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 harem, and is
threatened with death by its master. It turns out that the pasha is a
beautiful woman, the slave of his mysterious lady-love, and she promises
him speedy fulfilment of his wishes. Finally, close to the attainment of
his end, he discovers that his beauty is a myth, the whole a practical
joke perpetrated by his merry companions. So Asher ben Yehuda in quest
of his mistress is led from adventure to adventure.
Internal evidence testifies against the genuineness of this romance, but
at the same time with it appeared two other mock-heroic poems, "The Book
of Diversions" (_Sefer Sha'ashuim_) by Joseph ibn Sabara, and "The Gift
of Judah the Misogynist" (_Minchatk Yehuda Soneh ha-Nashim_) by Judah
ibn Sabbatai, a Cordova physician, whose poems Charisi praised as the
"fount of poesy." The plot of his "Gift," a satire on women, is as
follows:[52] His dying father exacts from Serach, the hero of the
romance, a promise never to marry, women in his sight being the cause of
all the evil in the world. Curious as the behest is, it is still more
curious that Serach uncomplainingly complies, and most curious of all,
that he finds three companions willing to retire with him to a distant
island, whence their propaganda for celibacy is to proceed. Scarcely has
the news of their arrival spread, when a mass meeting of women is
called, and a coalition formed against the misogynists. Korbi, an old
hag, engages to make Serach faithless to his principles. He soon has a
falling out with his fellow-celibates, and succumbs to the fascinations
of a fair young temptress. After the wedding he discovers that his
enemies, the women, have substituted for his beautiful bride, a hideous
old woman, Blackcoal, the daughter of Owl. She at once assumes the reins
of government most energetically, and answers her husband's groan of
despair by the following curtain lecture:
"Up! up! the time for sleep is past!
And no resistance will I brook!
Away with thee, and look to it
That thou bringst me what I ask:
Gowns of costly stuff,
Earrings, chains, and veils;
A house with many windows;
Mortars, lounges, sieves,
Baskets, kettles, pots,
Glasses, settles, brooms,
Beakers, closets, flasks,
Shovels, basins, bowls,
Spindle, distaff, blankets,
Buckets, ewers, barrels,
Skillets, forks, and knives;
Vinaigrettes and mirrors;
Kerchiefs, turbans, reticules,
Crescents, amulets,
Rings and jewelled clasps;
Girdles, buckles, bodices,
Kirtles, caps, and waists;
Garments finely spun,
Rare byssus from the East.
This and more shalt thou procure,
No matter at what cost and sacrifice.
Thou art affrighted? Thou weepest?
My dear, spare all this agitation;
Thou'lt suffer more than this.
The first year shall pass in strife,
The second will see thee a beggar.
A prince erstwhile, thou shalt become a slave;
Instead of a crown, thou shalt wear a wreath of straw."
Serach in abject despair turns for comfort to his three friends, and it
is decided to bring suit for divorce in a general assembly. The women
appear at the meeting, and demand that the despiser of their sex be
forced to keep his ugly wife. One of the trio of friends proposes that
the matter be brought before the king. The poet appends no moral to his
tale; he leaves it to his readers to say: "And such must be the fate of
all woman-haters!"
Judah Sabbatai was evidently far from being a woman-hater himself, but
some of his contemporaries failed to understand the point of his
witticisms and ridiculous situations. Yedaya Penini, another poet,
looked upon it as a serious production, and in his allegory, "Woman's
Friend," destitute of poetic inspiration, but brilliant in dialectics,
undertook the defense of the fair sex against the misanthropic
aspersions of the woman-hater.
Such works are evidence that we have reached the age of the troubadours
and minnesingers, the epoch of the Renaissance, when, under the blue sky
of Italy, and the fostering care of the trio of master-poets, Dante,
Petrarch, and Boccaccio, the first germs of popular poetry were
unfolding. The Italian Jews were carried along by the all-pervading
spirit of the times, and had a share in the vigorous mental activity
about them. Suggestions derived from the work of the Renaissance leaders
fell like electric sparks into Jewish literature and science, lighting
them up, and bringing them into rapport with the products of the
humanistic movement. Provence, the land of song, gave birth to Kalonymos
ben Kalonymos, later a resident of Italy, whose work, "Touchstone"
(_Eben Bochan_) is the first true satire in neo-Hebraic poetry. It is a
mirror of morals held up before his people, for high and low, rabbis and
leaders, poets and scholars, rich and poor, to see their foibles and
follies. The satire expresses a humorous, but lofty conception of life,
based upon profound morality and sincere faith. It fulfils every
requirement of a satire, steering clear of the pitfall caricature, and
not obtruding the didactic element. The lesson to be conveyed is
involved in, not stated apart from the satire, an emanation from the
poet's disposition. His aim is not to ridicule, but to improve,
instruct, influence. One of the most amusing chapters is that on woman's
superior advantages, which make him bewail his having been born a
man:[53]
"Truly, God's hand lies heavy on him
Who has been created a man:
Full many a trial he must patiently bear,
And scorn and contumely of every kind.
