tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post8296829189634304659..comments2023-11-03T11:00:07.566+00:00Comments on Displacement: Reading Austerlitz. Nightmares in the Albert HallFiona Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052038869211775919noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-64054816876674714732011-08-24T20:56:42.164+01:002011-08-24T20:56:42.164+01:00Thanks Stephen, lovely comment. Sorry I can't...Thanks Stephen, lovely comment. Sorry I can't edit the weird spacing of your second para. But suppose it's in sympathy with what must have been a disorienting experience! <br /><br />Have just found a very relevant piece in the Guardian online, from today - top ten novels of solitude! Was delighted to see that the author, Teju Cole, put Sebald's Rings of Saturn at no.1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/24/teju-cole-top-10-novels-solitudeFionahttp://displacement-poetry.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1648230750208763565.post-11702218233671072172011-08-23T13:06:37.521+01:002011-08-23T13:06:37.521+01:00Austerlitz is a wonderful book and Sebald's de...Austerlitz is a wonderful book and Sebald's death (in a car crash in Norfolk, after a heart attack) was a great loss. Reading him is like being with an immensely wise and profoundly melancholy guide to uncovering the layers of the past, whom one trusts completely. The pictures are indeed very much of a piece with the text – from the witty juxtaposition of the eyes of a raccoon and an owl with the penetrating stare of Wittgenstein, to the excavated skeletons at Broad Street station. His memorable comparison of the lines on a map representing a railway to sinew and muscle in a book on anatomy, and its resonance with the Holocaust, has stayed with me. <br /><br /><br />Re the Albert Hall: it's interesting how our memories of buildings can<br />become entwined in our dreams. Bachelard says a lot about it in the<br />Poetics of Space (though I don't have a quote to hand). No dreamlike<br />sense of foreboding for me in the Albert Hall, though, just a memory<br />of sitting rather near the stage and some very hairy spear carriers of<br />the Romanian national opera in a production of Aida a few years ago.<br />It was memorable, though, for another event: I was pondering the<br />nature of spear-carrying as a metaphor and wondering how the singers<br />felt about it when there were loud blasts on whistles and the stage<br />was invaded by activists from Peter Tatchell's Outrage group,<br />protesting about discrimination in Romania. Uproar ensued.Stephen Elveshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05142895495222407874noreply@blogger.com