June 5, 2018 THE K PAOLETTER In Vertigo, W.G. Sebald describes a youthful Franz Kafka taking a journey to Venice by way of Vienna. He stops over in Trieste, and there “on the borderline between grinding weariness and half-sleep he wanders through the lanes of the harbour quarter, sensing under his skin how it is to be a free man waiting on the kerb, hovering an inch above the ground.” Sebald’s project in the book is an inquiry into the titular sensation that is induced by traveling, as exemplified by Kafka’s figure. You see, the journey of Dr. K (as Sebald elliptically refers to him) is not that of your typical eager young European, open to the world, wandering in search of new experience. He is, in short, no flâneur.
K Paoletter 8: Anti-Flâneur
K Paoletter 8: Anti-Flâneur
K Paoletter 8: Anti-Flâneur
June 5, 2018 THE K PAOLETTER In Vertigo, W.G. Sebald describes a youthful Franz Kafka taking a journey to Venice by way of Vienna. He stops over in Trieste, and there “on the borderline between grinding weariness and half-sleep he wanders through the lanes of the harbour quarter, sensing under his skin how it is to be a free man waiting on the kerb, hovering an inch above the ground.” Sebald’s project in the book is an inquiry into the titular sensation that is induced by traveling, as exemplified by Kafka’s figure. You see, the journey of Dr. K (as Sebald elliptically refers to him) is not that of your typical eager young European, open to the world, wandering in search of new experience. He is, in short, no flâneur.