Monumentalism and narrative: narrative tension in W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz

In Austerlitz, the last novel by W. G. Sebald, there is a dynamic of spaces that projects itself into the ways of thinking – and questioning – the construction of the story. The text, whose central narrative core is the story of Jacques Austerlitz, has numerous digressions and excurses on the history of architecture, in which the character criticizes the monumentalism of the capitalist era: a concealment of the truth that can only come to an end when we restore the small units. In the same way, the narrative articulates anti-narrative impulses (interweaving of voices, linguistic crises, images that the character cannot identify) that undermine the epic grand récit and shape a fragile tale, whose main strength is the declaration of its own impotence.

Keywords:
space; monumentalism; narrative; memory; trauma