orna B Raz's Blog
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May.16.2013
My response to Red Room's challenge to blog about the best parenting advice:
Parents are forever giving needed and unneeded advice to their children: we always remember Polonius’ advice to Laertes:
"Give your thoughts to yourself,
And don’t act without thinking. . .
Listen to what every man...
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May.13.2013
In "Window" the passivity of the speaker is in contrast with the on- going, never ending, activity of nature. She seems to have no control of her life as she has no control over the world outside that window. In many Dahlia Ravikovitch's poems the stress is on the...
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May.11.2013
Her careful choice of words makes this poem relevant to all creative people who are on a constant search. It is quite surprising how "The Last Line" by Dahlia Ravikovitch could apply to the poet, novelist, composer and the painter.
Dahlia Ravikovitch from True Love
The...
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May.10.2013
Since Sunday is Mother's Day in the US; in Israel, alas, this day has already turned into "Family Day," I decided to use the opportunity to bring up a minor yet important point about motherhood and fiction.
I was surprised to read in Jane and Prudence (1953) Barbara Pym’s...
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May.08.2013
In time for Mother's Day a beautiful poem about motherhood.
Dahlia Ravikovitch from True Love
In Line For A Show
Translated by Orna Raz
Perhaps you and I won’t remember
how we stood in line together,
hand in hand.
And each time you talked to me
I heard nothing,...
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May.06.2013
I heard a beautiful quote on the radio the other day. One of our major novelists said that writing is a way of correcting insults. I am not sure how exactly he meant it but I can think of several options.
The first way is in fiction where a real life offence could...
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May.04.2013
![images[4].jpg](http://redroom.com/files/images/images[4].100x150.jpg)
Dahlia Ravikovitch From The Love of An Orange (1959)
Translated by Orna Raz
A Picture
The green-lamb woods skittered down the slopes
And the sea below splashed and turned blue from the sun.
In the sky clouds bloomed like river lilies.
And we were still girls.
And one girl among...
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May.03.2013
Many of Ravikovitch’s themes in her earlier work are familiar, and universal. The most prevalent ones are: the child/woman’s feeling of personal deprivation and injustice, perhaps abuse (in the poem below Standing in the Street), problematic love (Love), and death (In Memory of Saint...
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May.02.2013
Dalhia Ravikovitch (1936--2005) wrote this poem in 1964. Here, like in the poem "Love", we can her sources of inspiration.
The following is from my preface to the translations:
Ravikovitch's poetry is serious, sincere, and almost free of irony. Translating Ravikovitch, one has to maintain the...
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May.01.2013
I was surprised to see in the English version of "Love" that the young poet (she was 23 when her first book The Love of An Orange first came out) was influenced by Edgar Allan Poe's Annabel Lee
Dahlia Ravikovitch from The Love of An Orange
Love
translated by Orna Raz
Two fish...
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Apr.28.2013
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I read the long story "A Prolonged Childhood and Summer and Winter in Another City" in a literary journal in 1974 and was smitten. The story was brilliant and original, something between Camus and Salinger. The post script indicated that the writer Naftali Yavin was dead and a...
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Apr.25.2013
![Ghent_altarpiece_angel_musicians[1].jpg](http://redroom.com/files/images/Ghent_altarpiece_angel_musicians[1]_0.100x150.jpg)
"An inference is a statement about the unknown made on the basis of the known.”
This is a lovely definition by S. I. Hayakawa from his book, Language in Thought and Action.
Hayakawa was an English professor who later became a United States Senator (from California from 1977 to 1983).
...
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Apr.21.2013
Thirty some years ago when the US was still across the ocean, I left my parents in Israel and travelled with my husband to the US to attend graduate school. Living abroad at that time meant being disconnected from everything that was going on in Israel.
Every week...
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Apr.17.2013
![Fairytale 2007, 1001 Qing Dynasty wooden chairs( 1664-1911) installation view, Ai wei wei' studio[1].jpg](http://redroom.com/files/images/Fairytale 2007, 1001 Qing Dynasty wooden chairs( 1664-1911) installation view, Ai wei wei' studio[1].100x150.jpg)
I spent last weekend in London and saw two plays. Although they were completely different, the first was #aiww The Arrest of Ai Weiwei at the Hampstead Theatre and the second Untold Stories: two autobiographical pieces by Alan Bennett at the Duchess Theatre, they were disappointing...
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Apr.17.2013
On the eve of Israel Independence Day we were a group of 15 friends at our house sitting around talking, eating and laughing; it wasn’t an ordinary party and I would like to explain.
Like the American 4th of July, Independence Day in Israel is a great day of celebration and ...
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About orna
I teach English as a second language at the College of Management Academic Studies in Israel. My area of research is the cultural scene of 1950s Britain. I am also interested in literary translation and translate Modern Hebrew poems into English.
Connections
orna’s Favorite Books
The Glass of Blessings
Middlemarch
Private Papers
The Good Husband
Sense and Sensibility
The Chronicles of Barsetshire
When We were Orphans
Great Expectations...