RACHEL'S ART OF POETRY: BETWEEN MODESTY AND COMPLEXITY

Abstract

The major purpose of this paper is to cast a new light upon the poetry of Rachel (1890-1931), probably the most prominent female poet in modern Hebrew literature. Few poets have received the critical praise Rachel has.' Furthermore, the critical praises are always formulated in superlative language, lofty metaphors and emotional expressions.2 Accordingly, critics have depicted her poetry as pure, transparent, lucid, fair, tender, gentle, refined, humble, meek, restrained, hermit-like, sincere, musical, lyrical, hovering, intimate, touching, and so on.3 Although critics constantly avoided a thorough probe of the structural aspects in Rachel's poetry, they all seemed to agree that it is of a simple structure, one that denies complexity and displays an innocent, almost an elementary, composition.4 The only critical exception is a book by Reuven Kritz (1969) in which a new critical attitude is adopted, primarily toward the structural patterns in Rachel's poetry. This book maps and classifies its prevailing structural features, and correspondingly, elucidates some of the complexity of her compositional poetics. However, as this book is of a panoramic nature, it does not do a thorough structural probe of Rachel's poetry. Thus, despite the book's considerable contribution to a better understanding of the work under study, and notably its structural qualities, a thorough study of Rachel's art of poetry, and notably its structural patterns, is more than urgent. The following study shows that Rachel's poetry may possess such a degree of intricacy that it is beyond the capacity of one paper to thoroughly probe more than one poem. Hence, the current study concentrates on one poem by Rachel which seems to demonstrate Rachel's challenging structural poetics. The poem in focus is To The Mountains (El heharim).5 The prevailing poetics of this poem are built on an intriguing structural pattern that may be titled an oxymoronic structure. Oxymoronic structure is a complicated pattern in which two literary layers are engaged. These layers demonstrate an oxymoronic interaction as they simultaneously display contradictory inclinations and conflicting meanings.6 The first layer may be titled a surface layer, or an epidermic layer. This layer of the poem is blatantly contradicted by the poem's second layer. The second layer may be titled an inner layer, or a deeper layer, as