Dahlia Ravikovitch: A Biblical Poet

Dahlia Ravikovitch’s Hovering at Low Altitude describes what we do with heart-wrenching directness. We watch from a safe distance and pretend we do not see. We see and pretend we cannot act. We act but we are careful not to do anything that threatens our own existence. No matter what we say, neither justice nor mercy takes precedence when we engage the world from the comfort of our living rooms.

In Hovering at Low Altitude, the pre-announced rape and murder of one girl stands for an entire people. The one who repeats “I am not here” stands for an entire class, the educated elite, voyeurs of injustice of which they are co-responsible, as they know well, by sins of omission and commission. I belong to that elite. Since you are reading this blog, so do you.

In order to fully grasp the nettle of this poem, you have to know your Hebrew Bible. Ravikovitch wrote poetry in her youth filled with complex allusions to a very large canon of literature. In her maturity, she whittled her canon down until she was left with not much more than her lived experience and the Bible whose every word is pregnant with the ages. The result is piercing.

Through the latticework of the poetic text, pre-texts peek through. Cant 1:5-8; Isa 3:16-26; Ps 121; Deut 22:23-24; Isa 40:22; 40:2. (This is not to claim that Ravikovitch had all of these in mind when she composed the poem.) The paintings of Chagall, in which people hover in mid-air. A shepherd girl rises early to tend a herd of black goats and heads to the hills with them: I have seen it. The poet watches scenes of violence. So do we. Tiananmen Square, Srebrenica, the Rwandan_genocide. We have pictures, we were witnesses. The Armenian Genocide, still not condemned by the US government, because in God we *do not* trust. Not to mention the treatment given to the people Ravikovitch supported as best she knew how: the Palestinians.

What wobbly-kneed wretches we are.

רחיפה בגובה נמוך

Hovering at Low Altitude

אני לא כאן

אני על נקיקי הרים מזרחיים

מנומרים פסות של קרח

במקום שעשב לא צמח

וצל רחב נטוש על המורד

I am not here.
I’m on top of the crags of the eastern mountains
dappled with patches of ice
where grass doesn't sprout
and a broad shadow is spread over the slope.

רועה קטנה עם צאן עזים

שחורות

הגיחה שם

מאהל לא נראה

לא תוציא את יומה הילדה הזאת

במרעה

A little shepherd girl with a herd of goats
– black ones –
burst on the scene
from an unseen tent.
She won't bring her day to a close, that girl,
in the pasture.  . . .

והקטנה השכימה כה לקום אל המרעה

גרונה אינו נטוי

עיניה לא קרועות בפוך, לא משׂקרות

אינה שואלת, מאין יבוא עזרי

The little one rose early to take her place in the pasture.
Her neck is not outstretched,
Her eyes are not lined with kohl, not done up with mascara,
she doesn't ask, “From whence cometh my help?”

אני לא כאן

אני כבר בהרים ימים רבים

אור לא יצרבני. הכפור בי לא יגע.

שוב אין לי מה ללקות בתדהמה.

דברים גרועים מאלה ראיתי בחיי. 

I am not here.
I've been in the mountains for a long time already.
The light will not scorch me. Me the frost will not touch.
Nothing any more is able to batter me with amazement.
Worse things than these I’ve seen in my life.

אני אוספת שמלתי ומרחפת

סמוך מאד אל הקרקע.

מה היא חשבה לה הילדה הזאת?

פראית למראה, לא רחוצה

לרגע משתופפת בכריעה.

I pull my dress toward me and hover,
low to the ground.
What was she thinking, that girl?
Wild in appearance, unwashed,
for a moment she bends down, knees flexed.

לחייה רכה כמשי

פצעי קור על גב ידה,

פזורת דעת כביכול

קשובה לאמתו של דבר.

ועוד נותרו לה כך וכך שעות.

Her cheeks soft like silk,
frostbite on the back of her hand,
her mind distracted, seemingly,
in fact she's intent.
She still has a few hours left.

אני לא בענין הזה הגיתי.

מחשבותי רפדוני ברפידה של מוך

מצאתי לי שיטה פשוטה מאד,

לא מדרך כף רגל ולא מעוף

רחיפה בגובה נמוך.

The situation I don’t mull over.
My thoughts cushion me like a cushion of down.
I've found a very simple method,
not a foot-breadth away, not moving a wing,
I hover at low altitude.

אבל בנטות צהרים

שעות רבות

לאחר הזריחה

עלה האיש ההוא בהר

כמטפס לפי תומו.

והילדה קרובה אליו מאד

ואין איש זולתם.

ואם נסתה להתחבא או צעקה

אין מסתור בהרים.

Even so while the midday stretched on,
many hours
after sunrise,
that man went up the mountain,
to all appearances a simple mountain climber.
The girl is right next to him,
no one is there except them.
If she fled for cover, or cried out—
there would be no place to hide in the mountains.

אני לא כאן

אני מעל רכסי הרים פרועים ואיומים

בפאתי מזרח.

ענין שאין צריכים להתעכב עליו.

אפשר בטלטלה עזה וברחיפה

לחוג במהירות הרוח.

אפשר להסתלק ולדבר על לב עצמי:

אני דבר לא ראיתי.

I am not here.
I'm on top of the precipices of savage, awesome mountains
in the extremities of the East.
No need to elaborate on the situation.
With a single hard twirl, it’s possible to hover
and make a circle with the speed of the wind.
It’s possible to get away and reassure myself:
I didn’t see a thing.

והקטנה עיניה רק חרגו מחוריהן

חכה יבש כחרס,

כשיד קשה לפתה את שערה ואחזה בה

ללא קורטוב חמלה

But the little one, her eyes bulged from their sockets,
her palate dry as a potsherd,
when a hard hand held her hair tight, and gripped her
without a shred of pity.

כל השירים עד כה, עמ' 219-221 

The above translation is my own. Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld’s translation is beautiful. Go here. Here and there I followed their lead, but mostly I went my own way. As Michael Pitkowsky pointed out to me, the reference to the "eastern mountains" may allude to a preferred vacation destination of hip young Israelis: Nepal and similar.

Bibliography

Dahlia Ravikovitch, Hovering at a Low Altitude: The Collected Poetry of Dahlia Ravikovitch (Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld, introd. and tr.; New York: Norton, 2009) 32-33; Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld, “Dahlia Ravikovitch: An Introduction,” Prooftexts 28 (2008) 249-281; 273-74

Comments

[nancy bogue]

gorgeous translation and beautiful title for the whole collection. the poems are both hopeful and depairing. i don't know when the poems were written, but the translation is so well done that i feel as if i am in an old world. things seem simpler, but when the world has fewer external pulls on it, emotions and relationships take on a "heightened" posture. or heightened to us today, anyway. lovely and haunting, john.

[nancy bogue]

i made a post a few minutes ago, prior to reading the introduction and what the poem was about. after reading what it is about, i don't know now if the poem is "hopeful". do others find any hope in it?

[JohnFH]

Hi Nancy,

I find the poem hopeful, despite everything, because it is truthful. "I didn't see a thing," we want to say, but ultimately, we can't say that.

We do see injustice around us, including injustice we are responsible for to some degree. The next question can only be, what then shall we do?

Externally, superficially, it is possible to twirl the top and hover away to a beach somewhere in the Caribbean. But internally, within our spirits, it should not be possible to do so.