Here are the letters between Nelly Sachs (1891-1970), recipient of the 1966 Nobel Prize for Literature, and the great German-speaking poet Paul Celan (1920-1970). Their correspondence lasted from 1954 until Celan's death by suicide. Sachs died the day Celan was buried.
What Paul Celan once said of his mother tongue holds as well for Nelly Sachs: "Reachable, near and not lost, there remained amid the losses this one thing: language. It, the language, remained, not lost, yes in spite of everything. But it had to pass through its own answerlessness, pass through frightful muting, pass through the thousand darknesses of death bringing speech". Sachs put it this way: "The frightful experiences that brought me to the edge of death and darkness are my tutors. If I couldn't have written, I wouldn't have survived... my metaphors are my wounds".
About the Author
Nelly Sachs, poet and playwright, was born in Berlin in 1891. Her first poems were published in 1929. In 1940 she and her mother fled to Sweden, where she was granted nationality in 1952. Her correspondence with Paul Celan began in 1954. In 1966, the year before she died, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Paul Celan (1920-1970) was born Paul Antschel into a Jewish family in Bukovina, a German enclave in Romania which was destroyed by the Nazis. His parents were taken to a concentration camp in 1942, and did not return; Celan managed to escape deportation and to survive. After settling in Paris in 1948, he gained widespread recognition as a poet with the publication of his first collection of poems in German in 1952. His earliest poems were written in Romanian and have been translated by, among others, his friend Nina Cassian. He was a fine translator of poetry, mainly from French, English, Russian and Romanian. His mysterious meeting with Martin Heidegger was the subject of a radio play by John Banville.
Paul Celan (1920-1970) was born Paul Antschel into a Jewish family in Bukovina, a German enclave in Romania which was destroyed by the Nazis. His parents were taken to a concentration camp in 1942, and did not return; Celan managed to escape deportation and to survive. After settling in Paris in 1948, he gained widespread recognition as a poet with the publication of his first collection of poems in German in 1952. His earliest poems were written in Romanian and have been translated by, among others, his friend Nina Cassian. He was a fine translator of poetry, mainly from French, English, Russian and Romanian. His mysterious meeting with Martin Heidegger was the subject of a radio play by John Banville.
Reviews
Awards won by Paul Celan
Winner, 1990 European Poetry Translation Prize (Poems of Paul Celan)
Winner, 1990 European Poetry Translation Prize (Poems of Paul Celan)
"The correspondence includes lovely Sachs poems and interesting accounts of their meeting and of contact with other prominent writers of the time. The introduction and afterword are indispensable, as is the entire book" – Choice
