Rachel (birth name Rachel Bluwstein) was born into a respectable family of Russian Jews. She grew on the lyrical conventions of the Russian Romantic poetry. Her first works, written in Russian, appear quite mediocre. However, her consequent work in Hebrew is superb and groundbreaking. Main themes are reflection on her coming to Ottoman Turk-controlled Palestine on ideological grounds, her unhappy love affairs giving birth to a profound sense of loneliness, and her eventual mortal illness - tuberculosis ("consumption").
Her personal, clear, stremalined language marks a considerable change from the Bibleic and Talmudic-laced language of many of her contemporaries. In particular, it is interesting that Rachel intended the vowels in her poems to be pronounced with a Sephardic intonation (which eventually was became the dominant in Modern Israeli Hebrew), whereas her contemporaries Bialik and Tchernihovsky used the Ashkenazi intonation. Altogether, her poetic style became the progenitor for much of Israel's lyrical poetry for the decades following her untimely death.
מי אתה? מדוע יד מושטת
לא פוגשת יד אחות
ועיניים, אך תמתינה רגע
והנה שפלו כבר נבוכות
גן נעול. לא שביל אליו לא דרך.
גן נעול - אדם.
האלך לי, או אכה בסלע
עד זוב דם.
To an unknowing muse.
Who are you? And why a reached-out hand
Fails to meet a hand - her mate?
And the gaze - awaiting for one moment,
In the next one is so shyly waived.
A closed garden. No path, no road to go there.
A closed garden is the Man.
Should I leave, or face the rock and batter,
With my hands - a bleeding ram?
Translation by yours truly.
A performance by Shuki and Dorit, music by Shuki (they started performing this song in 1978; the recording is from 1979) -
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