattoni, delle fortezze militari e delle stazioni e delle banche, di tutte le 'cattedrali' che il capitalismo ha dedicato alla propria glorificazione.