BOOK OF THE MONTH
After Nature
by W G Sebald
0241141370 (Hamish Hamilton)
Reviewer: Tim Fowler, Manager, Collection Development — Lindsay and Croft
When W G Sebald was killed in a car crash in the winter of 2001 there still remained an untranslated work awaiting publication in English. 'After Nature' was first published in Germany in 1988, and the curious sequence his works have appeared in translation means that his final book for many is in fact his first. 'After Nature' represents the first fitful utterances of what arguably became one of the most constantly astonishing authorial voices of the twentieth century's final decade.
'After Nature' is what Sebald himself described as 'a long prose poem', although anyone familiar with the rest of Sebald's work could argue that the ethereal quality of all of his books makes each and every work poetic. In fact, Sebald's most troublesome aspect is just how to classify his work. All of his books show touches of biography, autobiography, memoir, travelogue and fiction, and the sign of his true genius is just how readily he can alternate between them all and still hold the narrative together so effectively.
The ambiguity is less apparent in this first work, which consists of three stories told in verse. Each tale deals with a different figure; the first with 16th century German painter Grunewald; the second with the 18th century explorer and botanist Sheller, and lastly the author himself, but it is in this final section alone that the fully formed, truly recognisable Sebald emerges.
Loosely based around interpretations of nature and our different conceptions of it through the disciplines and ages, each tale is a moral argument, which uses historical contrasts to focus the narrative on a collective vision. The giant imaginative strides that Sebald takes to encompass this vision range from passages describing Alexander the Great and his confrontation with the Persian King Darius, to his own contemporary vision of himself at rest ranging around his adopted Norfolk Coast. Anyone familiar with Sebald's work should immediately be at home with such giant leaps and the power of the descriptive imagery he invokes to arrive there.
Whilst reading 'After Nature', it is worth reminding yourself that the work is in translation, so beautifully is it accomplished by Michael Hamburger. It is also a credit to the translator that although Hamburger has not translated any of Sebald's previous work, he retains the voice of those that have, and presents an easily recognisable Sebald to the world.
'After Nature' succeeds in spite of its slight nature in comparison to the rest of the author's work, mainly because of the strong final section, because as always it is the dichotomy between the authentic Sebald and the illusionary one that provides his most haunting passages. However, the real value of the book is in the illumination it provides as to the future direction of his work.
'After Nature' hints at a quiet genius — we were not to be disappointed.
