Books: Habitations of Death

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All's Metamorphosis. Nelly Sachs chose to answer that question in a context of creation and death and new creation that seemed to start with the Book of Genesis and engage the support of the higher sciences. Both the small sounds and the indifference belong to the cosmic flow that includes all things. "Sleep and dying are neutral," and man is precious matter that life shapes and death changes into something new. Even all that is worst in man can ultimately be absorbed:

When the man seduced by sleep rises

guilt-laden

from the wellshaft of morning

he does not know

that he is wrapped in the nightclothes of the chrysalis

for still he has not experienced his rebirth

nor abandoned himself to his death.

All's metamorphosis.

Thus she placed the sum total of the horror she knew in the continuing life cycle of the universe, instead of bending her talent to uttering justified curses against her time and place. That must have taken a consuming strength.