Rachel Bluwstein

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Rachel Bluwstein
Mandate Palestine
OccupationPoet

Rachel Bluwstein in kibbutz Degania Alef, 1919–1921

Rachel Bluwstein Sela (20 September (Julian calendar) 1890 – 16 April 1931) was a

Israel, then part of the Ottoman Empire
, in 1909. She is known by her first name, Rachel (Hebrew: רחל [ʁaˈχel]), or as Rachel the Poetess (רחל המשוררת‎ [ʁaˈχel (h)am(e)ʃoˈʁeʁet]). She is featured on Israel's 20 Shekel Banknote.

Biography

Rachel was born in

Kiev. During her childhood, her family moved to Poltava, Ukraine, where she attended a Russian-speaking Jewish school and, later, a secular high school. She began writing poetry at the age of 15. When she was 17, she moved to Kiev and began studying painting.[2]

At the age of 19, Rachel visited The British Mandate of Israel, with her sister Shoshana, en route to Italy, where they were planning to study art and philosophy. They decided to stay on as Zionist pioneers, learning Hebrew by listening to children’s chatter in kindergartens.[3] They settled in Rehovot and worked in the orchards. Later, Rachel moved to Kvutzat Kinneret on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, where she studied and worked in a women's agricultural school.[3] At Kinneret, she met Zionist leader A. D. Gordon who was to be a great influence on her life, and to whom she dedicated her first Hebrew poem.

In 1913, on the advice of Gordon, she journeyed to Toulouse, France to study agronomy and drawing. When World War I broke out, unable to return to British Israel, she returned instead to Russia where she taught Jewish refugee children. In Russia she suffered from poverty and strenuous labour, as well as the reappearance of her childhood lung disease.[3] It may have been at this point in her life that she contracted tuberculosis.[4] Lonely, ill and famished, she had only one hope left: to return to Israel. In 1919, after the war, she boarded the first ship to leave Russia to Israel.[3]

Rachel's House in No. 64 Street of the Prophets in Jerusalem

She returned to Palestine on board the ship Ruslan and for a while joined the small agricultural

French,[3] and finally settled in a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients in Gedera.[6]

Rachel died on 16 April 1931 in Tel Aviv, at the age of 40. She is buried in the Kinneret cemetery in a grave overlooking the Sea of Galilee, following her wishes as expressed in her poem If Fate Decrees. Alongside her are buried many of the socialist ideologues and pioneers of the second and third waves of immigration. Naomi Shemer was buried near Rachel, according to Shemer's wish.[2]

Literary career

Rachel the poetess

As a member of the editorial staff of Davar newspaper, Zalman Rubashov (later Zalman Shazar, who became the third President of Israel) encouraged her to write and publish her poetry. [7]

Her early work was in Russian, but she switched to Hebrew. Most of her poems were written in the final six years of her life, usually on small notes to her friends.

State of Israel
.

Rachel is known for her lyrical style, the brevity of her poems, and the revolutionary simplicity of her conversational tone.

Acmeists and their leader, the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. Rachel’s style reflects the movement’s strive for “clarity, accuracy, conciseness, and economy of language” in poetry.[4]

In some poems, Rachel expresses identification with Biblical figures such as Rachel, her namesake matriarch,[11] and Michal, wife of David.

Rachel also wrote a one-act comic play Mental Satisfaction, which was performed but not published in her lifetime. This ironic vignette of pioneer life was recently rediscovered and published in a literary journal.[12]

Awards and recognition

Rachel was the first Jewish woman poet in The British Mandate of Palestine to receive recognition in a genre that was practiced solely by men.

Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian, Basque (by Benito Lertxundi) and Slovak
.

In his foreword to the 1994 edition of Flowers of Perhaps, the acclaimed Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai stated: "What may be most remarkable about the poetry of Ra'hel, a superb lyric poet, is that it has remained fresh in its simplicity and inspiration for more than seventy years."

In 2011, Rachel was chosen as one of four great poets whose portraits would be on Israeli currency (the other three being Leah Goldberg, Shaul Tchernichovsky, and Nathan Alterman).[13]

In 2016, Google Doodle commemorated her 126th birthday.[14]

Published works

Rachel's grave at the Kineret cemetery

Poetry books published in Hebrew

  • Aftergrowth, Davar, 1927 (Safiah, ספיח)
  • Across From, Davar, 1930 (Mineged, מנגד)
  • Nevo, Davar, 1932 (Nevo, נבו)

