concerning the creation of the two things of perennial interest to
poets: wife and wine.
When the Lord God created woman, he formed her not from the head of man,
lest she be too proud; not from his eye, lest she be too coquettish; not
from his ear, lest she be too curious; not from his mouth, lest she be
too talkative; not from his heart, lest she be too sentimental; not from
his hands, lest she be too officious; nor from his feet, lest she be an
idle gadabout; but from a subordinate part of man's anatomy, to teach
her: "Woman, be thou modest!"
With regard to the vine, the Haggada tells us that when Father Noah was
about to plant the first one, Satan stepped up to him, leading a lamb, a
lion, a pig, and an ape, to teach him that so long as man does not drink
wine, he is innocent as a lamb; if he drinks temperately, he is as
strong as a lion; if he indulges too freely, he sinks to the level of
swine; and as for the ape, his place in the poetry of wine is as well
known to us as to the rabbis of old.
With the approach of the great catastrophe destined to annihilate
Israel's national existence, humor and spontaneity vanish, to be
superseded by seriousness, melancholy, and bitter plaints, and the
centuries of despondency and brooding that followed it were not better
calculated to encourage the expression of love and humor. The pall was
not lifted until the Haggada performed its mission as a comforter. Under
its gentle ministrations, and urged into vitality by the religious needs
of the synagogue, the poetic instinct awoke. _Piut_ and _Selicha_
replaced prophecy and psalmody as religious agents, and thenceforth the
springs of consolation were never permitted to run dry.
Driven from the
shores of the Jordan and the Euphrates, Hebrew poetry found a new home
on the Tagus and the Manzanares, where the Jews were blessed with a
second golden age. In the interval from the eleventh to the thirteenth
century, under genial Arabic influences, Andalusian masters of song
built up an ideal world of poetry, wherein love and humor were granted
untrammelled liberty.
To the Spanish-Jewish writers poetry was an end in itself. Along with
religious songs, perfect in rhythm and form, they produced lyrics on
secular subjects, whose grace, beauty, harmony, and wealth of thought
rank them with the finest creations of the age. The spirit of the
prophets and psalmists revived in these Spanish poets.
At their head
stands Solomon ibn Gabirol, the Faust of Saragossa, whose poems are the
first tinged with _Weltschmerz_, that peculiar ferment characteristic of
a modern school of poets.[47] Our accounts of Gabirol's life are meagre,
but they leave the clear impression that he was not a favorite of
fortune, and passed a bleak childhood and youth. His poems are pervaded
by vain longing for the ideal, by lamentations over deceived hopes and
unfulfilled aspirations, by painful realization of the imperfection and
perishability of all earthly things, and the insignificance and
transitoriness of life, in a word, by _Weltschmerz_, in its purest,
ideal form, not merely self-deception and irony turned against one's own
soul life, but a profoundly solemn emotion, springing from sublime pity
for the misery of the world read by the light of personal trials and
sorrows. He sang not of a mistress' blue eyes, nor sighed forth
melancholy love-notes--the object of his heart's desire was Zion, his
muse the fair "rose of Sharon," and his anguish was for the suffering of
his scattered people. Strong, wild words fitly express his tempestuous
feelings. He is a proud, solitary thinker. Often his _Weltschmerz_
wrests scornful criticism of his surroundings from him.
On the other
hand, he does not lack mild, conciliatory humor, of which his famous
drinking-song is a good illustration. His miserly host had put a single
bottle of wine upon a table surrounded by many guests, who had to have
recourse to water to quench their thirst. Wine he calls a
septuagenarian, the letters of the Hebrew word for wine (_yayin_)
representing seventy, and water a nonagenarian, because _mayim_ (water)
represents ninety:
WATER SONG
Chorus:--Of wine, alas! there's not a drop, Our host has filled our goblets to the top With water.
When monarch wine lies prone,
By water overthrown,
How can a merry song be sung?
