Works. Commented Edition in Four Volumes

Sachs’ volumes of poetry, greatly influenced by the experience of the Shoah, have received profound reception throughout the world, In the Habitations of Death, Flight and Metamorphosis, Journey into a Dustless Realm, and Sternverdunklung first and foremost. Her close personal and artistic relationship with Paul Celan deeply influenced both authors’ poetry. But Nelly Sachs’ association with Swedish authors, most of all Selma Lageröf, have contributed to the fact that her work has been translated into more than 40 languages. She maintained a lively exchange with Siegfried Unseld and Hans Magnus Enzensberger, whom she named trustee of her estate, as evidenced by the exhaustive correspondences.

Sachs remains topical for as long as people hurt one another and the power of the lyrical word is required to communicate this.

Countless poems of hers have been set to music and dramatic poems have been inspired by her around the world and bear witness to the power, spirituality and topicality of Nelly Sachs’ oeuvre.

Representative editions of the collected works and volumes of selected poems have been published in numerous countries. A complete and commentated edition of the collected works of Nelly Sachs, edited by Aris Fioretos, was published by Suhrkamp Verlag in 2011.

»Your lyrical and dramatic writing now belongs to the great laments of literature, but the feeling of mourning which inspired you is free from hate and lends sublimity to the suffering of man. We honour you today as the bearer of a message of solace to all those who despair of the fate of man.« Ingvar Andersson, laudatory speech on the bestowal of the Nobel Prize