Atlas eines ängstlichen Mannes: the burden of history

While Atlas eines ängstlichen Mannes develops Christoph Ransmayr’s long-term interest in the relationship between travel and narrative, it suggests links to a non-cartographic project, namely Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas. Using Georges Didi-Huberman’s recent reading of Warburg’s “Bilderatlas” and the mythological figure of Atlas, this article shows how Ransmayr’s narrator is confronted on his travels with the “Pathosformeln” of human suffering. As witness, he feels conflicted about what to do with this burden: at times he wants to set it down, to see it dissipate in a vision of weightlessness; but in the episodes relating to his native Austria and the recent past, he sees the proximity of this legacy and tries to shoulder the burden of history through acts of narrative.