Bibliography: p. 323-332. / This study posits that the concept of the Other is central in modern Hebrew literature. It traces its beginnings in Jewish thought to the Bible, and connects the creation and Eden narratives to contemporary psychoanalytic thought on ego formation and the Other. It considers the importance of the figure of the talush to the focus on the Other in modern Hebrew literature and suggests that the conflicts of the collective versus the individual that are expressed in the early stages of the literature do not disappear as it moves into the present day, but are discernible in different guise and can be seen in the burden of group consciousness which besets Hebrew authors and vitiates their attempts to configure the unique. The feminized Other is seen as especially important in this regard because of the collective textual and thus social repression of women in the tradition. Its presentation is thus taken as a useful measure of the successful resolution of individual as opposed to group narration. The modern Hebrew texts analyzed, beginning with a poem by the late Haskhalah poet, Y.L. Gordon through D. Baron, M.Y. Berdichewski, A. Kahana-Carman, S.Y. Agnon, A Appelfeld and ending with a novel by the contemporary Israeli writer, D. Grossman, support this decision as the collective is subjugated only in Kahana-Carman's text where the feminine is fully realized. The thesis examines the ways the eight narratives grapple with the awareness of the Other, and focuses on the aspects, including body, war and language, that are highlighted variously in each text. The struggles of modern Hebrew writers are also viewed as part of the difficulties entailed in the denotative endeavors of writing itself which strives, towards the always elusive Other that predates ego-formation and thus individuality itself. It is proposed that this intensifies the tensions about the Other in modern Hebrew literature which derive from its specific cultural heritage.

The poetry of Dahlia Ravikovitch presents as self-writing nestled in the wide embrace of non-linear écriture féminine. Each poem offers a glimpse of the persona: body and soul, the music of her voice and the perspective of her spirit. Together the poems comprise verbal self-portraits of a lovelorn soul, torn between impulses to fully remember and deliberately forget. Through years of love, life, disappointment, bouts of depression and renewed promise, Dahlia Ravikovitch continued to compose. Through the crystals of poetry the speaker examines, from varying angles and in multiple refractions of light, those figures of alterity who are her self. For Ravikovitch poetry was the only neutral space in which her self could comfortably exist and, even so, not always. The poet-persona experiences love in unsuitable proportions. She receives too little; she goes ‘overboard’ and ‘out of bounds’ in giving too much. She experiences love, even when accessible, as an affliction. She suffers love. She laments love. The persona performs her malaise through contrasting physical sensations, idiosyncrasies and profound cravings. Her personal thermostat is erratic. She exhibits pronounced wardrobe-predilections. Her throat reacts to a flow of eros and creative vitality or lack thereof. She yearns for pure memory and thirsts for pure essence. The speaker’s gallery displays an elaborate montage of a golden apple endowed with gifts of wisdom, eros, poetry and passion, alongside portraits of a royal chanteuse and a skilled scribe. Crucial brushstrokes illuminate lovers and sinners, souls in flames, shipwrecks, lyric-expressive throats in various states of constriction and release, as well as voices of collective responsibility. Ravikovitch encrypts her poetry with rich resources of biblical, rabbinic, medieval and early modern Hebrew literature. She forwards the linguistic and literary resonance of these layers. She innovates upon their motifs through feats in the dimensions of feminine writing, intertextual engagements and postmodern poetics.

The poetry of Dahlia Ravikovitch presents as self-writing nestled in the wide embrace of non-linear écriture féminine. Each poem offers a glimpse of the persona: body and soul, the music of her voice and the perspective of her spirit. Together the poems comprise verbal self-portraits of a lovelorn soul, torn between impulses to fully remember and deliberately forget. Through years of love, life, disappointment, bouts of depression and renewed promise, Dahlia Ravikovitch continued to compose. Through the crystals of poetry the speaker examines, from varying angles and in multiple refractions of light, those figures of alterity who are her self. For Ravikovitch poetry was the only neutral space in which her self could comfortably exist and, even so, not always. The poet-persona experiences love in unsuitable proportions. She receives too little; she goes ‘overboard’ and ‘out of bounds’ in giving too much. She experiences love, even when accessible, as an affliction. She suffers love. She laments love. The persona performs her malaise through contrasting physical sensations, idiosyncrasies and profound cravings. Her personal thermostat is erratic. She exhibits pronounced wardrobe-predilections. Her throat reacts to a flow of eros and creative vitality or lack thereof. She yearns for pure memory and thirsts for pure essence. The speaker’s gallery displays an elaborate montage of a golden apple endowed with gifts of wisdom, eros, poetry and passion, alongside portraits of a royal chanteuse and a skilled scribe. Crucial brushstrokes illuminate lovers and sinners, souls in flames, shipwrecks, lyric-expressive throats in various states of constriction and release, as well as voices of collective responsibility. Ravikovitch encrypts her poetry with rich resources of biblical, rabbinic, medieval and early modern Hebrew literature. She forwards the linguistic and literary resonance of these layers. She innovates upon their motifs through feats in the dimensions of feminine writing, intertextual engagements and postmodern poetics.