Fragmented Order: The Poetry of the Book of Job and Nelly Sachs

• In Event: Artistic, Literary, and Philosophical Consequences of the Book of Job

Abstract

Experiences of profound disruption often draw modern poets to engage with the ancient poetry of Job. This paper explores the poetry of Nelly Sachs’s engagement with the poetry of Job, from explicit references to Job, themes that connect to Job, and the creative struggle to use language--a system of meaning--to express the destruction of meaning (a struggle intensified by writing about the Shoah in German). Sachs’s poetry, the testimony and lament of a survivor, are taken up in particular by the post-Shoah theodicy of the German Catholic theologian Johann Baptist Metz. Sachs struggles with the tension of using Job to describe overwhelming destruction within the creative framework of poetry and traditions of theological systems of meaning. This paper explores Sachs's use of Job, with attention to prior studies, like the analysis by Elaine Martin (2011), in light of the broad modern turn to Job to express trauma and senselessness, instead of Job as the model of the faithful sufferer. Within the modern context of interpreting Job in terms of his questions, this paper argues that Sachs’s poetic use of Job remains fragmented, avoiding claims of meaning. The difficulty of speaking about the tragedy of millions is also briefly set in contrast to other modern poets that engage experiences of trauma in relation to Job, but as focused on the individual (such as modern poets of disability).

Author

• Janice Thompson, King's College