“THERE IS NO ANTIDOTE TO THE OPIUM OF TIME”: MEMORY, THE FLANEUR AND THE GHOSTS OF THE PAST IN W.G. SEBALD’S THE RINGS OF SATURN
“THERE IS NO ANTIDOTE TO THE OPIUM OF TIME”: MEMORY, THE FLANEUR AND THE GHOSTS OF THE PAST IN W.G. SEBALD’S THE RINGS OF SATURN

Summary/Abstract: A fictional account of Sebald’s journey on the coast of East Anglia, The Rings of Saturn can be analyzed as a “fiction of memory” (Neumann). Its primary concern is with cultural aspects of the past that have been ignored, downplayed or misinterpreted, so the narrator’s peregrinations and his subjective digressions point to larger issues of colonialism, exploitation or genocide. Memory as the human capacity for storing and retrieving the past is understood as variable, incomplete and selective- which makes it vulnerable to historical manipulation. At the same time these characteristics of memory reveal the role imagination plays in the working of memory. The theme of memory is linked to that of space and traveling and an important trope for the workings of both individual and cultural memory is the labyrinth. Photographs serve as the visual markings that order one’s way through the maze of memory as well as traces- pointing to the ramifications of the story. The figure of the narrator emerges as that of the flaneur, who, while apparently aimlessly strolling, picks up the remnants of the past in order to give a voice to the marginal, the liminal and the transitory.

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