DE ROSSI’S “LIGHT OF THE EYES”
Towards dusk, on a mid-November Friday in the year 1570, Azariah de Rossi descended from his own apartments to those of his married daughter. It was in Ferrara, and for some hours past earth-tremblings had made people anxious. Within an hour of his lucky visit to his child De Rossi’s abode was wrecked.
To this earthquake, as Zunz suggested in 1841 (Kerem Hemed, vol. v, p. 135), we owe the first attempt by a Jew to investigate critically, and with the aid of secular research, the history of Jewish literature. De Rossi had a fine command of Latin, and though he was less at home with Greek, he had a good working knowledge of it. After the earthquake, he left his home, and took refuge in a village south of the Po. A Christian scholar, a neighbor in the new settlement, was diverting his mind from the recent disturbing calamities, by perusing the Letter of Aristeas. There is a rare charm in the scene that followed. Finding some difficulties in the Letter, the Christian turned to the Jew, suggesting that they should consult the Hebrew text. But De Rossi was, to his chagrin, compelled to admit that there was no Hebrew text! Such a lamentable deficiency need not, however, continue. In less than three weeks De Rossi had translated the Letter into Hebrew, and with that act the modern study of Jewish records by Jews opens.
Chroniclers were once upon a time fond of contrasting the physique and the intellect of the worthies of former ages. Those were the days, one might almost say, of “kakogenics,” if our own is the era of eugenics. So we read of De Rossi that though “well-born” by ancestry, he was “ill-born” in person. Graetz somewhat overcolors the record when he writes of De Rossi thus: “Feeble, yellow, withered, and afflicted with fever, he crept about like a dying man.” At all events, he was thin and short, and neglectful of his bodily health. Yet he was not quite the weakling Graetz presents, for he lived to the age of sixty-four (1514-1578). Moreover, he assures us, giving full details of the diet and treatment, that he was thoroughly cured of the malaria, of the ravages of which Italian Jews so frequently complain. As to his “family,” that was old enough. The legend ran that four of the families settled by Titus in Rome survived into the Middle Ages; the stock of the De Rossis (min ha-adummim) belonged to one of the famous quartette. The other three were the Mansi, de Pomis, and Adolescentoli groups.
This was the man who created modern Jewish “science”—to use the term so beloved of our Continental brethren. De Rossi’s great work appeared as a quarto in November, 1573 (some date it 1574). It was well printed in the pretty square Hebrew type for which Mantua is famous. The author called it Meor ‘Enayim, that is, “Light of the Eyes.” It was, indeed, an illuminant. Graetz summarily asserts that “the actual results of this historical investigation, for the most part, have proved unsound.” Assuredly many of De Rossi’s statements are no longer accepted. He was the father of criticism, yet he was often himself uncritical. In his chapter on the antiquity of the Hebrew language, for instance, he remarks: “I have seen among many ancient coins, belonging to David Finzi of Mantua, a silver coin on which, on the obverse, is a man’s head round which is inscribed ‘King Solomon’ in Hebrew square letters, while the reverse bears a figure of the temple with the Hebrew legend ‘Temple of Solomon.’” As Zunz observes, this coin must have been a modern fabrication. In many other points De Rossi erred. But some of the “mistakes” for which he is blamed are not his but his critics’. Zunz, like Graetz, had little patience with the Zohar. The literature of the Kabbalah was to both these great scholars “false and corrupt.” At this date we are much more inclined to treat the Kabbalah with respect. De Rossi has been justified by later research. Then, again, Zunz categorically includes among De Rossi’s blunders his acceptance of the Letter of Aristeas as genuine. But in the year 1904 Mr. H. St. J. Thackeray, in the preface to his new English translation of the Letter, asserts “recent criticism has set in the direction of rehabilitating the story, or at any rate part of it.” Here, one can have no hesitation in claiming, De Rossi was right, and his critics wrong.
