"I can just see them in my mind's eye, said Marie, a set of very corpulent men disregarding their doctors' advice and giving themselves up to the pleasures of the table, which even at a spa were lavish at the time, in order to suppress, by dint of their increasing girth, the anxiety for the security of their social position constantly stirring within them, and I see other patients, most of them ladies and rather pale and sallow already, deep in their own thoughts as they walk along the winding paths from one of the little temples which house fountains to the next, or else in elegiac mood, watching the play of clouds moving over the narrow valley from the viewing points of Amalienhöhe of Schloss Miramont."
— Sebald, W. G. (1944-2001)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Hamish Hamilton
Date
2001
Metaphor
"I can just see them in my mind's eye, said Marie, a set of very corpulent men disregarding their doctors' advice and giving themselves up to the pleasures of the table, which even at a spa were lavish at the time, in order to suppress, by dint of their increasing girth, the anxiety for the security of their social position constantly stirring within them, and I see other patients, most of them ladies and rather pale and sallow already, deep in their own thoughts as they walk along the winding paths from one of the little temples which house fountains to the next, or else in elegiac mood, watching the play of clouds moving over the narrow valley from the viewing points of Amalienhöhe of Schloss Miramont."
Metaphor in Context
[...] I can just see them in my mind's eye, said Marie, a set of very corpulent men disregarding their doctors' advice and giving themselves up to the pleasures of the table, which even at a spa were lavish at the time, in order to suppress, by dint of their increasing girth, the anxiety for the security of their social position constantly stirring within them, and I see other patients, most of them ladies and rather pale and sallow already, deep in their own thoughts as they walk along the winding paths from one of the little temples which house fountains to the next, or else in elegiac mood, watching the play of clouds moving over the narrow valley from the viewing points of Amalienhöhe of Schloss Miramont. [...]
(pp. 210-1)
(pp. 210-1)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz, trans. Anthea Bell (New York: Modern Library, 2001)
Theme
Mind's Eye
Date of Entry
05/18/2011