For naught there is to wet our tongue But water.
CHORUS:--Of wine, alas! etc.
No sweetmeats can delight
My dainty appetite,
For I, alas! must learn to drink,
However I may writhe and shrink,
Pure water.
CHORUS:--Of wine, alas! etc.
Give Moses praise, for he
Made waterless a sea--
Mine host to quench my thirst--the churl!--
Makes streams of clearest water purl, Of water.
CHORUS:--Of wine, alas! etc.
To toads I feel allied,
To frogs by kinship tied;
For water drinking is no joke,
Ere long you all will hear me croak
Quack water!
CHORUS:--Of wine, alas! etc.
May God our host requite;
May he turn Nazirite,
Ne'er know intoxication's thrill,
Nor e'er succeed his thirst to still With water!
CHORUS:--Of wine, alas! etc."
Gabirol was a bold thinker, a great poet wrestling with the deepest
problems of human thought, and towering far above his contemporaries and
immediate successors. In his time synagogue poetry reached the zenith of
perfection, and even in the solemn admonitions of ritualistic
literature, humor now and again asserted itself. One of Gabirol's
contemporaries or successors, Isaac ben Yehuda ibn Ghayyat, for
instance, often made his whole poem turn upon a witticism.
Among the writers of that age, a peculiar style called
"mosaic"
gradually grew up, and eventually became characteristic of neo-Hebraic
poetry and humor. For their subjects and the presentation of their
thoughts, they habitually made use of biblical phraseology, either as
direct quotations or with an application not intended by the original
context. In the latter case, well-known sentences were invested with new
meanings, and this poetic-biblical phraseology afforded countless
opportunities for the exercise of humor, of which neo-Hebraic poetry
availed itself freely. The "mosaics" were collected not only from the
Bible; the Targum, the Mishna, and the Talmud were rifled of sententious
expressions, woven together, and with the license of art placed in
unexpected juxtaposition. An example will make clear the method. In
Genesis xviii. 29, God answers Abraham's petition in behalf of Sodom
with the words: "I will not do it for the sake of forty," meaning, as
everybody knows, that forty men would suffice to save the city from
destruction. This passage Isaac ben Yehuda ibn Ghayyat audaciously
connects with Deuteronomy xxv. 3, where forty is also mentioned, the
forty stripes for misdemeanors of various kinds:
"If you see men the path of right forsake, To bring them back you must an effort make.
Perhaps, if they but hear of stripes, they'll quake, And say, 'I'll do it not for forty's sake.'"
This "mosaic" style, suggesting startling contrasts and surprising
applications of Bible thoughts and words, became a fruitful source of
Jewish humor. If a theory of literary descent could be established, an
illustration might be found in Heine's rapid transitions from tender
sentiment to corroding wit, a modern development of the flashing humor
of the "mosaic" style.
The "Song of Songs" naturally became a treasure-house of
"mosaic"
suggestions for the purposes of neo-Hebraic love poetry, which was
dominated, however, by Arab influences. The first poet to introduce the
sorrow of unhappy love into neo-Hebraic poetry was Moses ibn Ezra. He
was in love with his niece, who probably became the wife of one of his
brothers, and died early on giving birth to a son. His affection at
first was requited, but his brothers opposed the union, and the poet
left Spain, embittered and out of sorts with fate, to find peace and
consolation in distant lands. Many of his poems are deeply tinged with
gloom and pessimism, and the natural inference is that those in which he
praises nature, and wine, and "bacchanalian feasts under leafy canopies
with merry minstrelsy of birds" belong to the period of his life
preceding its unfortunate turning-point, when love still smiled upon
him, and hope was strong.
Some of his poems may serve as typical specimens of the love-poetry of
those days:
"With hopeless love my heart is sick, Confession bursts my lips' restraint That thou, my love, dost cast me off, Hath touched me with a death-like taint.
I view the land both near and far,
To me it seems a prison vast.
