Charcoal: The Phantom Traces of W.G. Sebald

Abstract

This article provides an introduction to Sebald's Vertigo, The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, and Austerlitz, as well as an analysis of the relationship between the discourses of history and literature in these works. The essay examines the major stylistic traits of Sebald's 'novel-memoirs,' and—through the author's exploration of colonialism and the Holocaust—shows how the figure of displacement functions to complicate the traditional genres of literature and history. The essay concludes that 'Writing as displacement allows for the astonishing conjunction of times and places that enables us to utter, and, therefore, to respond to, the phantom traces of the past as they reappear.' Sebald's art, then, in its encounter with the oblivion of history, acts as a piece of charcoal: burned, but therefore able to be used as a tool for drawing one more image.