Later Hebrew editions and compilations

  • Poems, Davar, 1935 (Shirat Rachel, שירת רחל)
  • The Poems and Letters of Rachel, in Manuscript, Hotza'at Kineret, 1969 (Shirei Rachel u-Mikhtaveiha bi-Khtav Yada שירי רחל ומכתביה בכתב ידה)
  • Inside and Outside Home (children), Sifriat Poalim, 1974 (Ba-Bayit U Va-Hutz, בבית ובחוץ)
  • As Rachel Waited, Tamuz, 1982 [Ke-Chakot Rachel, כחכות רחל]
  • Poems, Letters, Writings, Dvir, 1985 (Shirim, Mikhtavim, Reshimot, שירים, מכתבים, רשימות)
  • In My Garden, Tamuz, 1985 (Be-Gani Neta`atikha, בגני נטעתיך)
  • Will You Hear My Voice, Bar, 1986 (Ha-Tishma Koli, התשמע קולי)
  • Rachel's Poems, Sridot, 1997 (Shirei Rachel, שירי רחל)

Translations

  • English: Flowers of Perhaps: Selected Poems of Rahel London, Menard, 1995,
    ISBN 1-874320-02-0
  • Finnish: Lähellä kaikki kaukaisuus: Runoja Basam Books, 2021,
    ISBN 978-952-733-700-4
  • German: Berlin, Hechalutz, 1936; Tel Aviv, Davar, 1970
  • Spanish: Barcelona, Riopiedras, 1985
  • Yiddish: Winnipeg, WIZO U.S.A. and Canada, 1932
  • Buenos Aires, Kium Farlag, 1957

Individual poems have been published in Afrikaans, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, Esperanto, French, Frisian, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Spanish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Welsh, and Yiddish.

Books about Rachel

  • Biography in French: " Quand Israël rêvait. La vie de Rachel Bluwstein." Author: Martine Gozlan. Editor: Le Cerf, Paris, 2018

Selected poems

Our Garden

Spring and early morning –
do you remember that spring, that day? –
our garden at the foot of Mount Carmel,
facing the blue of the bay?

You are standing under an olive,
and I, like a bird on a spray,
am perched on the silvery tree-top.
We are cutting black branches away.

From below, your saw’s rhythmic buzzing
reaches me in my tree,
and I rain down from above you
fragments of poetry.

Remember that morning, that happiness?
They were – and disappeared,
like the short spring of our country,
the short spring of our years.

Barren

Oh, if I had a son, a little son,
with black curled hair and clever eyes,
A little son to walk with in the garden
under morning skies
a son,
a little son.

I'd call him Uri, little laughing Uri,
a tender name, as light, as full of joy
as sunlight on the dew, as tripping on the tongue
as the laughter of a boy -
"Uri"
I'd call him.

And still I wait, as mother Rachel waited,
or Hannah at Shiloh, she the barren one,
until the day comes when my lips whisper,
"Uri, my son."

Ra'hel's Book

By her grave her book
dangles from a chain,
as if the words had not
already flown,
and sown,
in hearts everywhere,
seeds of song.
Nurtured by despair
they flower there.

See also

  • Esther Raab (1894–1981), friend and author of Hebrew prose and poetry, known as "the first Sabra poet" (sabra meaning 'born in the Land of Israel')

References

  1. ^ She was born in Saratov according to Encyclopaedia Hebraica and the book "Rachel" (ed. Uri Milshtein, 1993.) According to Biography and bibliography from the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature Archived September 3, 2005, at the Wayback Machine, she was born in Vyatka (later renamed Kirov).
  2. ^ a b Grishaver, Joel L., and Barkin, Josh. Artzeinu: An Israel Encounter. Los Angeles: Torah Aura Productions, 2008. 99. Google Books. Web. October 25, 2011.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Band, Ora. Modern Hebrew Prose and Poetry. West Orange, NJ: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003. 826. ebook3600. PDF file.
  4. ^ a b "Bluwstein, Rachel". Encyclopedia of Modern Jewish Culture. 2004. ebrary. Web. October 25, 2011.
  5. ^ Green, Michael (August 7, 2008). "Whose Property?". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved June 30, 2010.
  6. ISBN 9781584657033
    .
  7. ^ The private life of a Zionist poet and pioneers goes online
  8. ^ "המפעל לתרגום אקטואלי - תפוז קומונות". tapuz.co.il. Retrieved May 7, 2014.
  9. ^ a b Kerbel, Sorrel. Jewish Writers of the Twentieth Century. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003. 826. ebrary. Web. October 25, 2011.
  10. ^ Eisenberg, Ronald L. The Streets of Jerusalem: Who, What, Why. Israel: Devora Publishing, 2006. 159. Google Books. Web. October 25, 2011.
  11. ^ Mendels, Doron. On Memory: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Germany: Peter Lang, 2007. 344. Google Books. Web. October 25, 2011.
  12. ^ All About Jewish Theatre – Hidden play by Israeli poet Rachel Bluwstein (1890–1931) at www.jewish-theatre.com
  13. ^ Nadav Shemer, Jerusalem Post, 3/10/2011
  14. ^ "Rachel Bluwstein's 126th Birthday". Retrieved September 20, 2016.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Rachel Bluwstein.
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