Unrecounted (New Directions Paperbook) [Paperback]

W. G. Sebald (Author), Jan Peter Tripp (Illustrator), Michael Hamburger (Translator), Andrea Köhler (Contributor), Hans Magnus Enzensberger (Contributor)

Book Description

Series: New Directions Paperbook | Publication Date: October 15, 2007

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." 33 black-and-white illustrations

Editorial Reviews

Review

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

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

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 )

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

A totally original book of poems...haunting, profound, nonsensical, surreal—at moments even painful. (Robert Leiter - Jewish Exponent )

Think of Sebald as memory's Einstein. (Richard Eder - The New York Times )

About the Author

W. G. Sebald was born in Germany in 1944 and died in 2001. He is the author of The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, Vertigo, Austerlitz, After Nature, On the Natural History of Destruction, Unrecounted and Campo Santo.

Jan Peter Tripp was born in 1945 and lives and works in Alsace.

Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (October 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811217264
• ISBN-13: 978-0811217262
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #534,387 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars WG Sebald in the Guise of a Poet, September 15, 2005

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Unrecounted (Hardcover)

UNRECOUNTED is a collaborative work by the deceased and sorely missed WG Sebald and his life long artist friend Jan Peter Tripp. Together they blocked 33 poems and 33 lithographs on apposing pages that were meant to create a sense of communication. In Sebald's words "The longer I look at the pictures of Jan Peter Tripp, 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."

As a devoted reader of all of Sebald's output I was eagerly looking forward to yet another posthumous document from this astonishingly fine writer. What is in this handsome volume is not really 'poetry' but rather brief haiku-like musings. Not that they aren't lovely, it is just that they are not up to the challenging standards of his novels. Still one is left with a satisfied feeling having read this (sideways printed) book of thoughts. The art of Tripp is stunning - eyes of famous writers and thinkers. In the end, in Sebald's own critical self examination, these works are "time lost, the pain of remembering, and the figure of death". As such, they gain more meaning. Grady Harp, September 05

21 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Like an unknown trunk with a stranger's garments in it, June 1, 2005

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Unrecounted (Hardcover)

My first thought was that Sebald (1944-2001) might have been a great novelist but he wasn't too good as a poet. And my second thought was that the good people at New Directions are really milking his posthumous fame to try to sell this puzzling "keepsake," as they call it, for $22.95, when it is so manifestly inferior to his other books. But luckily I kept the book on top of my desk for awhile and presently found myself returning to it again and again, trying to puzzle out what made it different than other books of poetry I had read. These "micropoems," as the translator calls them, do creep under your skin.

Here's one:

The house

in the night
through the windows
the flickering light of
flames

That's it! As New Directions lays them out, these lines are all centered a la Michael McClure (it's hard to tell if Sebald planned this effect.) By the way the translator (Michael Hamburger) must be British and I wonder what a good US translator could have done with the German of these poems which the editor has supplied as an appendix for our eluctation at the back of the book. They are so short you could copy them all out on your lunch hour, but they gain weight and resonance by their placement next to the lithographs that inspired them-33 portraits by Sebald's best friend Jan-Peter Tripp) of people's eyes. (A lot of the poetry is about questions of seeing, perception, realization, etc) I thought I recognized some of the faces and I was right in one case only. The eyes are mostly those of famous artists (Francis Bacon, rembrandt, Jasper Johns, Barnett Newman) and writers (Capote, Borges, Burroughs) and some of the juxtapositions attain a transparency as luminous as ice water. But you don't find out whose eyes they are until the end, so the volume has the aspect of a parlor game to it. By the way, check out page 74. It says those are the eyes of Proust, but they look like Rex Harrison to me!

So you're reading these haiku and puzzling over whose eyes are whose and before you know it, you are swept away into the land of the Unerzahlt for the ride of a lifetime.

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome book, October 31, 2011

By 

Luis Bugarini (Mexico) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Unrecounted (New Directions Paperbook) (Paperback)

If you're a Sebald reader this is your book. Fine poetry beatifully illustrated. The traslation is perfect and the book ifself is a mayor achievement.