The Function of Biographyin Die Ringe des Saturn,

with a focus on Joseph Conrad and Roger Casement

Samuel Hopkins

Who is mentioned?The numerous people about whom we are given biographical details include:

• Michael Parkinson, academic;

• Janine Dakyns, academic;• Thomas Browne, man of

many interests;• Morton Peto, businessman

and estate owner;• Frederick Farrar, judge and

neighbour;

• George Wyndham Le Strange, eccentric estate owner;

• Roger Casement; • Joseph Conrad, novelist;• Tz’u-hsi, empress;• T’ung-chih, emperor;• Algernon Swinburne,

poet;

and

• Michael Hamburger, writer;

• Stanley Kerry, academic;• Edward FitzGerald,

translator of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam;

• The Ashburys, estate owners;

• Cutherbert Quilter, businessman, estate owner;

• Alec Garrard, farmer and model maker;

• Reverend Ives, mathematician;

• Chateaubriand, writer

So,

• We are given accounts of the lives of around twenty people.

• The narrator knows some personally, but many are deceased. The biographies of those who lived in past centuries provide a human point of access to periods of time of which the narrator can have no direct experience.

• Biography also allows Sebald to cover a vast area of space.

The biographical sketches as a bridge between locations

• All of these people can be connected in some way to the Suffolk setting of the narrator’s physical journey. For example, Conrad spent time in Lowestoft (pp. 137-138) (1).

• Many of them are better remembered in connection with other places. The biographical sketches, alongside the narrator’s recollections of his own journeys, connect the physical setting of the narrative to the many other locations.

Landscape, people, ideas and time

• Biography is also used to tie the setting of the physical landscape to the art and ideas in the text.

• For instance, the present-day location of Thomas Browne’s skull in Norwich links the historical event depicted in the Rembrandt painting to East Anglia because the narrator speculates that Browne was at the dissection (p. 22). Biography is used to tie the setting of the physical landscape to the art and ideas in the text, and the present to the past.

Conrad and Casement

• The contents pages inform us that there are ten parts.

• They indicate that the fifth part is concerned principally with Conrad und Casement.

• The amount of the total work devoted to them makes the particular importance of these two biographies clear.

Casement’s life and journeys as described in Die Ringe des Saturn

• In 1903 Casement was the British consul in the Belgian Congo. ‘‘Casement […] machte in einer dem Foreign Secretary […] vorgelegten Denkschrift genaue Angaben über die […] Ausbeutung der Schwarzen’’ (p. 154).

• In South America he encounters imperialism again – this time carried out by a company based in Britain.

• He is, however, best remembered for his support for Irish independence.

Conrad’s life and journeys

• Conrad is born to a Polish family in Tsarist Russia. As his parents’ aim is ‘‘die von so vielen ersehnte Erhebung gegen die russische Tyrannei vorbereiten zu helfen’’ (p. 127), the family is exiled – and Conrad experiences imperialist oppression.

• Conrad spends time in the Congo and is disgusted by what he finds.

• He comes to Britain and becomes a successful novelist, whose most famous work, Heart of Darkness, addresses what he saw in the Congo.

What Conrad and Casement have in common in the narrative

• They both witnessed brutal colonialism in the Congo, where they met.

• Both travelled widely.• Between them they observed colonialism on

several continents, which means that their biographies allow the narrator to reflect on colonialism on a global level.

Conrad and Casement as points of entry into colonialism

• By writing about what they witnessed in the Congo they gave people of the perpetrating nations a window into the lives of the faraway victims of European colonialism.

• This makes them highly suitable for Sebald’s engagement with the subject: both as an entry point to colonial history for himself and because, like Conrad and Casement, Sebald seeks to give his readers insight into colonialism.

The narrator’s attitude to colonialism

• The following quotes indicate the narrator’s own characterisation and condemnation of colonialism:

• ‘‘von ihrer eigenen Habsucht und Gier korrumpierten Europäern’’ (p. 126);

• ‘‘aus dieser unguten Stimmung erkennt Korzeniowski [….] den Wahnwitz des ganzen kolonialen Unternehmens’’ (p. 142).

The past relates to the present: the narrator’s memories of Brussels

• Margaret Bruzelius notes that ‘‘the narrator seems to view Belgian hideousness as retribution for its rapacity in the Congo’’ (2).