Throughout its breadth, where'er I look, My eyes are met by doors locked fast.
And though the world stood open wide, Though angel hosts filled ev'ry space, To me 'twere destitute of charm
Didst thou withdraw thy face."
Here is another:
"Perchance in days to come,
When men and all things change,
They'll marvel at my love,
And call it passing strange.
Without I seem most calm,
But fires rage within--
'Gainst me, as none before,
Thou didst a grievous sin.
What! tell the world my woe!
That were exceeding vain.
With mocking smile they'd say,
'You know, he is not sane!'"
When his lady-love died, he composed the following elegy:
"In pain she bore the son who her embrace Would never know. Relentless death spread straight His nets for her, and she, scarce animate, Unto her husband signed: I ask this grace, My friend, let not harsh death our love efface; To our babes, its pledges, dedicate
Thy faithful care; for vainly they await A mother's smile each childish fear to chase.
And to my uncle, prithee, write. Deep pain I brought his heart. Consumed by love's regret He roved, a stranger in his home. I fain Would have him shed a tear, nor love forget.
He seeketh consolation's cup, but first His soul with bitterness must quench its thirst."
Moses ibn Ezra's cup of consolation on not a few occasions seems to have
been filled to overflowing with wine. In no other way can the joyousness
of his drinking-songs be accounted for. The following are
characteristic:
"Wine cooleth man in summer's heat, And warmeth him in winter's sleet.
My buckler 'tis 'gainst chilling frost, My shield when rays of sun exhaust."
"If men will probe their inmost heart, They must condemn their crafty art:
For silver pieces they make bold
To ask a drink of liquid gold."
To his mistress, naturally, many a stanza of witty praise and coaxing
imagery was devoted:
"My love is like a myrtle tree, When at the dance her hair falls down.
Her eyes deal death most pitiless,
Yet who would dare on her to frown?"
"Said I to sweetheart: 'Why dost thou resent The homage to thy grace by old men paid?'
She answered me with question pertinent:
'Dost thou prefer a widow to a maid?'"
To his love-poems and drinking-songs must be added his poems of
friendship, on true friends, life's crowning gift, and false friends,
basest of creatures. He has justly been described as the most subjective
of neo-Hebraic poets. His blithe delight in love, exhaling from his
poems, transfigured his ready humor, which instinctively pierced to the
ludicrous element in every object and occurrence: age dyeing its hair,
traitorous friendship, the pride of wealth, or separation of lovers.
Yet in the history of synagogue literature this poet goes by the name
_Ha-Sallach_, "penitential poet," on account of his many religious
songs, bewailing in elegiac measure the hollowness of life, and the
vanity of earthly possessions, and in ardent words advocating humility,
repentance, and a contrite heart. The peculiarity of Jewish humor is
that it returns to its tragic source.
No mediæval poet so markedly illustrates this characteristic as the
prince of neo-Hebraic poetry, Yehuda Halevi, in whose poems the
principle of Jewish national poesy attained its completest expression.
They are the idealized reflex of the soul of the Jewish people, its
poetic emotions, its "making for righteousness," its patriotic love of
race, its capacity for martyrdom. Whatever true and beautiful element
had developed in Jewish soul life, since the day when Judah's song first
rang out in Zion's accents on Spanish soil, greets us in its noblest
garb in his poetry. A modern poet[48] says of him:
"Ay, he was a master singer,
Brilliant pole star of his age,
Light and beacon to his people!
Wondrous mighty was his singing--
Verily a fiery pillar
Moving on 'fore Israel's legions,
Restless caravan of sorrow,
Through the exile's desert plain."
