‘Unheimliche Heimat’ (‘Uncanny Homeland’) by W.G. Sebald (Review)

After our last German Literature Month read followed a young Austrian traveller as he discovered there’s no place like home, today’s choice takes a slightly more pessimistic view of the subject.  This time around, we’re introduced to a number of writers, seeing what they make of their Austrian homeland, and as you might suspect, it isn’t always pretty.  Nevertheless, it’s an intriguing journey, and what makes it even better is that we’re in the hands of an excellent travel guide, one who’s been on this journey before.  Last time he showed us the unfortunate side of the country’s literature – this time around it’s downright uncanny…

*****
W.G. Sebald’s Die Beschreibung des Unglücks (The Description of Unhappiness) was a series of collected essays on Austrian writers and their unhappy lives, yet Sebald obviously thought there was far more to say on the topic, the result being a second collection entitled Unheimliche Heimat – Essays zur österreicheischen Literatur (Uncanny Homeland – Essays on Austrian Literature).  While the form is the same, with the writer presenting a series of essays on Austrian writers, this time the emphasis has shifted a little.  You see, what he’s focusing on here is the image various authors give of their homeland in their work, one that rarely proves to be positive.

As you can see above, I’ve translated the title of this book, rather loosely, as ‘Uncanny Homeland’, yet it’s not an expression I’m entirely happy with, particularly as both words have a range of connotations and nuances in German that are tricky to bring over into English.  For one thing, Heimat has a far more emotional ring than either ‘home’ or ‘homeland’, meaning something like ‘mother country’, but hitting far more strongly.  The adjective unheimlich, on the other hand, has many meanings, such as ‘sinister, ‘mysterious’ and ‘creepy’.  An interesting point here, though, is that it includes the word Heim (‘home’), meaning the title could be translated, then, as ‘Unhomely Homeland’, an oxymoron that would actually suggest Sebald’s focus nicely, even if it sounds rather clumsy in English.

An idea that Sebald returns to throughout his essays is that of the need to be cautious when reading tales about the mother country, given that those writing about their homeland have usually left it:

Améry definiert Heimat als das, was man umso weniger braucht, als man es hat, was wiederum heißt, daß alle positiven Verlautbarungen zu diesem Thema fast von vornherein verdächtig sind und daß man das, was Heimat einem bedeutet oder hätte bedeuten können, nur ex negativo, im Evil erfahren kann.
‘Verlorenes Land’, p.134 (Fischer Verlag, 2012)

Améry defines Heimat as that which one needs less, the more of it one has, which in turn means that all positive proclamations on this subject are suspicious almost in advance, and that one can only experience what Heimat means, or could have meant, to one, ex negativo, or in an evil sense.
*** (my translation)

Hence, Heimat writing is necessarily a subject approached through a lens of loss, as shown in the work of the pseudonymous Charles Sealsfield, a nineteenth-century writer in exile, whose American books are full of homages to his lost homeland (even if they appear to be about life in the US and encounters with native Americans!).

However, elsewhere Sebald shows that to write about Heimat, you don’t necessarily need to leave your country behind.  One essay focuses on Peter Altenberg’s beautiful evocations of country life, poetic pieces for which he is feted.  Those who read his work would hardly have thought he was a man who, having left the countryside behind, barely ventured outside a tiny radius from his home in the centre of Vienna.

Sooner or later in most of the texts, though, we return to the vexed question of what exactly is meant by Austria, anyway, as Heimat can be a rather complex question in a country that was the seat of a sprawling empire.  This can be seen as much in the writer’s look at Joseph Roth and his tales of a world fast disappearing, as in a return to the work of Peter Handke, one of Sebald’s favourite subjects.  This essay follows the protagonist of Handke’s novel Die Wiederholung on his trip to Slovenia in search of his missing brother, outlining the contrast between this imagined mythical homeland and an Austria the young man finds increasingly repellent.

