At times in my spirit I fitfully ponder,
Where shall I pass after death from this light;
Do Heaven's bright glories await me, I wonder,
Or Lucifer's kingdom of darkness and night?
In the one, though 'tis perhaps of ill reputation,
A crowd of gay damsels will sit by my side;
But in Heaven there's boredom and mental starvation,
To hoary old men and old crones I'll be tied.
And so I will shun the abodes of the holy,
And fly from the sky, which is dull, so I deem:
Let hell be my dwelling; there is no melancholy,
Where love reigns for ever and ever supreme.
Immanuel, it is only just to point out, occasionally draws a worthier
character. In his third Machbereth he tells of a lovely girl, who is
intelligent, modest, chaste, coy, and difficult, although a queen in
beauty; she is simple in taste, yet exquisite in poetical feeling and
musical gifts. The character is the nearest one gets in Hebrew to the best
heroines of the troubadours. Immanuel and she exchange verses, but the path
of flirtation runs rough. They are parted, she, woman-like, dies, and he,
man-like, sings an elegy. Even more to Immanuel's credit is his praise of
his own wife. She has every womanly grace of body and soul. On her he
showers compliments from the Song of Songs and the Book of Proverbs. If
this be the true man revealed, then his light verses of love addressed to
other women must be, as I have hinted, a mere pose. It may be that his wife
read his verses, and that his picture of her was calculated to soothe her
feelings when reading some other parts of his work. If she did read them,
she found only one perfect figure of womanliness in her husband's poems,
and that figure herself. But on the whole one is inclined to think that
Immanuel's braggartism as to his many love affairs is only another aspect
of the Renaissance habit, which is exemplified so completely in the similar
boasts of Benvenuto Cellini.
Be this as it may, it is not surprising to find that in the _Shulchan
Aruch_ (_Orach Chayyim_, ch. 317, Section 16), the poems of Immanuel are
put upon the Sabbath Index. It is declared unlawful to read them on
Saturdays, and also on week-days, continues the Code with gathering anger.
Those who copy them, still more those who print them, are declared sinners
that make others to sin. I must confess that I am here on the side of the
Code. Immanuel's _Machberoth_ are scarcely worthy of the Hebrew genius.
There has been, it may be added, a long struggle against Hebrew love songs.
Maimonides says ("Guide," iii. 7): "The gift of speech which God gave us to
help us learn and teach and perfect ourselves--this gift of speech must not
be employed in doing what is degrading and disgraceful. We must not imitate
the songs and tales of ignorant and lascivious people. It may be suitable
to them, but it is not fit for those who are bidden, Ye shall be a holy
nation." In 1415 Solomon Alami uses words on this subject that will lead me
to my last point. Alami says, "Avoid listening to love songs which excite
the passions. If God has graciously bestowed on you the gift of a sweet
voice, use it in praising Him. Do not set prayers to Arabic tunes, a
practice which has been promoted to suit the taste of effeminate men."
But if this be a crime, then the worst offender was none other than the
famous Israel Najara. In the middle of the sixteenth century he added some
of its choicest lyrics to the Hebrew song-book. The most popular of the
table hymns (Zemiroth) are his. He was a mystic, filled with a sense of the
nearness of God. But he did not see why the devil should have all the
pretty tunes. So he deliberately wrote religious poems in metres to suit
Arabic, Turkish, Greek, Spanish, and Italian melodies, his avowed purpose
being to divert the young Jews of his day from profane to sacred song. But
these young Jews must have been exigent, indeed, if they failed to find in
Najara's sacred verses enough of love and passion. Not only was he, like
Jehudah Halevi, a prolific writer of Wedding Odes, but in his most
spiritual hymns he uses the language of love as no Hebrew poet before or
after him has done. Starting with the assumption that the Song of Songs was
an allegory of God's espousal with the bride Israel, Najara did not
hesitate to put the most passionate words of love for Israel into God's
mouth. He was strongly attacked, but the saintly mystic Isaac Luria
retorted that Najara's hymns were listened to with delight in Heaven--and
if ever a man had the right to speak of Heaven it was Luria. And Hebrew
poetry has no need to be ashamed of the passionate affection poured out by
these mystic poets on another beloved, the Queen Sabbath.
This is not the place to speak of the Hebrew drama and of the form which
the love interest takes in it. Woman, at all events, is treated far more
handsomely in the dramas than in the satires. The love scenes of the Hebrew
dramatists are pure to coldness. These dramas began to flourish in the
eighteenth century; Luzzatto was by no means an unworthy imitator of
Guarini. Sometimes the syncretism of ideas in Hebrew plays is sufficiently
grotesque. Samuel Romanelli, who wrote in Italy at the era of the French
Revolution, boldly introduces Greek mythology. It may be that in the
Spanish period Hebrew poets introduced the muses under the epithet
"daughters of Song." But with Romanelli, the classical machinery is more
clearly audible. The scene of his drama is laid in Cyprus; Venus and Cupid
figure in the action. Romanelli gives a moral turn to his mythology, by
interposing Peace to stay the conflict between Love and Fame. Ephraim
Luzzatto, at the same period, tried his hand, not unsuccessfully, at Hebrew
love sonnets.
Love songs continued to be written in Hebrew in the nineteenth century, and
often see the light in the twentieth. But I do not propose to deal with
these. Recent new-Hebrew poetry has shown itself strongest in satire and
elegy. Its note is one of anger or of pain. Shall we, however, say of the
Hebrew race that it has lost the power to sing of love? Has it grown too
old, too decrepid?
And said I that my limbs were old,
And said I that my blood was cold,
And that my kindly fire was fled,
And my poor withered heart was dead,
And that I might not sing of love?
Heine is the answer. But Heine did not write in Hebrew, and those who have
so far written in Hebrew are not Heines. It is, I think, vain to look to
Europe for a new outburst of Hebrew love lyrics. In the East, and most of
all in Palestine, where Hebrew is coming to its own again, and where the
spring once more smiles on the eyes of Jewish peasants and shepherds, there
may arise another inspired singer to give us a new Song of Songs in the
language of the Bible. But we have no right to expect it. Such a rare thing
of beauty cannot be repeated. It is a joy forever, and a joy once for all.