His life is like a field laid waste--
Fortunate he is if it lasts not too long!
Were I, for instance, a woman,
How smooth and pleasant were my course.
A circle of intimate friends
Would call me gentle, graceful, modest.
Comfortably I'd sit with them and sew,
With one or two mayhap at the spinning wheel.
On moonlight nights
Gathered for cozy confidences,
About the hearthfire, or in the dark,
We'd tell each other what the people say,
The gossip of the town, the scandals,
Discuss the fashions and the last election.
I surely would rise above the average--
I would be an artist needlewoman,
Broidering on silk and velvet
The flowers of the field,
And other patterns, copied from models,
So rich in color as to make them seem nature--
Petals, trees, blossoms, plants, and pots,
And castles, pillars, temples, angel heads,
And whatever else can be imitated with needle by her
Who guides it with art and skill.
Sometimes, too, though 'tis not so attractive,
I should consent to play the cook--
No less important task of woman 'tis
To watch the kitchen most carefully.
I should not be ruffled
By dust and ashes on the hearth, by soot on stoves and pots;
Nor would I hesitate to swing the axe
And chop the firewood,
And not to feed and rake the fire up,
Despite the ashy dust that fills the nostrils.
My particular delight it would be
To taste of all the dishes served.
And if some merry, joyous festival approached,
Then would I display my taste.
I would choose most brilliant gems for ear and hand,
For neck and breast, for hair and gown,
Most precious stuffs of silk and velvet,
Whatever in clothes and jewels would increase my charms.
And on the festal day, I would loud rejoice,
Sing, and sway myself, and dance with vim.
When I reached a maiden's prime,
With all my charms at their height,
What happiness, were heaven to favor me,
Permit me to draw a prize in life's lottery,
A youth of handsome mien, brave and true,
With heart filled with love for me.
If he declared his passion,
I would return his love with all my might.
Then as his wife, I would live a princess,
Reclining on the softest pillows,
My beauty heightened by velvet, silk, and tulle,
By pearls and golden ornaments,
Which he with lavish love would bring to me,
To add to his delight and mine."
After enumerating additional advantages enjoyed by the gentler sex, the
poet comes to the conclusion that protesting against fate is vain, and
closes his chapter thus:
"Well, then, I'll resign myself to fate,
And seek consolation in the thought that life comes to an end.
Our sages tell us everywhere
That for all things we must praise God,
With loud rejoicing for all good,
In submission for evil fortune.
So I will force my lips,
However they may resist, to say the olden blessing:
My Lord and God accept my thanks
That thou has made of me a man."
One of Kalonymos's friends was Immanuel ben Solomon of Rome, called the
"Heine of the middle ages," and sometimes the "Jewish Voltaire." Neither
comparison is apt. On the one hand, they give him too high a place as a
writer, on the other, they do not adequately indicate his characteristic
qualities. His most important work, the _Mechabberoth_, is a collection
of disjointed pieces, full of bold witticisms, poetic thoughts, and
linguistic charms. It is composed of poems, Makamat, parodies, novels,
epigrams, distichs, and sonnets--all essentially humorous. The poet
presents things as they are, leaving it to reality to create ridiculous
situations. He is witty rather than humorous. Rarely only a spark of
kindliness or the glow of poetry transfigures his wit. He is uniformly
objective, scintillating, cold, often frivolous, and not always chaste.
To produce a comic effect, to make his readers laugh is his sole desire.
Friend and admirer of Dante, he attained to a high degree of skill in
the sonnet. In neo-Hebraic poetry, his works mark the beginning of a new
epoch. Indelicate witticisms and levity, until then sporadic in Jewish
literature, were by him introduced as a regular feature. The poetry of
the earlier writers had dwelt upon the power of love, their muse was
modest and chaste, a "rose of Sharon," a "lily of the valleys."
