там и тогда

Posted by Terry

https://sebald.wordpress.com/2026/01/23/perennially-in-search-of-east-anglia/

http://sebald.wordpress.com/?p=22424

W.G. Sebald’s book The Rings of Saturn, which is almost always described by booksellers and even its own publisher as a walking tour of England’s East Anglia, has, not surprisingly, served as a literal guidebook for tourists, journalists, artists, filmmakers, and writers seeking either insights into Sebald or inspiration for their own projects. The latest iteration comes from a new music and publishing start-up company located in East Anglia called Briticana. It’s a book called In Search of Anglia, a novella published in a small edition of 400 copies that comes with a CD inserted inside. In their publicity, Briticana seems to be highlighting the musicians more than the author, a writer named J. Kyn, who they describe as “an emerging writer from East Anglia.”

A group of friends [wander] along the East Anglian countryside and coast under April skies on a mission. They stop at pubs to listen to wonderful musicians, eat the food and drink of the land and sample the real ale of life. They talk into the early hours about music, about the storms howling outside and spooky tales of centuries past. New friends are made at the bookshops and galleries they visit, yet this holiday turns out to be a quest to discover if it is possible to create something new without losing the old.”

Jezebel, Simon, and Ismael are “following in the footsteps of an enigmatic writer called Max who died decades ago leaving behind the literary equivalent of the formula s=kLogW; which may be the most elegant scientific equation ever articulated by a human being in the last one hundred and forty thousand years.” That equation is Boltzmann’s entropy formula, which I encourage you to read about elsewhere, perhaps on Wikipedia. They follow the route that Sebald took through East Anglia and have decided that “at the end we would throw away something that had once been very precious.” On their trip, which measures about 80 miles in length by my estimation, they travel by foot, train, and bus. They chat up people whenever they can and converse about Brexit, Quantum mechanics, fascism, DNA, rapacious developers, emigration, London in the 1980s, memory, what England really stands for, trickle-down economics, war, refugees, and more—all topics Sebald would have approved of, I think.

Much of the talk during the trip is about music. At Southwold, listening to the gentle sounds of the sea, Ishmael, who serves as the narrator, is reminded of “Sea Drift” (1903-4) by Frederick Delius, which “conveys the restlessness of the sea to such perfection.” Later on, he describes to his companions his five favorite recordings of “Chants D’Auvergne” (1923-1930) by Joseph Canteloube. And outside the Jolly Sailor pub in Orford, he listens to a man singing the ending lines of Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes. In pubs along the way, they listen to the songs of the musicians whose work can be heard on the CD that accompanies the book—the East Anglian artists Chloe with the Cyriacs, Miguel Zambujeira, All My Trials, and Efte and Ghost Carnival. The book is also heavily illustrated, with small photographs (as on the left page below) credited to “M B et al” and “Ink sketches by F Carless et al.”

When they reach the end of their trip, the trio ceremoniously drop their cellphones in the sea and start the journey homeward. “The three of us will leave everything we know behind to start something new. We will abandon the complicity of our current life. We will embrace the risk of living in a different way. It has every chance of failing, but we are here only through courage.” In spite of their own minimal sacrifice, the trio insist on thinking big as they reflect back through the history of activism in Britain and commit themselves to carry on the battle “to protect our freedoms and ensure justice stays at the heart of our culture and our land.” It’s a good message for our times.

Die Ringe des Saturn: Eine Englische Wallfahrt was first published in Germany in 1995 and then translated as The Rings of Saturn in 1998. In Search of Anglia stays true to the spirit of Sebald’s book without ever becoming slavish to it. The trio follow in his footsteps and his ethic, but they do so very much with their own spirit, bringing it into the 21st century. And the music is really good.

https://sebald.wordpress.com/2026/01/23/perennially-in-search-of-east-anglia/

http://sebald.wordpress.com/?p=22424