–settles in Eretz–Israel (Palestine)
As noted in Encyclopaedia Judaica on Rachel Bluwstein {1997} [CD–ROM]: “Rachel (pseudonym of Rahel Bluwstein, 1890–1931), Hebrew poet in Erezt Israel. Rachel was born in Saratov, on the Volga in northern Russia, and raised in Poltava. She began writing poetry in Russian at the age of 15 and also studied painting. In 1909 she emigrated to Erezt Israel, settling in Rehovot. She abandoned her native Russian idiom and learned Hebrew.
Under the influence of the pioneer Zionist Hannah Maisel (Shohat) she became a pioneer and was one of the first trainees at the young women’s training farm at Kinneret. At Kinneret she met Aaron David Gordon, the philosopher of Zionist agrarianism, and to him she dedicated her first Hebrew poem, “Halokh Nefesh” (“Mood”), in Ha–Shilo’ah, 37, (1920).
Having decided on an agricultural life, she studied agronomy at the University of Toulouse (1913). Unable to return to Erezt Israel because of World War I, she went to Russia, where she taught Jewish refugee children. After the war, she settled in Deganyah [Degania]. However, having contracted tuberculosis during the war, she soon became too ill for farm life and had to spend the rest of her life in hospitals and sanatoria.
Rachel is among the first modern Hebrew poets who wrote in a conversational style. Her knowledge of Hebrew was drawn from both the developing spoken idiom and the Bible. She was also influenced by the conversational school, which then prevailed in Russian poetry (Blok, Akhmatova, and Yesenin).
Her poems are characterized by a clear, uncomplicated lyrical line and a musicality, then rare in Hebrew poetry. Invariably short, her poems are elegiac and nostalgic in tone, many of them reflecting the pessimism of a young writer on the brink of death.
These qualities made her writings very popular with younger Hebrew readers and with the general public. Many of the poems, including the widely sung “Kinneret,” have been put to music. Rachel also translated Russian, Yiddish, and French poetry and wrote occasional pieces of criticism.
Two volumes of her verse appeared in her lifetime: Safi’ah (“Aftergrowth,” 1927), Mi–Neged (“From Opposite,” 1930), and one posthumously, Nevo (1932). These were collected in Shirat Rachel (“The Poetry of Rachel,” 1935), the eighth edition (1961) of which also contains her other works as well as a biography by Bracha Habas and a bibliography of her poems and their translations.”