08: HOMELAND

Albinson Linares, journalist, [Venezuela]

[Translation (subtitles): Marilena de Chiara]

Transcription:

“Homeland or Heimat, according to Sebald, is one of the concepts I like the most of the Sebaldian universo. In Austerlitz, Saturn Rings, The Emigrants, Natural History of Destruction. In all of these books he constantly talks of Heimat, this untranslatable German term, which means motherland, native land, nation, all bound together in the same word. To me is one of the most interesting concepts Sebald uses, because, just like him, I also constantly reconstruct by heart my own country. In all of Sebald’s books Germany is being reconstructed, almost always by heart, with the experience of the traveler, the experience of the walker, the flâneur, that constant experience of going back to our homelands, redefining our concept of country, from our memory. And I had to basically live two small migrations, one from my small city to the city capital and now that I live in another country, Mexico, I am constantly reconstructing again, in my writing as journalist or novelist, my own homeland from my own memory, from this sediment of memories that ends up being what all of us consider our homeland. Maybe it is a song, maybe is a meal, maybe it is a color, this is constantly present in Sebald and is what I like the most.”