Reader’s Guide:W.G. Sebald,

The Rings of Saturn

This novel—at once a collage of memories, histories, and photographs—followsthe narrator on a walking tour of the Eastern coast of England. Along the way, he touchesdistant landscapes and long-lost people, finding thematic threads that bind them together more closely than one would have believed possible. Detailed histories of silk factories,flooded towns, deserts, herring, lonely writers, and Chinese courtiers combine step bystep like images in a poem, looking again and again at loss, failure, and destruction.However, as Sebald restlessly explores his own memory and the memories presented inthe landscape, he loosens the ties that isolate these tragedies, releasing each one into acommon suffering that is ultimately beautiful, terrifying, and transcendent.1.

At the very beginning, Sebald describes how the walking tour became a book.Look at the movement from freedom and mobility to hospitalization andimmobility to thought and writing. Why does writing happen as soon as he stopsmoving? How does it help him?2.

Why is Janine’s office full of paper a landscape approaching perfection? Why is itsignificant that she knows where to find Sir Thomas Browne’s skull?3.

Why does Sebald include the drawing of the quincunx on page 20? How does thestructure of the book mirror the structure of the quincunx?4.

At the end of Part I, Sebald says, “the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw ata man is to tell him he is at the end of his nature.” What does this mean for writing? How is Sebald’s work like gathering objects for urn burial? How is it likethe transmigration involved in spinning a silk cocoon?5.

On page 80, Sebald asks, “What manner of theater is it, in which we are at once playwright, actor, stage manager, scene painter, and audience?” Based on theremembered landscapes that precede this question, can it be answered? In thisdream-theater, is the veiled perspective positive? Or comforting?6.

On page 124, How does the trip to Waterloo and the panorama contrast with thedream perspective? Why can he get “no clear picture”?7.

Page 174 includes a quote from Shakespeare’s

King Lear

: “Lend me a lookingglass; if that her breath will mist or stain the stone, why, then she lives.” In thesame passage, Lear says “nothing can come of nothing.” Is this true for Sebald?Why does Sebald follow the quote with “No, nothing. Nothing but dead silence.Then softly, barely audibly, a funeral march”?8.

What do Michael Hamburger and Catherine Ashbury have in common? Why is perceiving oneself “in another human being” (page 182) so essential?