The Aesthetics of Passage: The Imag(in)ed Experience of Time in Thomas Lehr, W. G. Sebald and Peter Handke (review)

Across the disciplines, the study of time and space has undergone a profound transformation. The past two decades have witnessed a shift away from the structural explanations and grand narratives that dominated twentieth-century scholarship toward a more culturally and geographically nuanced work, sensitive to difference and specificity. This trend has also manifested itself in the humanities—specifically in literary and cultural studies—as extensively discussed in Doris Bachmann-Medick's study Cultural Turns. Neuorientierungen in den Kulturwissenschaften (2006).

Polster's book The Aesthetics of Passage combines textual analysis with cultural anthropology to focus on negotiations between visual and literary material as a means to explore the passing of time and history. By examining works of authors Thomas Lehr, W.G. Sebald, and Peter Handke and artist Jan Peter Tripp, she sets out to determine "narrative and aesthetic strategies of images and texts which attempt to show past times, and unfolding times without changing the frame of observation" (11). The author assertively turns away from traditional scholarship and argues for an unconventional approach to uncover how the past is incorporated into the present as a distinct—and visually distinctive—temporal phase.

In her first and introductory chapter, Polster succinctly reviews the history of time, image, and metaphor in the philosophical discourse through the works of Hegel, Kant, and Bergson. While these philosophers have conceptualized and formulated the relationship of time to space—perceived space as static and time as fluid—the author postulates that this notion no longer exists. She uses Thomas Lehr's novel 42 as a prime example. In this narrative, time stops while a group visits CERN (the underground European Laboratory for Nuclear Research located in Switzerland). Humans are now held hostage in a world described as a "Fotografie der Welt" (29). In this universe, moral and ethical values have lost their meaning, presenting a quasi-nuclear apocalyptic scenario. For this reason, the author contends that temporal and spatial imagination have failed and can no longer be restored.

Polster's second chapter is devoted to German contemporary artist Jan Peter Tripp. Polster utilizes an innovative approach termed "heterochronocization" (64). Her method of interpretation, largely built on the work of Deleuze, is used to visualize a history of the present. The artist's photorealist paintings are composed of imaging multiple temporal phases within a single image. This visual material demonstrates that space is not rigidly opposed to time, but rather "conceptualized as the act of spatializing [with the intent to] render the invisible visible and, consequently to doubt our senses" (65).

It is only natural that a discussion of the works of W. G. Sebald follows in the third chapter, for both Sebald's and Tripp's lives and works are closely intertwined. According to Polster, Sebald transcends the idea of a simple temporal landscape by creating mnemoscapes: "heterochronic, associative, narrative spatializations that consist of memory fragments, information of literary accounts of a specific historical period, and his own visual perception of a particular site" (13). It is commonly known that Sebald's narratives revolve around topics of memory, memory-making, flux of time, and passing of history. As a result of this, his œuvre is frequently interpreted within the scholarly framework of the Holocaust. Polster acknowledges this trajectory but nonetheless wants to move research away from Vergangenheitsbewältigung towards a critical analysis of the present in which the reader questions his or her own relationship to space and temporality.

The forth and last chapter concerns recent works of Peter Handke. His self-proclaimed prohibition of space—evident in Der Bildverlust oder Durch die Sierra de Gredos (2002)—provides Polster with ample room for implementation of her theoretical project. She concludes her argument by postulating that the text is unable to capture time's eternal passage and fleetingness within language. Consequently, the text illustrates the failure to...