After Nature

by W.G. Sebald, Michael Hamburger (Translator)

After Nature, W. G. Sebald’s first literary work, now translated into English by Michael Hamburger, explores the lives of three men connected by their restless questioning of humankind’s place in the natural world. From the efforts of each, “an order arises, in places beautiful and comforting, though more cruel, too, than the previous state of ignorance.” The first figure is the great German Renaissance painter Matthias Grünewald. The second is the Enlightenment botanist-explorer Georg Steller, who accompanied Bering to the Arctic. The third is the author himself, who describes his wanderings amongst the landscapes scarred by the wrecked certainties of previous ages.

After Nature introduces many of the themes that W. G. Sebald explored in his subsequent books. A haunting vision of the waxing and waning tides of birth and devastation that lie behind and before us, it confirms the author’s position as one of the most profound and original writers of our time.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, German Literature, Germany, Nature, Philosophy, Literature

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Winfried Georg Maximilian Sebald was a German writer and academic. His works are largely concerned with the themes of memory, loss of memory, and identity (both personal and collective) and decay (of civilizations, traditions or physical objects). They are, in particular, attempts to reconcile himself with, and deal in literary terms with, the trauma of the Second World War and its effect on the German people.

At the time of his death at the age of only 57, he was being cited by many literary critics as one of the greatest living authors, and was tipped as a possible future recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Reviews

[Mir · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this in translation,
so I can't say for certain
maybe there is some metric by which it is poetry.
Maybe the lines are not merely
broken because Sebald felt like it.
Perhaps in German this is not prosaic --
by which I am not calling Sebald's writing
by any means quotidian but
I saw no reason it could not be
arranged in full text lines.
It would sound just the same,
it would be easier to follow,
it would save space and the lives of trees.
Did the trees do something to you,
morbid walker of Suffolk,
moor-mournful Sebaldus?
I like your prose, I do.
The Rings of Saturn was great.
This is like Rings watered down.
It even covers several of the same
subjects (Suffolk, sadness, Edward Fitzgerald)
and reads much the same, half
travel guide half thought-piece.
But less. Less than Saturn.
And I want more.
Line breaks are not more.

I

Matthias Grünewald
last great medieval artist,
rejector of Renaissance classicism.
Married to a convert Jew,
although Sebald insists the man
was gay for Neithart.

II

No portrait is known to exist of
Georg Wilhelm Steller
botanist, zoologist, physician, explorer,
drawer of this sea-cow.
Named after him, the species outlived
him by only twenty-five years.
Except his Jay all other
creatures named for him are now
extinct or in danger of it.

III

W.G. is it not a bit hubristic
to include yourself among these greats?
Well, let it slide.
The past is another country,
and anyway,
the man is dead.

[Luís · Rating 3 out of 5]

"After nature" reveals this author's originality, and we rarely see literary beginnings so singular and worthy of interest from the outset.

[Makis Dionis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Με δυσκολία έρχονται στο φως τα φτερωτά σπονδυλωτά της προϊστορίας, έγκλειστα στις πλάκες του σχιστόλιθου.
Όταν όμως αντικρίζω μια εικόνα με τις νευρώσεις της περασμένης ζωής, τότε σκέφτομαι πάντα πως κρύβει μέσα της πτυχές της αλήθειας.

Πόσο πίσω χρειάζεται να γυρίσει κανείς για να βρει την αρχή;

Ένα γλωσσικό αριστουργηματικό έργο τέχνης, ένα ποιητικό τρίπτυχο, με βασικό άξονα τη σύγκρουση ανάμεσα στον άνθρωπο και τη φύση (του)

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous book. 3 poems that are mini Sebald pieces to the core, without the usual accompanying images. There were points during reading each of the three poems where I would slightly lose my way, not knowing which direction Sebald was heading, no current bearings. Even yet, the wave of goosebumps and the presence of auditory gold were guaranteed. That’s rare.

Here is a beautiful portion of the third poem, Dark Night Sallies Forth, that spoke to me:

In a Chinese cricket cage
for a time we kept good fortune
imprisoned. The Paradise apples
grew splendidly, a good mass of gold
lay on the barn floor and you said,
one must watch over the
bridegroom as over a
scholar by night. Often
it was carnival time
for the children. Pink
cloudlets hung in the
sky. Friends came
disguised as Ormuzd
and Ahriman. But then unexpectedly
there was this thing with the elegant
gentleman at the opera and I found
a slowworm in the henhouse.
A crow on the wing lost a white
feather. The vicar, a limping
messenger in a black coat,
appeared on New Year’s morning
alone on the wide snow-covered field.
Ever since we’ve been arming ourselves
with patience, ever since sand
has been trickling through the letter box,
the potted plants have had a way of
keeping things to themselves.

