The Function of Biography
in Die Ringe des Saturn,
with a focus on Joseph Conrad and Roger
Casement
Samuel Hopkins
Who is mentioned?
The numerous people about whom we are given biographical details include:
• Michael Parkinson,
academic;
• Janine Dakyns, academic;
• Thomas Browne, man of
many interests;
• Morton Peto,
businessman and estate
owner;
• Frederick Farrar, judge
and neighbour;
• George Wyndham Le
Strange, eccentric estate
owner;
• Roger Casement;
• Joseph Conrad, novelist;
• Tz’u-hsi, empress;
• T’ung-chih, emperor;
• Algernon Swinburne,
poet;
and
• Michael Hamburger,
writer;
• Stanley Kerry, academic;
• Edward FitzGerald,
translator of the
Rubaiyat of Omar
Khayyam;
• The Ashburys, estate
owners;
• Cutherbert Quilter,
businessman, estate
owner;
• Alec Garrard, farmer
and model maker;
• Reverend Ives,
mathematician;
• Chateaubriand, writer
So,
• We are given accounts of the lives of around
twenty people.
• The narrator knows some personally, but
many are deceased. The biographies of those
who lived in past centuries provide a human
point of access to periods of time of which the
narrator can have no direct experience.
• Biography also allows Sebald to cover a vast
area of space.
The biographical sketches as a bridge
between locations
• All of these people can be connected in some
way to the Suffolk setting of the narrator’s
physical journey. For example, Conrad spent time
in Lowestoft (pp. 137-138) (1).
• Many of them are better remembered in
connection with other places. The biographical
sketches, alongside the narrator’s recollections of
his own journeys, connect the physical setting of
the narrative to the many other locations.
Landscape, people, ideas and time
• Biography is also used to tie the setting of the
physical landscape to the art and ideas in the
text.
• For instance, the present-day location of Thomas
Browne’s skull in Norwich links the historical
event depicted in the Rembrandt painting to East
Anglia because the narrator speculates that
Browne was at the dissection (p. 22). Biography is
used to tie the setting of the physical landscape
to the art and ideas in the text, and the present
to the past.
Conrad and Casement
• The contents pages inform us that there are
ten parts.
• They indicate that the fifth part is concerned
principally with Conrad und Casement.
• The amount of the total work devoted to
them makes the particular importance of
these two biographies clear.
Casement’s life and journeys as
described in Die Ringe des Saturn
• In 1903 Casement was the British consul in the
Belgian Congo. ‘‘Casement […] machte in einer
dem Foreign Secretary […] vorgelegten
Denkschrift genaue Angaben über die […]
Ausbeutung der Schwarzen’’ (p. 154).
• In South America he encounters imperialism
again – this time carried out by a company based
in Britain.
• He is, however, best remembered for his support
for Irish independence.
Conrad’s life and journeys
• Conrad is born to a Polish family in Tsarist Russia.
As his parents’ aim is ‘‘die von so vielen ersehnte
Erhebung gegen die russische Tyrannei
vorbereiten zu helfen’’ (p. 127), the family is
exiled – and Conrad experiences imperialist
oppression.
• Conrad spends time in the Congo and is disgusted
by what he finds.
• He comes to Britain and becomes a successful
novelist, whose most famous work, Heart of
Darkness, addresses what he saw in the Congo.
What Conrad and Casement have in
common in the narrative
• They both witnessed brutal colonialism in the
Congo, where they met.
• Both travelled widely.
• Between them they observed colonialism on
several continents, which means that their
biographies allow the narrator to reflect on
colonialism on a global level.
Conrad and Casement as points of
entry into colonialism
• By writing about what they witnessed in the
Congo they gave people of the perpetrating
nations a window into the lives of the faraway
victims of European colonialism.
• This makes them highly suitable for Sebald’s
engagement with the subject: both as an entry
point to colonial history for himself and because,
like Conrad and Casement, Sebald seeks to give
his readers insight into colonialism.
The narrator’s attitude to colonialism
• The following quotes indicate the narrator’s
own characterisation and condemnation of
colonialism:
• ‘‘von ihrer eigenen Habsucht und Gier
korrumpierten Europäern’’ (p. 126);
• ‘‘aus dieser unguten Stimmung erkennt
Korzeniowski [….] den Wahnwitz des ganzen
kolonialen Unternehmens’’ (p. 142).
The past relates to the present: the
narrator’s memories of Brussels
• Margaret Bruzelius notes that ‘‘the narrator
seems to view Belgian hideousness as retribution
for its rapacity in the Congo’’ (2).
