1 - The Poetics of Silence: Nelly Sachs

Summary

Hinter den Lippen / Unsagbares wartet.

[Behind lips / the unsayable awaits]

— Nelly Sachs, “Behind Lips”

Unsere Zeit, so schlimm sie ist, muß […] in der Kunst ihren Ausdruck finden, es muß mit allen neuen Mitteln gewagt werden, denn die alten reichen nicht mehr aus.

[Our epoch, as terrible as it is, must find expression in art. We must dare to express it using all possible new means because the old methods no longer suffice.]

— Nelly Sachs, letter to Gudrun Dänhert, 1948

Das Übermaß an realem Leiden duldet kein Vergessen; […] jenes Leiden […] erheischt […] die Fortdauer von Kunst, die es verbietet; kaum wo anders findet das Leiden noch seine eigene Stimme.

[Extreme suffering tolerates no forgetting. This suffering demands the continued existence of the very art it forbids. It scarcely finds a voice anywhere else.]

— Theodor W. Adorno, Notes to Literature

Two clear directives from two highly significant figures in the field of post-Shoah art: both Nelly Sachs and Theodor W. Adorno recognized the formidable task confronting writers attempting to find new literary tools to express the horror of the Shoah in artistic form. Both were acutely aware of the dilemma facing the post-Shoah artist: the absolute necessity of giving voice to the suffering and the impossibility of doing so adequately. Both recognized the irreparable fissure that the Shoah had left in its wake; art's new task was to find means of presenting the reality of this fissure.