person
Rachel
also: Rachel, Rahel, die tote Rahel
In the Hebrew Bible, Rachel is the beloved wife of Jacob; the prophet Jeremiah casts her as weeping for her slaughtered children (Jer. 31:15), a verse echoed in Matthew's account of Herod's massacre. Trakl's 'dead Rachel' (Gedichte, section 30) walks through the plowland — an elegiac, ghostly mother-figure.
Reading notes
- Poems §30 Rachel
Rachel in the Hebrew Bible was the beloved wife of Jacob; Jeremiah 31:15 depicts her weeping for her children. The image recurs in Matthew 2:18 as a lament for the massacre of the innocents, making Rachel a figure of inconsolable maternal grief.