Craving Pure Essence: Portret ["Portrait"] by Dahlia Ravikovitch

My research examines the contemporary Hebrew poetry of Dahlia Ravikovitch as the prismatic self-portraiture of a lovelorn soul. Across the oeuvre, the poet-persona laments her lifelong experience of love in emotionally dissatisfying proportions. The imbalance affects her personal life and stalls her creative activity. She suffers existential malaise only held at bay when she is saturated with eros or immersed in poetic composition. Textual analysis shows that there are parallel aspects of the persona's experience of each, suggesting their equivalence in potential to assuage her discomfort: a sensation of descent, sinking fully cushioned into organic matter, and a heightening of sensory perception.

When the natural resources of eros and creative vitality are scarce, the persona yearns for the succor of a substance of sustenance that she calls "vanilla." Such is the case in Portret ["Portrait"], arguably the centerpiece of the persona's gallery. In an extraordinary performance of bios, the speaker of "Portrait" reveals that she is an accomplished writer of royal stature. Unfortunately, her work is at a standstill: this skilled lyricist is languishing in a vast vacuum of creative torpor.

The research methodology draws on textual analysis of three types: extended intertextual reverberation, "intratextual" equation, and literary analysis through the lens of écriture féminine.