Book Review: The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald

The Rings of Saturn

By W.G Sebald

New Directions Books (1998)

pp 296

In this great work of literature, there are as many rings operating as a concentric whole as there are rings around Saturn. The narrator, quasi main character, is unknowable, an eccentric crank who is obsessed with esoteric details about people, places, and things.

Who is this man? This very droll and thin-lipped man? He appears to be a wanderer, a journeyman apprenticing to an old world order, or an erudite writer connecting the dots among obscure but sometimes horrifying trivia. The wanderer travels the English country side (East Anglia) pontificating about the life of the polymath Sir Thomas Browne.

Eventually the discourse on Thomas Browne mushrooms into a spiraling narrative about silkworms and silk production in China, Germany, France and England. The author Joseph Conrad is given equal footing along with the little known English poet Edward FitzGerald. 

This solitary wanderer’s journey reeks of decay, rot, and despair that is both real and imagined. Vast country estates have fallen into ruin and neglect. Upper crust Englishmen and their progeny are land rich but cash poor. Unable to make a living, these wretched, well born souls subsist in gilded poverty, selling off their silver, fine china, and fineries in order to pay for food.

Then there are the dying trees. “Since the mid-Seventies there has been an ever more rapid decline in the number of trees, with heavy losses amongst all the species most common in England.” He cites the demise of the elm trees due to Dutch Elm disease, but death is contagious and other species of trees suffer sympathetically: ash trees, beech trees, poplars. 

A dreadful storm arose from the Bay of Biscay, crossed the English Channel, swept across the southeast part of the island and out to the North Sea, leaving a massacre in its wake. Gale force wind came and the great crashing of timber felled by the enormous weight of their crowns. The storm flattens the forest in a swift apocalypse, a natural form of Waldsterben. Forest death. 

As much as I recognize the genius of W.G. Sebald’s exploration, I was unable to fall in love. The style of writing is prosaic, formal and swimmingly descriptive, but I grew weary of longish sentences demonstrating the author knew how to distinguish which from that ad nauseum when one good clean sentence would do.

A plethora of phrases in foreign tongues feels more pedantic than it is the proper placement of metaphor, meaning and mystery. Sed quandam solo nocte nigriorem translates to "but I want a certain woman darker than night" (or "but I desire a certain girl darker than night"). This line comes from Epigram 1.115 by the Roman poet Martial.

Few people have thought about quotes attributed to a Roman poet or the tragic life of the poet Edward FitzGerald, who suffered from unrequited love and was ultimately buried in the place he had run from his entire life. 

Is this man’s journey meant to be illusory or an apology? Ultimately the rings of Saturn are real. We must travel the same circles, albeit rings, a multitude of times to once again conjure hell, the Black Night (Noche Oscura) or the dark night of the soul. There is no comfort to be found here, but I would gladly read The Rings of Saturn again if only to learn what the rings are made of.