Paisagem e espaço na narrativa nômade de W.G. Sebald

Abstract

Based on the History of Walking as a cultural act and its developments in literature, philosophy and aesthetics, W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn is brought closer to the concepts of landscape and space through Geography through the publications of Milton Santos and of Aesthetics through Anne Cauquelin and Mathieu Kessler. The analysis of the landscapes that Sebald's narrator enters and describes on his journey and the different temporal layers evoked by the author, through Santos' concept of palimpsest, allows the formulation of a Sebaldian space that, from uninhabited and ruined settings, recalls episodes of destruction caused by the colonialist enterprise of European empires and the great wars of the 20th century. Sebald's critical view of history is related to Walter Benjamin's historical materialist description and updated by Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe's concept of Brutalism. The various biographies portrayed in the narrative, driven by chance encounters of the narrator on his pilgrimage, were understood as instances of communication between the author and the specters he encounters on the journey from the work Our Grateful Dead: Stories of Those Left Behind by Belgian anthropologist Vinciane Despret. Through the analysis of the History of Walking by Rebeca Solnit and reflections on the role of walking in the literature and philosophy of Frédéric Gros, it was possible to identify the practice of walking as Sebald's narrative method. Approaches to geography and aesthetics allowed us to identify Sebald's narrative spatiality, a grouping of scenarios where devastation and abandonment invite specters from different eras to relive their laments. The study also defines the Sebaldian space as a result of the systemic shame of the world, based on Gros, portraying the author's nonconformity with the continuity of tragedies imposed by the idea of progress.