Echi di Russia nella poesia israeliana: la vita e l'opera di Lea Goldberg (1911-1970)

This article focuses on the poetry of Lea Goldberg (1911-1970) and on the poetical imagery that she drew on her double origin and elaborated upon, both linguistically and culturally, having grown up in Russia and moved to pre-state Israel in 1935. Of particular interest are the poems Mi-Beti Ha-Yašan (From my old home, published in 1942), and ’Oren (Pine, published in 1955). In the former, she nostalgically recalls the memory of a lost world, depicting an elegiac image of the land of her childhood in Russia. And in the latter she states her exilic condition, suspended between two parallel worlds, Russia of her memory and Israel of her life. Although her work comes as the result of merging XIX-XX century Russian poetry on one side and Hebrew language and tradition on the other, the caesura existing in the poet’s memory is unresolved and unresolvable. The only way left is to use poetry itself as the sole dimension where a conciliation is possible, beyond present and past, beyond here and there, beyond nationality.