Hebrew poetry of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (review)

230 Reviews Pagis, Dan., Hebrew poetry of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Berkeley/Los Angeles/Oxford, University of CaUfornia Press, 1991; cloth; pp. xvi, 84; R.R.P. US$22.50 This thin but importanttextis a set of three lectures, the Taubman lectures, deUvered by the late Dan Pagis, a poet of considerable standing in his adoptive Israel. In essence these lectures set out to deal with the question of the freedom, or lack thereof, with which medieval and Renaissance Hebrew poets wrote thenworks . The writer indicates that there are prevailing critical views which see in the Hebrew poetry of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance a conformist and stylized genre and this work is his review and rebuttal of those views. W e learn in the closing Unes of the third lecture, which serve as the epilogue, that Pagis had been criticized for corrupting public manners and morals by a pietistic literary critic for editing an anthology of Hebrew poetry. The writer points out that to some extend, this current study was motivated by a desire to attack what he caUed the sanctimonious clericatism in Israel literary criticism which frowned on love poetry and its medieval writers and m o d e m imitators and publicists. W e must also assume that his study is in defence of his own position. Pagis handles the problem of individuality and/or stylization in Hebrew poetry in three well defined stages. In thefirststage, his first chapter, he examines the degree to which poets had freedom to express their ideas in a poetry which was carefully governed by rules. In his second chapter he examines the interplay of language and imagery and the way in which rich conventions of language and imagery can still leave considerable freedom for the creative individual. In the third chapter hetestshis ideas against the writing of love poetry. The reason for the selection of this genre is made clear in his closing comments as noted. Pagis' study is wide-ranging and knowledgeable. He considers how far early Hebrew poetry reacted to contemporary criticism and how it interacted with contemporary poetry of Christian, Arab, Spanish, and Italian provenance. His fundamental conclusion is that contrary to the view that this was a static and conventional genre, in reality it was dynamic, spontaneous, varied, and expressive with a clearly felt vitatity. The book is an importantfirstin this field. Hebrew poetry is not well known to most secular historians and literature scholars and his quotations from a range of poets serve to introduce readers to what is both exciting literature and interesting source material for historians; for, much of Hebrew poetry related to contemporary events. The Hebrew poetry of the Middle Ages was grafted on a base of developments in Hebrew language and close association with Arabic. Because the Jews were generaUy at home in Moslem society and were not aliens and outcasts as they were in the Christian world, Hebrew and Arabic interacted to Reviews 231 produce a rich poetic tradition, in Spain at first Then, after the expulsion of Spanish Jewry in 1492, the poetic tradition was exported to Italy, Palestine, Egypt, Babylon, Provence, the Yemen, Turkey, and Greece. It saw its beginnings in court circles but spread widely as poets were supported by patrons and their writing became part of everyday life. The poetry of the early period reflected the hedonism of Spain. Before the efflorescence of verse in the 'Golden Age' in Spain, Hebrew poetry had been basically Palestinian in origin, and Piyyut poetry used to embellish prayer but always secondary to the main liturgy. In Spain the very new, sophisticated, self-conscious poetry was concerned with the individual and was not congregational. Themes varied but the poetry was always witty, playful, sublimely emotional and ran the full gamut from love to religion and philosophy. The chief innovation of the Spanish school was secular poetry in which Arabic influences, including rhetoric and metres, went hand in hand with a revival of biblical diction and vocabulary. This diction was an innovation and Pagis demonstrates that Spanish Hebrew poetry was not conventional but individual and fresh. Written for self-revelation and self-expression. It is true that there were...