[M. Sarki · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you enter the reading of this book as prose, and focus on not noticing the format, and just take in the words, it becomes obvious rather fast that this is a well-written piece of literature. I began by imagining all the words as verse collected instead into paragraphs, and by the last third it did not matter any longer that the text looked like poetry. I suppose this collection was called poetry because it was so lyrical and beautiful. Max Sebald, or another, shaping these words into "blank verse" also added to its claim of being poetry. Having the Poet Laureate of England write a blurb for the back of the dust jacket also acknowledges, and in some ways, confirms its claim of being poetry. But nonetheless and regardless, poetry it is or is not, but instead the beginnings of a too-short career in making historical artifacts that never cease to amaze. W.G. Sebald has a way of making any subject interesting just because he himself is so taken by it. He has a gift that engages even the most hateful and doubtful readers among us. And the more one reads and discovers of Sebald the better prepared to tackle these different types of formats as I had to learn the hard way. It is best not to stereotype in all of life but instead to look upon our journey as an unveiling.

[Uroš Đurković · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zvuči megalomanski - autobiografsko-esejistička poema u tri celine (prva o Matijasu Grinevaldu, izuzetnom nemačkom slikaru, druga o prirodnjaku Georgu Šteleru, a treća o samom autoru). Međutim, Zebald uspeva, a 'Posle prirode' postaje rasadnik ideja, motiva i atmosfere za njegova buduća dela.
Kao i ostatku Zebaldovog opusa i ovde je prisutna jednačina da je pisanje jednako putovanju - kroz prostor i vreme. A svako putovanje obrazuje i unutrašnje raskrsnice, koje kriju lucidna otkrića. Te mikroceline kao svojevrsni misaoni zavijuci učvršćuju doživljaj da je (i) čitanje lutalaštvo. I opet, odredište nije bitno već put.
A na tom putu saznao sam da je nesrećna sudbina svetaca vezana za podelu na polove (8), kao i da je prva toplokrivna životinja napravljena od strane čoveka parna mašina (62). Zapanjile su me Zebaldove izrazito čulne i izbrušene vizije - izuzetno snažne boje, neretko propraćene zanimljivim epitetom, igre svetlosti, enciklopedični nizovi sitnica, ali i neki dirljivi, gotovo filmski detalji. Među njima Šteler koji umire u Tjumenu, umotan u crveni kaput kao prebijena lisica ostavljena da leži na snegu (78) ili kako je Sunce drhtalo po obodu dok je pisac probao sočiva za naočare (96).
Boje i tihe mutacije svetla (98) propraćene su i muzikom - može se izdvojiti čitava skrivena simfonija unutar dela - od kamernih zvukova i odzvanjanja unutar katedrale, preko buke uličnih orkestara, do ulivanja u tišinu.
Ovo je i izuzetna knjiga o umetnosti. U tom svetlu ključna su autorova zapažanja o stvaranju i stvorenom. Dijalektika je poznata - mi kao bića prirode, podražavamo je, stvaramo ne-prirodnu prirodu, bežeći od nje, vraćamo joj se i sve vreme osećamo da koliko god aktivnosti našeg duha bile autentične, bez prirode ne možemo. Zebaldov put je tako ovde i više vezan za nekakvu romantičarsku raspravu o imaginaciji, nego za ekološku svest. Poema (ili poeme - kako god se uzme) senzitivna su skica sudbina (najmanje) tri životna modela - likovni stvaralac / proučavalac prirode / pisac. Ova trijada, unutar svoje krhke lične sudbine (Grinevaldove lične tragedije - porodične smrti, Štelerovo iscrpljujuće putovanje sa Beringom - otkrivanje novih vrsta i ekosistema, Zebaldov usud rođenja) iznova otkriva i stvara.
Iako nisam znalac vezan za istoriju likovne umetnosti, imam utisak da je Grinevald ustanovio jedan novi pristup religijskim temama - veoma ekspresivan i gotovo telesan. Savremenik (i saradnik) Direra, odškrinuo je vrata novom (pogermanisanom) biblijskom svetonazoru vidljiv od njegovog prikaza plavokose bebe Isusa sve do 'Ruganja Hristu' iz 1505. godine. Međutim, drugi slikar mi je ovom prilikom okupirao pažnju. Albert Altdorfer (ili, posrbljeno - Staroselić) i njegova čuvena slika 'Aleksandrova pobeda', jedna od najupečatljivijih prikaza kumulacije u istoriji umetnosti, gde mnoštvo vojske izgleda kao da se i dalje komeša, kao i nebo u pozadini na kome je i sunce i mesec. Jedna od autorovih želja je upravo da vidi ovu sliku - njeno spominjanje je kao kakav marker - spona između treće i prve celine. Putovanje je ostvareno tako i kroz sećanja drugih, kroz spomenike (prirode i/ili kulture) - u neprestanoj interakciji. I uz Altdorfera, još jedan sveprisutan motiv - sneg. Sneg Alpa. Sneg je, siguran sam, zavredeo čitavu književnoistorijsku studiju - od Tolstoja i Andrića do Orhana Pamuka.
Na samom kraju spominje se Afrika.
Terra incognita koja žudi da bude otkrivena?
Da bude prekrivena
pahuljama.

