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Arabic Poetics in Hebrew Poetry of the Golden AgeSpanish Hebrew Poetry and the Arabic Literary Tradition: Arabic Themes in HebrewAndalusian Poetry by Arie SchippersReview by: EVERETT K. ROWSONProoftexts, Vol. 16, No. 1, Readings in Medieval Hebrew Poetry (JANUARY 1996), pp. 105-111Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20689441 .

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REVIEW

Arabic Poetics in Hebrew Poetry of the Golden Age Arie Schippers. Spanish Hebrew Poetry and the Arabic Literary Tradition: Arabic

Themes in Hebrew Andalusian Poetry. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994. xiv + 376 pp.

After centuries of neglect, the secular Hebrew poetry of medieval Andalusia has in recent decades become the subject of intense study and debate. Celebrated on the one hand as representing a golden age of Jewish literature and attacked on the other as an assimilationist dead end ultimately contributing nothing to the

ongoing Jewish heritage, this peculiar hybrid of a patently borrowed Arabic

poetics and a strictly delimited biblical Hebrew lexicon raises a host of questions, both literary and historical. Why, for example, at a time when Andalusian Jews were writing philosophical and theological works of obvious religious import in

Arabic, should they be composing secular poetry in Hebrew? Who was the audience for such poetry, and what place did poets and audience occupy in both the Jewish community and the wider interconfessional society of their day? What

aspects of Arabic poetry?formal, thematic, rhetorical?were borrowed whole

sale, and what aspects were modified or rejected, and why? Much of the debate over such issues is being pursued in Hebrew, but much is also appearing in Western languages, especially English?which is fortunate for students of Arabic

literature, such as myself, to whom the Hebrew scholarship is inaccessible but who have a clear interest in knowing what is happening in this field. Not only can Arabists learn something from these discussions about the historical context of the literature they study and the range and directions of literary influences in such a

polyglot and multiconfessional society as Andalusia; they also can expect, by looking at what the Hebrew poets took from their Arabic models and what they did with it, to gain increased insight into the aesthetic norms and values embodied in those models themselves, as well as into underlying attitudes toward secular uses of a canonized and indeed sanctified langnage. Arie Schippers's recent book, which focuses precisely on the relationship between classical Arabic poetry and its Hebrew counterpart, is, in fact, explicitly directed in part to Arabists, "who have to take into account how and why Arabic poetic motifs circulated in Andalusian

society" (p. 3), and it is perhaps thus appropriate that it be reviewed by someone with such concerns.

There is certainly no lack of Arabic poetry in Schippers's book; it is cited in

quantities at least equal to those given of Hebrew poetry. But therein lies the

problem?and there is a problem: Schippers's stated intention is "to give a survey of most of the poetic themes and motifs occurring in Hebrew Andalusian

PROOFTEXTS16 (1996): 105-111 ? 1996 by The Johns Hopkins University Press



106 REVIEW

literature which have been borrowed from Arabic literature" (p. 1), and he

proceeds to do so, amassing three hundred pages of parallel citations, from wine

poetry, love poetry, elegiac poetry, and other genres, to demonstrate that "[i]n Hebrew Andalusian poetry, Arabic poetic conventions are assumed and Arabic

poets are imitated; only the language is different" (p. 22). Had one any doubts about the first part of this statement (and an Arabist would be unlikely to, even before picking up Schippers's book), they would be easily allayed by such overkill; but by reducing the differences between the two poetries purely to one of language, and mirtirnizing his attention even to that factor, Schippers seems to me to miss most of the really interesting questions?for Arabists as well as Hebraicists. Rather than the "how and why" of adoption of Arabic poetic motifs, what is presented is mostly simply the "that," and analysis is on the whole avoided in favor of simple cataloging.

The book is lucidly organized. The first four chapters deal with preliminary matters: purpose of the study and definitions of genre, theme, and motif; the

poetic climate of Andalusia in the eleventh century; the Jews in Muslim Spain; and the Arabic poem?developments, genres, subdivisions. The following six chapters run through the Arabic-Hebrew thematic parallels in six genres (or clusters of

themes): wine, love, nature, war, elegy, and descriptions of poetry. A final chapter, labeled "conclusions," is essentially a straightforward summary of what has been said in the six "thematic" chapters that constitute the heart of the book. Appended are a rather full bibliography and an index, as well as a table of correspondence between the two published editions of the poetry of Samuel Hanagid, one of the four Andalusian Hebrew poets on whom the author concentrates.

