HERDER’S ANTHOLOGY
Johann Gottfried von Herder belonged to the school of Rousseau. The latter, from whom the French Revolution derived its philosophy, was enamored of the primitive and the ancient. Nature began far better than she became after man mis-handled her. Herder (1744-1803) plays on the word “simplicity.” He loved the Hebrew poetry because it was so spontaneous, so untainted by artificiality. Herder’s work on the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry (1772-3) is fairly characterized by Graetz when he terms it epoch-making. Herder was among the first of the moderns to rouse interest in the Bible as literature. What his contemporary Lessing did in Germany for Shakespeare, Herder did for the Psalter.
Now Herder’s treatment of ancient literature rendered a lasting service despite his fundamental misconception. What James Sully calls Herder’s “excessive and sentimental interest in primitive human culture” prepared the way for the “genetic” theories of our time. He thoroughly realized the natural element in national poetry. He explained genius in terms of race. To him is due some part of the conception of a “Jewish culture,” as formulated by present-day Zionists of Ahad ha-‘Am’s school. It is rather curious that while, on the one hand, Herder’s theories helped national anti-Semitism, on the other hand, they gave suggestions to national Judaism. By laying undue stress on the natural, Herder exaggerated the national in the human spirit. In his early manhood Herder had thought of training as a physician. But he abandoned the idea because he could not endure the dissecting-room. When he came to discuss the world’s genius he used the scalpel freely enough. His gorge rose against cutting up the body, but he felt no reluctance to dissect the spirit.
Earlier writers had overlooked the national element in the Bible. Herder saw in the Old Testament nothing but national songs. The thought often led him right. He strongly opposed, for instance, the mystic and allegorical interpretations of the Song of Songs. To him it was a love poem, the purest, most delicate love poem of antiquity (“den reinsten und zartesten Liebesdichtung des Altertums”). Hebrew literature was national, but it revealed its nationality under unique conditions, for it was marked by the “poetic consciousness of God.” In all this Herder was magnificently right. But he could not leave well alone. In one of his latest essays he summed up the Hebrew poetry as distinguished indeed by religiosity, but also by simplicity (“kindliche Naivetä, Religiosität, Einfalt”). No term could be worse chosen. Hebrew poetry shows consummate art. If it conveys the sense of simplicity, it is because the poet’s art so thoroughly conceals its workings. Herder made aesthetically the same mistake as Wellhausen perpetrated theologically. According to Wellhausen, the prophets of the eighth century before the Christian era suddenly appeared as an utterly new phenomenon on the Hebraic horizon, whereas, in truth, by the time we reach Amos we have got to a very advanced stage in the religious history of Israel. So, too, is it with the biblical poetry. It is, even in its earliest fragments, such as the Song of Deborah, a highly cultivated form. “Simplicity” is the last word to apply to it. It is powerful, it is sincere, but it is not naive. The Greek athlete who conquered at the Olympic games was robust, but he had gone through a long process of training. Vigor is not synonymous with artlessness. Trench wrote a charming book on the “use of words.” An equally entertaining book could be compiled on the “misuse of words.” In such a book, a front place would be assignable to Herder’s “simplicity.”
What distinguished Hebrew poetry was not that element which it derived from the narrowing fetters of locality and epoch. Why is the Bible the most translatable book? Why has it been found the easiest of the great classics to re-express in the manifold tongues of man? Because it is so independent of the very qualities by which Herder sought to explain it! The poetry of Israel was “natural” and “national” in the sense that it corresponded to human nature, and was susceptible of interpretation in terms of every nationality. Over Herder’s tomb was inscribed the legend “Licht, Liebe, Leben.” Herder might have inscribed these or similar words over certain of the gems of Hebrew literature. “Light, love, life” are a truer characterization than “naiveness, religiosity, simplicity.”
Graetz thought that, though Herder dreamed of the time when Jew and Gentile would understand and appreciate each other, he was ill-disposed to the Jews. He was, it is true, not one of those who fell under the spell of Moses Mendelssohn’s personality. He was disinclined to subject himself to the spell. When Mendelssohn sought Herder’s acquaintance, the latter received the proposal coldly. This was not necessarily due to unkindness. It seems to me that Herder, who much admired Lessing, was rather resentful of the close intimacy between the hero and the author of Nathan the Wise. Herder had no desire to form one of a ménage à trois. As Graetz adds, Mendelssohn and Herder did come closely together after Lessing’s death. Herder, in one of his essays, dated 1781, the very year in which Lessing passed away, pays Mendelssohn a pretty compliment, praising him as an exponent of Jewish ideals.
Herder’s essay was prefixed to his “Anthology from Eastern Poets” (Blumenlese aus morgenländische Dichtern). Few of us remember that the word Anthology corresponds exactly with Blumenlese; it means a “collection of flowers.” (Compare Graetz’s Leket Shoshannim.) Foremost among the floral graces of Herder’s Oriental garland are the famous selections made from the Talmud and Midrash. Here, as elsewhere, Herder was rather too inclined to treat the rabbinical legend and parable as “naive.” He was, moreover, a little patronizing to the Haggadists when he declared that “people laughed at what they did not understand”—referring to the supposed grotesqueness of some of the rabbinic modes of expression. But he was happier when he described vandals like Eisenmenger as men who “rough-handled the butterfly, and who, mangling the beauteous creature between their coarse fingers, wondered that all they found on their hands was a particle of dust.” No one has ever translated rabbinic parables so successfully as Herder. His very love for the unfamiliar stood him in good stead. He does not tell us whence he derived his knowledge of the originals. Probably it was in oral intercourse with Jews. Such a spelling of Lilit as Lilis looks as though he heard it pronounced by a German Jew.
Be that as it may, Herder enters into the spirit of the rabbinic apologues with rare understanding. He chose the subjects with judgment, and executed the renderings with felicity. There could have been nothing but love for Judaism in the man who thus selected and who thus translated. Graetz was unduly hard on him. It was quite possible for a man to be fond of Jews and yet not drawn to Mendelssohn. The last-named fascinated so many that he could afford to find one person antipathetic—if indeed he was so. Long before others took to a cult of the rabbinic wit and wisdom, long before Emanuel Deutsch startled the English world in October, 1867, by his question in the Quarterly Review: “What is the Talmud?”, Herder had introduced the German world to it, and had in part answered Deutsch’s question by anticipation. From several points of view, therefore, Herder is of import for the Jewish student of nineteenth century history.
WALKER’S “THEODORE CYPHON”
Cumberland’s play, The Jew, appeared in 1794, and two years later was published Theodore Cyphon. The author was George Walker, a book-seller of London and a prolific writer of novels. His works are a curious compound of wild melodramatic incident with comments, often shrewd enough, on social and political actualities.