To conclude this series of articles, Jorge Carrión, the writer and curator of the exhibition Sebald Variations –to which this blog is a companion piece – retraces the steps of the German author to weave together a canvas of the spaces and worlds that shaped Sebald’s universe. We travel alongside Carrión and Sebald – it could not have been otherwise – through landscapes, cities, bookshops, railway stations, characters, writers and countless literary echoes. ‘Because our obligation is to be witnesses, although we don’t know exactly what to…’

Translating is the most respectful form of reading. For me, translating Sebald involves reading him more carefully than I would otherwise have done. The only thing I regretted was not being able to translate all of Sebald. The translator is a strange being with an overweening sense of possession: not only does he want to translate somebody; he wants that somebody to be his. At any rate, Sebald once said, cheerfully mixing languages: “I always try to write for ceux qui savent lire”.

Once, in Valparaiso, I thought I had discovered the key to Sebald’s writing in a book by him I had borrowed. Over the years, I forgot the title and the sentence. Now that I am borrowing, at random, another book by him, I wonder what those few lines were: lines that seemed so crucial to me ten years ago.