Sentence:  Taking into account the metaphor »scythe of Saturn« that refers to the god as well as the planet of melancholy that the title of Sebald's book recalls from the beginning, one might consider the vision of the globe as a graveyard as part of a baroque topos of "vanitas" and transitoriness—in the sense that Walter Benjamin pointed to the significance of <WSD>saturnic</WSD> melancholy within the ruinous world of seventeenth-century German tragedies. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  saturnine; tending to a gloomy, melancholy, or bitter disposition