Dahlia Ravikovitch

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Dahlia Ravikovitch (17 November 1936 – 21 August 2005) was an Israeli poet and peace activist best known for the freedom of expression in her romantic poetry and her principled engagement with current events.

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[edit] Biography

Born in Ramat Gan, she was educated at Kibbutz Geva and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Throughout her life, Ravikovitch was active in the Israeli peace movement. From her home in central Tel Aviv she functioned at the hub of Israeli culture, collaborating with artists and musicians and with public figures who like her wished to promote peace, equality and social justice.

On 21 August 2005, Ravikovitch was found dead in her apartment. Initial reports speculated the cause of death to be suicide, but the autopsy determined the cause to be sudden heart irregularities.

[edit] Bibliography

Her first poems appeared in the Hebrew language poetry journal Orlogin (Hourglass), edited by Avraham Shlonsky, and it was Shlonsky who encouraged her to pursue writing as a career. Her first book of poetry, The Love of an Orange, published in 1959, established her as one of Israel's leading young native-born poets.[1]

Her earlier poetry shows her command of formal technique without sacrificing the sensitivity of her always distinct voice. Although never totally abandoning traditional poetic devices, she developed a more prosaic style in the latter decades of her work. Her popular poem published in 1987, "The End of a Fall" (also called "The Reason for Falling") is from this period. Like many of Rabikovitch's poems, it may strike the reader as, at once, poignant, metaphysical, disturbing, and even political: "If a man falls from a plane in the middle of the night / only God can lift him up...".[2]

In all, Ravikovitch published ten volumes of poetry in her native Hebrew. In addition to poetry, she contributed prose works (including three collections of short stories) and children's literature, and translated poetry into Hebrew. Many of her poems were set to music. Her best known poem is Booba Memukenet (English: Clockwork Doll).[3]

Ravikovitch's poems have been translated into twenty one languages. Many of the poems that were translated into English were published in two books: Dress of Fire (first edition 1976, second edition 1978) and The Window (1989).

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself (2003) ISBN 0-8143-2485-1
  2. ^ Born to Dream on Ivrit.org.
  3. ^ Rabikovitch on the Drunken Boat.

[edit] External links