Mapping the Past

By Gabe Cabello, Emigrants ProjectTeam

    The Emigrants, a novel by W.G. Sebald, describes the travels of an unnamed narrator as he reflects on the lives of four German, Jewish emigrants. While some of the emigrants have been impacted by World War I, all have lived through the tragedies caused by the Nazi regime during World War II. The narrator sifts through his memories and the accounts of the people he has met, creating a novel that drifts from the present to the past, sometimes even drifting from the past to the distant past. Historical and geological markers often cause the narrator to make eerie connections between his own life and the lives of these people, giving him a deeper understanding of the struggles they have endured throughout their lives.  

Despite the connections made between these characters and the narrator, there still seems to be a void, or emptiness lurking throughout the novel; at times feeling like a dark cloud constantly hovering over their lives. This seems to be primarily caused by their lack of direct acknowledgement of the devastation brought upon them by the wars and the Holocaust. This is likely because they have all narrowly evaded the darkness of the Holocaust, only to find themselves still haunted by the change and restrictiveness it has brought into their lives. They have fled Germany, and found themselves in unfamiliar worlds that have forced them into seclusion. Their ties have been severed from Germany, and it is both a blessing and a curse.

The accounts of these characters are split into four chapters, and often include secondary accounts of family members and friends. The first is Henry Selwyn, second is Paul Bereyter, third is Ambros Adelwarth, and last is Max Ferber. Selwyn is a hermit born in Lithuania, who is living in London when the narrator meets him. Bereyter is the narrator’s former teacher, who was a patriot that was forced to emigrate from Germany because of his Jewish heritage. Adelwarth was the narrator’s uncle who immigrated to the U.S. and became a servant to a Jewish family. Ferber is an anti-social painter who the narrator meets during his years living in Manchester.

     Throughout the novel, the narrator’s traveling sometimes mirrors the traveling that these character have done during their lives. The narrator often finds himself on the same roads, hotels, and cities that the characters have been in or have spoken about. At times the narrator goes to these places intentionally to simply get a better understanding of their lives. However, these incidents are often coincidental and simply a result of pure chance. As writer Judith Kitchen explains in a biographical essay of Sebald, Sebald often creates a link between the narrator and the narrator’s past. She adds:

All of W. G. Sebald's "novels" adopted a similar stance. In them, a narrator, a loner whose life closely resembles what is known of the life of Sebald himself, provides a first-hand account of his own travels. Almost always, this narrator acts like a "displaced person," moving into strange new landscapes or returning to old haunts that appear at once familiar and remote. Each scene unfolds with such documentary detail--the hushed sounds of early morning in Venice; a steady, assiduous rain in the Tyrol; the architectural design of a railroad station; the smell of camphor in an abandoned attic; the green metal table and old atlas from childhood--that they lay claim to a Proustian dusting of things recalled. The speaker is haunted by the past, sometimes to the point of paralysis. In addition, this narrator often recounts, secondhand, the stories of others--stories of people and places lost to history.

Kitchen therefore seems to believe that the past constantly affects the narrator’s present. Whether it is his past, or the past of the people who have come before him, there are certain triggers throughout everyday life that cause him to remember. While many of us can avoid being bombarded by these memories, the narrator is at the mercy of the past. The narrator cannot avoid them and is constantly forced to reflect on his past, the past of the people he has met, and the past of the people in their lives.

An important thing to note about the novel is that each character has his or her separate story to tell. The characters are each German emigrants who are forced to build new lives for themselves, yet, their stories are not directly linked. They are each an account of their individual lives, and they are only linked together indirectly through the connections between each of them and the narrator. They have endured their own struggle, and each is as complicated as the next.

Despite the complexity of the novel, The Emigrant Project, which was conducted at UCSB, tries to capture the essence of these characters’ stories by mapping out the traveling they have done throughout the novel. The Emigrants Team has created a three-dimensional map using the Google Earth software platform. While the project would seemingly reduce the The Emigrants to a mere map, the Emigrants Team tried to incorporate as much aesthetic material from the novel as possible; things like quotes, and photos.

While the map would still likely be reductive because of the difficulty in capturing the various symbols and layers of history throughout the novel, it would also provide a model that would give readers a better understanding of the context of the novel and the places that the characters have traveled to. Places that were unfamiliar to many readers would be brought to life using the Google Earth map. Moreover, it would provide a better visualization of the distance the characters have traveled.

By using place-marks and connecting them with a different a colored path for each character, their travels have been represented in The Emigrant Project map. Depending on how far in the past the traveling was done, the opacity of the path becomes more transparent. This serves as a symbol for memory and how faint it gets when recollecting old memories as opposed to new ones. Likewise, the width of these paths has been created larger or smaller depending on the mode of transportation. The larger the vehicle is, the wider the path becomes. The order of the markers is chronologically based on the character’s life. While this is nicely organized for the viewer’s purpose, it is not representative of the text.

