...........................................
JM [ G.Sebald's
"The Emigrants", with its four distinct narratives united by recurring
images, among which we find four Nabokov ghostly apparitions.]
There are two portentous
insertions related to Nabokov which I failed to mention before, both in
the part devoted to Max Ferber, now obtained from his mother's
diary entrusted by him to the narrator. In her notes she mentions that,
while she was being courted by a Viennese trompetist named Fritz
Waldhof, in the fields close to Bodenlaube, they came across two Russians and a ten year-old boy, who was running
about with a butterfly net. One of the strolling Russians was
later recognized as Muromzev - a few days before he died. Fritz and
Ferber's mother were engaged several months later when, in her rapture,
she rememebers the little Russian boy, "a messenger of the happiness
that came back from that remote Saturday, when he opened his box of
specimens and let loose the most beautiful admirals, peacock royals,
citrines and sphyngids as a symbol of my final redeption."
(also Fritz died before their wedding took place, struck by a cerebral
hemorrage while he was playing the "Freischütz"**).
Sebald's collection of documented
memoirs are recounted by another memorialist, engaged in an almost
religious search for the traces, pictures, letters, and graves of those
individuals who were killed by the nazis. A reference to R.J.A Kilbourn's book in the internet allowed
me a glimpse of his opening lines.*** from where I hope to learn more
about the "redemptive" role attached to Nabokov by Sebald, and the way
this author explores various kinds of mnemic registers. The only thing
that I got clear, right now, is the importance Sebald attributes to
Nabokov's creative vision of life and of a look back into the past, in
contrast his tormented collection of recollected disasters and gradual
decay of Western civilization.
...................................................................................................................................................................................................
* -Sergei Andrejewitsch Muromzew
(23. Septemberjul./ 5. Oktober 1850 greg. in Sankt Petersburg; † 4.
Oktoberjul./ 17. Oktober 1910greg. in Moskau) war ein russischer
Rechtswissenschaftler und Hochschullehrer. Er war Vorsitzender der
ersten Staatsduma im zarischen Russland (1906). Er war befreundet mit
dem Juristen und später ebenfalls politisch tätigen Vladimir
Dmitrijewitsch Nabokov, Vater des späteren Schriftstellers Vladimir
Nabokov. Dieser war ebenfalls Mitglied der Partei „Konstitutionelle
Demokraten“. Noch kurz vor seinem Tod hielt sich Muromzew im Herbst
1910 gemeinsam mit der Familie Nabokov in Bad Kissingen auf. Nur wenige
Tage später starb er. [Wapedia - Wiki: Sergei Andrejewitsch Muromzew]
** - There are temporal
imprecisions which I'm unable to identify satisfactorily. According to
wikipedia, The "Freischütz" (an opera in three acts by Carl Maria von
Weber with a theme related to national identity and stark emotionality,
inspired on German folk legend and that quickly became an international
success) was first performed in Berlin, on 18 June 1821, eleven years
after Fritz started to court Federn's mother.
*** - Kafka,Nabokov...Sebald:
Intertextuality and Narratives of Redemption in Vertigo and the
Emigrants by R.J.A.Kilbourn
"This study begins from an acknowledgement of the highly intertextual
nature of the prose fiction of W.G.Sebald, and from the understanding
that Sebald's fictional world, to use that language, is an irreducibly
literary structure, within which the mediated experience of
subjectivity is the primary "object" or representation. More
specifically, I will consider here Sebald's bricolagic appropriation
and "translation" in Vertigo of Franz Kafka's "Jäger
Gracchus" (...) and in The Emigrants Sebald's
manipulation of a recurring motif from Vladimir Nabokov's autobiography
Speak, Memory, as well as Nabokov's post-emigration life in
America and Switzerland..."