Ah, if but Laila would send a greeting down
of grace, though between us lay the dust and flags of stone,
My greeting of joy should spring in answer, or there should cry
toward her an owl, ill bird that shrieks in the gloom of graves.
Nay, but I have greeted him, and he has not answered as he said. Now, there was a she-owl crouching in the gloom by the side of the grave; and when it saw the litter and the crowd of people, it was frightened and flew in the face of the camel. And the camel was startled and cast Laila headlong on the ground; and she died that hour, and was buried by the side of Taubah."
The fascination of such parallels is fatal to proportion in an essay such as this. But I cannot honestly assert that I needed the space for other aspects of my subject. I have elsewhere fully described the Wedding Odes which Jehudah Halevi provided so abundantly, and which were long a regular feature of every Jewish marriage. But, after the brilliant Spanish period, Hebrew love songs lose their right to high literary rank. Satires on woman's wiles replace praises of her charms. On the other hand, what of inspiration the Hebrew poet felt in the erotic field beckoned towards mysticism. In the paper which opens this volume, I have written sufficiently and to spare of the woman-haters. At Barcelona, in the age of Zabara, Abraham ibn Chasdai did the best he could with his misogynist material, but he could get no nearer to a compliment than this, "Her face has the shimmer of a lamp, but it burns when held too close" ("Prince and Dervish," ch. xviii). The Hebrew attacks on women are clever, but superficial; they show no depth of insight into woman's character, and are far less effective than Pope's satires.
The boldest and ablest Hebrew love poet of the satirical school is Immanuel of Rome, a younger contemporary of Dante. He had wit, but not enough of it to excuse his ribaldry. He tells many a light tale of his amours; a pretty face is always apt to attract him and set his pen scribbling. As with the English dramatists of the Restoration, virtue and beauty are to Immanuel almost contradictory terms. For the most part, wrinkled old crones are the only decent women in his pages. His pretty women have morals as easy as the author professes. In the second of his Machberoth he contrasts two girls, Tamar and Beriah; on the one he showers every epithet of honor, at the other he hurls every epithet of abuse, only because Tamar is pretty, and Beriah the reverse. Tamar excites the love of the angels, Beriah's face makes even the devil fly. This disagreeable pose of Immanuel was not confined to his age; it has spoilt some of the best work of W.S. Gilbert. The following is Dr. Chotzner's rendering of one of Immanuel's lyrics. He entitles it
PARADISE AND HELL
At times in my spirit I fitfully ponder,
Where shall I pass after death from this light;
Do Heaven's bright glories await me, I wonder,
Or Lucifer's kingdom of darkness and night?
In the one, though 'tis perhaps of ill reputation,
A crowd of gay damsels will sit by my side;
But in Heaven there's boredom and mental starvation,
To hoary old men and old crones I'll be tied.
And so I will shun the abodes of the holy,
And fly from the sky, which is dull, so I deem:
Let hell be my dwelling; there is no melancholy,
Where love reigns for ever and ever supreme.
Immanuel, it is only just to point out, occasionally draws a worthier character. In his third Machbereth he tells of a lovely girl, who is intelligent, modest, chaste, coy, and difficult, although a queen in beauty; she is simple in taste, yet exquisite in poetical feeling and musical gifts. The character is the nearest one gets in Hebrew to the best heroines of the troubadours. Immanuel and she exchange verses, but the path of flirtation runs rough. They are parted, she, woman-like, dies, and he, man-like, sings an elegy. Even more to Immanuel's credit is his praise of his own wife. She has every womanly grace of body and soul. On her he showers compliments from the Song of Songs and the Book of Proverbs. If this be the true man revealed, then his light verses of love addressed to other women must be, as I have hinted, a mere pose. It may be that his wife read his verses, and that his picture of her was calculated to soothe her feelings when reading some other parts of his work. If she did read them, she found only one perfect figure of womanliness in her husband's poems, and that figure herself. But on the whole one is inclined to think that Immanuel's braggartism as to his many love affairs is only another aspect of the Renaissance habit, which is exemplified so completely in the similar boasts of Benvenuto Cellini.
Be this as it may, it is not surprising to find that in the Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chayyim, ch. 317, Section 16), the poems of Immanuel are put upon the Sabbath Index. It is declared unlawful to read them on Saturdays, and also on week-days, continues the Code with gathering anger. Those who copy them, still more those who print them, are declared sinners that make others to sin. I must confess that I am here on the side of the Code. Immanuel's Machberoth are scarcely worthy of the Hebrew genius.