Status Updates From The Rings of Saturn

Like giant children under an evil spell, the three unmarried daughters, much of an age, sat on the floor amidst these mountains of material, working away and only rarely breathing a word to each other. (p. 22)

Without a heads up, suddenly Sebald seems to drag us into something that has the enchanting tone of a tale…

What work they did always had about it something aimless and meaningless and seemed not so much part of a daily routine as an expression of a deeply engrained distress. (p. 211)

For in and out, above, about, below,
‘Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-Show,
Play’d in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
Round which the Phantom Figures come and go.
Omar Khayyam – Rubaiyat
Translated by Edward FitzGerald

7. Dunwich heath – Marsh Acres, Middleton – A Berlin childhood – Exile in England – Dreams, elective affinities, correspondences – Two strange stories – Through the rainforest

First bit of tenderness comes from Anne Beresford. It is most welcome even if it is but a dream. Possibly, imagination is where we need to turn to for comfort. All the rest remains saturnal grit and dust…

…one of the chief difficulties of writing consisted of thinking, with the tip of the pen, solely of the word to be written, whilst banishing from one‘s mind the reality of what one intends to describe. (p. 186)

Perhaps we all lose our sense of reality to the precise degree to which we are engrossed in our own work, and perhaps that is why we see in the increasing complexity of our mental constructs a means for greater understanding, even while intuitively we know that we shall never be able to fathom the imponderables that govern our course through life. (p. 182)