> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Sebald-Dapres-nature--Poeme-elementaire/837777

> D'après nature révèlent l'originalité de cet auteur, et sans doute ne voit-on que rarement des débuts littéraires d'emblée si singuliers et si dignes d'intérêt...
—Danieljean (Babelio) ( )

Sebald's first book, published posthumously, is a short and beautiful three-part narrative about a German painter, an exploring who sailed with Bering, and a version of Sebald himself (very Sebald). The text is lineated like poetry but the prose reads like his later work. There is less density to After Nature than Sebald's later novels, but the text still provokes wonder through the arresting use of significant detail and distillation of language. ( )

If you enter the reading of this book as prose, and focus on not noticing the format, and just take in the words, it becomes obvious rather fast that this is a well-written piece of literature. I began by imagining all the words as verse collected instead into paragraphs, and by the last third it did not matter any longer that the text looked like poetry. I suppose this collection was called poetry because it was so lyrical and beautiful. Max Sebald, or another, shaping these words into "blank verse" also added to its claim of being poetry. Having the Poet Laureate of England write a blurb for the back of the dust jacket also acknowledges, and in some ways, confirms its claim of being poetry. But nonetheless and regardless, poetry it is or is not, but instead the beginnings of a too-short career in making historical artifacts that never cease to amaze. W.G. Sebald has a way of making any subject interesting just because he himself is so taken by it. He has a gift that engages even the most hateful and doubtful readers among us. And the more one reads and discovers of Sebald the better prepared to tackle these different types of formats as I had to learn the hard way. It is best not to stereotype in all of life but instead to look upon our journey as an unveiling. ( )

This book is the english translation of the first literary work of Sebald, Nach der Natur. Ein Elementargedicht. It is an extended prose poem divided into three parts. The first is about the German Renaissance painter Matthias Grünewald, opening with his triptych on the alter of Lindenhardt parish church. The second part centers on the German naturalist Georg Wilhem Steller, a member of the Vitus Bering second Kamchatka expedition that landed in Alaska in the summer of 1741. The last part is centered on Sebald himself. The common theme that seems to run through the three parts of the book is that of human suffering, but also of the efforts of people in their quest for meaning, from which an order arises, in places beautiful and comforting, though more cruel, too, than the previous state of ignorance. A difficult book. Beautiful. ( )

The book consists of three long poems that are thematically related. The strongest is the first, an extended ekphrastic poem on a German artist named Matthew Grunewald. The third section takes up themes of wandering that are familiar from Sebald's novels. Though the poems have some striking images, you can tell that his real interests are in narrative and character. The novels of his that I have read are much stronger than this poetry collection. ( )