[Guillermo · Rating 5 out of 5]

«El hombre
es un animal, envuelto
en luto profundo,
con un abrigo negro,
forrado de piel negra»

[Oscar · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Del natural', de W. G. Sebald, no es una novela propiamente dicha, sino que es un poema en prosa. En este librito (apenas 100 páginas), Sebald plasma su amor a la Naturaleza (con mayúsculas) utilizando el lenguaje y sus conocimientos como nadie.

Esta obra está dividida en tres partes: la primera dedicada al pintor Grünewald, prácticamente un desconocido, que retrataba sobre todo santos, crucifixiones, eclipses... En la segunda parte nos habla del botánico Steller, que acompañó a Behring en una expedición a Alaska, y en la que queda clara su gran cultura y capacidad de observación (es mi parte favorita). Y, por último, en la tercera parte nos habla del pasado, la otra gran obsesión de Sebald, de querer poner en conocimiento de los alemanes su pasado más oscuro, deliberadamente puesto en el olvido colectivo.

Es un libro insólito, extraño, ni de lejos lo mejor que ha escrito este gran autor alemán fallecido prematuramente en accidente de coche cuando estaba en su mejor momento de creatividad. Su último libro, 'Austerlitz', puede que sea el mejor libro de los últimos 25 años, así, sin más.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ah, Sebald. After a short hike this morning, with some colleagues and students, the afternoon drifts toward evening. What better, than the book length series of three poems, After Nature. And this is the true Sebald. This belongs on the shelf alongside The Rings of Saturn, The Emigrants, and Austerlitz.

Better still to realize, only now, that two years ago while seeking to make the most of my fading time in Freiburg, on a train and bus trip to Colmar, France, and only entering the museum at Unterlinden so as to have a place to sit and to belong, I by chance had occasion to view and be changed by Grunewald's Isenheim Altarpiece which features prominently in the first part of this work by WG. What grace to have been granted this most Sebaldian of encounters with an artwork that Sebald himself found worthy of meditation.

To read the book at the most perfect moment, that too is grace.

[Mesoscope · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was prepared to give this long prose-poem a more critical review until one of the last cantos, part five of the third section, forced me to reevaluate. That piece is one of the most beautiful German poems I've read from the last fifty years.

Most of this poem reads like missing chapters from his novel Rings of Saturn, only with arbitrary line breaks. I think this points to a formal problem that, at least in these two works-the only works by Sebald that I've read thus far-he was not able to solve. His writing is neither prose nor verse and works equally well as either, but equally poorly as well. As a poem, I feel it lacks the conviction of a unifying conception, and he reads to me like a kind of collector or curator of impressions, and it must be said that his impressions are frequently of the same basic type, expressing a deep world-weariness and dukkha in the Buddhist sense of suffering the pain of existence, which he ties more or less explicitly to the historical trauma of growing up in aftermath of Nazi Germany.

He writes with a kind of astringent distrust of beauty, but in the rare moments he allows himself to write lyrically, to which he is clearly extremely well suited, it is not only felt as a momentary exultation, but as a relief - a relief from his oppressive insistence on discovering abject sorrow and decline in every impression. I have little appetite for the literature of the clinically depressed.

He is intelligent in a way that reminds me of certain post-Heideggerian philosophers, but he rarely surprises me with something truly new. And I think he gives too much of the intellect to his design, and not enough to the intuition. There is something brittle and fragile at the heart of this work.

