Nelly Sachs' New Language in Exile

Anders Olsson — Sat, 22 May 2010 02:02:16 GMT

The project, belonging to comparative literature, is dedicated to Nelly Sachs´ innovative poetry in exile. It will be conducted during a 3 year period and consists of two closely connected studies, that investigate how Sachs´ language develops in Swedish exile after the flight from Germany to Sweden in May 1940. Sachs´ relatively comprehensive German production has not been sufficiently studied. The project attempts by way of archive studies and comparative analysis an explanation of the change in Sachs´ poetry in exile, of how she quickly becomes 1. poet of Holocaust, 2.Modernist and 3. poet of exile in universal terms. The project consists of a doctoral thesis, to be written by Daniel Pedersen, preliminary called “The Path to In den Wohnungen des Todes. Nelly Sachs becoming poet in Swedish exile”, and a literary monography, written by Anders Olsson, with the preliminary title “Nelly Sachs – exile poet and Modernist”. The former has its focus on relations within the oeuvre, whereas the latter has its focus on relations between Sachs and literary Modernism in general, in Sweden and in other countries. Sachs´ intense translation work, comprising six German anthologies with modern Swedish poetry, will be given special attention. The claim of the project is that Swedish poetic Modernism has been decisive for Sachs´ new language in exile, and its special motivation is the lacking competence in Swedish language and literature within international Sachs´scholarship.

Time, Memory and Representation

Sat, 22 May 2010 02:02:57 GMT

The post-war period has witnessed an increased preoccupation with the role and significance of historical knowledge, and the relation between the present, past, and future. During the last decades, through the linguistic and hermeneutic turn in philosophy, with critical cultural analysis, genealogy, feminist critique of science and established canons, conceptual analysis, and post-colonial "subaltern" questioning of culturally biased narratives, the very way in which history is studied, interpreted, and produced, has become a central academic concern. This academic concern also mirrors a more general growing preoccupation in Western culture with history, with politics of memory, with the cultural heritage, the construction and destruction of memorials.

The program explores this new common territory in three general sections organized along the key words: Time, Memory and Representation. The first section develops the conceptual historical critique of fundamental historical categories, including established chronologies, the second investigates how politics of memory and uses of history shape the relation to the past and explores the existential foundations for historical consciousness, and the third explores how different mediums (literature, film, language) shape and influence historical narratives and representations, and how this orients historical consciousness.

The proposed program gathers 25 researchers from 13 different disciplines, for a joint exploration and development of recent transformations in historical consciousness, and its implications for the human and historical sciences. The program is organized from Södertörn University College, but researchers are recruited from all six major universities in Sweden (Uppsala, Lund, Stockholm, Göteborg, Linköping, and Umeå).

Olsson, Anders (Literature (Department of Literature and History of Ideas))

Nelly Sachs' New Language in Exile

Time, Memory and Representation