The Rings of Saturn

by W.G. Sebald

What we perceive are no more than isolated lights in the abyss of ignorance, in the shadow-filled edifice of the world.

And how fine a place the house seemed to me now that it was imperceptibly nearing the brink of dissolution and silent oblivion.

They just want to be in a place where they have the world behind them, and before them nothing but emptiness.

and since almost all creatures, from one meridian to the next, lie down after the sun has set, so, he continues, one might, in following the setting sun, see on our globe nothing but prone bodies, row upon row, as if levelled by the scythe of Saturn – an endless graveyard for a humanity struck by falling sickness.

What manner of theatre is it, in which we are at once playwright, actor, stage manager, scene painter and audience?