About Nelly Sachs
Nelly Sachs (Berlin, 10 December 1891 – Stockholm, 12 May 1970) was a German-born Swedish poet and writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1966. At fifteen, she was fascinated by the novel “The Saga of Gösta Berling”, which marked the debut of the Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf, with whom she would have a lively exchange of letters that would last over 35 years. Nelly Sachs began composing poetry at the age of 17. In 1921, with the help of writer Stefan Zweig, her first collection of short stories, “Legends and Tales”, was published. Her early works were characterized by a neo-Romantic influence and revolved around the themes of nature and music. Her first collection of poems was published in 1946 and entitled “In the Mansions of Death”, this collection of poems deals especially with the night, the memory, and exile. Toward the end of the decade, her poems were published in several Berlin newspapers and were appreciated by both the public and critics of the time.She obtained Swedish citizenship only in 1953, from where she began to learn Swedish and to translate modern Swedish poetry into German, and thanks to these translations she acquired new expressive abilities, moving away from her previous romantic style. The translation of poetry by authors like Edith Södergran, Karin Boye, Johannes Edfelt, Hjalmar Gullberg, Anders Österling and Pär Lagerkvist allowed her to reach a level of maturity that guaranteed her artistic appreciation that lasts to this day.
After her mother's death in 1950, she began a correspondence with the poet Paul Celan, with whom she felt a kinship of soul and destiny. Literary critic Peter Hamm later stated that “for both of them, poetry was a lifeline from the abyss of the past.”
Toward the end of the decade, after years of isolation, Nelly Sachs's works began to spread widely in Germany. She began to be “discovered” by the young literary scene of the Federal Republic. In Germany, her first recognition as a poet occurred: in 1960, she became a member of the Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg.
She died four years later, a few weeks after Paul Celan.
Browse all poems and texts published on Nelly Sachs
But silence is where victims dwell.
