Palestine is still the land of song. There the peasant sings Arabic ditties
in the field when he sows and reaps, in the desert when he tends his flock,
at the oasis when the caravan rests for the night, and when camels are
remounted next morning. The maiden's fresh voice keeps droning rhythm with
her hands and feet as she carries water from the well or wood from the
scanty forest, when she milks the goats, and when she bakes the bread.
The burden of a large portion of these songs is love. The love motive is
most prominent musically during the long week of wedding festivities, but
it is by no means limited to these occasions. The songs often contain an
element of quaint, even arch, repartee, in which the girl usually has the
better of the argument. Certainly the songs are sometimes gross, but only
in the sense that they are vividly natural. With no delicacy of expression,
they are seldom intrinsically coarse. The troubadours of Europe trilled
more daintily of love, but there was at times an illicit note in their
lays. Eastern love songs never attain the ideal purity of Dante, but they
hardly ever sink to the level of Ovid.
But why begin an account of Hebrew love songs by citing extant Palestinian
examples in Arabic? Because there is an undeniable, if remote, relationship
between some of the latter and the Biblical Song of Songs. In that
marvellous poem, outspoken praise of earthly beauty, frank enumeration of
the physical charms of the lovers, thorough unreserve of imagery, are
conspicuous enough. Just these features, as Wetzstein showed, are
reproduced, in a debased, yet recognizable, likeness, by the modern Syrian
_wasf_--a lyric description of the bodily perfections and adornments of a
newly-wed pair. The Song of Songs, or Canticles, it is true, is hardly a
marriage ode or drama; its theme is betrothed faith rather than marital
affection. Still, if we choose to regard the Song of Songs as poetry merely
of the _wasf_ type, the Hebrew is not only far older than any extant Arabic
instance, but it transcends the _wasf_ type as a work of inspired genius
transcends conventional exercises in verse-making. There are superficial
similarities between the _wasf_ and Canticles, but there is no spiritual
kinship. The _wasf_ is to the Song as Lovelace is to Shakespeare, nay, the
distance is even greater. The difference is not only of degree, it is
essential. The one touches the surface of love, the other sounds its
depths. The Song of Songs immeasurably surpasses the _wasf_ even as poetry.
It has been well said by Dr. Harper (author of the best English edition of
Canticles), that, viewed simply as poetry, the Song of Songs belongs to the
loveliest masterpieces of art. "If, as Milton said, 'poetry should be
simple, sensuous, passionate,' then here we have poetry of singular beauty
and power. Such unaffected delight in all things fair as we find here is
rare in any literature, and is especially remarkable in ancient Hebrew
literature. The beauty of the world and of the creatures in it has been so
deeply and warmly felt, that even to-day the ancient poet's emotion of joy
in them thrills through the reader."
It is superfluous to justify this eulogy by quotation. It is impossible
also, unless the quotation extend to the whole book. Yet one scene shall be
cited, the exquisite, lyrical dialogue of spring, beginning with the tenth
verse of the second chapter. It is a dialogue, though the whole is reported
by one speaker, the Shulammite maid. Her shepherd lover calls to her as she
stands hidden behind a lattice, in the palace in Lebanon, whither she has
been decoyed, or persuaded to go, by the "ladies of Jerusalem."
_The shepherd lover calls_
Rise up, my love,
My fair one, come away!
For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone,
The flowers appear on the earth:
The birds' singing time is here,
And the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land.
The fig-tree ripens red her winter fruit,
And blossoming vines give forth fragrance.
Rise up, my love,
My fair one, come away!
Shulammith makes no answer, though she feels that the shepherd is conscious
of her presence. She is, as it were, in an unapproachable steep, such as
the wild dove selects for her shy nest. So he goes on:
O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock,
In the covert of the steep!
Let me see thy face,
Let me hear thy voice,
For sweet is thy voice, and thy face comely!
She remains tantalizingly invisible, but becomes audible. She sings a
snatch from a vineyard-watcher's song, hinting, perhaps, at the need in
which her person (her "vineyard" as she elsewhere calls it) stands of
protection against royal foxes, small and large.
_Shulammith sings_
Take us the foxes,
The little foxes,
That spoil the vineyards:
For our vines are in blossom!
Then, in loving rapture,
_Shulammith speaks in an aside_
My beloved is mine, and I am his:
He feedeth his flock among the lilies!
But she cannot refuse her lover one glance at herself, even though she
appear only to warn him of his danger, to urge him to leave her and return
when the day is over.
_Shulammith entreatingly to her lover_
Until the evening breeze blows,
And the shadows disappear (at sunset),
Turn, my beloved!
Be thou as a young hart
Upon the cleft-riven hills!
This is but one of the many dainty love idylls of this divine poem. Or,
again, "could the curious helplessness of the dreamer in a dream and the
yearning of a maiden's affection be more exquisitely expressed than in the
lines beginning, I was asleep, but my heart waked"? But, indeed, as the
critic I am quoting continues, "the felicities of expression and the happy
imaginings of the poem are endless. The spring of nature and of love has
been caught and fixed in its many exquisite lines, as only Shakespeare
elsewhere has done it; and, understood as we think it must be understood,
it has that ethical background of sacrifice and self-forgetting which all
love must have to be thoroughly worthy."
It is this ethical, or, as I prefer to term it, spiritual, background that
discriminates the Song of Songs on the one hand from the Idylls of
Theocritus, and, on the other, from the Syrian popular ditties. Some
moderns, notably Budde, hold that the Book of Canticles is merely a
collection of popular songs used at Syrian weddings, in which the bride
figures as queen and her mate as king, just as Budde (wrongly) conceives
them to figure in the Biblical Song. Budde suggests that there were "guilds
of professional singers at weddings, and that we have in the Song of Songs
simply the repertoire of some ancient guild-brother, who, in order to
assist his memory, wrote down at random all the songs he could remember, or
those he thought the best."
