Novel
Vertigo
Schwindel. Gefühle.
W. G. Sebald · 1990
Synopsis
Four tales that echo one another. The first follows Henri Beyle, the future Stendhal, who crosses the Alps at seventeen with Bonaparte's army in 1800, then his Milanese love affairs. In the second, a narrator who resembles the author retraces in 1987 a journey made in 1980, from Vienna to Venice and Verona, where he had believed himself to be followed. The third accompanies Kafka, Dr K., in the autumn of 1913, to the sanatorium at Riva, on Lake Garda. In the last, the narrator returns to the village of his childhood, W., which he has not seen for decades.
Context
The book appeared in 1990. It is the first of Sebald's four major books of prose, followed by Die Ausgewanderten (1992), Die Ringe des Saturn (1995) and Austerlitz (2001). Each narrative mixes biographical facts and fiction, and motifs recur from one to the next, including the vertigo of the title. This title, two words each followed by a full stop, can also be read as “deception. feelings.”, a sense the English version loses. Michael Hulse's English translation was made with the author; the French one by Patrick Charbonneau appeared from Actes Sud in 2001.
Who it is for
Four narratives of unequal length, two of them told in the first person by a narrator close to the author.
Prizes and reception
Steles bearing passages from the last narrative now mark a twelve-kilometre path to Wertach, the author's native village.