Glowing Enigmas by Nelly Sachs

Glowing Enigmas Reviews

• 
  Kathleen

  Enigma is certainly the right term for these mysterious and sometimes painful poems. But the piercing eye and mind of Nelly Sachs bring the reader along--wherever she chooses to go. This is simply amazing:
  
  This night
  I turned the corner into
  a dark side street
  Then my shadow
  lay down in my arm
  This tired piece of clothing
  wanted to be carried
  and the color Nothing addressed me:
  You are beyond!
  
  
  
  
• 
  iko ikovski ∵

  
  Metro altındaki kitapçının 'elden çıkartmak' için adam yayınlarını kelepir fiyata sattığı standttan aldığım kitaplardan biri. O kitaplardan bazılarını hiç sevmesem de bu gerçekten çok güzel.
  
  Akkor Bilmeceler, neredeyse kitap uzunluğunda bir şiir aslında. Normalde 4 tane Akkor Bilmeceler var, bizim baskı I ve II'sini içeriyor (sebep? belki farklı zamanlarda basılmıştır).
  
  Duru, dramatik, lirik bir üslubu var. Betimleme, benzetme ve imgelemler şahaneydi. Savaşın (WWII) yıkımını, acısını, trajedisini savaştan bahsetmeden, kişisel ve kitlesel şeyleri daha kapsayıcı bir dille anlatmış sanki; o yüzden içe işlemesi daha geçirgen bence.
  
  "Kanamak bir akşam uzunluğunca
  kazıp hazırlayana kadar mezarı karanlık
  Tekmeler atıyor
  bir düşün oğulcuğu ana rahminde
  Yoktan var eden hava
  usulca örtünüyor yeni doğumun derisini üzerine
  Suretler yelpazesi açılınca
  acı da kaybediyor kendi adını
  Sürüp gidiyor dirim ve ölüm -"
  
  Çeviriyi çok sevdim. 1985 basım olduğu için, 'çevirmenin şiiri'ne de dönüşmüş olma ihtimali vardı. Dili çok hoşuma gittiği ve bazı yerlerde acaba dedirttiği için kitabı buldum, açtım baktım. Abartmadan, süslemeden, ekleme-çıkartma yapmadan, gerektiği güzel kelime seçilerek çevrilmiş, hatta kimi yerlerde ingilizcesinden güzel çevrilmiş (geçen yine süperim)
  
  

  akkor mesela çok güzel bi kelime
  xoxoxo
  iko
• 
  Ann

  Of course, I am familiar with Sachs' famous longer poems, mediations on the Holocaust which she survived. (See: "O The Chimneys.") I had never heard of her book-length poem, glowing enigmas, before. Michael Hamburger is an estimable translator. His versions of Sachs' friend and colleague Paul Celan's poems are among my favorites. The Celan book is a dual language text and I found myself wishing this book was too. I also would have loved an introduction that places the poem and poet in context. But the book is a remarkable achievement. So many contemporary poets write in enigmatic, elliptical styles--but they are just that, styles. But the urgency of Sachs' enigmas is that plain speech and meaning were broken apart by the Nazis. These haunting, sad pieces of memory, beauty and dread don't add up. They remain enigmas. Each page is a mediation.
  
  It is black like
  chaos before the word
  Leonardo looked for that black
  behind black
  Job was swaddled
  in the life-bearing body of the stars
  Someone shakes the blackness
  till the apple Earth drops
  ripened to the end
  A sigh
  is that the soul--?
  
  
• 
  Kevin

  More like a 3.5 for me. Some great punches of melancholy with war survivor heaviness.
• 
  Michelle

  GLOWING ENIGMAS by female Nobel Laureate, Nelly Sachs, is just that— an enigma.
  .
  Sachs was either batty or brilliant and, after reading through this twice (and many passages several times), I’m choosing brilliant. Inconceivably. So much so I can’t fully grasp what I just read. Suffice it to say, I’m in awe.
  .
  I feel like she was one of those “beautiful mind” types. So remarkable, in fact, that I can’t seem to entirely wrap my own around what she wrote.
  .
  The poems had no sense of flow. Like each page was its own but they were all knit together to create a whole. There was a sense of no sense throughout. Yet THAT just made sense. Does that make sense?
  .
  Written in four parts, the writing is quite superb. It is lyrical and lovely. I just wish I knew what she was talking about. When I thought I got it, she did a 360 and I was left questioning what just happened. I’m confident I understood some, but I would liked to have followed it all the way through.
  .
  I’m not sure if I feel stupid or just stumped. I know I do feel vulnerable sharing this as I don’t know if this makes me sound uneducated. If it does, so be it. All I know is that I appreciate her work and how beautifully read it is. I just hope I’m not alone in this analysis.
  .
  An interesting side note is a quote from Sachs of her own work. She stated, “My metaphors are my wounds.” Indeed. GLOWING ENIGMAS is aptly titled.
• 
  Nate

  Every word of this poem is perfectly placed. Every phrase so carefully timed and arranged that I had to read most of it a couple times for maximum impact and a better form of understanding. Got turned on to this poet through a wonderful book called “Translation as Transhumance” which also gave me a greater appreciation of the work of a translator (this guy did a fantastic job).
• 
  Dara

  Definitely enigmatic. Beautiful language but will likely take multiple readings to fully appreciate. 4th section was most accessible in my view parts remind be a little of Plath.
• 
  Ally Perrin

  When I come to leave the room protected by illness
  free to live—to die—
  air with its welcoming kiss
  deeply delights the twin mouth
  then I shall not know
  what my invisible
  will do with me now—
• 
  Brian

  It is hard to write a fair review of this work. I know its something of a classic and highly praised for what it represents (a coming to terms with the evil of the Holocaust). The imagery is just beautiful, the words euphonic. But the meaning of the imagery is a riddle (true to its title) and I am not alone in that conclusion. As another reviewer put it, the pieces of the poem "don't add up", making it very frustrating to read. Even after looking up Sachs' bio and some published reviews of the poem, I am still not sure what I read, exactly. At the end of the book is a short biography of Sachs that, actually, explains a lot about the poem - hints at her mindset and suggests an explanation. She wrote it while living in Stockholm in the 1960s, in a four-square-meter apartment, by herself. (There is nothing better, or worse, than loneliness for spawning idiosyncrasies.) Sachs once said about her own work, "my metaphors are my wounds". After reading Glowing Enigmas, that statement makes a lot of sense to me. Her words 'open'. They don't suggest they'll close, and they don't - there are no denouements. The metaphors only keep opening, unreconciled, one from another, and don't explain anything: they are like a wound that can't heal. Brilliant lights that birth only darkness...
  
  "I write you --
  You have come into the world again
  with the haunting strength of letters
  that groped for your essence
  Light shines
  and your fingertips glow in the night
  Constellations at the birth
  of darkness like these verses --"