ShakeSPeareaN VertIgo:
W. g. SebalD’S Lear
anita gilman Sherman
In “Campo Santo” (2003), a posthumously published account of a visit to
Corsica, W. g. Sebald ambles through a graveyard near Piana, meditating
on the inscriptions:
regrets éternels—like almost all phrases in which we express
our feelings for those who have gone before, it is not with-
out ambiguity, for not only does the announcement of the
everlasting inconsolability of the bereaved confine itself to
the absolute minimum, it also sounds, if one stops to con-
sider it, almost like an admission to the dead of guilt, a half-
heart