But this theory has been generally rejected as unsatisfying. The book,
despite its obscurities, is clearly a unity. It is no haphazard collection
of love songs. There is a sustained dramatic action leading up to a noble
climax. Some passages almost defy the attempt to fit them into a coherent
plot, but most moderns detect the following story in Canticles: A beautiful
maid of Shulem (perhaps another form of Shunem), beloved by a shepherd
swain, is the only daughter of well-off but rustic parents. She is treated
harshly by her brothers, who set her to watch the vineyards, and this
exposure to the sun somewhat mars her beauty. Straying in the gardens, she
is on a day in spring surprised by Solomon and his train, who are on a
royal progress to the north. She is taken to the palace in the capital, and
later to a royal abode in Lebanon. There the "ladies of Jerusalem" seek to
win her affections for the king, who himself pays her his court. But she
resists all blandishments, and remains faithful to her country lover.
Surrendering graciously to her strenuous resistance, Solomon permits her to
return unharmed to her mountain home. Her lover meets her, and as she draws
near her native village, the maid, leaning on the shepherd's arm, breaks
forth into the glorious panegyric of love, which, even if it stood alone,
would make the poem deathless. But it does not stand alone. It is in every
sense a climax to what has gone before. And what a climax! It is a
vindication of true love, which weighs no allurements of wealth and
position against itself; a love of free inclination, yet altogether removed
from license. Nor is it an expression of that lower love which may prevail
in a polygamous state of society, when love is dissipated among many. We
have here the love of one for one, an exclusive and absorbing devotion. For
though the Bible never prohibited polygamy, the Jews had become monogamous
from the Babylonian Exile at latest. The splendid praise of the virtuous
woman at the end of the Book of Proverbs gives a picture, not only of
monogamous home-life, but of woman's influence at its highest. The virtuous
woman of Proverbs is wife and mother, deft guide of the home, open-handed
dispenser of charity, with the law of kindness on her tongue; but her
activity also extends to the world outside the home, to the mart, to the
business of life. Where, in olden literature, are woman's activities wider
or more manifold, her powers more fully developed? Now, the Song of Songs
is the lyric companion to this prose picture. The whole Song works up
towards the description of love in the last chapter--towards the
culmination of the thought and feeling of the whole series of episodes. The
Shulammite speaks:
Set me as a seal upon thy heart,
As a seal upon thine arm:
For love is strong as death,
Jealousy is cruel as the grave:
The flashes thereof are flashes of fire,
A very flame of God!
Many waters cannot quench love,
Neither can the floods drown it:
If a man would give the substance of his house for love,
He would be utterly contemned.
The vindication of the Hebrew song from degradation to the level of the
Syrian _wasf_ is easy enough. But some may feel that there is more
plausibility in the case that has been set up for the connection between
Canticles and another type of love song, the Idylls of Theocritus, the
Sicilian poet whose Greek compositions gave lyric distinction to the
Ptolemaic court at Alexandria, about the middle of the third century B.C.E.
It is remarkable how reluctant some writers are to admit originality in
ideas. Such writers seem to recognize no possibility other than supposing
Theocritus to have copied Canticles, or Canticles Theocritus. It does not
occur to them that both may be original, independent expressions of similar
emotions. Least original among ideas is this denial of originality in
ideas. Criticism has often stultified itself under the obsession that
everything is borrowed. On this theory there can never have been an
original note. The poet, we are told, is born, not made; but poetry,
apparently, is always made, never born.
The truth rather is that as human nature is everywhere similar, there must
necessarily be some similarity in its literary expression. This is
emphatically the case with the expression given to the emotional side of
human nature. The love of man for maid, rising everywhere from the same
spring, must find lyric outlets that look a good deal alike. The family
resemblance between the love poems of various peoples is due to the
elemental kinship of the love. Every true lover is original, yet most true
lovers, including those who have no familiarity with poetical literature,
fall instinctively on the same terms of endearment. Differences only make
themselves felt in the spiritual attitudes of various ages and races
towards love. Theocritus has been compared to Canticles, by some on the
ground of certain Orientalisms of his thought and phrases, as in his Praise
of Ptolemy. But his love poems bear no trace of Orientalism in feeling, as
Canticles shows no trace of Hellenism in its conception of love. The
similarities are human, the differences racial.
Direct literary imitation of love lyrics certainly does occur. Virgil
imitated Theocritus, and the freshness of the Greek Idyll became the
convention of the Roman Eclogue. When such conscious imitation takes place,
it is perfectly obvious. There is no mistaking the affectation of an urban
lyrist, whose lovers masquerade as shepherds in the court of Louis XIV.
Theocritus seems to have had earlier Greek models, but few readers of his
Idylls can question his originality, and fewer still will agree with
Mahaffy in denying the naturalness of his goatherds and fishermen, in a
word, his genuineness. Mahaffy wavers between two statements, that the
Idylls are an affectation for Alexandria, and sincere for Sicily. The two
statements are by no means contradictory. Much the same thing is true of
Canticles, the Biblical Song of Songs. It is unreasonable for anyone who
has seen or read about a Palestinian spring, with its unique beauty of
flower and bird and blossom, to imagine that the author of Canticles needed
or used second-hand sources of inspiration, however little his drama may
have accorded with the life of Jerusalem in the Hellenistic period. And as
the natural scenic background in each case is native, so is the treatment
of the love theme; in both it is passionate, but in the one it is nothing
else, in the other it is also spiritual. In both, the whole is artistic,
but not artificial. As regards the originality of the love-interest in
Canticles, it must suffice to say that there was always a strong romantic
strain in the Jewish character.