Where the majority of the essays concentrate on one writer, even on one work, a slightly different approach is taken in a chapter on Ghettogeschichten (‘Stories from the Ghettoes’).  Here Sebald discusses a number of writers who moved on from the Jewish ghettoes of the eastern part of the empire in the early twentieth century, and how their stories look back at what they left behind.  These books are stories for their own kind, aimed squarely at Jews who knew this life well, but had left it behind, never to return, hence the nostalgic tone of Sabbath meals and a protagonist who goes back to their roots (in the reader’s place).  Of course, a different mood is evoked when reading such work today, as these have become historical artefacts, chronicles of a society later wiped out by the evil of the Nazis.

This is far from the only piece touching on the Jewish side of this question of Heimat, though – in fact, you suspect that Sebald could actually have centred the whole book around the subject.  He shows how several of his chosen writers struggled with attitudes towards their faith and heritage, with a piece on another of Sebald’s favourite works, Franz Kafka’s Das Schloß (The Castle), throwing up parallels between the book and real life:

Das Schicksal der Barnabas-Familie ist eine synoptische Soziologie des jüdischen Volkes.  Es läuft in seiner äußersten Konsequenzen darauf hinaus, daß die gedrückte Minderheit, im Versuch, ihre Lage zu rationalisieren, die eigene Not zu rechtfertigen beginnt.  So zwar, daß der Vorwurf der Mehrheit in die Selbstdefinition eingeht und verinnerlicht wird.
‘Das Gesetz der Schande’, p.98

The fate of the Barnabas family is a synoptic sociology of the Jewish people.  Taken to its extremes, it leads to a repressed minority beginning to justify its own plight in an attempt to rationalise its situation.  So much so, in fact, that the reproaches of the majority are taken into the definition of self and internalised. ***

In the case of Jean Améry, a Jewish writer who never really thought about his background until he was forced to flee, Sebald goes on to a critical examination of Austria’s ‘special nature’, a concept that fooled many Jews into staying until it was too late, believing that what had happened in Germany could never occur in *their* homeland.

If you’ve read any of Sebald’s non-fiction work, you’ll find Unheimliche Heimat similar in style.  There’s the usual complexity and elegance in his writing, sadly with far less of the wry humour that peppers his fiction.  Once again, he can be slightly off-putting in his seeming mastery of the subject, assuming we know things that we (or I, at least) certainly don’t, but if his aim is to make the reader want to go off and try his subjects’ work, then he definitely succeeds – there are several books mentioned here I’m keen to take a look at.

However, it wouldn’t be a Sebald collection without a withering take-down of another writer, and there’s a further prime example here.  Last time, Gerhard Roth was the victim, but if he gets off fairly lightly this time around, there’s no such luck for poor Hermann Broch and his Bergroman:

Mit dem Werk Hermann Broch’s hat es die besondere Bewandtnis, daß sein hohes Renommee, geflissentlich gefördert von den Wasserträgern der Germanistik, einer kritischen Lektüre nicht ohne weiteres standhält.
‘Una montagna bruna’, p.118

A particular point of interest regarding the work of Hermann Broch is that his high renown, deliberately promoted by the dogsbodies of the Germanistics world, does not stand up to any critical reading. ***

That’s just a taste of what’s to come, a systematic literary beating, with Sebald the critic methodically, ruthlessly hunting down examples of kitsch and poor writing.  It’s rather painful to read, and you can’t help feeling sympathy with poor Broch, whatever the merits of his work, as Mad Max pans the writer for trying (badly) to create an image of an idyll that never was.

Again, I’m not surprised that this one doesn’t seem to be in English translation yet (please correct me if I’m wrong!), but it’s definitely worth a try if your German’s up to it.  I’m not sure if it caught me on a good day, but I actually enjoyed this one far more than Die Beschreibung des Unglücks – just don’t ask me why!  In any case, I’m definitely considering an Austrian literature spree at some point as there’s a wealth of great books out there.  And, of course, if I do go in that direction, I know where to go for advice 😉