"nur eine Stimme, ein Seufzer". Die Identität der Dichterin Nelly Sachs und der Holocaust (review)

This is the first study on Nelly Sachs devoted exclusively to the author's personal correspondence. Drawing on Victor Turner's concept of the 'liminal,' Kraft's central thesis is that Nelly Sachs's "Dichteridentität," as revealed in her letters, developed as a reaction to the Jewish persecution and the Holocaust.

The book is divided into three sections. The first, which draws heavily on existing biographical studies, reconstructs Sachs's early Berlin years. Kraft argues that during Sachs's teenage years, her naturally delicate disposition became acutely sensitised when her father forbade her relationship with a non-Jewish man. It was at this time, he argues, that the melancholic author of the pre-Holocaust years developed. The second section is central to the book's message. Kraft explores Sachs's reaction to the Jewish persecution which he categorises as a process of "negative liminalisation," whereby individuals are expelled from society and damaged psychologically due to the traumatic shattering of their "Urvertrauen" (12). Faced with such realities, the persecuted enter a liminal sphere from which they can escape only with great difficulty. The melancholic author of the pre-Holocaust years, steeped in a Christian-romantic tradition, was gradually dissolved, and the "liminal poet" with her new identity as "Jew" emerged. He argues that the attribution of the label "Jew," which represented less an "Identitätszuweisung" than a "Todesurteil" (90), encouraged assimilated Jews like Sachs to explore their Jewish heritage as a defensive reaction against being labelled Jewish by the anti-Semites. As such, the act of writing was for Sachs "ein Widerstandsakt gegen die negative Liminalisierung" (92).

The third section examines the "psycho-social" dimension of Sachs's exile experience. Kraft highlights an irresolvable tension between Sachs's identity as a "liminal poet" and her "zwischenmenschliche[ ] Bedürfnisse[ ]," and he interprets this tension as the result of the interplay between Sachs's psychological disposition and the trauma suffered under the National Socialist persecution. Drawing on the author's correspondence with Gudrun Dähnert and Peter Hamm, Kraft persuasively shows how Sachs did not attempt to escape the liminal space she occupied. Instead, she used her "Dichteridentität" to transform this sphere of negative liminality into one of positive mystical liminality. This coping mechanism came, Kraft argues, at the high price of the isolation that she bemoans in her letters.

One of the book's most important achievements is its warning against "eine[ ] simplifizierend religiöse[ ] Vereinnahmung der Dichterin" (61). For Sachs, Kraft argues, the Holocaust "wound" must remain open with the passing of time; it cannot be "explained" or "understood" within the framework of rounded theological or philosophical narratives. Sachs's letters display instead what Kraft calls "eine paradoxe Verbindung von Zweifel und Glauben" (115), and he compares this tension with that present in Emil Fackenheim's post-Holocaust theology. This represents an important intervention given the prevalent view of Nelly Sachs as a redemptive writer. The significance of this intervention is tempered, however, by subsequent inconsistencies in the author's terminology. Having used "Zweifel und Glauben" as the point of departure, Kraft then alternates in the following pages between "Verzweiflung am Leid und Vertrauen im Gott" (126), "Verzweiflung und Erlösungsgewissheit" (128) and "eine Spannung zwischen Nihilismus und Glauben" (130), all of which represent very different kinds of tension.

Kraft interprets the references in Sachs's letters to keeping open and "suffering through" the Holocaust "wound" within the framework of Arthur Cohen's description of "subscending" the "Tremendum," a term Cohen uses to describe the Holocaust as the ultimate unfathomable abyss of evil. For Sachs, the Holocaust cannot be transcended by being interpreted within the framework of comforting theological narratives; it must instead be "subscended." Kraft describes Sachs's "Poetik des Durchschmerzens" (119) as a means of inspecting the abyss, of recognising the meaninglessness of the camps whilst also instructing for the future. The...