Esther Raab
(1894-1981) es mencionada a menudo como la primera poeta israelí nativa. Nació y creció en Petah Tikva. En 1921 se casó con su primo en la ciudad de El Cairo, donde permaneció durante varios años. Se la considera como no perteneciente a ningún movimiento o escuela poética de su época. Sus motivos principales giran alrededor del paisaje de Tierra Santa, la naturaleza, la simpleza y la libertad. En 1964 obtuvo el Premio Kugel.
Esther Raab (1894-1981) is often touted as Israel’s first native-born woman poet, with the accent on her being native-born. That is, the fact that she was born in Ottoman-ruled Palestine, 52 years before the founding of the state of Israel, and her attention to the landscape, are seen as her defining features. She is celebrated as a nature poet, said to be reflecting the Land of Israel as the new Jewish context – almost as if she simply mirrored what she saw. Nonetheless, or perhaps because of this, she has often been ignored in surveys of Hebrew poetry: her work is missing from T. Carmi’s seminal Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse (1981) and from both editions of The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself (1st ed. 1965; 2nd ed. 2003), an omission rectified, of course, in the definitive anthology of women’s poetry in Hebrew, The Defiant Muse (1999). Raab, whose poetry is thematically daring and technically innovative, surely deserves close attention.
La canción de la mujer
Bendito tú que me hiciste mujer,
que soy humana tierra
y débil costilla;
bendito por hacerme
redondeces y curvas
como el sol y los planetas,
como los henchidos frutos.
Por darme una viva carne florecida,
por hacerme como las plantas,
agreste y fértil.
Los hilos de tus nubes
se deslizan como seda
por mi rostro y mis muslos.
Soy adulta
y deseo ser niña:
llorar de tristeza, reír
y cantar a voces.
Ínfima entre lo nimio,
un pequeño grillo
en el sublime coro de tus potencias;
la más diminuta entre todos tus seres
juega aquí, a tus pies,
mi Creador.
Traducción: Gerardo Lewin
Cocklebur pierced red loam
Cocklebur pierced red loam
and spilled like milk
across the ground;
and at night a moon licks
saucers of milk swaying
on slender stalks,
the clouds extend their trail-of-white,
dip in the froth of blossoming
flooding cocklebur,
and green bee-eaters in masses
gurgle and go berserk,
fill their bellies
with swarming insects
in saucers of white cocklebur;
screw bean smothers cocklebur
lest it also conquer the sand;
smell of soft screw bean, leaking
and smell of pungent cocklebur leaping –
each to the other tightly adhering
and filling expanses of flat
red loam in its clods.
Translated by Harold Schimmel
I’m beneath the bramble
I’m beneath the bramble,
easy, wanton,
I raised its thorns
towards you laughing,
light beats upon the expanse,
each fold in my dress
whispers to me:
“White and quaking
you go out
towards death.”
You appear –
and lightly I exult
brandishing a glittering sword -
and at high noon
in fields white with light
I issued our sentence
as one!
1922
Translated by Harold Schimmel
Thus will you love me
Thus will you love me
and day after day rend your heart for me –
for I will never
be your beloved;
since only on heights-of-sorrow
do we rest
and we will not descend
to the baseness of couches in rooms;
for I lie in wait still
beneath the warm eucalyptus trees –
crazed with love.
1926
Translated by Harold Schimmel
WOMAN'S SONG
Blessed is he who made me a woman –
that I am earth and Adam,
a tender rib;
Blessed is he who made me
circles upon circles –
like the orbits of planets
and spheres of fruit –
who gave me living flesh
that blossoms,
and made me like a plant of the field –
that bears fruit;
so your cloud tatters,
slide like silk
over my face and thighs;
and I am grown
and want to be a girl,
weeping from sorrow,
and laughing, and singing aloud,
thinner than thin –
like the smallest cricket
in the sublime chorus
of your cherubs –
smallest of the small –
I play
at your feet –
my Creator!
1969
Translated by Harold Schimmel
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