Introduction
In the English-speaking world, Nelly Sachs is perhaps best known as the German Jewish poet who wrote âdifficultâ poetry (Domin 1977: 110), and whose works often address the Holocaust . She is perhaps also known as a Nobel Prize winner (she was awarded the prize in 1966). Her work has been translated into Swedish , French , Spanish , Hebrew, Yiddish , Japanese , and other languages. There are many translations of her work into English , in particular by Michael Hamburger (e.g. Hamburger et al. 1970), but also by Ruth and Matthew Mead (Hamburger et al. 1970, 2011), and Michael Roloff (Hamburger et al. 2011), among others, and several biographical and critical studies, for example by Kathrin Bower (2000), Aris Fioretos (2011), Jennifer Hoyer (2014), and Elaine Martin (2011).
Though the first English translation of her work appeared in 1970 (Hamburger et al. 1970), Nelly Sachs is not a widely-read poet in English (Shanks 2016: n.p.). And yet she is one of the most interesting and challenging of Holocaust poets to translate, not least because her poetry changed and developed over time, as the influence of historical events, of her changing circumstances, and of the poets she translated, all had profound effects on her poetic expression.
In this chapter I shall consider how Sachsâ poetry has been translated, and what particular challenges its translation poses. I shall ask whether the insights we gain by studying the translation of her work can have consequences for its future translation. One conclusion I come to is that we need to provide readers with enough background to locate the poetry in its historical, political, religious, cultural and poetic context , and we need a careful selection of her translated work that will both demonstrate the broad range of her poetry and emphasize its relevance for readers today. Another conclusion is that, by considering the translation of her poetry, we gain greater insight into the poetry itself. This benefits criticism of her work, which then also has the potential to affect future translation.
Understanding a case study as an examination of âa particular unit of human activityâ (Gillham 2000: 1) which is in some way âsingularâ (Simons 2009: 3), and which will lead to an interpretative narrative (Susam-Sarajeva 2009: 39), I aim in this chapter to outline a narrative that is based on a close consideration of the translation of Sachsâ poetry. Nelly Sachs appears particularly suited to a translation case study: her life was interesting and unusual, she was writing at and beyond a time of almost ungraspable pain, disruption, upheaval and tragedy. Her work can only be understood in context , because it is heavily informed by her own situation, secure though this may seem in comparison with that of the millions who died. Yet she was not secure, or content, or balanced: she was deeply traumatized by historical events, and, as she came to understand more about her Jewish roots, her trauma became greater, her poetry both more inward-looking and more complex.
In German -speaking countries her poetry experienced what Martin calls âa tumultuous reception historyâ (2011: 9), and a brief consideration of the reception of Sachsâ original poetry will further help to illustrate the background against which these translations have been undertaken.
Though the purpose of a case study is to provide the basis for a detailed description and analysis of at least some elements of the case in question, it does not exhaust its usefulness with the description itself. It can be used as the basis for inferences about other cases, or to question assumptions made by theories or views of the world. As Ćebnem Susam-Sarajeva (2009: 45) points out, there are differing views on the extent to which case studies can be, or need to be, generalizable to other contexts . My intention here is to focus on a few specific exemplary translations, which, together with the facts of Sachsâ background and reception , should provide the basis for a more general picture of the translation of Sachsâ poetry. The conclusions I draw from this picture are not concerned with the questioning of theoretical considerations but with their possible consequences for future translation of Sachsâ work.
Nelly Sachs as Poet and Translator
Nelly (Leonie) Sachs was born in 1891 into an assimilated German -Jewish family in Berlin. Her motherâs family appear to have been Sephardic Jews, possibly coming originally from Spain (Fritsch-ViviĂ© 1993: 9). On both sides, the family were fairly wealthy business people, her fatherâs family well-known in Berlin as rubber manufacturers: Sachsâ father Georg William Sachs had in 1887 invented the expander (Fioretos 2011: 28â30), an elastic muscle-exerciser still in use today. Her cousin, Manfred Georg, was the biographer of Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism (Georg 1932). Around 1908, at the age of 17, Sachs suffered an unhappy love affair, which she only spoke of much later to the critic Walter Berendsohn (Fioretos 2011: 56â8). As a consequence she had a breakdown in her late teens that resulted in a stay in a clinic, and this was to be the first of several throughout her life (Fritsch-ViviĂ© 1993: 37â42).
Though her biographer and editor Ruth Dinesen remarks that the âlove crisis led Nelly Sachs to the wordâ (Dinesen 1995: 25), she was already writing prose, drama and poetry before this (Fioretos 2011: 21). The poems she wrote up to the outbreak of war in 1939 were generally simple rhymed verses about nature and animals, though some were less conventional. As Fioretos observes, this early, highly conventional poetry with its âprim rhymes and bittersweet tonesâ (Fioretos 2011: 53) gives hints of what was to come, when, suddenly, âit is as if Sachs has plugged her poetry into the power circuit of her later worksâ (ibid.). Conversely, her later poems sometimes take up the themes and images of early ones: in her 1959 poem âKleiner Friedenâ (Small Peace), for example, the music-box is remembered in the light of later knowledge (Sachs 1988: 284). But it was the opinion of German poet Hilde Domin, writing the âAfterwordâ to a 1977 collection of Sachsâ poetry, that we do not need to know anything written by Sachs before 1940 (Domin 1977: 111), and, indeed, this was Sachsâ own view (Bahr 1995: 43). In May 1940, shortly before she was to be transported to a concentration camp (Fritsch-ViviĂ© 1993: 76â7), she escaped to Sweden, a flight made possible with the help of Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf, whom she much admired, and with whom she had been corresponding since her teenage years (Fritsch-ViviĂ© 1993: 32).
Sachs had first attempted publication of her prose and poems, unsuccessfully, in 1915. Her first work, Legenden und ErzĂ€hlungen (Legends and Stories), had appeared in 1921, and consisted of prose tales that explore relationships, and questions of loyalty, love and death (Fritsch-ViviĂ© 1993: 51â53). Before her escape to Sweden, a few single poems had appeared, but further publication was impossible for a Jewish writer (Dinesen 1995: 28; Fioretos 2011: 98â99). Dinesen mentions a handwritten copy of poems about a âlost belovedâ, composed up to 1923 (Dinesen 1995: 25; see also Dinesen 1995: 38â9, FN 3). Sachs also read very widely at this time: Christian mysticism, such as Jakob Böhme and Meister E...