Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Study Guide for Nelly Sachs's "But Perhaps God Needs the Longing"
    A Study Guide for Nelly Sachs's "But Perhaps God Needs the Longing"
    A Study Guide for Nelly Sachs's "But Perhaps God Needs the Longing"
    Ebook34 pages23 minutes

    A Study Guide for Nelly Sachs's "But Perhaps God Needs the Longing"

    By Gale and Cengage

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Nelly Sachs's "But Perhaps God Needs the Longing," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateAug 26, 2016
    ISBN9781535820325
    A Study Guide for Nelly Sachs's "But Perhaps God Needs the Longing"

    Read more from Gale

    Related to A Study Guide for Nelly Sachs's "But Perhaps God Needs the Longing"

    Related ebooks

    Teaching Methods & Materials For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Jena-gadda-da-vida

      Sep 1, 2022

      For a few years at the turn of the 19th century, Jena, a small university town in the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar, was an intellectual Shangri-La. And then, suddenly, it wasn’t. Though its population was barely 4,500, Jena was for a while home to many of th

      4 min read

    • Article

      I Always Write in the Past: The Millions Interviews André Aciman

      Mar 25, 2021

      In writing truth, the act of writing already changes things, even if you swear the story is factually true. The post I Always Write in the Past: The Millions Interviews André Aciman appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Nothingism

      Mar 1, 2019

      Nothingism
      11 min read

    • Article

      O Majestic Poet

      Jun 6, 2017

      O Majestic Poet
      1 min read

    • Article

      DeLillo, Lethem, and the Seductive Sentence

      Apr 11, 2018

      DeLillo is so famously and distinctively a writer who appeals to sentence-lovers, with all their blindnesses, hubristic ideals, and narrow-minded cerebrations. The post DeLillo, Lethem, and the Seductive Sentence appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • Article

      Vigilantly Himself: Artists on Philip Roth’s Legacy

      May 29, 2018

      Al Alvarez, Joyce Carol Oates, John Cheever, and others remember Philip Roth, the creator of iconic characters Portnoy and Nathan Zuckerman. 1. Intense [University of Chicago English professor Joan Bennett] invited us to tea to meet one of her studen

      9 min read

    • Article

      Mary McCarthy at the 92nd Street Y

      May 18, 2017

      Chris Kraus reflects on Mary McCarthy’s reading, in November 1963, from her novel ‘The Group.’

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Living Mandelstam

      May 1, 2020

      It is common for English-language accounts of Mandelstam’s life to begin with an account of his death. Consider the first sentence of a twosentence biography that appeared in The New York Review of Books in 2016 to preface a translation by Andrew Dav

      13 min read

    • Article

      Sense of Borges

      Aug 16, 2021

      FiǼty years ago, restless Lafayette graduate Jay Parini, faced with the choice of ensconcing himself back in the bosom of his mother in Icranton Pennsylvania or being drafted into the Vietnam War, decided to escape both fates by moving to study Icott

      2 min read

    • Article

      The True Crime Story That (Might Have) Inspired Nabokov to Write ‘Lolita’

      May 16, 2019

      What if the young girl from Camden was the model for the nymphet from Ramsdale? Who was Sally Horner? Who is Dolores Haze? The post The True Crime Story That (Might Have) Inspired Nabokov to Write ‘Lolita’ appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      To Hell And Back

      Sep 1, 2022

      The first complete English translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy appeared in 1802, and over the past two centuries, new versions have proliferated beyond count, like Beatles covers or Sherlock Holmes movies. A diverting literary parlor game is to imag

      4 min read

    • Article

      Closer To Vermeer

      Mar 1, 2023

      Closer To Vermeer
      6 min read

    • Article

      Speak, Butterfly: Butterflies tied together Vladimir Nabokov’s home, science, and writing.

      Dec 19, 2013

      The life and work of the novelist Vladimir Nabokov referenced many symbols, none so much as the butterfly. Butterflies prompted Nabokov’s travels across the United States, exposing him to the culture and physical environment that he would transform i

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Poet Upstairs

      Jan 22, 2018

      The Poet Upstairs
      9 min read

    • Article

      In Memory of Stanley Cavell

      Jun 21, 2018

      In Memory of Stanley Cavell
      4 min read

    • Article

      Visible Man

      Dec 2, 2019

      Visible Man
      4 min read

    • Article

      What The Thunder Said

      Sep 14, 2022

      ON Margate Sands./I can connect/ Nothing with nothing.’ Thomas Stearns (T. S.) Eliot crafted these short lines that form a part of his fractured epic The Waste Land in October 1921, as he sat in the inauspicious Nayland Rock Shelter (granted Grade II

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Study Guide for Nelly Sachs's "But Perhaps God Needs the Longing"

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Nelly Sachs's "But Perhaps God Needs the Longing" - Gale

      1

      But Perhaps God Needs the Longing

      Nelly Sachs

      1966

      Introduction

      When Nelly Sachs first began to write, she wrote of the longing for a lover and of the disappointment of lost love. After her experiences during the Holocaust, most of Sachs's poems dealt with the destruction of European Jewry. She used her poems to express the deep sense of loss and grief that she felt and as a form of catharsis for the many emotions that she had experienced during the war years. Although Sachs escaped the death camps, her escape did not leave her immune to the suffering of those Jews who were transported. Although she had been brought up in a non-religious, secular household, the experience of the Holocaust deepened Sachs's commitment to Judaism. Many of her poems, written after the war, reflect this deepened commitment to religion. This is certainly the case with But Perhaps God Needs the Longing, (first printed in 1966 in Die Suchende) a poem in which the writer poses a reason for the inevitability of death and the grief that results from the loss of love. This poem appears in a chapter of The Seeker and Other Poems that is titled, In the Habitations of Death, in which Sachs writes about the death camps. The dominant theme of But Perhaps God Needs the Longing, is that of death. In this poem the poet expresses both the inevitability of death and the cycle of rebirth that are equal parts of life. One theme of But Perhaps God Needs the Longing, suggests that the prayers of longing and grief that result from death create the light of stars in the night sky. These stars represent the continuing cycle of birth and death that are part of man's existence. The conclusion of the poem might be viewed as an affirmation that there is life after death, since the grief and longing that mankind feels perpetuates the memory of those who have been

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1