Unrecounted

17 June 2005

Territory Rights — Worldwide excluding Canada and the British Commonwealth.

W. G. Sebald (Author), Michael Hamburger (Translator), Jan Peter Tripp (Illustrated by), Andrea Köhler (Other)

With contributions from Hans Magnus Enzensberger

Description

A gorgeous illustrated poetry collection by W. G. Sebald: "An extraordinarily handsome edition of poems by the late great writer" (Confrontation).

Unrecounted combines thirty-three of what W. G. Sebald called his "micropoems"—miniatures as unclassifiable as all of his works—with thirty-three exquisitely exact lithographs by one of his oldest friends, the acclaimed artist Jan Peter Tripp.

The lithographs portray, with stunning precision, pairs of eyes—the eyes of Beckett, Borges, Proust Jasper Johns, Francis Bacon, Tripp, Sebald, Sebald's dog Maurice. Brief as haiku, the poems are epiphanic and anti-narrative. What the author calls "time lost, the pain of remembering, and the figure of death" here find a small home. The art and poems do not explain one another, but rather engage in a kind of dialogue. "The longer I look at the pictures of Jan Peter Tripp," Sebald comments in his essay, "the better I understand that behind the illusions of the surface, a dread-inspiring depth is concealed. It is the metaphysical lining of reality, so to speak."

Reviews

"Think of Sebald as memory's Einstein." — Richard Eder, The New York Times

"The images...set up a mysterious dialogue with the text, rather like the photos Sebald inserted into his novels." — Adam Kirsch, New York Sun

"A totally original book of poems...haunting, profound, nonsensical, surreal—at moments even painful." — Jewish Exponent

"The drawings along with Sebald's text play with serious themes in a European tradition that has all but vanished." — George Porcari, New York Arts

"The magic of W. G. Sebald's incandescent body of work continues to unfold, with this unexpected collaboration." — Susan Sontag

"Now this poem of gazes has become a memorial, a bequeathal...this legacy of his has the density of epitaphs." — Andrea Köhler

Also By: W. G. Sebald

The Emigrants
W. G. Sebald, Michael Hulse
Paperback, 2016
A masterwork of W. G. Sebald, now with a gorgeous new cover by the famed designer Peter Mendelsund
Vertigo
W. G. Sebald, Michael Hulse
Paperback, 2016
A masterwork of W. G. Sebald, now with a gorgeous new cover by the famed designer Peter Mendelsund
The Rings of Saturn
W. G. Sebald, Michael Hulse
Paperback, 2016
A masterwork of W. G. Sebald, now with a gorgeous new cover by the famed designer Peter Mendelsund
Three Book Sebald Set: The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, and Vertigo
W. G. Sebald, Michael Hulse
Paperback, 2016
The masterworks of W. G. Sebald, now in gorgeous new covers by the famed designer Peter Mendelsund
The Emigrants
W. G. Sebald, Michael Hulse
E Book, 2016
A masterwork of W. G. Sebald, now with a gorgeous new cover by the famed designer Peter Mendelsund