The narrator’s recollection of Max Ferber’s story, for example, is scattered around throughout the chapter. This is common throughout Sebald’s texts. As Susan Salter Reynolds of the Los Angeles Times notes, “{Sebald] writes the way the mind works, moving from observation to memory and back again, jumping or flowing, but moving all the time”. Although the map by The Emigrants Team is not organized in this scattered manner, the layout of Google Earth allows users to jump back and forth from marker to marker as Sebald does in his text. The map therefore offers both a chronological account of the characters lives, while still giving users the freedom to toggle back and forth from destination to destination.

Like the text, the place-marks throughout the novel add a supportive element on how the story is read. The Emigrants, as most of Sebald’s other novels are, is packed with photographs that serve as markers of the places that the characters have traveled to. As Kitchen explains, “The books contain an interweaving of the verbal and the visual; throughout the text, photographs (portraits, informal snapshots, old postcards, ticket stubs, other memorabilia) play a role in how the story is read. In fact, sometimes (especially in photographs of newspaper articles) they serve as primary text”. These photographs therefore seem to give Sebald’s texts a non-fictional feeling. While some of these accounts are said to resemble Sebald’s own life, and the actual accounts of people he had met throughout his life, The Emigrants is essentially a fictional account. Still, theses photographs seem to falsely authenticate the non-fictional value of the text.

Like Sebald’s novels, the map blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction. “The book jacket declares ‘novel’ while its text and photos almost insist ‘nonfiction’”, adds Kitchen. Like the novel, the Emigrant Project seems to take on a life of its own. It’s based on fictional accounts, however, the map, text, and images seem to breathe real life into the accounts. You are able to see 3-D images of the places they have gone to, and the depth of their travels and struggles seems all too real. Places that were once unfamiliar become clear.

This blend of fiction and non-fiction seems to become a part of reality because of the similarity to the accounts of many other Jewish Germans. While some of them were able to escape the direct impact of the Holocaust, they all seem to have been forced to create new lives for themselves. Similar to what the characters in The Emigrants have done. While the character in The Emigrants have been spared, they must still face the emptiness of being detached from their past, from their history. Like the characters have become detached from their past in the novel, the markers become detached from one another within the map as the characters travel further and further away from their hometowns.

However, the map created by the Emigrants Team as UCSB is simply one example of a growing trend throughout society. While The Emigrants team was able to achieve a model that better represented the traveling within The Emigrants novel, this can now be done by all computer users alike. A feat that could have only been done by a select few several years ago can now be done by the most novice user. Googlelittrips.com is an example of what can be accomplished nowadays. Novels like Blood Meridian, and stories like The Narrative of Captivity and Restoration of Mary Rowlandson, have now be represented through the creation of three-dimensional maps on Google Earth.

As Matt Helft of the New York Times suggests:

With the help of simple tools introduced by Internet companies recently, millions of people are trying their hand at cartography, drawing on digital maps and annotating them with text, images, sound and videos. In the process, they are reshaping the world of mapmaking and collectively creating a new kind of atlas that is likely to be both richer and messier than any other. They are also turning the Web into a medium where maps will play a more central role in how information is organized and found.

Therefore, maps like the ones of The Emigrants and Blood Meridian can play a key role on how information is read and seen. While they are not replacements for the text, they are great supplements for understanding visual aspects of narratives.

     Although these maps fail at translating many key elements and symbols of their novels, they aid users with the understanding of distance and the context of a particular place or setting. They parallel many of their novels qualities and themes, yet, represent an entirely new mode of understanding a text. While The Emigrants Project, for example, fails in capturing the madness and chaos of Sebald’s work, it offers a more objective, and sometimes, a closer look at the context of his narratives. Whether you get a better understanding of the distance traveled, or the places visited, it offers users a different view of complex stories.

Works Cited

Helft, Miguel. With Simple New Tools on Web, Amateurs Reshape Mapmaking. New York Times.  (Late Edition (east Coast)). New York, N.Y.:Jul 27, 2007. ProQuest. UCSB Library. Feb 2008.

Kitchen, Judith. Biographical Essay: Winfried Georg Sebald. British Writers, Supplement VIII. Jay Parini, Ed. Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003. Literature Resource Center. UCSB Library. Feb 2008.

Reynolds, Susan Saleters. A Writer Who Challenges Traditional Storytelling Style. Los Angeles Times.  Los Angeles, Calif.:Oct 24, 2001.ProQuest. UCSB Library. Feb