The Book of Delight and Other Papers

I >> Israel Abrahams >> The Book of Delight and Other Papers

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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 wuerz'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!" laesst sie hoeren;
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,

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