Nelly Sachs (original) (raw)
Nelly Sachs(1891-1970)
- Writer
Sachs, whose real name was Leonie Sachs, grew up in a sheltered upper-middle-class family until the National Socialists came to power. She enjoyed largely private lessons. It was not until 1940 that she and her mother were able to escape from the National Socialists to Stockholm, Sweden. From 1933 onwards, Sachs became intensively interested in her Jewish ancestry. Her reading at the time also included the mystic Jakob Böhme. She later used the knowledge from this in her lyrical works. As early as the 1920s, Nelly Sachs published impressionistic poems and stories in a neo-romantic tone in various newspapers. In 1921 her title "Legends and Stories" was published.
In Stockholm she began translating 20th century Swedish poetry. She published the fruits of this work in the titles "Of Waves and Granite. Cross-section through Swedish poetry of the 20th century" in 1947 and "But the sun is also homeless. Swedish poetry of the present" in 1957. But her actual literary work begins with the pieces in which she deals with the persecution by the Nazi regime and her experiences from the Auschwitz concentration camp. The dirge "Your body in smoke through the air" was written in 1944 and 1945 and was then published in 1947. The work is dedicated to Nelly Sachs's fiancé, who died in the concentration camp. The volumes of poetry "In the Apartments of Death" (1947) and "Sterndarkenung" (1949) address suffering and death in the German extermination camp.
The two collections were published in East Berlin at the initiative of Johannes R. Becher. The topic extends into the history of the Jews and into the mystical and cosmic. For Nelly Sachs, the term "dust" plays a prominent role, which she associates with destruction on the one hand, and with mystical motivation as resurrection on the other. In many works the author deals with Jewish history and the fate of the Jews. Some texts appeared in the GDR literary magazine "Sinn und Form". In 1962 the collected scenic poems "Signs in the Sand" were created; among other things, the "Mystery Play of the Suffering of Israel" written in 1943 and entitled "Eli" was included. In this game with a lyrical character, different artistic forms such as dance, drama, music and text are combined to create a total work of art.
"And nobody knows what to do next" was written in 1957, followed two years later by the lyric title "Flucht und Verwandlung". In it, Nelly Sachs continues the resignation and depression in the language that she began in her poetic works from the 1940s. The models for this are the poetry of French surrealism. Language itself becomes an issue, which becomes concrete in the demand for linguistic autonomy. Nelly Sachs's literary role models also included Novalis and Friedrich Hölderlin. From them she got inspiration for her mystification and peculiar metaphorical language, which she realized, for example, in the poetry collection "Late Poems" from 1965. During this time she was honored with the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. In 1966 she shared the Nobel Prize for Literature with the Israeli writer Samuel Josef Agnon.
The Nelly Sachs Prize of the same name, which is awarded every two years by the city of Dortmund, is named after her. It was only in the 1960s that demand for Nelly Sachs' works began to increase.
Nelly Sachs died on May 12, 1970 in Stockholm.
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