The crowning image of the poem is his vision of the concupiscence, as depicted by Matthias Grünewald in a painting of the temptation of Saint Anthony. That is to say, he is horrified by the monstrous heart of nature, where life eats life, and the whole network is tangled in an endless sea of using and devouring. Or, as he puts it later:

Es sind nämlich
nicht ins Gleichmaß zu richten
die Entwicklungsbahnen großer
Systeme, zu diffus ist der Akt
der Gewalt, das eine immer
der Anfang des andern
und umgekehrt. Taurus
draconem genuit et draco
taurum, und es ist nirgends
ein Einhalt.

If you can't experience the givenness of that whole mess as itself miraculous and inexplicable, then nothing can save you. Every time I read Sebald, I am astonished that he didn't end his life by suicide.

[Ρένα Λούνα · Rating 5 out of 5]

Το πρώτο βιβλίο του Ζέμπαλντ που πέφτει στα χέρια μου, εξαιτίας του ομιχλώδους εξωφύλλου της Sharon-Louise Aldridge.

Ένα αμιγώς ποιητικό έργο, γλωσσικά προκλητικό, με κάποια λογοτεχνική δομή, ιδιαίτερα διαφορετικό και ιδιαίτερο απ’ ότι έχω διαβάσει μέχρι τώρα. Περίμενα πως εξαιτίας της ιστοριολαγνικής αφήγησης και των μερικών, προσεκτικά διαλεγμένων αρχαϊκών λέξεων, θα ήταν πολύ προγενέστερο του καιρού του.

Η σύσταση είναι μαγνητική, σαν όνειρο, όπου διαρκώς ένιωθα πως το άκουγα αντί να το διαβάζω, σαν να ήταν μια πρόζα ενός παραμυθιού από κάτι που σίγουρα έχει συμβεί πολύ πριν υπάρξω εγώ, λες και με κάθε αλλαγή σειράς, η δομή του έσπαγε και δεν άνηκε πια σε παραγράφους. Και πράγματι: εάν αφεθεί κανείς στη γλυκιά δύνη και αφήσει πίσω του τέτοιους δομικούς περιορισμούς, τότε είναι σαν βόλτα στο μουσείο, όπου κάποιο σπουδαίο φάντασμα εισχωρεί στα ιστορικά τεχνουργήματα και τους δίνει φωνή. Η πρώτη φωνή αφορά τον Γερμανό ζωγράφο Ματτία Γκρύνεβαλντ, ακουλουθεί ο γιατρός και εξερευνητής Γκέοργκ Βίλχελμ Στέλλερ και καταλήγει στον ίδιο τον Ζέμπαλντ. Τέλος, αυτές οι οκτάβες, δεν είναι απλά παρά ένα φυσικό θαύμα, που αφορά την πιο γνωστή αναμέτρηση, Άνθρωπος και φυσική δημιουργία, φυσική καταστροφή, η τελευταία, οδυνηρή μονάχα για τον ίδιο.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I believe this is the first of Sebald’s published works and to be honest it is best regarded as a primer for the career of this remarkable Norfolk based writer.

The book contains some of the trademarks of Sebald’s writing – a mix of autobiographical detail with meditations on famous figures: here the German renaissance painter - Matthias Grünewald ( interestingly given the recent inexplicable inclusion of “The War of The Poor” on the Booker International longlist this also has some brief meditations on Thomas Müntzer but otherwise was too religious art focused for my tastes) and the botanist Georg Steller (focused around his inclusion on Bering’s famous Arctic trip searching for the posthumously eponymous Straits).

It also has some general and specific themes that his later writing focuses on – the interaction of man and nature (as per the title), the Suffolk coastline, destruction (particularly bombing in Germany).

What distinguishes the book (and not in a good way) is its form. Sebald’s writing at its wonderful best mixes themes and ideas, biography and autobiography in seamless sections and long spooling sentences. Here there are two differences: the three sections (the two famous people and the autobiographic part) are separate and largely standalone and the flowing prose is instead represented as prose poetry. Unfortunately the latter seems to consist of little more than a completely random insertion of line breaks (but as I think Sebald’s last publication – “For Years Now” shows, published poetry was not his strongpoint).

Best for Sebald aficionados – if you are not yet one then read “Rings of Saturn” of “Austerlitz” instead.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The thing with blank verse is that you can mentally string it back into prose and it often reads equally well either way.

The thing with Sebald's prose is that it always seemed poetic to me, in a forlorn, elegiac way.

The thing here, in the three blank-verse poem/essays that constitute 'After Nature' is the music imposed by the line-breaks, the halting rhythms that emerge, the occasional breaks from the controlled if gloomy, peripatetic Sebaldian tone into something more abstract and fraught.