• It is made clear that this excursion back into (or closer to) the present is related to Belgium’s past by the fact that the narrator remarks on a woman whose ‘‘Geburtsdatum […] mochte in etwa übereinstimmen mit dem Zeitpunkt der Fertigstellung der Kongo-Bahn’’ (p. 154).

Biography, Time, Place and Truth

• Sebald seeks, in Mary Cosgrove’s words, an ‘‘interconnectedness of persons, regions and events across space and time […] that would explain – more profoundly and truthfully than chronological historical narrative – the place of mankind in the late twentieth century’’ (3).

Biography and Perspective

• Strikingly Sebald often uses the first person when we are presented with other characters’ experiences and omits quotation marks.

• For example, ‘‘Als der Schlitten anruckte, begann für mich’’ and so on (p. 140). The first person speaker is Conrad, which is conveyed only by the context and ‘‘schreibt Korzeniowski’’ in the previous sentence (pp. 139-140).

Directness of access to other characters

• Although our access to the perspectives of other people is controlled by Sebald, the use of first person without the distancing effect produced by the third person or the subjunctive or quotation marks makes the narrator appear unobtrusive.

• The consequent apparent directness of access that the reader has to subjects of the biographical sketches is perhaps likely to make them appear truthful, to return to Mary Cosgrove’s interpretation (4).

Biography is a source of multiple perspectives

• This allows for corroboration and comparison of the various accounts and therefore ought to help to establish what the truth is.

• Long remarks that ‘‘As several critics have pointed out, Sebald’s texts are concerned with questions of perspective. A recurrent topos is the desire for a stable, epistemologically reliable vantage point from which the object – be it a landscape or an historical event – can be represented’’ (5).

Conclusion

• Through biography Sebald connects the work’s Suffolk setting to other locations and its present to the past.

• Through Conrad and Casement colonialism and its geographical and temporal relationship to the work as a whole are examined.

• The biographies provide eyewitness ‘‘vantage point[s]’’ (6) from which to view the historical truth; the multiple viewpoints offer scope for corroboration and the first person lends a sense of authenticity.

Endnotes

• 1. Quotes from the primary text are from: Sebald, W. G.: Die Ringe des Saturn (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1997).

• 2. Bruzelius, Margaret: ‘‘Adventure, Imprisonment and Melancholy: Heart of Darkness and Die Ringe des Saturn’’ in Zisselberger, Markus (ed.): The Undiscover’d Country: W. G. Sebald and the Poetics of Travel (Rochester and New York: Camden House, 2010), pp. 247-276, p. 263.

• 3. Cosgrove, Mary: ‘‘Sebald for our Time: the Politics of Melancholy and Critique of capitalism’’ in Fuchs, Anne and Long, J. J (eds): W. G. Sebald and the writing of History (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007), pp. 91-110, p. 94.

• 4. ibid.• 5. Long, J. J.: ‘‘W. G. Sebald’s Miniature Histories’’ in

Fuchs, Anne and Long, J. J (eds): W. G. Sebald and the writing of History (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007), pp. 111-120, p. 111.

• 6. ibid.

Endnotes (continued)

Bibliography

• Primary text: Sebald, W. G.: Die Ringe des Saturn (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1997).

• Secondary sources:• Bruzelius, Margaret: ‘‘Adventure, Imprisonment and

Melancholy: Heart of Darkness and Die Ringe des Saturn’’ in Zisselberger, Markus (ed.): The Undiscover’d Country: W. G. Sebald and the Poetics of Travel (Rochester and New York: Camden House, 2010), pp. 247-276.

• Cosgrove, Mary: ‘‘Sebald for our Time: the Politics of Melancholy and Critique of capitalism’’ in Fuchs, Anne and Long, J. J. (eds): W. G. Sebald and the writing of History (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007), pp. 91-110.

Bibliography (continued)

• Fuchs, Anne: ‘‘ ‘Ein Hauptkapitel der Geschichte der Unterwerfung’: Representations of Nature in W. G. Sebald’s Die Ringe des Saturn’’ in Fuchs, Anne and Long, J. J (eds): W. G. Sebald and the writing of History (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007), 121-138.

• Long, J. J.: ‘‘W. G. Sebald’s Miniature Histories’’ in Fuchs, Anne and Long, J. J (eds): W. G. Sebald and the writing of History (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007), pp. 111-120.