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J Tali Asher The Growing Silence of the Poetess Rachel This is the way—there is no other, to follow, to go to the end; and to remember, and sing, and yearn and to remember, and be silent . . . and be silent. —“My Tiny Joy” T he way and silence are key concepts in Rachel’s poems. Rachel’s marching along the path began as progress, with knowledge that the purpose of the journey was to arrive at a target site within a defined period, and turned into treading in space until the end of time. In this article I would like to demonstrate that the emotional and ideological foundation in Rachel’s poems is the experience of remaining “afar”; this experience was designed in connection with Moses, the leader of the Jewish people on the way from Egypt to Eretz Israel, and is expressed in the poetics discerned in her poems. The path that Rachel traversed during her life was one of wanderings, of immigration to Eretz Israel, and of exile within its borders. Rachel was born in 1890 in Russia and reached Eretz Israel in 1909 with her sister; in 1911, she made her way to Kinneret following Hannah Maisel-Shohat. In 1913, Rachel went to France to study art and agriculture. Because of World War I, she was forced to go back to Russia, remaining there until her return, ill with tuberBehind this article stand those who taught me the meaning of responsibility toward a text that is read and a text that is written—Dr. Ruth Ginsburg, Dr. Ilana Pardes, Tamar Hess, and my teacher Prof. Dan Miron. I thank them for the thought and time they invested in me as a student and for allowing me to feel that I was a teacher, too. In the Hebrew original of this article, all poems were cited as they appear in Rahel—Shirim, Mikhtavim, Reshimot, Korot Hayyeha [Rachel—Poems, Letters, Sketches, Biography], ed. U. Milstein (Tel Aviv, 1994) (Hereafter Milstein , Rahel—Shirim.) culosis, to Eretz Israel, to Degania—from which she was asked to leave because of her illness. After five years of wandering between Petah Tikva, Jerusalem, the hospital in Safed, and Tel Aviv, she settled in a small Tel Aviv garret, living there for about five years. In 1931, Rachel spent time in a convalescent home in Gedera and from there she returned to the hospital in Tel Aviv on the day she died, 15 April 1931. She was buried in Kinneret. This progression, of promise toward the realization of a personal and collective vision by the very act of settlement, and its being shattered on the threshold of realization, is a fundamentally important step towards understanding Rachel’s poems. As an individual—with all the facets of her being— Rachel feels she is standing at the threshold, as a halutzah, as a woman, as a creative person. In this article, I will focus on the development of the sense of threshold by characterizing the poetics in this light and in the link between Rachel and Moses—on the basis of the shattering that came before realization could be achieved. Literary Reception As a poetess, Rachel had to overcome a number of obstacles. The expectations of the masculine establishment in Eretz Israel at the beginning of the twentieth century from the feminine pen were nurtured by phallocentric thought patterns, and they allotted women’s poetry limited functionality and minimal access. From the time the feminine voice penetrated cultural discourse , it was identified with the emotional world composed of sensations of love, desire, pregnancy, and motherhood as an imperative thematic foundation , which is not congruent with intellectual-philosophical significance. In his book Imahot Meyassedot, Ahayot Horgot (Founding Mothers, Stepsisters ), Dan Miron identifies these demands with genre expressions: It was recommended that women’s poetry anchor its messages in the realm of the lyrical , become entrenched in the small lyrical poem, and be excluded it from the “higher,” more complicated lyrical genres such as the ode and the elegy. Actually, the male cultural establishment was quite amenable to personal, autobiographical, confessional, and sentimental women’s poetry, and if despite this, women’s poetry did aim for Modernism, it would be best if it would locate itself in its conservative wing.1 Rachel did indeed choose the small lyrical poem. With the publication of her first poems in Davar, there were signs of the perception of a poem that was likely to deceive many readers...

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