The first and second poems are closer to versified approximations of typical Sebald material - essays on Matthias Grunewald (which made me take a new look at Grunewald's works, not particular favourites of mine in the past apart from the cool monsters), botanist Georg Steller, they use biographical facts as a peg on which to hang reflections on our ongoing assault on nature and one another. The last, autobiographical, piece, delves into Sebald's own life and family history to reflect on the burden of history and ends with an inspired segue into a vision of Alexander the Great contemplating the continent of Africa - a prelude and overture to so much of the colonial history Sebald so often looks back on and deplores in his other works, and in that sense an effective prelude to themes and concerns that were later explored again in his prose.

Excellent stuff. A book I shall have to read again several times to fully grasp.

[Isabel · Rating 4 out of 5]

P. 58- "XII

Infindáveis voos
de aves a gritar, pairando
baixo sobre as águas,
de longe parecem ilhas
à deriva, há baleias à roda
do barco cuspindo alto para o ar
esguichos em todas as direções
da bússola. (...)"

[John Pistelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given my mild ambivalence about Sebald, I thought I would make this small book, the author's first, my next destination on the gray-toned walking tour of European ruin that is the Sebaldian oeuvre. I think of Sebald's gift as essentially lyric, in the sense that the lyric poet projects his subjectivity onto the world and that his composition is accordingly of one tone and mood—the lyric poet "turns his back on the audience," writes Frye; similarly, Lukács claims that "the language of the absolutely lonely man is lyrical, i.e., monological"—as opposed to the incorporation of difference and disputation that characterizes the epic, the drama, and the novel. Is Sebald, the "last man in Europe," to borrow a very different writer's rejected title, not "the absolutely lonely man"?

Again, this poem, published in 1988 in German, is Sebald's first literary work. It was published posthumously in 2002 in Michael Hamburger's translation, which most critics agree is superb—though this book could really use a translator's preface or editorial introduction explaining its provenance and context. The title, as far as I can tell, means "from nature," in the sense of "painted from nature," thus suggesting an argument about mimesis as the representation of nature's profound strangeness and alienation.

The poem is a triptych: its first part ("...As the Snow on the Alps") is about the painter Matthias Grünewald, whose works carry the medieval aesthetics of Christian art into the Renaissance; the second part ("And If I Remained by the Outermost Sea") concerns the naturalist Georg Steller and his northerly expedition with the Russian explorer Bering; and the third part ("Dark Night Sallies Forth") is narrated by the Sebaldian persona who will become familiar from the author's later work. The third section is rather opaque, seeming at times to be a somewhat private autobiographical discourse. What, for instance, does this mean?

A long series of tiny shocks,
from the first and the second pasts,
not translated into the spoken
language of the present, they
remain a broken corpus guarded
by Fungisi and the wolf's shadow.

While it has some compelling moments, such as its concluding discussion of Albrecht Altdorfer's's extraordinary painting The Battle of Alexander at Issus, whose vast vista the narrator is taught to construe as a prophecy of conquest and colonialism—

As fortunate,
did the clever chaplain, who
had hung up an oleograph
of the battle scene beside
the blackboard describe the outcome
of this affair. It was,
he said, a demonstration
of the necessary destruction of all
the hordes coming up from the East.
and thus a contribution to the history
of salvation.

—I much prefer the first two parts, both narrated in the third person to create fragmentary portraits of Grünewald and Steller.

In the Grünewald part, a beautifully cryptic poem of mysterious doubles, doomed marriages, terrifying eclipses, Christian anti-Semitism and misogyny, and religious hospitals where the sick are treated with "rituals of purification," Sebald emphasizes the painter's apprehension of the sheer horror of life, as displayed in his famously grotesque paintings of the Crucifixion:

To him the painter, this is creation,
image of our insane presence
on the surface of the earth,
the regeneration proceeding
in downward orbits
whose parasitical shapes
intertwine, and, growing into
and out of one another, surge
as a demonic swarm
into the hermit’s quietude.

In the background is the failed revolution of Thomas Müntzer and the first stirrings of German fascism. Grünewald, the poet tells us, "must have tended / towards an extremist view of the world" and "will have come to see the redemption of the / living as one from life itself."

My philistine tendencies as a reader of Sebald continue here, as my favorite section of this poem is the second, wryly describing the adventures of the scientist Steller, a man who, in contrast to Grünewald, rejected the other world of Christianity for the world of nature:

perscrutamini scripturas,
shouldn’t that read,
perscrutamini naturas rerum?

