On the Natural History of Destruction

by W.G. Sebald

To Weiss who, like all moralists, embodies the neurasthenic type apostrophized in Nietzsche’s study, memory logically consists almost inevitably in the recall of past torments.

This is the justification for the sadomasochistic preoccupation, the repeated and virtuoso representation of suffering, manifest in the literary work of two poets more than half a millennium apart in time, yet very much alike in spirit.