Worshiping the dust. W. G. Sebald and reading in the tracks Cover Image

Oddanie czci kurzowi. W. G. Sebald i czytanie w tropach
Worshiping the dust. W. G. Sebald and reading in the tracks

Author(s): Muriel Pic
Subject(s): Polish Literature
Published by: Fundacja Terytoria Książki
Keywords: Sebald

Summary/Abstract: Few writers paid as much attention to dust as W. G. Sebald. The author of Austerlitz saw in it „the lowest sign of annihilation” and a “boundary between being and nothingness,” an elegiac way of making the dead present in the text. For Sebald, all the ways of reading the past were “reading (in) dust,” making this particular way close to prophesying. The author of the essay follows Sebald’s opinion, tracing various forms and manifestations of the “prophetic epistemological paradigm.” Reading the irregular, reading „what has never been written,” has also its political aspect of (re)thinking the past from the remains of destruction. This is how dust becomes critical and subversive matter.

  • Issue Year: 2021
  • Issue No: 17-18
  • Page Range: 144-152
  • Page Count: 9
  • Language: Polish
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