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5. Dialectic of Error in W.G. Sebald’s prose («The Rings of Saturn») (OPEN ACCESS)

Dialectic of Error in W.G. Sebald’s prose («The Rings of Saturn») (OPEN ACCESS)

Sokolova E.V.

Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia, lizak2000@mail.ru

Abstract

The article examines the dynamic relationships between illness, death, nature, creativity, life, on the one hand, and error – on the other, within the first part of «The Rings of Saturn» (1995) by W.G. Sebald (1944-2001), an influential German-language writer of the last decade of the twentieth century. Following Wittgenstein, W.G. Sebald understood «error» as «inexactness», a deviation from a goal (ideal, norm, etc.); error appears in his literary text as a general property of human being and thinking, reflecting the fundamental principle of variability. The article argues the basical meaning of the identified dynamics for the analyzed first part of the text, where the main «patterns» for the topic of error in the whole text of «The Rings of Saturn» are set.

Keywords

German literature of the twentieth century; the problem of memory in literature;

For citing: Sokolova E.V. (2021). Dialectic of Error in W.G. Sebald’s prose («The Rings of Saturn»). Human being: Image and essence. Humanitarian aspects. Moscow: INION RAN. Vol. 3(47): Literature and history – fact and fiction, pp. 200-217. DOI: 10.31249/chel/2021.03.11

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