Whatever precursors in German literature Sebald is calling upon are alas lost on me, but in the troubled northern expedition I heard echoes of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Frankenstein and Moby-Dick, which is generally in keeping with Sebald's brand of rueful "after Auschwitz" neo-Romanticism. This section evokes everything from St. Petersburg (perhaps recalling Pushkin’s "Bronze Horseman")—

Kronstadt, Oranienbaum, Peterhof
and last in the Torricellian void,
a thirty-four-year-old bastard,
marooned on the Neva’s marsh delta,
St. Petersburg under the fortress,
the new Russian capital,
uncanny to a stranger,
no more than a chaos erupting,
buildings that began to subside
as soon as erected, and nowhere
a vista quite straight.

—to an illicit handjob—

He spends the whole summer
bent over the jumble of cards,
while the naturalist’s neglected
wife, gaudily dressed, sits
beside him and with her split
fin strokes the glans that throbs
like his heart. Steller feels science
shrinking to a single slightly
painful point. On the other hand
the foam bubbles, to him, are
a paradigm. Come, he whispers
into her ear in his desperation,
come with me to Siberia as
my true wife, and already hears
the answer: wherever
you go I will
go with you.

—suggesting, as a first book ought to do, all the different writers the writer might have become.

I cannot judge the translation, admittedly, but I love the short lines of free verse, organized, as you can see from the quotations above, as long sinuous hypotactic sentences that both irresistibly draw the eye down the page and force the eye back up the page to read again for meaning and beauty. This is a poem, in English at least, beautifully ordered by intricate syntax rather than rhyme or meter.

I recently came across this observation about literary judgment (via) from W. H. Auden:

For an adult reader, the possible verdicts are five: I can see this is good and I like it; I can see this is good but I don't like it; I can see this is good and, though at present I don't like it, I believe that with perseverance I shall come to like it; I can see that this is trash but I like it; I can see that this is trash and I don't like it.

Sebald has moved from the second to the third category for me, and will perhaps be arriving at the first any day now. I look forward to the two books of his that I have not yet read, The Emigrants and Vertigo.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't get into this book at all, despite the glowing recommendation in Patti Smith's book M Train. I'm intrigued that since I love two particular books as all-time favorites, that one by Smith, and Sebald's later, famous The Rings of Saturn, I was unimpressed by After Nature.

After Nature is not really poetry, even though it is presented as such on the page. The lines are broken in seemingly arbitrary places, and the reader will quickly adapt to reading it as prose. And quickly it goes, too, thanks to its relatively thin texture. As most reviewers have noted, Sebald here first presents many of the themes he picks up in grand fashion in his later books. Compared to his The Rings of Saturn and The Emigrants, this book is lightweight, almost as practice for what came later.

[Francisca · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Parecía como si en las obras de arte / los hombres se respetaban como hermanos”.

[Juane Pizarro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me gusto mucho la primera parte me gusto harto la segunda y la tercera creo que no la entendí c:
3,75

[Héctor Genta · Rating 4 out of 5]

L'esordio letterario di Sebald (1988) è un poema diviso in tre parti, centrate rispettivamente sul pittore medievale Grünewald, lo studioso di scienze naturali G. W. Seller che seguì Bering nell'impresa di trovare una nuova rotta verso l'America, e una terza parte autobiografica.
Ad un angosciato e solitario Grünewald, per il quale la presenza dell'uomo sulla terra è "insana" e la natura

ignara d’equilibri,
che cieca compie, l’uno dopo l’altro,
esperimenti privi di costrutto
e, come insano bricoleur, ecco
distrugge quanto appena ha creato.
Sperimentare fino al limite postremo,
è l’unico suo scopo, germinare,
perpetuarsi e riprodursi,
anche in noi e attraverso di noi, e mediante
i congegni nati dalle nostre menti,
in un’unica accozzaglia,

Sebold affianca un alter ego di nome Mathis Nithart, pittore dai vestiti sgargianti e "mago dei giochi d'acqua" che ne costituisce il contraltare.
Duplice è anche la personalità del naturalista Steller, dibattuto tra l'impulso ad avventurarsi nella natura selvaggia e quello a "porre un limite al disordine del mondo".
Riflessioni simili sono quelle che animano la terza parte dell'opera, se da un lato Sebald scrive che il cervello

lavora inesausto su tracce,
ancorché labili, di auto-organizzazione,
e talvolta ne risulta
un ordine, a tratti bello
e rappacificante, ma anche più crudele
del tempo passato, il tempo dell’ignoranza
più avanti afferma che
Le linee guida dei grandi
sistemi non si possono
armonizzare, troppo diffuso è l’atto
della violenza, ogni cosa sempre
l’inizio dell’altra
e viceversa.

