'The Space of Words:' Exile and Diaspora in the Works of Nelly Sachs

摘要

Jennifer M. Hoyer begins this groundbreaking study of Nelly Sachs by identifying her high stature in twentieth-century literature. She is known as 'the quintessential German-language Holocaust poet' (1), and she was one of two 'voices of Israel' awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1966, S. Y. Agnon, representing the geographic and political State of Israel, and Sachs for her 'poetic treatment of the current "state"-the psychological, historical, diasporic or exile state-of the abstract Israel, that is, of the Jews' (1). Ironically, however, despite her status as a major literary figure, Sachs's works have generated a rather small body of secondary literature, particularly regarding her writings prior to her escape from Nazi Germany to Sweden in 1940. In this book, Hoyer offers evidence that important aspects of Sachs's entire body of writings and its development have not received thorough analysis. Moreover, their subtlety and complexity have often been overlooked, in part because some have deceivingly simple, traditional (even 'sweet' and sentimental) surface content.