Canticles is perhaps (by no means certainly) post-Exilic and not far
removed in date from the age of Theocritus. Still, a post-Exilic Hebrew
poet had no more reason to go abroad for a romantic plot than Hosea, or the
author of Ruth, or the writer of the royal Epithalamium (Psalm xlv), an
almost certainly pre-Exilic composition. This Psalm has been well termed a
"prelude to the Song of Songs," for in a real sense Canticles is
anticipated and even necessitated by it. In Ruth we have a romance of the
golden corn-field, and the author chooses the unsophisticated days of the
Judges as the setting of his tale. In Canticles we have a contrasted
picture between the simplicity of shepherd-life and the urban
voluptuousness which was soon to attain its climax in the court of the
Ptolemies. So the poet chose the luxurious reign of Solomon as the
background for his exquisite "melodrama." Both Ruth and Canticles are
home-products, and ancient Greek literature has no real parallel to either.
Yet, despite the fact that the Hebrew Bible is permeated through and
through, in its history, its psalmody, and its prophetic oratory, with
images drawn from love, especially in rustic guise, so competent a critic
as Graetz conceived that the pastoral background of the love-story of
Canticles must have been artificial. While most of those who have accepted
the theory of imitation-they cannot have reread the Idylls and the Song as
wholes to persist in such a theory-have contended that Theocritus borrowed
from Canticles, Graetz is convinced that the Hebrew poet must have known
and imitated the Greek idyllist. The hero and heroine of the Song, he
thinks, are not real shepherds; they are bucolic dilettanti, their
shepherd-rôle is not serious. Whence, then, this superficial pastoral
_mise-en-scène?_ This critic, be it observed, places Canticles in the
Ptolemaic age.
"In the then Judean world," writes Graetz, "in the post-Exilic period,
pastoral life was in no way so distinguished as to serve as a poetic
foil. On the contrary, the shepherd was held in contempt. Agriculture was
so predominant that large herds were considered a detriment; they spoiled
the grain. Shepherds, too, were esteemed robbers, in that they allowed
their cattle to graze on the lands of others. In Judea itself, in the
post-Exilic period, there were few pasture-grounds for such nomads. Hence
the song transfers the goats to Gilead, where there still existed
grazing-places. In the Judean world the poet could find nothing to
suggest the idealization of the shepherd. As he, nevertheless, represents
the simple life, as opposed to courtly extravagance, through the figures
of shepherds, he must have worked from a foreign model. But Theocritus
was the first perfect pastoral poet. Through his influence shepherd songs
became a favorite _genre_. He had no lack of imitators. Theocritus had
full reason to contrast court and rustic life and idealize the latter,
for in his native Sicily there were still shepherds in primitive
simplicity. Under his influence and that of his followers, it became the
fashion to represent the simple life in pastoral guise. The poet of
Canticles--who wrote for cultured circles--was forced to make use of the
convention. But, as though to excuse himself for taking a Judean shepherd
as a representative of the higher virtues, he made his shepherd one who
feeds among the lilies. It is not the rude neat-herds of Gilead or the
Judean desert that hold such noble dialogues, but shepherds of delicate
refinement. In a word, the whole eclogic character of Canticles appears
to be copied from the Theocritan model,"
This contention would be conclusive, if it were based on demonstrable
facts. But what is the evidence for it? Graetz offers none in his brilliant
Commentary on Canticles. In proof of his startling view that, throughout
post-Exilic times, the shepherd vocation was held in low repute among
Israelites, he merely refers to an article in his _Monatsschrift_ (1870, p.
483). When one turns to that, one finds that it concerns a far later
period, the second Christian century, when the shepherd vocation had fallen
to the grade of a small and disreputable trade. The vocation was then no
longer a necessary corollary of the sacrificial needs of the Temple. While
the altar of Jerusalem required its holocausts, the breeders of the animals
would hardly have been treated as pariahs. In the century immediately
following the destruction of the Temple, the shepherd began to fall in
moral esteem, and in the next century he was included among the criminal
categories. No doubt, too, as the tender of flocks was often an Arab
raider, the shepherd had become a dishonest poacher on other men's
preserves. The attitude towards him was, further, an outcome of the
deepening antagonism between the schoolmen and the peasantry. But even then
it was by no means invariable. One of the most famous of Rabbis, Akiba, who
died a martyr in 135 C.E., was not only a shepherd, but he was also the
hero of the most romantic of Rabbinic love episodes.
At the very time when Graetz thinks that agriculture had superseded
pastoral pursuits in general esteem, the Book of Ecclesiasticus was
written. On the one side, Sirach, the author of this Apocryphal work, does
not hesitate (ch. xxiv) to compare his beloved Wisdom to a garden, in the
same rustic images that we find in Canticles; and, on the other side, he
reveals none of that elevated appreciation of agriculture which Graetz
would have us expect. Sirach (xxxvii. 25) asks sarcastically:
How shall he become wise that holdeth the plough,
That glorieth in the shaft of the goad:
That driveth oxen, and is occupied with their labors,
And whose talk is of bullocks?
Here it is the farmer that is despised, not a word is hinted against the
shepherd. Sirach also has little fondness for commerce, and he denies the
possibility of wisdom to the artisan and craftsman, "in whose ear is ever
the noise of the hammer" (_ib_. v. 28). Sirach, indeed, is not attacking
these occupations; he regards them all as a necessary evil, "without these
cannot a city be inhabited" (v. 32). Our Jerusalem _savant_, as Dr.
Schechter well terms him, of the third or fourth century B.C.E.; is
merely illustrating his thesis, that
The wisdom of the scribe cometh by opportunity of leisure;
And he that hath little business shall become wise,
or, as he puts it otherwise, sought for in the council of the people, and
chosen to sit in the seat of the judge. This view finds its analogue in a
famous saying of the later Jewish sage Hillel, "Not everyone who increaseth
business attains wisdom" (_Aboth_, ii. 5).
Undeniably, the shepherd lost in dignity in the periods of Jewish
prosperity and settled city life. But, as George Adam Smith points out
accurately, the prevailing character of Judea is naturally pastoral, with
husbandry only incidental. "Judea, indeed, offers as good ground as there
is in all the East for observing the grandeur of the shepherd's
character,"--his devotion, his tenderness, his opportunity of leisurely
communion with nature.