Secondo natura è un testo interessante, che contiene alcune delle tracce che saranno sviluppate da Sebald in seguito: la forza distruttiva del mondo e lo sforzo dell'uomo di trovare un ordine e il ruolo del ricordo come un ponte gettato tra vivi e morti per costruire una mappa del passato e conservarne la memoria.

[Guillermo Jiménez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mientras uno se desgasta en la oficina. Pensando en cómo resolver situaciones nimias y percatándose de cómo la educación en las universidades están creando eunucos incapaces de concebir cualquier maldita idea fértil: la vida que es una caprichosa nos arrebata a un maestro del lenguaje, de la cadencia que arrulla y envuelve y nos hace creer en un mundo mejor posible.

Son palabras, una detrás de otra; son luces y oscuridades sobre paisajes conocidos o nuevos, que nos pueden parecer bucólicos o arriesgados, soporíferos o al borde de precipicios infranqueables; pero, es el lenguaje mismo el que nos lleva a heredar, a creer en algo, maldita sea, es el lenguaje, y la literatura un medio más, nuestra razón única de ser.

Sebald tiene una manera hermosa de hablar del amor, con guiños, con detalles en un fresco, apenas perceptibles. Con un par de palabras, una pausa y un punto final preciso.

En este texto nos entrega las preguntas a sus padres sobre acontecimientos específicos, las llamas que consumen una ciudad después de un bombardeo en la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Preguntas que sus padres no pensaron en su momento y que los hace incapaces de responder algo.

Naturaleza es lo que muere.

La visión de un médico del mundo nunca será igual que la de un físico, un historiador, un escritor. Es una visión romántica, un romanticismo que no entendemos, un romanticismo real.

Emilia nace un 28 de agosto, 57 años antes de ese día, Dresde recibe, indefensamente, el impacto de las bombas de 582 aviones.

Los padres no podremos recordar nada. Nunca. No importa cuanto escribamos en nuestros diarios, seremos incapaces de abarcar la naturaleza de las cosas. Ni con todo el lenguaje posible podremos hacerlo.

Sebald nos acerca un tanto más a la cultura. Desdibuja la ciencia y la literatura, y nos comparte preocupaciones hondas del mundo que habitó. Un mundo que no le fue ajeno, que no le dio miedo, sino que por el contrario: lo asombraba.

Uno lee la obra de este cabrón y se llena de asombro, y levanta la vista de sus páginas, y no puede más que fajarse y rifarse un día a la vez el destino que cada uno nos hemos ido forjando.

[Elena Sala · Rating 5 out of 5]

AFTER NATURE (first published in German in 1988, in English in 2002) is a poem about life, death and the struggle for existence not only of human beings, but of all the species. It is structured as a triptych, composed by three interrelated narratives.
The first one is the 16th century painter Matthaeus Grünewald, the second is the 18th century naturalist Georg Wilhelm Stepped, and the third one is Sebald himself.
The connections between the three parts are not immediately obvious. In Grünewald's art the natural world is corrupt, monstrous and fallen. In the case of Steller's expeditions the effect of Arctic sea and landscape is to make men introspective and melancholy. They no longer wish to perceive anything outside of their own souls.
The third part of the triptych adopts the perspective of Sebald's later work. The poetic narrative voice explores his own life since his grandparents' marriage. Some themes, such as the bombardment of Germany, which figure prominently in his later fiction, appears here too. The narrating voice is always aware of some impending disaster, and he is unable to identify it nor counteract it's occurence.
On the one hand, nature appears as subject to human whim, but on the other hand it appears as an elemental force, absolutely unconcerned with the fate of human beings. There is an implication that we are inseparable from nature, and since we always place ourselves in the centre of things, there is no choice but to place nature in the centre, with us.
Sebald's landscapes are apocalyptic, entropic, empty. Always behind nature, behind history and behind narrative Sebald finds death.
This was a disturbing, difficult book. Despite being his first literary work, I believe it is not a good idea to start from this book if you wish to read Sebald's astonishing ouvre. Probably THE EMIGRANTS would be a better place to become acquainted with his unique style.

