Chapter 22 - Philosophical Models

Summary

This essay explores the philosophical texts and ideas that exerted an influence on Sebald. His personal library was highly selective, containing the works of unconventional thinkers such as Elias Canetti, but omitting most of the major figures of German philosophy along with post-structuralist writers. Ludwig Wittgenstein, however, inspired Sebald’s early film scripts and his life provided biographical details in Austerlitz and Die Ausgewanderten. Sebald expressed an affinity for, and his literary style evidenced, the pre-rational assemblage of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s ‘system of bricolage’, in the way that his works can resemble a scrapbook of clippings, personal recollections, visual images, etc. Although he detested Heidegger, phenomenology pervaded Sebald’s work. For example, the Liverpool Street Station episode in Austerlitz evidenced Bachelard’s ‘theatre of the past’, and he made use of Merleau-Ponty’s ‘pre-human gaze’ in his essay on Jan Peter Tripp. Sebald’s liking for the pre-rational extended to an interest in Gnosticism, Zoroastrianism, superstition and other overlooked schools of thought and philosophy. Zoroastrianism, for example, influenced his early poetry. This essay concludes that Sebald’s deep interest in metaphysics is key for a full understanding of his critical and literary writings.