• It is made clear that this excursion back into (or
closer to) the present is related to Belgium’s past
by the fact that the narrator remarks on a woman
whose ‘‘Geburtsdatum […] mochte in etwa
übereinstimmen mit dem Zeitpunkt der
Fertigstellung der Kongo-Bahn’’ (p. 154).
Biography, Time, Place and Truth
• Sebald seeks, in Mary Cosgrove’s words, an
‘‘interconnectedness of persons, regions and
events across space and time […] that would
explain – more profoundly and truthfully than
chronological historical narrative – the place
of mankind in the late twentieth century’’ (3).
Biography and Perspective
• Strikingly Sebald often uses the first person
when we are presented with other characters’
experiences and omits quotation marks.
• For example, ‘‘Als der Schlitten anruckte,
begann für mich’’ and so on (p. 140). The first
person speaker is Conrad, which is conveyed
only by the context and ‘‘schreibt
Korzeniowski’’ in the previous sentence (pp.
139-140).
Directness of access to other
characters
• Although our access to the perspectives of other
people is controlled by Sebald, the use of first
person without the distancing effect produced by
the third person or the subjunctive or quotation
marks makes the narrator appear unobtrusive.
• The consequent apparent directness of access
that the reader has to subjects of the
biographical sketches is perhaps likely to make
them appear truthful, to return to Mary
Cosgrove’s interpretation (4).
Biography is a source of multiple
perspectives
• This allows for corroboration and comparison of
the various accounts and therefore ought to help
to establish what the truth is.
• Long remarks that ‘‘As several critics have pointed
out, Sebald’s texts are concerned with questions
of perspective. A recurrent topos is the desire for
a stable, epistemologically reliable vantage point
from which the object – be it a landscape or an
historical event – can be represented’’ (5).
Conclusion
• Through biography Sebald connects the work’s
Suffolk setting to other locations and its present
to the past.
• Through Conrad and Casement colonialism and
its geographical and temporal relationship to the
work as a whole are examined.
• The biographies provide eyewitness ‘‘vantage
point[s]’’ (6) from which to view the historical
truth; the multiple viewpoints offer scope for
corroboration and the first person lends a sense
of authenticity.
Endnotes
• 1. Quotes from the primary text are from: Sebald,
W. G.: Die Ringe des Saturn (Frankfurt am Main:
Fischer, 1997).
• 2. Bruzelius, Margaret: ‘‘Adventure,
Imprisonment and Melancholy: Heart of Darkness
and Die Ringe des Saturn’’ in Zisselberger, Markus
(ed.): The Undiscover’d Country: W. G. Sebald and
the Poetics of Travel (Rochester and New York:
Camden House, 2010), pp. 247-276, p. 263.
Endnotes (continued)
• 3. Cosgrove, Mary: ‘‘Sebald for our Time: the Politics of
Melancholy and Critique of capitalism’’ in Fuchs, Anne
and Long, J. J (eds): W. G. Sebald and the writing of
History (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007),
pp. 91-110, p. 94.
• 4. ibid.
• 5. Long, J. J.: ‘‘W. G. Sebald’s Miniature Histories’’ in
Fuchs, Anne and Long, J. J (eds): W. G. Sebald and the
writing of History (Würzburg: Königshausen &
Neumann, 2007), pp. 111-120, p. 111.
• 6. ibid.
Bibliography
• Primary text: Sebald, W. G.: Die Ringe des Saturn (Frankfurt
am Main: Fischer, 1997).
• Secondary sources:
• Bruzelius, Margaret: ‘‘Adventure, Imprisonment and
Melancholy: Heart of Darkness and Die Ringe des Saturn’’
in Zisselberger, Markus (ed.): The Undiscover’d Country: W.
G. Sebald and the Poetics of Travel (Rochester and New
York: Camden House, 2010), pp. 247-276.
• Cosgrove, Mary: ‘‘Sebald for our Time: the Politics of
Melancholy and Critique of capitalism’’ in Fuchs, Anne and
Long, J. J. (eds): W. G. Sebald and the writing of History
(Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007), pp. 91-110.
Bibliography (continued)
• Fuchs, Anne: ‘‘ ‘Ein Hauptkapitel der Geschichte
der Unterwerfung’: Representations of Nature in
W. G. Sebald’s Die Ringe des Saturn’’ in Fuchs,
Anne and Long, J. J (eds): W. G. Sebald and the
writing of History (Würzburg: Königshausen &
Neumann, 2007), 121-138.
• Long, J. J.: ‘‘W. G. Sebald’s Miniature Histories’’ in
Fuchs, Anne and Long, J. J (eds): W. G. Sebald and
the writing of History (Würzburg: Königshausen &
Neumann, 2007), pp. 111-120.