Over the course of several day’s walk through the English countryside, the writer/speaker reminisces and meditates on the local history and architecture, digressing into an exloration of imperialism, colonialism, the nature of time and loss in memory. It’s hard to describe, but it’s astonishingly beautiful. It made me feel the same way I felt when I first saw the Russian ark movie–swept away by a tide of memory, like the gentle inexorable, lulling ebb of the sea in a quiet lagoon protected from the sea on a remote, lost island.
Resources
The New Yorker on Sebald – “The Poetry of the Disregarded” by Teju Cole
More New Yorker: “Why You Should Read W. G. Sebald” by Mark O’Connell
Excerpt
Film
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pftG3sr2X9o&noredirect=1&w=560&h=315&rel=0]