Chaya Shacham

The early criticism labeled Lea Goldberg primarily as the poet of unrequited love and thus imparted her image to generations of readers. However, the reading of her work, as reflected in this book, refutes this assumption and reveals that Goldberg's range of subjects contains a much more fascinating and wide variety than the criticism attempted to determine. This book contains new readings by Lea Goldberg, the result of observation and research in her literary work from various vantage points. The studies included in it rely on attentive monitoring of subjects that illuminate the personal and literary world of the creator from special angles. The discussions are based on longitudinal cuts, which enable us to illuminate the subjects with a diacritical gaze and to examine their evolution over time. The chapters of the book reveal, among other things, implicit aspects of Goldberg's poetics and expand the range of unique subjects that her work is required for, such that criticism and research have not been delayed or discussed at all. Cumulatively, here is a fascinating profile of Goldberg's creation, and by its implication - of herself as a multi-faceted artist who avoids banality, and is very far from the image that critics of her generation, both young and old, have tried to attach to her. Among the phenomena examined in the book are: cross-gender poems, female characters from the Western culture canon, which are used as hallucinations, the residue of the Song of Songs in Goldberg's work and their special status, body poetry (erotic poetry), female initiation through train journeys, dark and light exchanges as "obsessive" Death, and more.