Immanuel's was of coarser fibre; his witty sallies remind one of Italian
rather than Hebrew models. A recent critic of Hebrew poetry speaks of
his Makamat as a pendant to "Tristan and Isolde,"--in both sensuality
triumphs over spirituality. He is at his best in his sonnets, and of
these the finest are in poetic prose. Female beauty is an unfailing
source of inspiration to him, but of trust in womankind he has none:
"No woman ever faithful hold,
Unless she ugly be and old."
The full measure of mockery he poured out upon a deceived husband, and
the most cutting sarcasm at his command against an enemy is a
comparison to crabbed, ugly women:
"I loathe him with the hot and honest hate
That fills a rake 'gainst maids he can not bait,
With which an ugly hag her glass reviles,
And prostitutes the youths who 'scape their wiles."
His devotion to woman's beauty is altogether in the spirit of his
Italian contemporaries. One of his most pleasing sonnets is dedicated to
his lady-love's eyes:[54]
"My sweet gazelle! From thy bewitching eyes
A glance thrills all my soul with wild delight.
Unfathomed depths beam forth a world so bright--
With rays of sun its sparkling splendor vies--
One look within a mortal deifies.
Thy lips, the gates wherethrough dawn wings its flight,
Adorn a face suffused with rosy light,
Whose radiance puts to shame the vaulted skies.
Two brilliant stars are they from heaven sent--
Their charm I cannot otherwise explain--
By God but for a little instant lent,
Who gracious doth their lustrous glory deign,
To teach those on pursuit of beauty bent,
Beside those eyes all other beauty's vain."
Immanuel's most congenial work, however, is as a satirist. One of his
best known poems is a chain of distichs, drawing a comparison between
two maidens, Tamar the beautiful, and Beria the homely:
"Tamar raises her eyelids, and stars appear in the sky;
Her glance drops to earth, and flowers clothe the knoll whereon she stands.
Beria looks up, and basilisks die of terror;
Be not amazed; 'tis a sight that would Satan affright.
Tamar's divine form human language cannot describe;
The gods themselves believe her heaven's offspring.
Beria's presence is desirable only in the time of vintage,
When the Evil One can be banished by naught but grimaces.
Tamar! Had Moses seen thee he had never made the serpent of copper,
With thy image he had healed mankind.
Beria! Pain seizes me, physic soothes,
I catch sight of thee, and it returns with full force.
Tamar, with ringlets adorned, greets early the sun,
Who quickly hides, ashamed of his bald pate.
Beria! were I to meet thee on New Year's Day in the morning,
An omen 'twere of an inauspicious year.
Tamar smiles, and heals the heart's bleeding wounds;
She raises her head, the stars slink out of sight.
Beria it were well to transport to heaven,
Then surely heaven would take refuge on earth.
Tamar resembles the moon in all respects but one--
Her resplendent beauty never suffers obscuration.
Beria partakes of the nature of the gods; 'tis said,
None beholds the gods without most awful repentance.
Tamar, were the Virgin like thee, never would the sun
Pass out of Virgo to shine in Libra.
Beria, dost know why the Messiah tarries to bring deliverance to men?
Redemption time has long arrived, but he hides from thee."
With amazement we see the Hebrew muse, so serious aforetimes,
participate in truly bacchanalian dances under Immanuel's guidance. It
is curious that while, on the one hand, he shrinks from no frivolous
utterance or indecent allusion, on the other, he is dominated by deep
earnestness and genuine warmth of feeling, when he undertakes to defend
or expound the fundamentals of faith. It is characteristic of the trend
of his thought that he epitomizes the "Song of Songs" in the sentence:
"Love is the pivot of the _Torah_." By a bold hypothesis it is assumed
that in Daniel, his guide in Paradise (in the twenty-eighth canto of his
poem), he impersonated and glorified his great friend Dante. If true,
this would be an interesting indication of the intimate relations
existing between a Jew and a circle devoted to the development of the
national genius in literature and language, and the stimulating of the
sense of nature and truth in opposition to the fantastic visions and
grotesque ideals of the past.