In his early youth the muse of poetry had imprinted a kiss upon Halevi's
brow, and the gracious echo of that kiss trembles through all the poet's
numbers. Love, too, seems early to have taken up an abode in his
susceptible heart, but, as expressed in the poems of his youth, it is
not sensuous, earthly love, nor Gabirol's despondency and unselfish
grief, nor even the sentiment of Moses ibn Ezra's artistically
conceived and technically perfect love-plaint. It is tender, yet
passionate, frankly extolling the happiness of requited love, and as
naively miserable over separation from his mistress, whom he calls Ophra
(fawn). One of his sweetest songs he puts upon her lips:
"Into my eyes he loving looked, My arms about his neck were twined,
And in the mirror of my eyes,
What but his image did he find?
Upon my dark-hued eyes he pressed
His lips with breath of passion rare.
The rogue! 'Twas not my eyes he kissed; He kissed his picture mirrored there."
Ophra's "Song of Joy" reminds one of the passion of the
"Song of Songs":
"He cometh, O bliss!
Fly swiftly, ye winds,
Ye odorous breezes,
And tell him how long
I've waited for this!
O happy that night,
When sunk on thy breast,
Thy kisses fast falling,
And drunken with love,
My troth I did plight.
Again my sweet friend
Embraceth me close.
Yes, heaven doth bless us,
And now thou hast won
My love without end."
His mistress' charms he describes with attractive grace:
"My sweetheart's dainty lips are red, With ruby's crimson overspread;
Her teeth are like a string of pearls; Adown her neck her clust'ring curls
In ebon hue vie with the night;
And o'er her features dances light.
The twinkling stars enthroned above
Are sisters to my dearest love.
We men should count it joy complete
To lay our service at her feet.
But ah! what rapture in her kiss!
A forecast 'tis of heav'nly bliss!"
When the hour of parting from Ophra came, the young poet sang:
"And so we twain must part! Oh linger yet, Let me still feed my glance upon thine eyes.
Forget not, love, the days of our delight, And I our nights of bliss shall ever prize.
In dreams thy shadowy image I shall see, Oh even in my dream be kind to me!"[49]
Yehuda Halevi sang not only of love, but also, in true Oriental fashion,
and under the influence of his Arabic models, of wine and friendship. On
the other hand, he is entirely original in his epithalamiums, charming
descriptions of the felicity of young conjugal life and the sweet
blessings of pure love. They are pervaded by the intensity of joy, and
full of roguish allusions to the young wife's shamefacedness, arousing
the jest and merriment of her guests, and her delicate shrinking in the
presence of longed-for happiness. Characteristically enough his
admonitions to feed the fire of love are always followed by a sigh for
his people's woes:
"You twain will soon be one,
And all your longing filled.
Ah me! will Israel's hope
For freedom e'er be stilled?"
It is altogether probable that these blithesome songs belong to the
poet's early life. To a friend who remonstrates with him for his love of
wine he replies:
"My years scarce number twenty-one--
Wouldst have me now the wine-cup shun?"
which would seem to indicate that love and wine were the pursuits of his
youth. One of his prettiest drinking songs is the following:
"My bowl yields exultation--
I soar aloft on song-tipped wing,
Each draught is inspiration,
My lips sip wine, my mouth must sing.
Dear friends are full of horror,
Predict a toper's end for me.
They ask: 'How long, O sorrow,
Wilt thou remain wine's devotee?'
Why should I not sing praise of drinking?
The joys of Eden it makes mine.
If age will bring no cowardly shrinking, Full many a year will I drink wine."
But little is known of the events of the poet's career.
History's
niggardliness, however, has been compensated for by the prodigality of
legend, which has woven many a fanciful tale about his life. Of one fact
we are certain: when he had passed his fiftieth year, Yehuda Halevi left
his native town, his home, his family, his friends, and disciples, to
make a pilgrimage to Palestine, the land wherein his heart had always
dwelt. His itinerary can be traced in his songs. They lead us to Egypt,
to Zoan, to Damascus. In Tyre silence suddenly falls upon the singer.