[Ben Loory · Rating 4 out of 5]

a slim 3-parter written early but published posthumously; the first two parts are beautiful, the third (the autobiographical section) less so. w.g. sebald is the best writer in the world, even though he is dead.

this, from the second section, about the bering expedition into the arctic:

XII

Unending flights
of screeching birds, which skimmed
low over the water,
from afar resembled
drifting islands. Whales
rotated around the ship, emitting
water-spouts high into the air
in all direction of the compass.
Chamisso, who later marvelled at
the same spectacular sight
on the Romanzov expedition,
was led to think that perhaps
these animals could be tamed
and-- no different from geese
on a stubble field-- be herded
with a rod, as it were, on the sea.
Bring up the young in a fjord, he wrote,
fasten a spiked belt buoyed up by
air-bladders under their pectoral fins,
let them unlearn their submersions,
make experiments. Whether the whale is
then to draw or to carry,
whether and how it is harnessed
or laden, how it is bridled
or otherwise governed, and who is to be the
mahout of this water-elephant-- all this
will settle itself in time. Chamisso,
it is true, also writes
of the steam engine as
the first warm-blooded animal
created by humankind.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three stories, one of his own, woven in Sebald's unmistakably careful and almost formal language; his first published work, I think? Poetry, as good as his prose. Amazing interwoven reflections on nature, history, colonialism, anti-Semitism, modernism, the drive to "conquer" or "tame" nature (even human nature) and its sometimes (and increasingly?) devastating effects. Haunting work by a master. Accessible, because, in spite of (or for me, because of) sort of byzantinely ornamental sentences, the stories are compelling: 1) a medieval artist and his artistic accounts of history, focusing on religion and its effects, 2) a scientific expedition to the North pole and 3) his own story of growing up in Germany in mid century. Nature always a central theme. "After" nature meant in a few different ways. The Holocaust, as with Austerlitz and other works, figuring in thoughout. Pretty amazing stuff.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is so beautiful. It's an early work, written in verse in three parts. The first part reflects on the life and work of the late medieval painter Matthias Grunewald (most famous for the
Isenheim Altarpiece), the second on the eighteenth-century naturalist Georg Wilhelm Stellar, who traveled with Vitus Bering, and the last on moments from the author's life. The first two sections are stunning. The third section felt more disjointed and I wasn't sure where it was going. All the same, five stars for such beautifully written meditations on history, nature, and individuals living out their own history in nature. This is a book I could just pick up and read randomly to be with the words and images. I've read most of Sebald's work. He's amazing.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful poetry. Of the three poems in this book, the last two - a semi-autobiographical story of his childhood, and a narrative of the naturalist Steller's journey across Siberia are particularly haunting. Sebald weaves photography into the narrative of these poems, which has an unexpectedly powerful effect. He does the same in the Emigrants, which is also semi-autobiographical and also a very wonderful novel.

[Danny Mason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Felt a bit out of my depth in the first part because I know nothing about Matthias Grünewald and had to look up what his art actually looked like, but parts two and three provided much more context for the stories they were telling and I found them both really beautiful and compelling. I especially enjoyed the part where Sebald writes about Manchester as if it's literally hell on earth.

[a · Rating 5 out of 5]

a wonderful example of how to combine aesthetics and (art) history with (auto)biography
a book about our search for greatness, the search of the sublime and our failure
history is relived
almost as an essay on travels, art and life
a poem about wanderers

[Marcus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful poetic verse as Sebald gives a potted history of an artist, a botanist and finally his own perspective. The third and final piece is the most abstract but still wonderfully written.

“The panic-stricken
kink in the neck to be seen
in all of Grunewald's subjects,
exposing the throat and often turning
the face towards a blinding light,
is the extreme response of our bodies
to the absence of balance in nature
which blindly makes one experiment after another
and like a senseless botcher
undoes the thing it has only just achieved.”

[jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

to him, the painter, this is creation,
image of our insane presence
on the surface of the earth,
the regeneration proceeding
in downward orbits
whose parasitical shapes
intertwine, and, growing into
and out of one another, surge
as a demonic swarm
into the hermit’s quietude.

sebald’s posthumously published first book, after nature (nach der natur) is comprised of three long poems considering the human relationship to our natural world, conveyed through the lives of three german figures: painter matthias grünewald, naturalist georg steller, and the author himself. incubating themes that would be more fully fleshed out in his later works, after nature is a beautifully composed and thoughtful rumination on time, place, setting, and the world around us.

*translated from the german by michael hamburger

[Andrew]

After nature is only barely a set of poems-- it's really more of a set of abstract prose pieces that were too abstract to be sold as "prose," so Sebald said eff this an added line breaks. I remember pulling the same move to placate my high school creative writing teacher.

Otherwise, it's more excellent Sebald being excellent and Sebaldish. Frozen seas. The Alps. Destruction. Medieval art. German civilization. You get it.