Eucalyptus Trees, Ars-Poetica, and Feminine Manhood in the Early Poetry of Esther Raab

Abstract

This article concerns the symbolic meanings ascribed to the eucalyptus trees in the early poetry of Esther Raab. I aim to discuss the various significations that the eucalyptus receives in Raab's writings by positioning them against the backdrop of the tree's status as a central symbol in the Zionist discourse of the period. Esther Raab was among the first women who wrote modern poetry in Hebrew. This article stresses that she was well aware of her unique position in the sphere of Hebrew culture and of the specific historical conditions and power relations that enabled her entry into what was until then an exclusively male territory. During her early years as a poet, Esther Raab did not write poems dealing openly with the acts of writing and creating. None of Raab's first poems place the dilemmas of poetic creation at their center, nor do any of them raise questions about the language of poetry. Yet my main argument in the article is that many of her poems address important meta-poetic questions in an implicit manner, through a gendered charging and an engagement with aesthetic values that are ascribed to nature and to the working of the land. The eucalyptus tree is a salient example of this psycho-poetic strategy. It serves Raab, among other things, in creating a kind of "cover story," allowing her to address the subject of creativity. The creative passion is charged, through its linking to the huge trees, with the desire to transgress the established feminine gender identity, replacing it with a masculine one.