The same characterization must have held in ancient times. And, after all,
as Graetz himself admits, the poet of Canticles locates his shepherd in
Gilead, the wild jasmine and other flowers of whose pastures (the "lilies"
of the Song) still excite the admiration of travellers. Laurence Oliphant
is lost in delight over the "anemones, cyclamens, asphodels, iris," which
burst on his view as he rode "knee-deep through the long, rich, sweet
grass, abundantly studded with noble oak and terebinth trees," and all this
in Gilead. When, then, the Hebrew poet placed his shepherd and his flocks
among the lilies, he was not trying to conciliate the courtly aristocrats
of Jerusalem, or reconcile them to his Theocritan conventions; he was
simply drawing his picture from life.
And as to the poetical idealization of the shepherd, how could a Hebrew
poet fail to idealize him, under the ever-present charm of his traditional
lore, of Jacob the shepherd-patriarch, Moses the shepherd-lawgiver, David
the shepherd-king, and Amos the shepherd-prophet? So God becomes the
Shepherd of Israel, not only explicitly in the early twenty-third Psalm,
but implicitly also, in the late 119th. The same idealization is found
everywhere in the Rabbinic literature as well as in the New Testament.
Moses is the hero of the beautiful Midrashic parable of the straying lamb,
which he seeks in the desert, and bears in his bosom (_Exodus Rabba_, ii).
There is, on the other hand, something topsy-turvy in Graetz's suggestion,
that a Hebrew poet would go abroad for a conventional idealization of the
shepherd character, just when, on his theory, pastoral conditions were
scorned and lightly esteemed at home.
It was unnecessary, then, and inappropriate for the author of Canticles to
go to Theocritus for the pastoral characters of his poem. But did he borrow
its form and structure from the Greek? Nothing seems less akin than the
slight dramatic interest of the idylls and the strong, if obscure, dramatic
plot of Canticles. Budde has failed altogether to convince readers of the
Song that no consistent story runs through it. It is, as has been said
above, incredible that we should have before us nothing more than the
disconnected ditties of a Syrian wedding-minstrel. Graetz knew nothing of
the repertoire theory that has been based on Wetzstein's discoveries of
modern Syrian marriage songs and dances. Graetz believed, as most still do,
that Canticles is a whole, not an aggregation of parts; yet he held that,
not only the _dramatis personae_, but the very structure of the Hebrew poem
must be traced to Theocritus. He appeals, in particular, to the second
Idyll of the Greek poet, wherein the lady casts her magic spells in the
vain hope of recovering the allegiance of her butterfly admirer. Obviously,
there is no kinship between the facile Sirnaitha of the Idyll and the
difficult Shulammith of Canticles: one the seeker, the other the sought;
between the sensuous, unrestrained passion of the former and the
self-sacrificing, continent affection of the latter. The nobler conceptions
of love derive from the Judean maiden, not from the Greek paramour. But,
argues Graetz with extraordinary ingenuity, Simaitha, recounting her
unfortunate love-affair, introduces, as Shulammith does, dialogues between
herself and her absent lover; she repeats what he said to her, and she to
him; her monologue is no more a soliloquy than are the monologues of
Shulammith, for both have an audience: here Thestylis, there the chorus of
women. Simaitha's second refrain, as she bewails her love, after casting
the ingredients into the bowl, turning the magic wheel to draw home to her
the man she loves, runs thus:
Bethink thee, mistress Moon, whence came my love!
Graetz compares this to Shulammith's refrain in Canticles:
I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
By the roes,
And by the hinds of the field,
That ye stir not up
Nor awaken love,
Until it please!
But in meaning the refrains have an absolutely opposite sense, and, more
than that, they have an absolutely opposite function. In the Idyll the
refrain is an accompaniment, in the Song it is an intermezzo. It occurs
three times (ii. 7; iii. 5; and viii. 4), and like other repeated refrains
in the Song concludes a scene, marks a transition in the situation. In
Theocritus refrains are links, in the Song they are breaks in the chain.
Refrains are of the essence of lyric poetry as soon as anything like
narrative enters into it. They are found throughout the lyrics of the Old
Testament, the Psalms providing several examples. They belong to the
essence of the Hebrew strophic system. And so it is with the other
structural devices to which Graetz refers: reminiscent narrative, reported
dialogues, scenes within the scene--all are common features (with certain
differences) of the native Hebraic style, and they supply no justification
for the suggestion of borrowing from non-Hebraic models.
There have, on the other side, been many, especially among older critics,
who have contended that Theocritus owed his inspiration to Canticles. These
have not been disturbed by the consideration, that, if he borrowed at all,
he must assuredly have borrowed more than the most generous of them assert
that he did. Recently an ingenious advocate of this view has appeared in
Professor D.S. Margoliouth, all of whose critical work is rich in
originality and surprises. In the first chapter of his "Lines of Defence of
the Biblical Revelation," he turns the tables on Graetz with quite
entertaining thoroughness. Graetz was certain that no Hebrew poet could
have drawn his shepherds from life; Margoliouth is equally sure that no
Greek could have done so.
"That this style [bucolic poetry], in which highly artificial
performances are ascribed to shepherds and cowherds, should have
originated in Greece, would be surprising; for the persons who followed
these callings were ordinarily slaves, or humble hirelings, whom the
classical writers treat with little respect. But from the time of
Theocritus their profession becomes associated with poetic art. The
shepherd's clothes are donned by Virgil, Spenser, and Milton. The
existence of the Greek translation of the Song of Solomon gives us the
explanation of this fact. The Song of Solomon is a pastoral poem, but its
pictures are true to nature. The father of the writer [Margoliouth
believes in the Solomonic authorship of Canticles], himself both a king
and a poet, had kept sheep. The combination of court life with country
life, which in Theocritus seems so unnatural, was perfectly natural in
pre-Exilic Palestine. Hence the rich descriptions of the country (ii. 12)
beside the glowing descriptions of the king's wealth (iii. 10).