The introductory chapter raises two fundamental questions, promising answers that we never really get. First, why did such Arabizing secular Hebrew

poetry arise in eleventh-century Andalusia? Why specifically then and there? In

reply, we are offered only a jejune history of "The Jews in Muslim Spain" (chapter 3) and a paraphrase of selections from Moses ibn Ezra's discussion of the

origins of this poetry; the closest we get to a real answer seems to be that "poetry arose at a time when there were also many other linguistic activities. Perhaps linguistic and poetic activities stimulated and influenced each other" (p. 52). Second, was there something distinctive about Andalusian poetry (Arabic or

Hebrew), compared with Eastern Arabic poetry? Schippers gives a review (in chapter 2) of the extensive scholarship on this question, appropriately emphasiz ing the contributions of Gregor Schoeler and Raymond Scheindlin, but does not

attempt to advance the discussion himself, and no definitive answer is settled on.

Perhaps his own contribution is to be found in the penultimate paragraph of the

book, where (without previous discussion) he announces that "we cannot refrain from concluding that the Hebrew Andalusian poets imitated Oriental Arabic

poets far more than they imitated contemporary local Arabic Andalusian poets" (p. 325). But whether this conclusion is actually borne out by the accumulated evidence in the preceding catalog of comparisons (which does regularly offer both Eastern and Western Arabic examples) remains unclear to me.

The basic parameters of this catalog are discussed in the preliminary chap ters. First, there is the question of which poets to include. On the Hebrew side, Schippers focuses his attention almost exclusively on "the four greatest poets,"



Proo?exts 107

Samuel Hanagid, Solomon Ibn Gabir l, Moses Ibn Ezra, and Judah Halevi, whose lives and works he summarizes in chapter 3. His choices from the Arabic side are somewhat more diffuse; the Eastern tradition is represented primarily by Abu

Nuw?s, Ab? Tamm?m, and al-Mutanabb?, and the Andalusian by Ibn Khafaj?, but

many others, both Eastern and Western and from various periods, appear as well. The second question is that of what is to be compared or identified as borrowed. A

preliminary discussion of this problem, in chapter 1, considering the terms

"genre," "theme," and "motif," does little beyond establishing the subordination of "motif" to "theme," but is supplemented by further treatment in chapters 2 and 4. In the latter, basing himself in part on previous work by Schoeler, Schippers reviews a number of discussions of genre (gharad) in Arabic theoretical works, as

well as the actual generic divisions appearing in medieval recensions of the collected verse of several major poets. To this, he adds his own survey of the

genres represented in the oeuvre of the four Hebrew poets, which is perhaps the most interesting section of the book?although it is not altogether clear how much of this generic labeling is based on the manuscript sources and how much on the work of modern editors. (I would note that the "Hij?ziyy?t" of Moses Ibn Ezra, which puzzle Schippers, are perhaps less likely to refer to the verse of the

Umayyad poet cUmar b. Ab? Rabfa, as he suggests, than to the group of poems known by this rubric that were composed by the eleventh-century Baghd?dl Shfite al-Shar?f al-Rad?.) Two further sections of this chapter, attempting to subdivide Arabic and Hebrew polythematic poems into subgenres, are less

satisfactory, and degenerate into content summaries of sample poems that seem to have been rather randomly selected.

Schippers is bothered by the fact that standard Western definitions of

"genre," which involve form, do not seem to fit the case of Arabic and Hebrew

poetry (where typology depends almost entirely on content, independent of

form), and by the ambiguity of the line between what he calls "genres" and "themes" ( a' ; in the end, he settles for defining a genre for his purposes as "a cluster of themes," which is not very helpful. In any case, most of the "genres" on which he ultimately relies?wine, love, and the like?as well as their subordinate "themes"?such as the invitation to a drinking party, or the beauty of the beloved?are appropriately determined by the tradition itself. There are, however, some difficulties, not the least of which is his decision to omit "the laudatory genre" (that is, panegyric, madTh), "although it is one of the most important," either because "this theme is one of the most difficult genres for modern readers"

(p. 7) or "[f]or reasons of space" (p. 91). He does not explain why he is nevertheless "confident of presenting a balanced survey of the themes and motifs which occur in the poetry of the four Hebrew Andalusian poets under considera tion" (p. 8).

