Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Poetics after Auschwitz
- 1 The Poetics of Silence: Nelly Sachs
- 2 “Flaschenpost” and “Wurfholz”: Reflections on Paul Celan's Poems and Poetics
- 3 History and Nature in Motion: Paradigms of Transformation in the Postwar Poems of Ingeborg Bachmann
- 4 Mourning as Remembrance: Writing as Figuration and Defiguration in the Poetry of Rose Ausländer
- 5 On the Fringes: Mistrust as Commitment in the Poetics of Ilse Aichinger
- 6 Nazi Terror and the Poetical Potential of Dreams: Charlotte Beradt's Das Dritte Reich des Traums
- Part II Tradition and Transgression
- Part III Comparative Explorations in European Poetics
- Works Cited
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
1 - The Poetics of Silence: Nelly Sachs
from Part I - Poetics after Auschwitz
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Poetics after Auschwitz
- 1 The Poetics of Silence: Nelly Sachs
- 2 “Flaschenpost” and “Wurfholz”: Reflections on Paul Celan's Poems and Poetics
- 3 History and Nature in Motion: Paradigms of Transformation in the Postwar Poems of Ingeborg Bachmann
- 4 Mourning as Remembrance: Writing as Figuration and Defiguration in the Poetry of Rose Ausländer
- 5 On the Fringes: Mistrust as Commitment in the Poetics of Ilse Aichinger
- 6 Nazi Terror and the Poetical Potential of Dreams: Charlotte Beradt's Das Dritte Reich des Traums
- Part II Tradition and Transgression
- Part III Comparative Explorations in European Poetics
- Works Cited
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
Summary
Hinter den Lippen / Unsagbares wartet.
[Behind lips / the unsayable awaits]
— Nelly Sachs, “Behind Lips”Unsere Zeit, so schlimm sie ist, muß […] in der Kunst ihren Ausdruck finden, es muß mit allen neuen Mitteln gewagt werden, denn die alten reichen nicht mehr aus.
[Our epoch, as terrible as it is, must find expression in art. We must dare to express it using all possible new means because the old methods no longer suffice.]
— Nelly Sachs, letter to Gudrun Dänhert, 1948Das Übermaß an realem Leiden duldet kein Vergessen; […] jenes Leiden […] erheischt […] die Fortdauer von Kunst, die es verbietet; kaum wo anders findet das Leiden noch seine eigene Stimme.
[Extreme suffering tolerates no forgetting. This suffering demands the continued existence of the very art it forbids. It scarcely finds a voice anywhere else.]
— Theodor W. Adorno, Notes to LiteratureTwo clear directives from two highly significant figures in the field of post-Shoah art: both Nelly Sachs and Theodor W. Adorno recognized the formidable task confronting writers attempting to find new literary tools to express the horror of the Shoah in artistic form. Both were acutely aware of the dilemma facing the post-Shoah artist: the absolute necessity of giving voice to the suffering and the impossibility of doing so adequately. Both recognized the irreparable fissure that the Shoah had left in its wake; art's new task was to find means of presenting the reality of this fissure.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- German and European Poetics after the HolocaustCrisis and Creativity, pp. 19 - 34Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011