An essential work of postwar literary correspondence, this book collects the existing letters between Nobel Prize winning poet Nelly Sachs (1891-1970) and Paul Celan (1920-1970). "What Paul Celan once said of his mother tongue holds as well for Nelly Sachs: 'Reachable, near and not lost, there remained amid the losses this one thing: language. It, the language, remained, not lost, yes in spite of everything. But it had to pass through its own answerlessness, pass through frightful muting, pass through the thousand darknesses of "deathbringing speech"" (from Felstiner's Introduction).