Dahlia Ravikovitch (Hebrew: דליה רביקוביץ’, born 27 November 1936, died 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.
Biography
Ravikovitch was born in Ramat Gan in 1936. Her father, Levi, was a Russian-born Jewish engineer who arrived in the British Mandate of Palestine from China. Her mother, Michal, was a teacher who came from a religious household. When Dahlia was six, her father was run over and killed by a drunken driver. She moved to kibbutz Geva with her mother but not fit into the collectivist mentality and at 13 moved to a foster home in Haifa, the first of several foster homes.[1]
She married at 18, but divorced after three months. Her subsequent marriages also ened in divorce. She could read and write at the age of three, and studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem after completeing her mandatory service in the Israel Defense Forces. She worked as a journalist and high school teacher. She translated WB Yeats, TS Eliot, Edgar Allan Poe, and Mary Poppins into Hebrew.[1]
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.
)
Dahlia Ravikovitch in the 1950s.
Bibliography
Ravikovitch’s 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.[2]
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…”.[3]
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).[4]
Her poems are taught in schools, and several were turned into popular songs. She won the Bialik Prize for her poetry in 1987 and the Israel Literary Prize in 1998. Her poetry was translated into 20 languages. Dress Of Fire (1978) and The Window (1989), were translated into English.[1]
