Abstract

This study approaches Nelly Sachs' dramatic scenes as stagings of the processes of language. It places the analysis of these scenes in the larger context of Walter Benjamin's as well as Peter Szondi's theories of modern drama. Both authors suggest that to recognize the limits of dramatic language calls language itself into question. This theoretical premise finds an artistic realization in Nelly Sachs' dramatic scenes, which reflect rigorously, even destructively, on their own genre. ;Selected dramatic scenes are examined as stagings of the paradoxical search for a language which draws away from itself. In Sachs' scenes, biblical, chassidic and cabalistic motifs are torn from traditional contexts to assume new functions, problematizing the signifying capacities of language. Consideration of unpublished materials and letters makes it possible to analyze the gradual formation of Nelly Sachs' innovative dramatic stagings, which break with conventional theater, invoking a new concept of "Total- and Kulttheater." Nelly Sachs' dramas employ theatre as the crucial tool to open up the sphere of languages beyond words: the theatrical languages of silence, visual scenic elements, gesture, and movement. The scenes are examined in a sequence which demonstrates different aspects of Nelly Sachs' concept of language as they appear in the relations of the figures to the boundaries of language on one hand and to their bodily life on the other. Finally, Nelly Sachs' stagings of the problems of language are related to those by Samuel Beckett in three of his shorter plays. ;The thematization of language in these scenes involves complex questions about its figuration, dramatization and stylization. Jakob Bohme's theory of language, Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris, Nietzsche's concept of tragedy, Wagner's ideas about the "Gesamtkunstwerk," Heinz Holliger's musical setting of a scene by Nelly Sachs and Beckett's late dramaturgy are examined in order to establish a systematic, historical, and thematic framework for the analysis of Nelly Sachs' texts