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JEWISH POETS IN SPAIN

Towards the close of our first “Glance at the Poetry of Spain” we intimated our intention, previously to entering upon the beautiful romances of that country, of briefly adverting to the state of the Jews, and to the influence which their learned men had upon the poetry and general literature of Spain, during the period of Moorish sovereignty.

The Jews, an ever-persecuted race, have been, through every era, an extraordinary people. Contemplating the character of the sacred writings —their bold, magnificent, and sublime imagery— it might be expected that their literature should have been eminently distinguished in poetic composition. This, however, has very rarely been the case.

In the present day, in our own country —and we believe the remark willhold good in every part of Europe— very few of the Hebrew nation, even amongst the most polished and the most wealthy, are known to patronize literature and the arts.

This appears to us the more remarkable when we reflect upon their high national pride, upon their far remote and honourable ancestry, upon the deep romance of their history in every age, upon their regarding themselves as the peculiarly-favoured and only chosen people of the Most High. It might be thought that reflections, such as these, would have produced all the effect of inspiration. Such, however, has not been the result. Spain presents us with one of the rare exceptions—almost, indeed, an exclusive exception.

"From the period of the destruction of Jerusalem," observes a contemporary writer, to whose labours we shall find ourselves much indebted in the progress of this Little sketch, "down to that of the expatriation of the Jews by the decrees of Ferdinand and Isabella—decrees which were carried into effect with an inhospitality as barbarous as that which dictated them— their number in Spain had always been very considerable. Under the Gothic dynasty, they had to suffer a variety of indignities; they were pillaged, imprisoned, expatriated, condemned to death, according to the caprice of the reigning monarch, and the only cessation of persecution was owing rather to the individual humanity of the ruler, than to any legal or positive protection they could claim.

The fifth Toledo council went so far, as to compel every Gothic King to swear, before he was crowned, that he would extirpate the Jews; an arrangement which Lope de Vega seems to have contemplated with infinite satisfaction:

The sceptre was denied in days of yore
To the elected king, until he swore,
With his own royal hand
To purge the fertile land
Of the vile tares that choke the genuine grain,
And write the holy law upon
the crown of Spain.

"No doubt the Jews welcomed with joy the Moorish conquerors of Spain; and, bound together by the strong tie of common sufferings, they prepared the way, in many instances, for the successes of the Mahommedan power. Under the Caliphs, they rose from their depressed and degraded state, and reached a literary eminence, higher than they had ever before, or have ever since attained. Great numbers of Jews were driven to Spain by the persecutions with which they had been visited in the east under the Mahommedan princes. They were imbued with Arabic and Persian literature, and they arrived, at a fortunate moment, to give splendour to the schools of Cordoba and Toledo, which were then in infancy, but which had already given the fairest promises for futurity."

The school of Cordoba proved the most eminent; next to that, the school of Toledo, in which, it has been asserted, there were at one time no fewer than twelve thousand Jewish students; and, in addition to these, there were other rising schools at Barcelona, Granada, etc. The tolerant, and even benevolent spirit of the Mahommedans, at this period, was equally astonishing and honourable.

From the tenth to the fifteenth century, a succession of distinguished Jewish writers, in every department of literature, may be traced. They had not only their poets, but their orators and philosophers, their mathematicians and astronomers, their grammarians and historians; and, what is not the least remarkable, the Rabbi Sem Tob de Carrion, a converted Jew of the fourteenth century, was one of the most eminent Troubadours of his time. The history of the Jews in Spain, during the period of which we are speaking, is altogether exceedingly curious and extraordinary. A list of their great men —many of whom held the highest offices under the Moorish princes— would alone occupy a considerable space. To their credit, too, it should be recorded, that there seems to have been much good feeling amongst them. Soloman Halebi, a converted Jew of the fourteenth century, and better known in the Christian world by the name of Pablo de Santa María, is thus mentioned by one of his friends and contemporaries: "He posessed all human learning, all the secrets of high philosophy; he was a masterly theologian, a sweet orator, an admirable historian, a subtle poet, a clear and veracious narrator, an excellent minister, one of whom everybody spoke well". Nor was the eulogy of this writer confined to simple prose. In one of his poems he thus affectionately speaks of his friend:

Twas my delight to sit with him
Beneath the solemn ivy tree—
To hide me from the sunny beam
Beneath the laurel's shade, and see
The little silver streamlet flowing;
While from his lips a richer stream
Fell, with the light of wisdom glowing
How sweet to slake my thirst with him!"

Several other stanzas follow in the same strain.

The game of chess appears to have been a great favourite with the Jewish poets. Abenezra, a native of Toledo, who flourished in the twelfth century, wrote a poem on chess, which Thomas Hyde translated into Latin and published at Oxford, in the year 1694. Anbonet Abraham, who lived in the thirteenth century, also wrote a poem in praise of the game of chess, which was translated by Hyde into Latin. This writer, who was termed the Jewish Cicero, produced an oration, every word of which begins with the letter M. In some of his poetical compositions, every verse is made to form an anagram of his own name.

One of the poems, written by De Carrion, the Jewish Troubadour already mentioned, embraces "the relation of a vision seen by a holy hermit when praying. A corpse is introduced, putrified, with worms devouring it, and behind it is something in the shape of a white bird, which represents the disembodied soul; the latter hurls the most dreadful curses at the decaying body, which are again retorted, each accusing the other of having caused its eternal damnation."

De Carrion's principal poem, however —and this is somewhat remarkable—, appears to have been his Dance of Death; a piece which bears the following prologue or introduction: —

Here begins the general dance, in which it is shewn how death gives advice to all, that they should take due account of the brevity of life, and not to value it more highly than it deserves: and this he orders and requires, that they see and hear attentively what wise preachers tell them and warn them from day to day, giving them good and wholesome counsel, that they labour in doing good works to obtain pardon of their sins, and shewing them by experience; who, he says, calls and requires from all classes, whether they come willingly or unwillingly.

