1 - Opening Address: The Connections between H. G. Adler and W. G. Sebald, from a Personal Perspective

Summary

It is an honor for me to offer a few opening words to this volume on H. G. Adler and W. G. Sebald. The symposium that served as a starting point for this volume, hosted by the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, was, as far as I am aware, the second Sebald symposium in London University, and the second on H. G. Adler—the first having been devoted exclusively to H. G. Adler's correspondence with Hermann Broch. That in itself deserves recognition. Moreover, the symposium and this volume are made special by virtue of the fact that they widen the focus from the obvious theme of Sebald's reception of H. G. Adler's work—a topic interesting enough—to their shared commitment to Witnessing, Memory, and Poetics. The circumstances they wrote about tested these concepts to the limit and the contributions gathered here promise to deepen our understanding not just of Adler and Sebald and the relationship between the two of them, but of the three concepts, so important to them both.

Adler and Sebald have much in common. They are both scholarpoets—Dichter—who practice scholarship, fiction, poetry, and photography; both write as German-speaking exiles in England; and both stand in the tradition of Austrian literature defined by the work of Adalbert Stifter. Stifter's style, Stifter's fascination with detail, and Stifter's ethics all play a part in their work.