![]() Stereometry refers to the volumetric measurement of three-dimensional Euclidean space-or, in other words, the measurement of (representations of) physical space. They describe fluid cartographies as those that ‘ at understanding instead of controlling,’ and whichĬrucially for my purposes, toward the novel’s end the eponymous protagonist himself makes the following observation about his experience of space and time: ‘I feel more and more as if time did not exist at all, only various spaces interlocking according to the rules of a higher form of stereometry, between which the living and the dead can move back and forth as they like’ (p. Particularly, I have demonstrated the complementary fluidities of the memories and cartographies expressed within Sebald’s texts, particularly with reference to the notion of ‘fluid cartography,’ a critical understanding of mapping introduced by Isabel Capeloa Gil and João Ferreira Duarte. Crucial to this aspect of his representations of space is an array of real-world markers of place, extended perambulations on the part of protagonists and other characters, and a proliferation of overhead and bird’s-eye views (to give but a few examples), and it is within such spaces (and the mental wanderings they inspire) that memory and history come to bear upon the narrative (see Holden 2021). I have elsewhere described the ‘map-like’ quality of Sebald’s work-particularly in The Rings of Saturn-and the ways in which the author’s map-like constructions are inseparable from the mnemonic concerns of his texts. Austerlitz differs somewhat, in that it explores the suppression of its protagonist’s natural recollections and instead employs ‘association and encyclopedic links’ in the role of a kind of surrogate memory. 563) and a ‘spherical system of association and encyclopedic links’-these are the very characteristics that the scholar Bianca Theisen identifies as being central to the author’s earlier work, The Rings of Saturn ( Theisen 2006, p. It is owing to this mnemonic black hole that the text relies on ‘allegorical indirection’ ( Theisen 2006, p. ![]() Whilst it is not hinted at in this description, however, I suggest that this quality of being ‘undemonstrative’ originates from the void that is at the novel’s core-namely, a void of repressed memory, from which the protagonist struggles throughout to emerge. It would seem that its ‘undemonstrative’ quality is here perceived as a positive attribute, and is crucial to Banville’s enthusiastic reception of the novel. ‘Has there ever been,’ asks John Banville, ‘a more devastating and yet wholly undemonstrative account of the mid-20th century European horrors as Austerlitz Sebald’s ( 2002a) final novel his masterpiece, and one of the supreme works of art of our time?’ ( Banville 2003, ♢). ![]()
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