Everywhere, not only in Italy, the Renaissance and the humanistic
movement attract Jews. Among early Castilian troubadours there is a Jew,
and the last troubadour of Spain again is a Jew. Naturally Italian Jews
are more profoundly than others affected by the renascence of science
and art. David ben Yehuda, Messer Leon, is the author of an epic,
_Shebach Nashim_ ("Praise of Women"), in which occurs an interesting
reference to Petrarch's Laura, whom, in opposition to the consensus of
opinion among his contemporaries, he considers, not a figment of the
imagination, but a woman of flesh and blood. Praise and criticism of
women are favorite themes in the poetic polemics of the sixteenth
century. For instance, Jacob ben Elias, of Fano, in his "Shields of
Heroes," a small collection of songs in stanzas of three verses,
ventures to attack the weaker sex, for which Judah Tommo of Porta Leone
at once takes up the cudgels in his "Women's Shield." At the same time a
genuine song combat broke out between Abraham of Sarteano and Elias of
Genzano. The latter is the champion of the purity of womanhood, impugned
by the former, who in fifty tercets exposes the wickedness of woman in
the most infamous of her sex, from Lilith to Jezebel, from Semiramis to
Medea. An anonymous combatant lends force to his strictures by an
arraignment of the lax morals of the women of their own time, while a
fourth knight of song, evidently intending to conciliate the parties,
begins his "New Song," only a fragment of which has reached us, with
praise, and ends it with blame, of woman. Such productions, too, are a
result of the Renaissance, of its romantic current, which, as it
affected Catholicism, did not fail to leave its mark upon the Jews,
among whom romanticists must have had many a battle to fight with
adherents of traditional views.
Meantime, neo-Hebraic poetry had "fallen into the sear, the yellow
leaf." Poetry drooped under the icy breath of rationalism, and vanished
into the abyss of the Kabbala. At most we occasionally hear of a polemic
poem, a keen-edged epigram. For the rest, there was only a monotonous
succession of religious poems, repeating the old formulas, dry bones of
habit and tradition, no longer informed with true poetic, religious
spirit. Yet the source of love and humor in Jewish poetry had not run
dry. It must be admitted that the sentimentalism of the minneservice,
peculiar to the middle ages, never took root in Jewish soil. Pale
resignation, morbid despair, longing for death, unmanly indulgence in
regret, all the paraphernalia of chivalrous love, extolled in every key
in the poetry of the middle ages, were foreign to the sane Jewish mind.
Women, the object of unreasoning adulation, shared the fate of all
sovereign powers: homage worked their ruin. They became accustomed to
think that the weal and woe of the world depended upon their constancy
or disloyalty. Jews alone were healthy enough to subordinate sexual love
to reverence for maternity. Holding an exalted idea of love, they
realized that its power extends far beyond the lives of two persons, and
affects the well-being of generations unborn. Such love, intellectual
love, which Benedict Spinoza was the first to define from a scientific
and philosophic point of view, looks far down the vistas of the future,
and gives providential thought to the race.
While humor and romanticism everywhere in the middle ages appeared as
irreconcilable contrasts, by Jews they were brought into harmonious
relationship. When humor was banished from poetry, it took refuge in
Jewish-German literature, that spiritual undercurrent produced by the
claims of fancy as opposed to the aggressive, all absorbing demands of
reason. Not to the high and mighty, but to the lowly in spirit, the
little ones of the earth, to women and children, it made its appeal, and
from them its influence spread throughout the nation, bringing
refreshment and sustenance to weary, starved minds, hope to the
oppressed, and consolation to the afflicted. Consolation, indeed, was
sorely needed by the Jews on their peregrinations during the middle
ages. Sad, inexpressibly sad, was their condition. With fatal
exclusiveness they devoted themselves to the study of the Talmud.
Secular learning was deprecated; antagonism to science and vagaries
characterized their intellectual life; philosophy was formally
interdicted; the Hebrew language neglected; all their wealth and force
of intellect lavished upon the study of the Law, and even here every
faculty--reason, ingenuity, speculation--busied itself only with highly
artificial solutions of equally artificial problems, far-fetched
complications, and vexatious contradictions invented to be harmonized.
Under such grievous circumstances, oppression growing with malice,
Jewish minds and hearts were robbed of humor, and the exercise of love
was made a difficult task. Is it astonishing that in such days a rabbi
in the remote Slavonic East should have issued an injunction restraining
his sisters in faith from reading romances on the Sabbath--romances
composed by some other rabbi in Provence or Italy five hundred years
before?