BAT-MIRIAM (Zhelezniak), YOKHEVED

BAT-MIRIAM (Zhelezniak), YOKHEVED (1901–1980), Hebrew poet. Born in Keplits, Belorussia, Yokheved Bat-Miriam attended the universities of Odessa and Moscow. Although her poems began appearing in 1923, her first volume of poetry Me-Raḥok ("From Afar") was published in 1932, four years after she settled in Ereẓ Israel; it was followed by six other volumes of poetry. The bulk of her poetry was written between the two world wars against the background of the Jewish tragedy of this period, and her personal experiences as a child in Russia and a settler in Israel. Influenced by Russian symbolist poetry, her verse is written against a dreamlike landscape, charged with symbols from nature drawn from the world of childhood. One image fades into another, with past and present merging. This coalescing of imagery is reinforced by a similar shifting of her idiom by means of assonance, alliteration, and other sonal devices. Her works include Ereẓ Yisrael (1937); Re'ayon (1949); Demuyyot me-Ofek (1942); Mi-Shirei Rusyah (1942); 1943 – Shirim la-Getto (1946); and Shirim (1963). A list of her works translated into English appears in Goell, Bibl. She was awarded the Israel Prize in 1972.

bibliography:

Kitvei Shimon Ginzburg, 1 (1945), 285–95; D. Miron, in: Haaretz (Feb. 22, 1963); A. Bernstein, in: Keshet, 8 (Winter 1966), 184–7; Band, in: S. Burnshaw et al., The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself (1965), 84–88. add. bibliography: A. Ukhmani, Kolot Adam: Masot (1967); R. Kartun-Blum, Ba-Merḥak ha-Ne'elam: Iyyunim be-Shirat Yokheved Bat-Miriam (1977); U. Agasi, Bat Miriam: Dyukan Aẓmi (1990).