The Sub-Editor - Intervention (4) Austerlitz, Then

INTERVENTION (4) AUSTERLITZ, THEN

'You always have been rather remote, of course, I could tell that, but now it's as if you stood on a threshold and you dared not step over it. That evening in Marienbad, said Austerlitz, I could not admit to myself how right everything Marie said was, but today I know why I felt obliged to turn away when anyone came to close to me, I know that I thought this turning away made me safe. . .' (W G Sebald, 2001, Austerlitz, London: Penguin, 304)

Ok, let's play the pause game one more time. I'd stop time here, if I had the chance:

We had walked all day and talked the way we always did.  We had picnicked in the shelter of a dry-stone wall. Yorkshire in autumn: the sky stretched out blue and forgiving above us, and the beech trees were dressed in copper-red.

We walked for miles and, with you, I felt complete. As I always had and did with you. With you, I knew, I was safe.

We dropped down the hill.  We passed the Co-op on the left and the Inn on the Bridge on the right. We reached the station, and laughed about something I can no longer remember.

You said, 'I'll see you soon'. And I said, 'yes, please'.

I wanted to add, 'I love you. I don't like this life without you', but I didn't dare say it; say how I felt. I had learned to be wary.  Even of you. We had learned to be as bad as each other at not daring to ask for help.

You said, 'I'll see you soon', but, you never came back.

I'd stop time before you said, 'I'll see you soon' because, then, there would've been no promise to break. And I wouldn't have wasted so much time anticipating, desperately longing, for your return. 

The Sub-Editor - Austerlitz

AUSTERLITZ

'It seems to me then as if all the moments of our life occupy the same space, as if future events already existed and were only waiting for us to find our way to them at last, just as when we have accepted an invitation we duly arrive in a certain house at a given time.  And, might it not be, continued Autsterlitz, that we also have appointments to keep with the past, in what has gone before and is for the most part extinguished, and must go there in search of places and people who have some connection with us. . . ?' (W G Sebald, 2001, Austerlitz, London: Penguin, 359-60)

The Sub-Editor - W G Sebald

W G SEBALD

I am reading Austerlitz. W G Sebald. 

It comforts me strangely, though I struggle to say why. As I am strangely comforted by reading the obituaries of people who die young: literary figures, artists, musicians, photographers, all kinds of engineers and technicians. People I admire. People who other people have bothered to bear witness too.

It helps me to believe that a short life isn't necessarily a tragedy: a wasted life. 

And, Austerlitz: a wretched life can still be a worthwhile life, so long as it is properly told.

This is my concern: whether the worth of a life is dependent on how it is told. 

But, I dream of a library, a comprehensive history of humanity, where everybody's life is documented and archived. Forget birth certificates and marriage certificates, death certificates and CVs. I dream of a library where everyone who ever lived has taken the time to write themselves down. Or, someone else has done it for them. Some sub-editor of life.