Luís's Reviews > Austerlitz

Austerlitz.
Great Napoleonic victory. How many people can boast that having this surname is not banal?
They are probably people with extraordinary destinies. It would not be easy to understand why such people remain in the shadows.
Jacques Austerlitz, the main character of this WG Sebald book, is one of those scholars, a passionate philosopher, a man in search of his past, that of his family. What was his life like before the age of 4 and a half? Has he always called Austerlitz? Has he still lived in Wales, in a pastor's family?
That's a man who, page by page, rebuilds his memory and seeks to understand his past, of his parents, from Wales to Czechoslovakia, via Germany, Paris, London, and others. Still others a memory built by visiting places, libraries, cities, and fortifications, through meetings with other enthusiasts, by crossroads between history and current events, between his knowledge and those of his interlocutors, my readings, by an investigation work.
The narrator, who had Jacques Austerlitz as a teacher, talks with him. Jacques is now a lecturer at the London Art History Institute, but he has had many other interests, different passions, lives, and trades.
It's an exciting book, which "deserves," not easy to read and follow ... sometimes destabilizing. However, the narrators intersect, their words support each other, and their knowledge of Jacques mingles with the narrator or people they meet.
None of the people Jacques will encounter is commonplace. Yet, all who have a wealth of knowledge are passionate about a place, a city, or a fortification. They have a story, a life to tell. They are almost obsessed with each other in their corner, with insects or butterflies and parrots, and with the history of cities, railway stations, cemeteries, and quiet buildings today, which have been places of torture and deportation.
Austerlitz forces us to reflect on man's vanity and specific human constructions, fortresses obsolete and overcome by the progress they have been completing. Constructed to defend and ultimately used to kill innocent people, built modern libraries to promote the culture and leave a trace in the history of their initiator. And finally, unsuitable for promoting culture, a book made to recall a past that we seek to move aside, the importance of traces of spent not forgetting a message from a German anti-Nazi author.
Each word weighed, each description of the place, and each historical or cultural reference is a pleasure. What knowledge accumulated was made available to the reader. It may be a little too complicated, sometimes seeming accumulated unnecessarily.
The book's construction is not bland, which can be repulsive. Some will close this book after 20 pages. The author built it without any chapter, paragraph, or quotation mark. But we do not read poetry, melancholy cultural and historical references, philosophical or sociological reflections, or the construction of memory "diagonally." No! We cling!
I come out a little dizzy but happy.