- Person
- Nelly Sachs
- Lived
- 1891–1970
- Field
- Poetry
- From
- German-Swedish
The story
When Nelly Sachs arrived in Stockholm in 1940, she had little money and an elderly mother to support. At first the two women depended on Jewish welfare organisations, and at times Sachs worked as a washerwoman. She learned Swedish well enough to earn a living by translating between Swedish and German.
Translation became much more than a livelihood. Sachs became a highly recognised translator of contemporary Swedish poetry into German. In 1947 she published Von Wolle und Granit (From Wool and Granite), a cross-section of twentieth-century Swedish poetry, which brought well-deserved attention to writers little known outside Sweden. She edited and translated anthologies including Aber auch diese Sonne ist heimatlos (Yet This Sun Too Is Homeless), a collection of Swedish poetry of the day, and Schwedische Gedichte (Swedish Poems), as well as volumes of poems by Erik Lindegren, Gunnar Ekelöf and Karl Vennberg.
Among the poets she brought into German were Edith Södergran, Karin Boye, Johannes Edfelt, Hjalmar Gullberg, Anders Österling and Pär Lagerkvist. The Nobel Foundation's biography of Sachs notes that she devoted much of her time after 1940 to translating poets such as Ekelöf, Edfelt and Vennberg.
The work also changed her own poetry. German critics have argued that by immersing herself in the hard, truthful language of modern Swedish verse, shaped by the unforgiving northern landscape, she left behind her earlier romantic style and found the compressed, unsentimental voice of her mature poems.
Through this work, a German-Jewish refugee helped introduce contemporary Swedish poets to readers in the German-speaking world, even as she wrote her own poems of exile and mourning. In this way she repaid, through her own craft, the country that had given her refuge. Her translations are included in the four-volume annotated edition of her works published in 2010, and they remain an important bridge between Swedish and German literature.
Why it matters
Sachs's translations built a literary bridge between Sweden and the German-speaking world after the war.
About Nelly Sachs
Berlin-born poet who escaped to Sweden in 1940 and gave voice to the murdered Jews of Europe, sharing the 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature with S. Y. Agnon.
More about Nelly Sachs
- Nelly Sachs wrote Eli in memory of Holocaust victimsNelly Sachs's verse play Eli: A Mystery Play of the Sufferings of Israel was written in memory of those who perished in the Nazi camps.
- Nelly Sachs's 'In the Houses of Death' mourned the murderedNelly Sachs's 1947 collection In den Wohnungen des Todes (In the Houses of Death) made her a poignant voice for the grief of her people.
Sources
- Nelly Sachs Encyclopedia.com
- Nelly Sachs Wikipedia
- Nelly Sachs: Biographical NobelPrize.org
- Nelly Sachs German Wikipedia
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