Theocritus can match both (Idylls vii and xv), but it may be doubted
whether he could have found any Greek model for either."
It is disturbing to one's confidence in the value of Biblical
criticism--both of the liberal school (Graetz) and the conservative
(Margoliouth)--to come across so complete an antithesis. But things are not
quite so bad as they look. Each critic is half right--Margoliouth in
believing the pastoral pictures of Canticles true to Judean life, Graetz in
esteeming the pastoral pictures of the Idylls true to Sicilian life. The
English critic supports his theme with some philological arguments. He
suggests that the vagaries of the Theocritan dialect are due to the fact
that the Idyllist was a foreigner, whose native language was "probably
Hebrew or Syriac." Or perhaps Theocritus used the Greek translation of the
Song, "unless Theocritus himself was the translator." All of this is a
capital _jeu d'esprit,_ but it is scarcely possible that Canticles was
translated into Greek so early as Theocritus, and, curiously enough, the
Septuagint Greek version of the Song has less linguistic likeness to the
phraseology of Theocritus than has the Greek version of the Song by a
contemporary of Akiba, the proselyte Aquila. Margoliouth points out a
transference by Theocritus of the word for daughter-in-law to the meaning
bride (Idyll, xviii. 15). This is a Hebraism, he thinks. But expansions of
meaning in words signifying relationship are common to all poets. Far more
curious is a transference of this kind that Theocritus does _not_ make. Had
he known Canticles, he would surely have seized upon the Hebrew use of
sister to mean beloved, a usage which, innocent and tender enough in the
Hebrew, would have been highly acceptable to the incestuous patron of
Theocritus, who actually married his full sister. Strange to say, the
ancient Egyptian love poetry employs the terms brother and sister as
regular denotations of a pair of lovers.
This last allusion to an ancient Egyptian similarity to a characteristic
usage of Canticles leads to the remark, that Maspero and Spiegelberg have
both published hieroglyphic poems of the xixth-xxth Dynasties, in which may
be found other parallels to the metaphors and symbolism of the Hebrew Song.
As earlier writers exaggerated the likeness of Canticles to Theocritus, so
Maspero was at first inclined to exaggerate the affinity of Canticles to
the old Egyptian amatory verse. It is not surprising, but it is saddening,
to find that Maspero, summarizing his interesting discovery in 1883, used
almost the same language as Lessing had used in 1777 with reference to
Theocritus. Maspero, it is true, was too sane a critic to assert borrowing
on the part of Canticles. But he speaks of the "same manner of speech, the
same images, the same comparisons," as Lessing does. Now if A = B, and B =
C, then it follows that A = C. But in this case A does _not_ equal C. There
is no similarity at all between the Egyptian Songs and Theocritus. It
follows that there is no essential likeness between Canticles and either of
the other two. In his later books, Maspero has tacitly withdrawn his
assertion of close Egyptian similarity, and it would be well if an equally
frank withdrawal were made by the advocates of a close Theocritan parallel.
Some of the suggested resemblances between the Hebrew and Greek Songs are
perhaps interesting enough to be worth examining in detail. In Idyll i. 24,
the goatherd offers this reward to Thyrsis, if he will but sing the song of
Daphnis:
I'll give thee first
To milk, ay, thrice, a goat; she suckles twins,
Yet ne'ertheless can fill two milkpails full.
It can hardly be put forward as a remarkable fact that the poet should
refer to so common an incident in sheep-breeding as the birth of twins. Yet
the twins have been forced into the dispute, though it is hard to conceive
anything more unlike than the previous quotation and the one that follows
from Canticles (iv. 2):
Thy teeth are like a flock of ewes,
That are newly shorn,
Which are come up from the washing,
Whereof every one hath twins,
And none is bereaved among them.
It is doubtful whether the Hebrew knows anything at all of the twin-bearing
ewes; the penultimate line ought rather to be rendered (as in the margin of
the Revised Version) "thy teeth ... which are all of them in pairs." But,
however rendered, the Hebrew means this. Theocritus speaks of the richness
of the goat's milk, for, after having fed her twins, she has still enough
milk to fill two pails. In Canticles, the maiden's teeth, spotlessly white,
are smooth and even, "they run accurately in pairs, the upper corresponding
to the lower, and none of them is wanting" (Harper).
Even more amusing is the supposed indebtedness on one side or the other in
the reference made by Theocritus and Canticles to the ravages of foxes in
vineyards. Theocritus has these beautiful lines in his first Idyll (lines
44 _et seq._):
Hard by that wave-beat sire a vineyard bends
Beneath its graceful load of burnished grapes;
A boy sits on the rude fence watching them.
Near him two foxes: down the rows of grapes
One ranging steals the ripest; one assails
With wiles the poor lad's scrip, to leave him soon
Stranded and supperless. He plaits meanwhile
With ears of corn a right fine cricket-trap,
And fits it in a rush: for vines, for scrip,
Little he cares, enamored of his toy.
How different the scene in Canticles (ii. 14 _et seq_.) that has been
quoted above!
Take us the foxes,
The little foxes,
That spoil the vineyards,
For our vineyards are in blossom!
Canticles alludes to the destruction of the young shoots, Theocritus
pictures the foxes devouring the ripe grapes. (Comp. also Idyll v. 112.)
Foxes commit both forms of depredation, but the poets have seized on
different aspects of the fact. Even were the aspects identical, it would be
ridiculous to suppose that the Sicilian or Judean had been guilty of
plagiarism. To-day, as of old, in the vineyards of Palestine you may see
the little stone huts of the watchers on the lookout for the foxes, or
jackals, whose visitations begin in the late spring and continue to the
autumn. In Canticles we have a genuine fragment of native Judean folk-song;
in Theocritus an equally native item of every season's observation.
