What Corsica Represents: W. G. Sebald’s Poetics in “The Alps in the Sea”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3986/pkn.v48.i3.05Keywords:
German literature, imagology, Corsica, Sebald, W. G.: Campo Santo, tourism, aesthetics of destructionAbstract
The article analyzes the destruction of Corsica’s flora and fauna in “The Alps in the Sea” (“Die Alpen im Meer”), a work of prose by W. G. Sebald published in 2001 and included in the posthumous volume Campo Santo in 2003. The article reflects upon Sebald’s approach to travel and tourism, as well as upon the devastation of the island of Corsica over the centuries, as a metonymy of Europe’s decadence. The literary techniques applied in “The Alps in the Sea,” such as the retelling of Gustave Flaubert’s “Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller” (“La légende de Saint-Julien l’Hospitalier”) and the apparent convergence of the story’s elements in several key paragraphs, are understood in the article as fundamental characteristics of Sebald’s poetics. In turn, Sebald’s poetics is approached with a hypothesis that rethinks—along with several studies of the author’s oeuvre and with Jacques Rancière’s interpretation of Sebald’s 1995 novel The Rings of Saturn (Die Ringe des Saturn)—the technique of obliquity, a device defended by Sebald himself and deployed by many influential interpreters of his oeuvre.
References
Flaubert, Gustave. “The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller.” Three Tales, by Gustave Flaubert, translated by Arthur McDowall, New Directions, 1924, pp. 75–121.
Gilloch, Graeme. “The ‘Arca Project’: W. G. Sebald’s Corsica.” A Literature of Restitution: Critical Essays on W. G. Sebald, edited by Jeannette Baxter et al., Manchester University Press, 2013, pp. 126–148.
Gray, Richard T. Ghostwriting: W. G. Sebald’s Poetics of History. Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.
Kunze, Lisa. “The Corsica Project.” W. G. Sebald in Context, edited by Uwe Schütte, Cambridge University Press, 2023, pp. 110–118.
Meyer, Sven. “Editorial Note.” Campo Santo, by W. G. Sebald, translated by Anthea Bell, edited by Sven Meyer, Modern Library, 2006, pp. vii–ix.
Moyà, Eduard. “Isola rasa: Reimagining Mallorca and Ibiza as a Blank Canvas for Tourism in Travel Fiction.” Primerjalna književnost, vol. 48, no. 3, 2025, pp. 9–27.
Rancière, Jacques. The Edges of Fiction. Translated by Steve Corcoran, Polity, 2019.
Ruby, Ryan. “Privatized Grand Narratives.” New Left Review, no. 131, 2021, pp. 131–144.
Schütte, Uwe. “Literary Prizes.” W. G. Sebald in Context, edited by Uwe Schütte, Cambridge University Press, 2023, pp. 322–330.
Sebald, W. G. Austerlitz. Translated by Anthea Bell, Penguin Books, 2011.
Sebald, W. G. Campo Santo. Translated by Anthea Bell, edited by Sven Meyer, Modern Library, 2006.
Sebald, W. G. “A Conversation with W. G. Sebald.” Interview by Joseph Cuomo. The Emergence of Memory: Conversations with W. G. Sebald, edited by Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Seven Stories Press, 2010, pp. 93–118.
Sebald, W. G. “A Poem of an Invisible Subject.” Interview by Michael Silverblatt. The Emergence of Memory: Conversations with W. G. Sebald, edited by Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Seven Stories Press, 2010, pp. 77–86.
Sebald, W. G. The Rings of Saturn. Translated by Michael Hulse, Vintage, 2002.
Sebald, W. G. Vertigo. Translated by Michael Hulse, Harvill, 1999.
