Customer Reviews

Paul Celan, Nelly Sachs: Correspondence

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A bunch of letters written over 16 years by two nobel-winner poets. It's heartbreaking. Nelly Sachs, "his Li", loved him, no doubt. Her "dearest Paul" was married with a child. It is fascinating to read how two poets process the most common story among people. With tenderness and sadness and so much dignity. And as Nelly Sachs says: "Love is inhuman". This book reveals the sensitivity it takes to write poetry and how this sensitivity marks your every single gesture, making sometimes life to be simply unbearable. "If only I had you here" Nelly Sachs says, and that is what the reader wishes with her. An unfulfilled wish. They met only once and never again. Hard for simple people, even harder for poets. "You are my light" they say to each other and from the third letter she feels he is her home. Did they decrease each others loneliness, or did they make it bigger? It's up to the reader to decide.

If you're familiar with these two poets, you can already appreciate the intensity, sincerity, and uniqueness of their vision and the horror the Shoah forced upon each of them. With that background, the sweetness displayed in this correspondence, especially of Sachs to Celan, is doubly remarkable. Little or no melodrama can be found here, despite the difficulty of life's events in the years covered and the poignancy of the subjects of some of these letters. The well-considered footnotes relay highlights of each writer's biography and explicate their difficult circumstances.

The entire collection spans only a few dozen pages, but is a valuable insight into the lives of these two most consquential German writers. For those unfamiliar with their poetry this correspondence may still be impressive, but if you've read and appreciate either of these writers, this book is worth owning.

The book takes the reader through the amazing friendship of these two writers. I found the book to be a wonderful aid while writing my term paper on the works of Nelly Sachs. The book provides a great insight into the lives of these two authors.