So with most of the other parallels. It is only necessary to set out the
passages in full, to see that the similarity is insignificant in relation
to the real differences. One would have thought that any poet dealing with
rustic beauty might light on the fact that a sunburnt skin may be
attractive. Yet Margoliouth dignifies this simple piece of observation into
a _theory_! "The theory that swarthiness produced by sun-burning need not
be disfiguring to a woman" is, Margoliouth holds, taken by Theocritus from
Canticles. Graetz, as usual, reverses the relation: Canticles took it from
Theocritus. But beyond the not very recondite idea that a sunburnt maid may
still be charming, there is no parallel. Battus sings (Idyll x. 26 _et
seq_.):
Fair Bombyca! thee do men report
Lean, dusk, a gipsy: I alone nut-brown.
Violets and pencilled hyacinths are swart,
Yet first of flowers they're chosen for a crown.
As goats pursue the clover, wolves the goat,
And cranes the ploughman, upon thee I dote!
In Canticles the Shulammite protests (i. 5 _et seq_.):
I am black but comely,
O ye daughters of Jerusalem!
[Black] as the tents of Kedar,
[Comely] as the curtains of Solomon.
Despise me not because I am swarthy,
Because the sun hath scorched me.
My mother's sons were incensed against me,
They made me the keeper of the vineyards,
But mine own vineyard I have not kept!
Two exquisite lyrics these, of which it is hard to say which has been more
influential as a key-note of later poetry. But neither of them is derived;
each is too spontaneous, too fresh from the poet's soul.
Before turning to one rather arrestive parallel, a word may be said on
Graetz's idea, that Canticles uses the expression "love's arrows." Were
this so, the symbolism could scarcely be attributed to other than a Greek
original. The line occurs in the noble panegyric of love cited before, with
which Canticles ends, and in which the whole drama culminates. There is no
room in this eulogy for Graetz's rendering, "Her arrows are fiery arrows,"
nor can the Hebrew easily mean it. "The flashes thereof are flashes of
fire," is the best translation possible of the Hebrew line. There is
nothing Greek in the comparison of love to fire, for fire is used in common
Hebrew idiom to denote any powerful emotion (comp. the association of fire
with jealousy in Ezekiel xxxix. 4).
Ewald, while refusing to connect the Idylls with Canticles, admitted that
one particular parallel is at first sight forcible. It is the comparison of
both Helen and Shulammith to a horse. Margoliouth thinks the Greek
inexplicable without the Hebrew; Graetz thinks the Hebrew inexplicable
without the Greek. In point of fact, the Hebrew and the Greek do not
explain each other in the least. In the Epithalamium (Idyll xviii. 30)
Theocritus writes,
Or as in a chariot a mare of Thessalian breed,
So is rose-red Helen, the glory of Lacedemon.
The exact point of comparison is far from clear, but it must be some
feature of beauty or grace. Such a comparison, says Margoliouth, is
extraordinary in a Greek poet; he must have derived it from a non-Greek
source. But it has escaped this critic and all the commentaries on
Theocritus, that just this comparison is perfectly natural for a Sicilian
poet, familiar with several series of Syracusan coins of all periods, on
which appear chariots with Nike driving horses of the most delicate beauty,
fit figures to compare to a maiden's grace of form. Theocritus, however,
does not actually compare Helen to the horse; she beautifies or sets off
Lacedemon as the horse sets off the chariot. Graetz, convinced that the
figure is Greek, pronounces the Hebrew unintelligible without it. But it is
quite appropriate to the Hebrew poet. Having identified his royal lover
with Solomon, the poet was almost driven to make some allusion to Solomon's
famed exploit in importing costly horses and chariots from Egypt (I Kings
x. 26-29). And so Canticles says (i. 9):
I have compared thee, O my love,
To a team of horses, in Pharaoh's chariots.
Thy cheeks are comely with rows of pearls,
Thy neck with chains of gold.
The last couplet refers to the ornaments of the horse's bridle and neck.
Now, to the Hebrew the horse was almost invariably associated with war. The
Shulammite is elsewhere (vi. 4) termed "terrible as an army with banners."
In Theocritus the comparison is primarily to Helen's beauty; in Canticles
to the Shulammite's awesomeness,
Turn away thine eyes from me,
For they have made me afraid.
These foregoing points of resemblance are the most significant that have
been adduced. And they are not only seen to be each unimportant and
inconclusive, but they have no cumulative effect. Taken as wholes, as was
said above, the Idylls and Canticles are the poles asunder in their moral
attitude towards love and in their general literary treatment of the theme.
Of course, poets describing the spring will always speak of the birds;
Greek and Hebrew loved flowers, Jew and Egyptian heard the turtle-dove as a
harbinger of nature's rebirth; sun and moon are everywhere types of warm
and tender feelings; love is the converter of a winter of discontent into a
glorious summer. In all love poems the wooer would fain embrace the wooed.
And if she prove coy, he will tell of the menial parts he would be ready to
perform, to continue unrebuked in her vicinity. Anacreon's lover (xx) would
be water in which the maid should bathe, and the Egyptian sighs, "Were I
but the washer of her clothes, I should breathe the scent of her." Or the
Egyptian will cry, "O were I the ring on her finger, that I might be ever
with her," just as the Shulammite bids her beloved (though in another
sense) "Place me as a seal on thine hand" (Cant. viii. 6). Love intoxicates
like wine; the maiden has a honeyed tongue; her forehead and neck are like
ivory. Nothing in all this goes beyond the identity of feeling that lies
behind all poetical expression. But even in this realm of metaphor and
image and symbolism, the North-Semitic _wasf_ and even more the Hebraic
parallels given in other parts of the Bible are closer far. Hosea xiv. 6-9
(with its lilies, its figure of Israel growing in beauty as the olive tree,
"and his smell as Lebanon"), Proverbs (with its eulogy of faithful wedded
love, its lips dropping honeycomb, its picture of a bed perfumed with
myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon, the wife to love whom is to drink water from
one's own well, and she the pleasant roe and loving hind)--these and the
royal Epithalamium (Ps. xlv), and other Biblical passages too numerous to
quote, constitute the real parallels to the imagery and idealism of
Canticles.