Most of the themes known from Arabic wine songs reappear in the Hebrew versions of the genre (chapter 5), although Schippers notes that the Arabic visit to the tavern (run by a "landlord" or "landlady" in his parlance) is missing in

Hebrew. He remarks that for Abu Nuw?s, the most famous Arabic wine poet, "drinking wine is frequently considered a sin," but does not discuss the difference in wine's legal status in Islam and Judaism or speculate on how that might affect its poetic treatment. He discusses the conventional times for drinking without



108 REVIEW

mentioning the omnipresent morning and evening draughts (sab?h and ghab?q); these terms do appear in a later discussion (pp. 135 f.), but with their definitions reversed.

In chapter 6, on love poetry, Schippers refers to recent controversies over the

meaning and implications of Hebrew homoerotic verses, but refrains from enter

ing the lists himself. He rather exaggerates the degree to which homoerotic

imagery is bound to that of the cupbearer, and while plausibly appealing to (pre Islamic) Iranian customs in this regard, rather oddly adds (p. 147) mat "[t]here are

comparable situations in other cultures e.g., at the Roman courts" (adding a footnote to Martial), without so much as a nod to the Greek world, probably the

most relevant and certainly the best-known antecedent. One of the more interest

ing borrowed motifs illustrated in this chapter is that of the boy with a speech impediment perceived as effeminate (p. 151), consisting in Arabic of a substitution of "gh" for "r," which reappears in Hebrew in a poem by Samuel Hanagid, with

"g" in place of "r," resulting (unlike the Arabic) in several provocative puns (e.g., "He wanted to answer: 'miscreant [rac],' but he said: 'Come nearer [gac]'"). (The Arabic substitution is well known today, mostly among upper-class speakers, but the Hebrew equivalent seems rather improbable to me.)

Another common motif in love poetry, that of "wounding eyes" (whose glances pierce the heart) is dubbed "somewhat universal" by Schippers (p. 173), and he adduces parallels in troubadour literature, while steering well clear of any claims to historical connections. Citing further troubadour parallels in a later

discussion, on the motif of the poet's vaunting his own abilities, Schippers declares (pp. 300f.), "I am not of the opinion that here there is a direct influence of Arabic or Hebrew poetry on Occitanic or Proven?al poetry, but both poetries? Hebrew-Arabic as well as the poetry of the troubadours?may have had the same

climate and inspiration, which makes the poet conscious of and conceited about himself and his poetry." Whatever this means, it is typical of the author's reluctance seriously to engage in any of the major controversies that impinge on his study. On the other hand, in dealing with the ubi sunt motif (in chapter 9, on

"elegiac poetry"), he would appear to beg the very question to which his book is

devoted, by stating, "These kind[s] of ubi sunt themes are perhaps common to all literatures and all cultures, but the Hebrew poets were conscious imitators of

Arabic poetical themes, and that is the main reason for considering Arabic poetry here as the origin of these themes" (p. 271).

Both the chapter on elegiac poetry and that on nature poetry (chapter 7) include a somewhat wider range of "themes" than what indigenous concepts of

genre would justify. The latter initially appears to be devoted to descriptions of flowers and gardens (zahriyy?t), but moves on as well to motifs concerned with

rain, night, stars, and so on, which appear at least as frequently in other genres. Under "elegiac poetry" are included not only the ubi sunt motif, but also such other "themes" as blame of the world (dhamm al-duny?) and ascetic poetry (zuhdiyy?t). In chapter 8, on descriptions of war, the line between genre and theme becomes even fuzzier; the point of isolating this particular "cluster" is clearly to devote some attention to the well-known collection of war poems by Samuel

Hanagid, while Schippers draws most of his Arabic parallels from al-Mutanabb?, "since he is the most celebrated war poet among the Arabs" (p. 220)?a rather



Prooftexts 109

dubious characterization. Oddest of all is chapter 10, on "description of poetry," which represents neither a genre (although Schippers labels it as such) nor a

theme, but a congeries of verses referring to poetry itself in different ways, including boasting of one's own poetical abilities, praise of a friend's verses, and

deprecation of other poets?the last being the closest Schippers comes to dealing with the important genre of hijd\ or abuse poetry.

