Eric Maas’s Reviews > The Rings of Saturn > Status Update

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)

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)

No last sigh, no last words were to be heard, nor the last despairing plea: Lend me a looking-glass; if that her breath will mist or stain the stone, why then she lives. No, nothing. Nothing but dead silence. (p. 174/175)

6. The bridge over the Blythe – The Chinese court train – The Taiping rebellion and the opening of China – Destruction of the garden of Yuan Ming Yuan – The end of Emperor Hsien-feng – The Disaster Empire Tz’u-hsi – Mysteries of power – The town beneath the sea – Poor Algernon

So many shameful episodes at the expense of millions of human beings. King Leopold whitewashing the exploitation and deaths of so many indigenous Congolese is outrageous.

All pages in the book are black, but the stories are told so dryly, no dramatization whatsoever. If you want to be indignant, you’ll have to sort that out on your own…

5. Conrad and Casement – The Boy Teodor – Exile in Volgda – Nowofastów – Death and internment of Apollo Korzeniowski – Sea- and love-life – A winter journey – The heart of darkness – The panorama of Waterloo – Casement, the space economy and the Irish question – Casement tried and executed for treason

4. The Battle of Sole Bay – Nightfall – Station Road on The Hague – Mauritshuis – Scheveningen – The tomb of St Sebolt – Schiphol airport – The invisibility of man – The Sailor’s Reading Room - Pictures from the Great War – The concentration camp at Jasenovac on the Sava