The only genuine resemblance arises from identity of environment. If
Theocritus and the poet of Canticles were contemporaries, they wrote when
there had been a somewhat sudden growth of town life both in Egypt and
Palestine. Alexander the Great and his immediate successors were the most
assiduous builders of new cities that the world has ever seen. The charms
of town life made an easy conquest of the Orient. But pastoral life would
not surrender without a struggle. It would, during this violent revolution
in habits, reassert itself from time to time. We can suppose that after a
century of experience of the delusions of urban comfort, the denizens of
towns would welcome a reminder of the delights of life under the open sky.
There would be a longing for something fresher, simpler, freer. At such a
moment Theocritus, like the poet of Canticles, had an irresistible
opportunity, and to this extent the Idylls and the Song are parallel.
But, on the other hand, when we pass from external conditions to intrinsic
purport, nothing shows better the difference between Theocritus and
Canticles than the fact that the Hebrew poem has been so susceptible of
allegorization. Though the religious, symbolical interpretation of the Song
be far from its primary meaning, yet in the Hebrew muse the sensuous and
the mystical glide imperceptibly into one another. And this is true of
Semitic poetry in general. It is possible to give a mystical turn to the
quatrains of Omar Khayyam. But this can hardly be done with Anacreon. There
is even less trace of Semitic mysticism in Theocritus than in Anacreon.
Idylls and Canticles have some similarities. But these are only skin deep.
In their heart of hearts the Greek and Judean poets are strangers, and so
are their heroes and heroines.
No apology is needed for the foregoing lengthy discussion of the Song of
Songs, seeing that it is incomparably the finest love poem in the Hebrew,
or any other language. And this is true whatever be one's opinion of its
primary significance. It was no doubt its sacred interpretation that
imparted to it so lasting a power over religious symbolism. But its human
import also entered into its eternal influence. The Greek peasants of
Macedonia still sing echoes from the Hebrew song. Still may be heard, in
modern Greek love chants, the sweet old phrase, "black but comely," a
favorite phrase with all swarthy races; "my sister, my bride" remains as
the most tender term of endearment. To a certain extent the service has
been repaid. Some of the finest melodies to which the Synagogue hymns, or
Piyyutim, are set, are the melodies to _Achoth Ketannah_, based on
Canticles viii. 8, and _Berach Dodi_, a frequent phrase of the Hebrew book.
The latter melody is similar to the finer melodies of the Levant; the
former strikingly recalls the contemporary melodies of the Greek
Archipelago. To turn a final glance at the other side of the indebtedness,
we need only recall that Edmund Spenser's famous Marriage Ode--the
Epithalamium--the noblest marriage ode in the English language, and
Milton's equally famous description of Paradise in the fourth book of his
Epic, owe a good deal to direct imitation of the Song of Songs. It is
scarcely an exaggeration to assert that the stock-in-trade of many an
erotic poet is simply the phraseology of the divine song which we have been
considering so inadequately. It did not start as a repertoire; it has ended
as one.
We must now make a great stride through the ages. Between the author of the
Song of Songs and the next writer of inspired Hebrew love songs there
stretches an interval of at least fourteen centuries. It is an oft-told
story, how, with the destruction of the Temple, the Jewish desire for song
temporarily ceased. The sorrow-laden heart could not sing of love. The
disuse of a faculty leads to its loss; and so, with the cessation of the
desire for song, the gift of singing became atrophied. But the decay was
not quite complete. It is commonly assumed that post-Biblical Hebrew poetry
revived for sacred ends; first hymns were written, then secular songs. But
Dr. Brody has proved that this assumption is erroneous. In point of fact,
the first Hebrew poetry after the Bible was secular not religious. We find
in the pages of Talmud and Midrash relics and fragments of secular poetry,
snatches of bridal songs, riddles, elegies, but less evidence of a
religious poetry. True, when once the medieval burst of Hebrew melody
established itself, the Hebrew hymns surpassed the secular Hebrew poems in
originality and inspiration. But the secular verses, whether on ordinary
subjects, or as addresses to famous men, and invocations on documents, at
times far exceed the religious poems in range and number. And in many ways
the secular poetry deserves very close attention. A language is not living
when it is merely ecclesiastical. No one calls Sanskrit a living language
because some Indian sects still pray in Sanskrit. But when Jewish poets
took to using Hebrew again--if, indeed, they ever ceased to use it--as the
language of daily life, as the medium for expressing their human emotions,
then one can see that the sacred tongue was on the way to becoming once
more what it is to-day in many parts of Palestine--the living tongue of
men.
It must not be thought that in the Middle Ages there were two classes of
Hebrew poets: those who wrote hymns and those who wrote love songs. With
the exception of Solomon ibn Gabirol--a big exception, I admit--the best
love songs were written by the best hymn writers. Even Ibn Gabirol, who, so
far as we know, wrote no love songs, composed other kinds of secular
poetry. One of the favorite poetical forms of the Middle Ages consisted of
metrical letters to friends--one may almost assert that the best Hebrew
love poetry is of this type--epistles of affection between man and man,
expressing a love passing the love of woman. Ibn Gabirol wrote such
epistles, but the fact remains that we know of no love verses from his
hand; perhaps this confirms the tradition that he was the victim of an
unrequited affection.
Thus the new form opens not with Ibn Gabirol, but with Samuel ibn Nagrela.
He was Vizier of the Khalif, and Nagid, or Prince, of the Jews, in the
eleventh century in Spain, and, besides Synagogue hymns and Talmudic
treatises, he wrote love lyrics. The earlier hymns of Kalir have, indeed, a
strong emotional undertone, but the Spanish school may justly claim to have
created a new form. And this new form opens with Samuel the Nagid's pretty
verses on his "Stammering Love," who means to deny, but stammers out
assent. I cite the metrical German version of Dr. Egers, because I have
found it impossible to reproduce (Dr. Egers is not very precise or happy in
his attempt to reproduce) the puns of the original. The sense, however, is
clear. The stammering maid's words, being mumbled, convey an invitation,
when they were intended to repulse her loving admirer.