Did he attain the goal he had set out to reach? Did his eye behold the
land of his fathers? Or did death overtake the pilgrim singer before his
journey's end? Legend which has beautified his life has transfigured his
death. It is said, that struck by a Saracen's horse Yehuda Halevi sank
down before the very gates of Jerusalem. With its towers and battlements
in sight, and his inspired "Lay of Zion" on his lips, his pure soul
winged its flight heavenward.
With the death of Yehuda Halevi, the golden age of neo-Hebraic poetry in
Spain came to an end, and the period of the epigones was inaugurated. A
note of hesitancy is discernible in their productions, and they
acknowledge the superiority of their predecessors in the epithet
"fathers of song" applied to them. The most noted of the later writers
was Yehuda ben Solomon Charisi. Fortune marked him out to be the critic
of the great poetic creations of the brilliant epoch just closed, and
his fame rests upon the skill with which he acquitted himself of his
difficult task. As for his poetry, it lacks the depth, the glow, the
virility, and inspiration of the works of the classical period. He was a
restless wanderer, a poet tramp, roving in the Orient, in Africa, and in
Europe. His most important work is his divan _Tachkemoni_, testifying to
his powers as a humorist, and especially to his mastery of the Hebrew
language, which he uses with dexterity never excelled.
The divan touches
upon every possible subject: God and nature, human life and suffering,
the relations between men, his personal experiences, and his adventures
in foreign parts. The first Makamat[50] writer among Jews, he furnished
the model for all poems of the kind that followed; their first genuine
humorist, he flashes forth his wit like a stream of light suddenly
turned on in the dark. That he measured the worth of his productions by
the generous meed of praise given by his contemporaries is a venial
offense in the time of the troubadours and minnesingers.
Charisi was
particularly happy in his use of the "mosaic" style, and his short poems
and epigrams are most charming. Deep melancholy is a foil to his humor,
but as often his writings are disfigured by levity. The following may
serve as samples of his versatile muse. The first is addressed to his
grey hair:
"Those ravens black that rested Erstwhile upon my head,
Within my heart have nested,
Since from my hair they fled."
The second is inscribed to love's tears:
"Within my heart I held concealed My love so tender and so true;
But overflowing tears revealed
What I would fain have hid from view.
My heart could evermore repress
The woe that tell-tale tears confess."
Charisi is at his best when he gives the rein to his humor. Sparks fly;
he stops at no caustic witticism, recoils from no satire; he is malice
itself, and puts no restraint upon his levity. The "Flea Song" is a
typical illustration of his impish mood:
"You ruthless flea, who desecrate my couch, And draw my blood to sate your appetite, You know not rest, on Sabbath day or feast--
Your feast it is when you can pinch and bite.
My friends expound the law: to kill a flea Upon the Sabbath day a sin they call; But I prefer that other law which says, Be sure a murd'rer's malice to forestall."
That Charisi was a boon companion is evident from the following drinking
song:
"Here under leafy bowers,
Where coolest shades descend,
Crowned with a wreath of flowers,
Here will we drink, my friend.
Who drinks of wine, he learns
That noble spirits' strength
But steady increase earns,
As years stretch out in length.
A thousand earthly years
Are hours in God's sight,
A year in heav'n appears
A minute in its flight.
I would this lot were mine:
To live by heav'nly count,
And drink and drink old wine
At youth's eternal fount."
Charisi and his Arabic models found many imitators among Spanish Jews.
Solomon ibn Sakbel wrote Hebrew Makamat which may be regarded as an
attempt at a satire in the form of a romance. The hero, Asher ben
Yehuda, a veritable Don Juan, passes through most remarkable
adventures.[51] The introductory Makama, describing life with his
mistress in the solitude of a forest, is delicious.
Tired of his
monotonous life, he joins a company of convivial fellows, who pass their
time in carousal. While with them, he receives an enigmatic love letter
signed by an unknown woman, and he sets out to find her.
On his
wanderings, oppressed by love's doubts, he chances into a har