Figures of Memory in W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz – Reception of Young Readers

The main purpose of the article is the comparison of the “professional” analysis of Austerlitz by W.G Sebald with the reading reactions of a group of thirteen and fourteen-year-old students. The paper was inspired by a project which the author carried out at the Szalom Alejchem Primary School in Wrocław, which functioned as a Jewish national minority school. The narration of Austerlitz does not fit into the traditional, conventional novel structure; it reflects upon the work of memory itself, unsettled, with gaps and chronology disorders. Analysis undertook in volume Practical Past by Hayden White, an eminent theorist of the history and historiography, presents Austerlitz as a a peculiar example of the postmodern version of the historical novel; White specifies certain elements of the construction which determine the post-modernist character. Students, despite their limited knowledge regarding the theory of literature, pointed out similar elements, such as the lack of a tangible plot or rapid action, the narrator’s function, “eternal wanderer” as a metaphor of human fate or the recurrence of certain motifs and patterns. Those motifs and patterns – which during the joint work on Austerlitz were initially called “figures of memory” – have been defined in the same way as Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire. Work on the analysis of Austerlitz with teenagers proves that decoding the metaphorical layer of the novel often depends on the most primordial experiences. Young people are able to interpret “adult literature” and find themselves as full-fledged readers.