Sebald, W. G. (1944-2001)

Austerlitz

London

Hamish Hamilton

2001

"[T]his is how it is described in the book Le Jardin des Plantes, in which Claude Simon descends once more into the storehouse of memories, and on page 235 begins to tell the fragmentary tale of a certain Gastone Novelli who, like Améry, was subjected to this particular form of torture."

[...] I guessed at the kind of third-degree interrogations which were being conducted here around the time I was born, since it was only a few years later that I read Jean Améry's description of the dreadful physical closeness between torturers and their victims, and of the tortures he himself suffered in Breendonk when he was hoisted aloft by his hands, tied behind his back, so that with a crack and a splintering sound which, as he says, he had not yet forgotten when he came to write his account, his arms dislocated from the sockets of his shoulder joints, and he was left dangling as they were wrenched up behind him and twisted together above his head: la pendaison par les mains lieés dans le dos jusqu'à évanouissement--this is how it is described in the book Le Jardin des Plantes, in which Claude Simon descends once more into the storehouse of memories, and on page 235 begins to tell the fragmentary tale of a certain Gastone Novelli who, like Améry, was subjected to this particular form of torture. The passage opens with an entry of 26 October 1943 from General Rommel's diary, in which Rommel comments that in view of the powerlessness of the police in Italy one must now take charge oneself. [...]
(p. 26)

Architecture::Storehouse

Reading

W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz, trans. Anthea Bell (New York: Modern Library, 2001)

05/18/2011