It is pleasing to be able to make this last assertion. The Letter of Aristeas purports to tell the story how the Greek translation of the Pentateuch was made in Alexandria. We are not now concerned with the story itself. But, as we have already seen, it was this Letter which induced De Rossi to write his book. The book, after a short section on the Ferrara earthquake, in which the author collects much Jewish and non-Jewish seismological lore, goes straight to Aristeas. Now, it would be a somewhat unfortunate fact if Jewish criticism began with the acceptance of a forgery, if the father of all our modern scholars (including Zunz himself) had started off with a bad critical mistake. We are spared this anomaly, for though Aristeas may not be as old as it claims (the third century B. C. E.), it is demonstrably older than its assailants made it out to be. De Rossi is far nearer the truth than Graetz. Of course, we do not now turn to De Rossi for our critical nourishment. Though editions of the Meor ‘Enayim continued to appear as late as 1866 (in fact one of the author’s books appeared for the first time in London in 1854), his works are substantially obsolete. For this reason I am not attempting any close account of their contents.
But while it is antiquated in this sense, it is a book of the class that can never become unimportant. For let us realize what De Rossi accomplished. In the first place he directed Jewish attention to the Jewish literature preserved or written in Greek. He re-introduced Philo to Jewish notice; not very accurately, it is true, yet he did re-introduce him. Secondly, he showed how much was to be derived from a study of non-Jewish sources. No one, after De Rossi, has for a moment thought it possible to deal with Jewish history entirely from Jewish records. Every available material must be drawn on if we are to construct a sound edifice. It is a just verdict of Graetz’s that De Rossi’s “power of reconstruction was small.” But he showed subsequent generations how to build. De Rossi, finally, was not one who regarded Jewish literature merely as the subject matter for research. He was intensely interested in it for its own sake. He was a poet as well as a historian. And this he shows both by his whole style and outlook as well as by the Hebrew and Italian verses that he wrote. He was, indeed, known both as Azariah and as Bonajuto, the latter being the Italian equivalent. Let us end with this fact: the same man, who inaugurated modern Jewish criticism, added some notable hymns to the synagogue prayer-book.
GUARINI AND LUZZATTO
An aristocrat all his life, Guarini was out of place in the court life of Ferrara. He spent his vigor in a vain attempt to accommodate himself to the sixteenth century Italian conditions. Then, broken in strength and fortune, he retired to produce his dramatic masterpiece. Not that the Pastor Fido can be truly termed dramatic. It is much more of a lyric. But just as Banquo, himself no king, was the father of kings, so Guarini, of little consequence as a dramatist, begot famous dramas. For the Faithful Shepherd deeply influenced European drama throughout the two centuries which followed its publication in 1590.
The Hebraic muse owed much to Guarini. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto (1707-1747) has been the only writer of Hebrew plays whose work counts in the literary sense. Luzzatto derived his whole dramatic inspiration from Guarini. Let no one question this assertion without first comparing La-Yesharim Tehillah and Migdal ‘Oz with the Pastor Fido. The characters and scenes, and even more, the style, are closely alike. Nor is this latter fact wonderful. John Addington Symonds describes Guarini’s work as “a masterpiece of diction, glittering and faultless, like a bas-relief of hard Corinthian bronze.” Luzzatto produces the same effect in his Hebrew imitation, using a similar metre as well as similar dramatic conventions. In imitating, however, he re-interprets. Guarini’s play is sometimes gross, it is never truly rustic. But a Hebrew poet, moved by such models as the Song of Songs, better knew how to be sensuous with purity; grossness must be antipathetic to him. On the other hand, Hebrew poetry is genuinely rustic. The biblical shepherd, whether in scriptural history or romance, is the most beloved of heroes. Some of the great characters of the Bible are shepherds: Abraham, Moses, David, Amos, Shulammith—but why pile up instances? It is obvious that a Hebrew poet, adopting a rural background for a lyrical drama, must inevitably write with sincerity. He could not, at the same time, fail to write with delicacy. Luzzatto took much from Guarini, but he both refined and adorned what he borrowed.