APS TOGETHER
Day 2
Paul Bereyter (through "awoken in her a sense of the contrarieties that are in our longings.") p. 27-45
June 11, 2021 by Elisa Gabbert
We start to see the importance of chance, coincidence and “miracles” in Sebald’s work. Leo Damrosch contrasts realism w/ verisimilitude, which doesn’t have to be realistic. Do Sebald’s stories have to, in their nebulous space between fiction & reality?
The photo on p. 39 is uncaptioned, like all the photos here, its exact relationship to the text unclear. Is young W.G. among them? Which boy is he? They could be any boys, but Sebald has said his photos are “to a very large extent documentary.”
The story of Paul Bereyter’s moments of “utterly groundless violence” against his young pupils connects so neatly to Wittgenstein one has to wonder if this is mere coincidence, or fictive legerdemain, or a warping of Sebald’s own memory.
