obtain satisfaction only in love and in the praise of the good world and
its Maker. The sombre line of division had not yet been introduced
between the physical and the spiritual world, debasing this earth to a
vale of tears, and consoling sinful man by the promise of a better land,
whose manifold delights were described, but about which there was no
precise knowledge, no traveller, as the Talmud aptly puts it, having
ever returned to give us information about it. Those were the days of
perfect harmony, when man crept close to nature to be taught untroubled
joy in living. In such days, despite the storms assailing the young
Israelitish nation, a poet, his heart filled with the sunshine of joy,
his mind receptive, his eyes open wide to see the flowers unfold, the
buds of the fig tree swell, the vine put forth leaves, and the
pomegranate blossom unfurl its glowing petals, could carol forth the
"Song of Songs," the most perfect, the most beautiful, the purest
creation of Hebrew literature and the erotic poetry of all
literatures--the song of songs of stormy passion, bidding defiance to
ecclesiastical fetters, at once an epic and a drama, full of childlike
tenderness and grace of feeling. Neither Greece, nor the rest of the
Orient has produced anything to compare with its marvellous union of
voluptuous sensuousness and immaculate chastity. Morality, indeed, is
its very pulse-beat. It could be sung only in an age when love reigned
supreme, and could presume to treat humor as a pretender. So lofty a
song was bound to awaken echoes and stimulate imitation, and its music
has flowed down through the centuries, weaving a thread of melody about
the heart of many a poet.
The centuries of Israelitish history close upon its composition,
however, were favorable to neither the poetry of love nor that of humor.
But the poetry of love must have continued to exercise puissant magic
over hearts and minds, if its supreme poem not only was made part of the
holy canon, but was considered by a teacher of the Talmud the most
sacred treasure of the compilation.
The blood of the Maccabean heroes victorious over Antiochus Epiphanes
again fructified the old soil of Hebrew poetry, and charmed forth
fragrant blossoms, the psalms designated as Maccabean by modern
criticism. Written in troublous times, they contain a reference to the
humor of the future: "When the Lord bringeth back again the captivity of
Zion, then shall we be like dreamers, then shall our mouth be filled
with laughter, and our tongue with singing."
Many sad days were destined to pass over Israel before that future with
its solacement of humor dawned. No poetic work could obtain recognition
next to the Bible. The language of the prophets ceased to be the
language of the people, and every mind was occupied with interpreting
their words and applying them to the religious needs of the hour. The
opposition between Jewish and Hellenic-Syrian views became more and more
marked. Hellas and Judaea, the two great theories of life supporting the
fabric of civilization, for the first time confronted each other. An
ancient expounder of the Bible says that to Hellas God gave beauty in
the beginning, to Judaea truth, as a sacred heritage. But beauty and
truth have ever been inveterate foes; even now they are not reconciled.
In Judaea and Greece, ancient civilization found equally perfect, yet
totally different, expression. The Greek worships nature as she is; the
Jew dwells upon the origin and development of created things, hence
worships their Creator. The former in his speculations proceeds from the
multiplicity of phenomena; the latter discerns the unity of the plan. To
the former the universe was changeless actuality; to the latter it meant
unending development. The world, complete and perfect, was mirrored in
the Greek mind; its evolution, in the Jewish. Therefore the Jewish
conception of life is harmonious, while among the Greeks grew up the
spirit of doubt and speculation, the product of civilization, and the
soil upon which humor disports.
Israel's religion so completely satisfied every spiritual craving that
no room was left for the growth of the poetic instinct. Intellectual
life began to divide into two great streams. The Halacha continued the
instruction of the prophets, as the Haggada fostered the spirit of the
psalmists. The province of the former was to formulate the Law, of the
latter to plant a garden about the bulwark of the Law. While the one
addressed itself to reason, the other made an appeal to the heart and
the feelings. In the Haggada, a thesaurus of the national poetry by the
nameless poets of many centuries, we find epic poems and lyric
outbursts, fables, enigmas, and dramatic essays, and here and there in
this garden we chance across a little bud of humorous composition.
Of what sort was this humor? In point of fact, what is humor? We must be
able to answer the latter question before we may venture to classify the
folklore of the Haggada.
To reach the ideal, to bring harmony out of discord, is the recognized
task of all art. This is the primary principle to be borne in mind in
aesthetic criticism. Tragedy idealizes the world by annihilation,
harmonizes all contradictions by dashing them in pieces against each
other, and points the way of escape from chaos, across the bridge of
death, to the realm beyond, irradiated by the perpetual morning-dawn of
freedom and intellect.
Comedy, on the other hand, believes that the incongruities and
imperfections of life can be justified, and have their uses. Firmly
convinced of the might of truth, it holds that the folly and aberrations
of men, their shortcomings and failings, cannot impede its eventual
victory. Even in them it sees traces of an eternal, divine principle.
While tragedy precipitates the conflict of hostile forces, comedy,
rising serene above folly and all indications of transitoriness,
reconciles inconsistencies, and lovingly coaxes them into harmony with
the true and the absolute.
When man's spirit is thus made to re-enter upon the enjoyment of eternal
truth, its heritage, there is, as some one has well said, triumph akin
to the joy of the father over the home-coming of a lost son, and the
divine, refreshing laughter by which it is greeted is like the meal
prepared for the returning favorite. Is Israel to have no seat at the
table? Israel, the first to recognize that the eternal truths of life
are innate in man, the first to teach, as his chief message, how to
reconcile man with himself and the world, whenever these truths suffer
temporary obscuration? So viewed, humor is the offspring of love, and
also mankind's redeemer, inasmuch as it paralyzes the influence of anger
and hatred, emanations from the powers of change and finality, by laying
bare the eternal principles and "sweet reasonableness" hidden even in
them, and finally stripping them of every adjunct incompatible with the
serenity of absolute truth. In whatever mind humor, that is, love and
cheerfulness, reigns supreme, the inconsistencies and imperfections of
life, all that bears the impress of mutability, will gently and
gradually be fused into the harmonious perfection of absolute, eternal
truth. Mists sometimes gather about the sun, but unable to extinguish
his light, they are forced to serve as his mirror, on which he throws
the witching charms of the Fata Morgana. So, when the eternal truths of
life are veiled, opportunity is made for humor to play upon and
irradiate them. In precise language, humor is a state of perfect
self-certainty, in which the mind serenely rises superior to every petty
disturbance.
This placidity shed its soft light into the modest academies of the
rabbis. Wherever a ray fell, a blossom of Haggadic folklore sprang up.
Every occurrence in life recommends itself to their loving scrutiny:
pleasures and follies of men, curse turned into blessing, the ordinary
course of human events, curiosities of Israel's history and mankind's.
As instances of their method, take what Midrashic folklore has to say
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 mediaeval 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."