Nelly Sachs

Nobel Prize in Literature 1966

Leonie Nelly Sachs, a poet and playwright of Swedish citizenship and Jewish ethnicity, was born on December 10, 1891, in Berlin, Germany, and died of cancer on May 12, 1970, in Stockholm. The daughter of a prosperous industrialist, she received private education until entering the Berliner Höhere Tochterschule. Having developed a passion for books from a very young age, she began corresponding with the Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf, exchanging letters with her for over thirty years.
Aspiring to become a ballerina, she studied Dance, Music, and Literature and, starting in the 1920s, began publishing some of her poems in the press. Attracting the attention of the novelist Stefan Zweig, she published her first book under his guidance. Legenden Und Erzählungen In 1921, a project that went unnoticed and did not have immediate continuity.
In 1930, his father died, so he took his mother under his care. The rise of National Socialism made their situation precarious, and, seeking help from Selma Lagerlöf, he fled Germany in 1940 with his mother, heading for Sweden. Upon arrival, he learned of his friend's death. Learning Swedish, he supported himself by translating Swedish authors into German.
In 1947 he published a collection of poems entitled Den Wohnungen Des Todes, which focuses on the victimization of the Hebrew people throughout the ages, fulfilling what the poet believed to be a predestination. He gained great renown when his poetic drama Eli: Ein Mysterienspiel vom Leiden Israels (1951) was broadcast on the radio in what was then the Federal Republic of Germany. The work told the story of the murder of a Polish boy. Flucht Und Verwandlung (1959) deals with the idea of ​​humanity's metamorphosis and its exile, already present in other works of his authorship, and which came to confirm his message of suffering.
Nelly Sachs shared the Nobel Prize in Literature with Shmuel Yosef Agnon in 1966.

Nelly Sachs. In Infopédia [Online]. Porto: Porto Editora, 2003-2011.