This essay argues that Sebald’s entire work is informed by a negative ontology which has gained particular force and visibility in ‘modernity’, a period beginning, according to Sebald, with Napoleon ‘at the latest’. In a secular echo of the Bible’s teaching that nature is ‘fallen’ Sebald repeatedly hints that Being is misconstructed and that humans, with their apparently limitless capacity to inflict suffering, are subsumed under this verdict too. As possible sources for this view, this essay makes use of Sebald’s papers in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv at Marbach am Neckar (DLA). It then discusses some of the ways in which this negative ontology appears in Sebald’s work and concludes by showing why the author finally considers that the task of art, particularly literature, is to engage in creative activity as a labour of mourning and a demonstration of solidarity with those who suffer.
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