On the Natural History of Destruction

by W.G. Sebald

According to Sebald, during World War II the Allied forces bombed 131 German cities and towns. The air raids killed 600,000 German civilians. In this first section of the book, “Air War and Literature,” printed from the Zürich lectures given by Sebald in 1997, he addresses the German reaction to this devastation, specifically in art, more specifically in literature.

He claims that the German reaction was no reaction, esp. from Germans who remained in their country during and after WWII. He analyzes the huge void in German literature regarding the destruction of their country, giving also examples of writers who do touch on the subject (usually years later) and addressing what they still leave out.

Sebald proposes several reasons for the absence — everything from pride and defiance to “regard[ing] the great firestorms as just punishment” (14).

Sebald’s references writers who do address the attacks, sometimes decades later; writers who blatantly don’t; reports from German eyewitnesses (whose “stereotypical phrases” function “to cover up and neutralize experiences beyond our ability to comprehend” (25)); even reports from reporters participating in the bombing. He uses these as reference points to give a partial account of what happened and to attempt a fuller account of its effect on the German people.

Repeatedly he returns to the subjects of memory and language.

Can memory be accurate? Especially in instances of tragedy: What will it leave out? What will it distort? He refers to the 1970 account of Alexander Kluge, an American military psychologist who spoke with survivors after the war and claimed “the population, although obviously showing an innate wish to tell its own story, [had] lost the psychic power of accurate memory, particularly within the confines of the ruined city.” (24)

Can language be accurate? Either words fail us (so we use those “stereotypical phrases”) or words can be used to deceive. He gives an example of fictions written about the aftermath of the bombings that do not adequately “make up a comprehensive image of the world of the ruins” but instead “mythologize a reality that in its raw form defies description” (48). He also points out the tendency to put history in terms of stories we already tell. For example, some writers use “a rhetoric of fatefulness” (51) to explain the bombings.

[The book has several other sections, and I owe it much more detail, but it’s been weeks since I read it and this is the part that sticks with me the most.]

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3 Responses to On the Natural History of Destruction

  1. p says:

    it’s true, you take a historical tour of germany in germany and there is a significant block of time they don’t mention or acknowledge. i’ve read some books that mention horrible things in passing..more as an allusion which makes me think that it’s an unconscious shame of sorts.

  2. Adam says:

    Fascinating. I’ve read accounts of towns nearby concentration camps where, when the furnaces where running at full capacity the nearby town would be blanketed in a layer of ash from the burning bodies. Townspeople would comment that the ‘snow’ was dark and smelled different, but that was the only acknowledgment.

    Maybe this is how people cope with unbearable truths.

  3. ekbworldwide says:

    >> Maybe this is how people cope with unbearable truths.

    It’s how *some* *people* cope with such events. I guess I should have said *most* *people*.

    How can a man who’s warm understand a man who’s cold?
    from “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”

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