Collected Poems I: (1944-1949)

by Nelly Sachs

Nobel Prize-winning poet Nelly Sachs escaped Nazi Germany to Sweden, where she wrote these and other brilliant poems as a “mute outcry” to the Holocaust.

Genres: Poetry, Nobel Prize, German Literature

312 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2003

About the author

The suffering of the Jewish people during World War II based work of German writer Nelly Sachs, who shared the Nobel Prize of 1966 for literature.

"For her outstanding lyrical and dramatic writing, which interprets Israel's destiny with touching strength," she shared the award with Shmuel Yosef Agnon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelly_S...

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the saddest poems I have ever read: powerful meditations on the loss of individuals and collective identity. A topographical tour of loss written in smoke; that fades even as understanding wrestles with the nature of elusive evil. Nelly Sachs deserves much wider recognition for trying to put into words what is unspeakable about our nature. Highest recommendation.

[Anny · Rating 5 out of 5]

"but at dawn in the hills of pain
they see their fathers and mothers
dying again and again."
[...]
.
"Always
there where children die
stone and star
and so many dreams
become homeless"
[...]
.
Nelly Sachs, Collected Poems Vol 1, 1944-1949, German English Bilingual version.
.
If words can actually make us bleed, then I'd bleed so badly reading the poem of Nelly Sachs. Portrayed the catastrophe and grief of her fellow Jews in the Holocaust, it's very hard, painful and emotional especially the verses about mothers and children. Her perseverance to write during hospitalized in mental institute was really remarkable, shadowed the reflection of her poems.
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Nelly Sachs was born into a Jewish family in Berlin in 1891. A week before she was scheduled to report to a concentration camp, she and her mother escaped to Sweden with the help of her friend, Selma Lagerlöf. As the Nazis took power, she became increasingly terrified, at one point losing the ability to speak. After the death of her mother she suffered several nervous breakdown, hallucinations, paranoia, and delusions of persecution by Nazis, she was hospitalised in mental institution and at the same time, kept writing until she recovered.
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Nelly Sachs, poet, playwright, Nobel Prize in Literature 1966 "for her outstanding lyrical and dramatic writing, which interprets Israel's destiny with touching strength"

[Lisa]

I came across this poet while looking at a list of female Nobel Laureates in literature. I was glad to read poems in this collection and found it useful to have German on one side and English on the other. When my 4 year old removed my bookmark when I was maybe a third of the way through, I thought that was a good sign that I had read enough.

[Sean Curley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of Nelly Sachs' poetry covers the period from 1944 to 1949, previously published in the collections In the Habitations of Death and Eclipse of the Stars. As can be discerned from the dates involved, as well as guessed at by the author's surname, this was a tremendously bleak period for both the author personally and Europe as a whole, and that is well-reflected in the work being done here (the opening poem, "O the chimneys", which laments the 'refugees of smoke', pretty much sets the tone for things). Sachs escaped Germany at the last possible moment, with an assist from her longtime friend Selma Lagerlof (who thus became, incidentally, the only Nobel Laureate to save the life of another Nobel Laureate) and Prince Eugen of Sweden; and thus, she became one of the first and most celebrated mourners of a destroyed segment of Europe. There is a quite a lot of very moving writing, particularly concentrated in the first collection. As Sachs developed as a poet, her language and theme became a lot more abstract and spiritualist in a way that I found much harder to become engaged in.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

As you can guess from the dates, many of these poems date from the lowest point of the fortunes of pretty much anyone decent and un-Nazi in Europe, most especially the Jews, thus the Holocaust and persecution of the latter figure prominently as themes in these poems. Thus, also, these are grim, coffiny affairs, laments and paeans to a dying cultural universe. Despite their grim nature, I prefer the early half of the works collected here. The second half, representative of the post-war period, are much more religious and biblical in scope, with a smattering of bleak, secular themes explored here and there, and are, thematically, at least, a little more conservative.
Sachs was a fine poet, with lungs and heart burned black by her time. 'Tis a shame she's not more widely read.

[MalRoseMallory · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was really difficult to finish. Most of her poems are of the Holocast, so it was heartbreaking. But, the translation was off on some.
Very grief spoken and important. Her work in this volume needs to be taught in schools.

[Renata · Rating 5 out of 5]

Da ti srce pukne!