A Place in the Country by W.G. Sebald

Author:W.G. Sebald [Sebald, W. G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9503-9
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2014-02-11T05:00:00+00:00

with a strawberry painted on its lid, containing a golden pin on a piece of cotton in the shape of a forget-me-not, and a medallion with a monument of hair; further, a bundle of yellowed papers with recipes and secrets, a bottle of Hoffmann’s drops, another of eau de Cologne and a box with musk; another with a scrap of marten dropping in it, and a little basket plaited from fragrant palm leaves, as well as one made of glass beads and cloves; finally a little book with silver edges bound in sky-blue ribbed paper and entitled Golden Rules of Life for the Young Woman as Bride, Wife and Mother, and a small book of dreams, a guide to letter writing, five or six love letters, and a lancet for letting blood.” We find all of this in the story of Die drei gerechten Kammacher [The Three Righteous Combmakers], in a lacquered chest belonging to Züs Bünzlin, which Wolfgang Schlüter, in his essay on Benjamin as collector, refers to as a microcosmic intérieur. If the baroque imagination, which we see here once more dwelling upon the insignificant trifles we fashion and hoard during our brief time on earth, itself already embodied a kind of vogue for death, then its afterlife, as shown to us by Keller in this miniature world within a world belonging to a Swiss spinster, is determined by a narrative position which, as Wolfgang Schlüter writes, is circumspect even in its mockery, and whose underlying ironic perspective—as Schlüter also notes—is derived not from distance but from painfully focused images viewed from the closest possible proximity. For this reason it would be wrong to see Keller as a latter-day preacher of death and damnation in disguise, even though there can be no doubt that his inspiration derives from the baroque tendencies still latent within him. What is unique about Keller’s philosophy of transience is the serene glow with which it is suffused, stemming from the particular brand of Weltfrömmigkeit [secular piety] the young scholar from Zurich had become acquainted with during his time with the Heidelberg atheists. There were few things Keller could abide less than the self-righteous authority of religion, nothing he loathed more than the bigotry that seeks to wield the rod to make of poor little Meret an honest Christian child. This liberation from the age-old prison of religion is what lets in the light which he sees illumining even the darkest hours. There can scarcely be a brighter eulogy than Heinrich’s funeral oration for his young cousin Anna, who passed away long before her time. When the carpenter is rubbing down her newly finished coffin with pumice, Heinrich recalls, it becomes “as white as snow, and only the very faintest reddish touch of the fir shone through, giving the tint of apple blossom. It looked far more beautiful and dignified than if it had been painted, gilded, or even brass-bound. At the head, the carpenter had according to custom constructed an opening with a

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