Today is the birthday of Nelly Sachs, who brought beauty and transcendence out of unspeakable pain. All of the wounds she received: her experience of the Holocaust and the terrible mark it left on her, an obsessive fear and anguish that nearly cost her her mind; and the years of solitude and incomprehension that she lived through, along with the continuing loss of friends and loved ones to tragedy—in the end, all of it could only elevate the ultimate meaning and triumph of her art. In her poetry there is so much indistinctness and depth that her words sometimes seem like the surface of a shadowy well—that both hides, and hints at, a whole cosmos of relations and revelations. I can think of no other poet who has such laser precision, such rightness in language; she never hits a false note, never loses control.
Great poet of the tragic century, your voice is absolutely inimitable, but its message is universal, and I am gratefully sealed with its radiance.
Alles beginnt mit der Sehnsucht,
immer ist im Herzen Raum für mehr,
für Schöneres, für Größeres.
—Nelly Sachs
No comments:
Post a Comment