Šporkova

And so, said Austerlitz, no sooner had I arrived in Prague than I found myself back among the scenes of my early childhood, every trace of which had been expunged from my memory, as long as I could recollect. As I walked through the labyrinth of alleyways, thoroughfares, and courtyards between the Vlašská and Nerudova, and still more so when I felt the uneven paving of the Šporkova underfoot as step by step I climbed uphill, it was as if I had already been this way before and memories were revealing themselves to me not by means of any mental effort but through my senses, so long numbed and now coming back to life.

W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz, tr. Anthea Bell, p. 212.


15 November.