The Rings Of Saturn, W. G. Sebald, Translated By Michael Hulse, c. 1995, German; English Translation, 1998
It is not uncommon to find this book on a list of the 100 most important books in English. It was by pure happenstance that I came across this book. Being a "walker," this was a book I wish I could have written. Regardless it immediately reminded me of our walks in Yorkshire.
From the book:
A fictional account of a walking tour through England's East Anglia, Sebald's home for more than twenty years. The Rings of Saturn explores Britin's pastoral and imperial past. Its ten strange and beautiful chapters, with their curious archive of photographs, consider dreams and reality. As the narrator walks, a company of ghosts keeps him company -- Thomas Browne, Swinburne, Chateaubriand, Joseph Conrad, Borges -- conductors between the past and the present.
Chapter I
In August 1992 when the dog days were drawing to an end, I set off to walk the county of Suffolk, in the hope of dispelling the emptiness that takes hold of me whenever I have completed a long stint of work.
Chapter II
It was on a grey, overcast day in August 1992 that I travelled down to the coast in one of the old diesel trains, grimed with oil and soot up to the windows, which ran from Norwich to Lowestoft at that time.
Chapter III
Three or four miles south of Lowestoft the coastline curves gently into the land.
Chapter IV
The rain clouds had dispersed when, after dinner, I took my first walk around the streets and lanes of the town.
Chapter V
On the second evening of my stay in Southwold, after the late news, the BBC broadcast a documentary about Roger Casement, who was executed in a London prison in 1916 for high treason.
Chapter VI
Not far from the coast, between Southwold and Walberswick, a narrown iron bridge crosses the river Blyth where a long time ago shiops heavily lade with wool made their way seaward.
Chapter VII
It had grown uncommonly sultry and dark when at midday, after resting on the beach, I climbed to Dunwich Heath, which lies forlorn above the sea.
Chapter VIII
The day after my visit to Middleton I fell into conversationt with a Dutchman named Cornelis de Jong in the bar of the Crown Hotel in Southwold.
Chapter IX
After Oxford, I headed inland travelling on one of the Eastern Counties Omnibus Company's red buses, going through Woodbridge to Yoxford where I set out on foot in a north-westerly direction along the old Roman road, into the thinly populated countryside that lies to the south of Harleston.
Chapter X
Amongst the miscellaneous papers left by Sir Thomas Browne treating such diverse subjects as practical and ornamental horticulture, the urns found at Brampton in Norfolk, the making of artificial hills and burrows, the several plants mentioned in Scripture, the Saxon tongue, the pronouncements of the Oracle at Delphos, the fish eaten by our Savior, the behaviour of insects, hawks and falconry, and a case of boulimia centenaris which occurred in Yarmouth, amongth these and various other tracts, there is also to be found a catalogue of remarkable books, Musæum Clausum or Bibliotheca Abscondita listing pictures, antiquities and sundry singular items that may have formed part of a collection put together by Browne but were more likely products of his imagination, the inventory of a treasure house that existed purely in his head and to which there is no access except through the letters on the page.
Sir Thomas Browne, physician, 1605 - 1682 (who was born about a decade before William Shakespeare died). Describes bulimia in a woman who was 100 years old.
