In the paper it is argued that Sebald’s entire work is informed by a negative ontology which has gained particular force and visibility in the period known as ‘modernity’, an era that, according to Sebald, begins with Napoleon ‘at the latest’. In a secular echo of the Bible’s teaching that Nature is ‘fallen’ Sebald repeatedly hints that Being is mis-constructed and that humans, with their apparently limitless capacity to inflict suffering, are subsumed under this verdict, too. The possible sources for this view are critically investigated using Sebald’s papers in the Deutsches Lite-raturarchiv, Marbach/Neckar. The paper then discusses some of the ways in which this view of things appears in Sebald’s work and concludes by showing why Sebald finally considers that the task of art, particularly literature, is to engage in creative activity as a labour of mourning and a demonstration of soli-darity with those who suffer.