Here we are tempted to be a little desultory. The Dance of Death appears to have been a very favourite subject with poets, as well as with painters: perhaps it would not now be practicable to trace its origin. The very clever author of the "Introduction to Death's Doings" 1 , after alluding to the grotesque carvings of Death as a skeleton, in our old churches, the farcical representations of Death on the stage, and by the pencil, observes that one of these farcical Moralities, as they were then termed, was hinted at by Shakspeare, in Measure for Measure.

Merely thou art death's fool:
For him thou labourest, by thy flight to shun,
And yet runn'st toward him still.

This passage, he remarks, is thus explained in a note by one of the commentators on the works of our inmortal bard: "In the simplicity of the ancient shows upon our stage, it was common to bring in two figures, one representing a fool, and the other, Death or Fate; the turn and contrivance of the piece was, to make the fool lay stratagems to avoid Death, which yet brought him more immediately into the jaws of it".

Holbein's Dance of Death is, amongst us, the best known series of illustrations of this subject, but there are several of an earlier date than Holbein's. There are also many single pieces by different artists.

And here, again, because it bears upon De Carrion's poem, we must quote from the Introduction to Death's Doings: "An example of excellence in this way, is a drawing from the collection of Paul Sandby, R.A., where death is exhibited as preaching from a chamel house, amidst skulls and bones; another skeleton form is introduced as making a back on which to rest the book from which the phantom is discoursing; and, though highly ludicrous in point of character, the groups and composition are in the best style of ait. The auditors of the grim preacher are of every age and class, and are happily contrasted: the peasant and the ruler, the matron and the gailyattired female, the cavalier and the person of low degree, all disposed with skill in their appropriate and varied postures of attraction. Part of a cathedral-like building forms the background; the design is from the pencil of Van Venne, and from the picturesque costume and character of the composition, would do credit to the talents of the best artists of that period."

De Carrion's poem thus commences:

Lo, I am Death—with aim as sure as steady,
All beings that are and shall be I draw near me—
I call thee — I require thee, man! be ready!
Why build upon this fragile life? —Now hear me!
Where is the power that does not own me—fear me?
Who can escape me when I bend my bow?
I pull the string Thou liest in dust below,
Smitten by the barb my ministring angels bear me.

How similar in feeling and in character, are the succeeding lines, extracted from Death's Sermon, forming an illustration of Van Venne's picture above described in Death's Doings:

The great Deliverer of Man am I,
Although of mortal life the conqueror;
For though at human pride my shafts I hurl
And into atoms crush the vaunting fools,
Who with prosperity intoxicate, affect
To heed me not—yet from the direst woes
I rescue the oppressed; and with a wreath
Of never-fading glory bind their brows.
And shall my wond'rous attributes remain
Unnoticed or contemn'd—my power forgot,
Which earth, and air, and sea, encompasseth?
Shall I not use that glorious privilege,
Which both to mercy and to might belong—
Now striking terror in obdurate hearts,
Ami punishing men's crimes—now turning from
The error of their ways the penitent,
And leading them in paths of righteousness?

The close of De Carrion's poem is also in accordance with the above: —

And since 'tis certain then that we must die,
No hope, no chance, no prospect of redress—
Be it our constant aim, unswervingly
To tread God's narrow path of holiness:
For He is iirst, last, midst—O, let us press
Onwards—and when Death's monitory glance
Shall summon us to join his mortal glance,
Even then shall hope and joy our footsteps bless.

De Carrion evinces considerable invention, and yet more imagination. Popes, cardinals, patriarchs, kings, bishops, lords, monks, artizans, and labourers, are successively introduced in his dance. We must confine ourselves, however, to two more brief passages, which, even under the disadvantages of translation, will be found to possess considerable merit.

Come to the dance of Death—come hither even
The last, the lowliest—of all rank and station;
Who will not come, shall be by scourges driven;
I hold no parley with disinclination;

List to yon friar who preaches of salvation,
And hie ye to your penitential post:
For who delays—who lingers—he is lost,
And handed o'er to hopeless reprobation.

I to my dance—my mortal dance—have brought
Two nymphs, all bright in beauty and in bloom;
They listened, fear-struck, to my songs, me thought,
And truly songs like mine are tinged with gloom:
But neither roseate hues nor flowers' perfume
Will now avail them—nor the thousand charms
Of worldly vanity—they fill my arms—
They are my brides—their bridal-bed the tomb.

Of a totally different character, and written at a later period, are the following lines written by the Rabbi Moses, a Jewish physician, on the birth of one of the Castilian princes:

Now let the lion, that was long concealed,
Burst from his gloomy cavern, and be free:
O'er the green space of forest and of field,
Heard be his awful voice of majesty;
His strength be felt, his mighty energy
Make the world tremble, till the Moor shall yield.

At his fierce frown, and leave his dreaded throne,
To him who comes to claim it for his own.
Let the wild eagle wander from his nest,
Pass through heaven gates, and reach the breezy sky,
Towering above the mass of clouds on high,
And sit in flames—the highest—mightiest.

We might enumerate many other writers, and offer various additional extracts from their works; but we are not aware that, by so doing, we should be enabled to impart to the English reader a clearer idea of the poetical compositions of the Spanish Jews in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The history of this people is one series of varied suffering. Through the remorseless barbarity of the Inquisition, they were, in the reign of Ferdinand V, expelled from a country upon which their talents had shed no mean lustre. Even to the present day, however, many of the first families in Spain may be traced to a Jewish origin; and the effect which the writings of the Jews have had upon the poetry, upon the literature and science of Spain, seems likely to prove imperishable as their nation.