Wo ist mein stammelnd Lieb?
Wo sie, die würz'ge, blieb?
Verdunkelt der Mond der Sterne Licht,
Ueberstrahlt den Mond ihr Angesicht!
Wie Schwalbe, wie Kranich, die
Bei ihrer Ankunft girren,
Vertraut auf ihren Gott auch sie
In ihrer Zunge Irren.
Mir schmollend rief sie "Erzdieb,"
Hervor doch haucht sie "Herzdieb"--
Hin springe ich zum Herzlieb.
"Ehrloser!" statt zu wehren,
"Her, Loser!" lässt sie hören;
Nur rascher dem Begehren
Folgt' ich mit ihr zu kosen,
Die lieblich ist wie Rosen.
This poem deserves attention, as it is one of the first, if not actually
the very first, of its kind. The Hebrew poet is forsaking the manner of the
Bible for the manner of the Arabs. One point of resemblance between the new
Hebrew and the Arabic love poetry is obscured in the translation. In the
Hebrew of Samuel the Nagid the terms of endearment, applied though they are
to a girl, are all in the masculine gender. This, as Dr. Egers observes, is
a common feature of the Arabic and Persian love poetry of ancient and
modern times. An Arab poet will praise his fair one's face as "bearded"
with garlands of lilies. Hafiz describes a girl's cheeks as roses within a
net of violets, the net referring to the beard. Jehudah Halevi uses this
selfsame image, and Moses ibn Ezra and the rest also employ manly figures
of speech in portraying beautiful women. All this goes to show how much,
besides rhyme and versification, medieval Hebrew love poetry owed to Arabic
models. Here, for instance, is an Arabic poem, whose author, Radhi Billah,
died in 940, that is, before the Spanish Jewish poets began to write of
love. To an Arabic poet Laila replaces the Lesbia of Catullus and the Chloe
of the Elizabethans. This tenth century Arabic poem runs thus:
Laila, whene'er I gaze on thee,
My altered cheeks turn pale;
While upon thine, sweet maid, I see
A deep'ning blush prevail.
Laila, shall I the cause impart
Why such a change takes place?--
The crimson stream deserts my heart
To mantle on thy face.
Here we have fully in bloom, in the tenth century, those conceits which
meet us, not only in the Hebrew poets of the next two centuries, but also
in the English poets of the later Elizabethan age.
It is very artificial and scarcely sincere, but also undeniably attractive.
Or, again, in the lines of Zoheir, addressed by the lover to a messenger
that has just brought tidings from the beloved,
Oh! let me look upon thine eyes again,
For they have looked upon the maid I love,
we have, in the thirteenth century, the very airs and tricks of the
cavalier poets. In fact, it cannot be too often said that love poetry, like
love itself, is human and eternal, not of a people and an age, but of all
men and all times. Though fashions change in poetry as in other ornament,
still the language of love has a long life, and age after age the same
conceits and terms of endearment meet us. Thus Hafiz has these lines,
I praise God who made day and night:
Day thy countenance, and thy hair the night.
Long before him the Hebrew poet Abraham ibn Ezra had written,
On thy cheeks and the hair of thy head
I will bless: He formeth light and maketh darkness.
In the thirteenth century the very same witticism meets us again, in the
Hebrew _Machberoth_ of Immanuel. But obviously it would be an endless task
to trace the similarities of poetic diction between Hebrew and other poets:
suffice it to realize that such similarities exist.
Such similarities did not, however, arise only from natural causes. They
were, in part at all events, due to artificial compulsion. It is well to
bear this in mind, for the recurrence of identical images in Hebrew love
poem after love poem impresses a Western reader as a defect. To the
Oriental reader, on the contrary, the repetition of metaphors seemed a
merit. It was one of the rules of the game. In his "Literary History of
Persia" Professor Browne makes this so clear that a citation from him will
save me many pages. Professor Browne (ii, 83) analyzes Sharafu'd-Din Rami's
rhetorical handbook entitled the "Lover's Companion." The "Companion"
legislates as to the similes and figures that may be used in describing the
features of a girl.
"It contains nineteen chapters, treating respectively of the hair, the
forehead, the eyebrows, the eyes, the eyelashes, the face, the down on
lips and cheeks, the mole or beauty-spot, the lips, the teeth, the mouth,
the chin, the neck, the bosom, the arm, the fingers, the figure, the
waist, and the legs. In each chapter the author first gives the various
terms applied by the Arabs and Persians to the part which he is
discussing, differentiating them when any difference in meaning exists;
then the metaphors used by writers in speaking of them, and the epithets
applied to them, the whole copiously illustrated by examples from the
poets."
No other figures of speech would be admissible. Now this "Companion"
belongs to the fourteenth century, and the earlier Arabic and Persian
poetry was less fettered. But principles of this kind clearly affected the
Hebrew poets, and hence there arises a certain monotony in the songs,
especially when they are read in translation. The monotony is not so
painfully prominent in the originals. For the translator can only render
the substance, and the substance is often more conventional than the
nuances of form, the happy turns and subtleties, which evaporate in the
process of translation, leaving only the conventional sediment behind.
This is true even of Jehudah Halevi, though in him we hear a genuinely
original note. In his Synagogue hymns he joins hands with the past, with
the Psalmists; in his love poems he joins hands with the future, with
Heine. His love poetry is at once dainty and sincere. He draws
indiscriminately on Hebrew and Arabic models, but he is no mere imitator. I
will not quote much from him, for his best verses are too familiar. Those
examples which I must present are given in a new and hitherto unpublished
translation by Mrs. Lucas.