"On the evening of that day, when I visited Vera for the second time in her flat in the Šporkova and she confirmed, in answer to my question, that Agáta had indeed worn sequined sky-blue shoes with her costume as Olympia, I felt as if something were shattering inside my brain."
— Sebald, W. G. (1944-2001)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Hamish Hamilton
Date
2001
Metaphor
"On the evening of that day, when I visited Vera for the second time in her flat in the Šporkova and she confirmed, in answer to my question, that Agáta had indeed worn sequined sky-blue shoes with her costume as Olympia, I felt as if something were shattering inside my brain."
Metaphor in Context
]...] On the evening of that day, when I visited Vera for the second time in her flat in the Šporkova and she confirmed, in answer to my question, that Agáta had indeed worn sequined sky-blue shoes with her costume as Olympia, I felt as if something were shattering inside my brain. Vera said that I had been deeply affected by the dress rehearsal in the Estates Theater, first and foremost, she suspected, because I was afraid Agáta had genuinely changed into someone who, though she might ow be a magical figure, was also a complete stranger to me, and I myself, Austerlitz continued, suddenly remembered that I had been filled with a grief previously unknown to me when, long past my usual bedtime, I lay with my eyes wide open in the dark on the divan in Vera's room, listening to the church clocks strike the quarter-hours and waiting for Agáta to come home, waiting to hear the car bringing her back from that other world stop outside the gate, waiting for her to come into the room at last and sit down beside me, enveloped by a strange theatrical odor in which dust and drifts of perfume mingled. [...]
(pp. 161-2)
(pp. 161-2)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz, trans. Anthea Bell (New York: Modern Library, 2001)
Date of Entry
05/18/2011
