“Land Israel” – an analysis of the role of the Land of Israel in the lyric poetry of Nelly Sachs

Abstract

Nelly Sachs (1891-1970), a German Jewish author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1966, is one of the most important German-language poets of the post-war period. As someone who had to go into exile because of anti-Semitism, the poet was pleased with the founding and recognition of the State of Israel. However, she distanced herself from a Zionist position that saw the recognition of this state as the solution to the problems of the Jewish people. In “Sternverdunkelung” [Darkening of Stars], a book published in 1949, there is a cycle entitled Land Israel, and also a poem with the same title. According to Nelly Sachs, the cycle sought to "find the symbolic meaning of homeland" (SACHS, 1984, p. 93). The poem "Land Israel" is built on references to the Bible and tensions between movement and immobility, nation and exile, past and present, material and immaterial, as well as foreigner and native. In the poem, Israel exceeds its geopolitical borders and is measured by its contact with the divine and by its words, its poetry. The aim of this article is to discuss the different meanings of "Land" in the work of Nelly Sachs, based on an analysis of the tensions presented by the poem "Land Israel".