On the edge of a cosmopoetic paradigm shift : Sebald’s Die Ringe des Saturn

Abstract

This article proposes an alternative to the customary readings of W.G. Sebald’s work, which traditionally focus on alienation, exile and a dislocated semiotics. The suggestion here is that the very elements that generally are taken to emblematise these Modernist notions of artistic creation can be understood as indices of more positive tendencies. The article offers a new reading of Sebald’s Die Ringe des Saturn, that identifies elements of a positive aesthetic. According to that aesthetic, all facets of the material world are connected to each other in an undulating fabric of material, and not merely semiotic, correspondences.