Throughout this entire catalog of parallels, any differences between Arabic and Hebrew examples are consistently underplayed, in conformity with Schippers's premise that in the latter, "only the language is different." In elaborating this

premise, he goes on to say (p. 22), "Through the purely scriptural Hebrew there is

suggested the influence of Biblical writing on this poetry, but this is only superficial: the old language is here expressing Arabic ideas. The only exception is

perhaps that no references are made to Arab tribal history or Arabic poets, but instead Hebrew poets and Biblical names and tribes are mentioned." I, and

certainly others, would beg to differ. In a very odd discussion of the ways Moses Ibn Ezra adduces scriptural parallels to Arabic rhetorical figures, Schippers insists that this simply indicates the primacy of the Arabic, and he even labels Ibn Ezra's "Arabic" reading of the Bible "unconscious" (p. 38). But he thereby ignores what are surely the two most interesting aspects of this procedure. First, there is an obvious parallel here to earlier Muslim discussions of rhetoric in the Qur'?n, which were carried on in the context of the theological doctrine of the Qur'?n's miraculous inimitability; the implications for Ibn Ezra's own attitude toward both

holy writ and the Hebrew language are surely relevant to the entire enterprise of

producing secular Hebrew poetry in conformity with Arabic poetic norms, but

Schippers does not explore them. Second, and perhaps even more important, are the aesthetic resonances created by employing a closed lexical canon?and one derived from a closed textual canon known by heart?to create poetic imagery. While, in Arabic poetry, use of a Qur'?nic term can on occasion implicitly invoke its original context without further explicit reference, such "offstage" reference is

absolutely pervasive in this Hebrew poetry and fundamental to its proper appreciation. But Schippers seems to consider it beside the point. (For an excellent recent discussion of some aspects of these questions, see Ross Brann's 1991 study, The Compunctious Poet, pp. 23-58.)

A single example will illustrate both this and other problems with Schippers's method. Summarizing Ibn Ezra's discussion of the figure of taqstm ("partition"), he reproduces (p. 28) parallel lines by al-Mutanabb??

Insomnia for the eyelids, a sun for the one who looks, illness for the

bodies, musk for the one who sniffs?

and by Ibn Ezra himself?

Honey for the tasting mouth, the sun's light for the eye of the

beholder, fragrant myrrh for the smelling nose,

Singing for the ear, a pedestal for a precious thing, a table and board for the truth of the covenant.

Ibn Ezra does not identify what either of these passages is describing?nor does

Schippers. Al-Mutanabb?'s line is, in fact, about a beautiful female cupbearer,



110 REVIEW

while Ibn Ezra is describing a high-placed friend (ahad kibi?r ikhwanihi), but most readers will have no way of knowing this. Schippers notes that in transforming the Arabic image, Ibn Ezra "substituted [for] 'negative attributes' such as insom nia and illness ... positive ones and continued the taqs?m in the next line" and lets it go at that. He does not elucidate the meaning of the second line, nor does he indicate that it relies on a cluster of vocabulary taken from the description of the tabernacle in Exodus 26. (I also wonder whether qeresh le-mishkan ha-emet u=briah

[Schippers's transliteration] might not better be rendered "a board and bar for the tabernacle of truth.")

In this section, Schippers provides transliterations for both Hebrew and Arabic citations, but through most of the book these are lacking, and one must take his translations on faith. The transliterations on pages 28 to 31 by no means

inspire confidence. For Hebrew, Schippers has adapted the system of the

Encyclopaedia Judaica; the lack of indication of vowel length makes it difficult for the noninitiate to detect the meter. Errors, typographical and otherwise, are

frequent in both languages. (Hebrew: p. 30, for Mia?en read Ahannen and omit [in the same line] le-hayayim; p. 31, for We-lat-toceh read We-lat-toceh and for we-lah-hoceh read we-las-soceh?in fact, throughout this section, s in both Hebrew and Arabic regularly appears as h. Arabic: p. 28, for li-n?zirin read li-n?zirin; p. 29, for 'al? an fi-hi read cal? anna fi-hi; p. 30, for wa-hiya read wa-hya and for shamsu-hu read shamsa-hu.) Elsewhere, the Arabic call to share in mourning, asHd, appears regularly as iscad (meaning "be happy!" pp. 254,257, and passim). Schippers has

misread (p. 58) Ibn Ezra's qartas al-ramiyyah ("he hit the bull's-eye") as qirt?s al-ramyah, which he translates, inexplicably, as "an exemplary text." Where transliteration is not given, I have checked translations only here and there, but there are further errors, some of them serious, for example (p. 292), "I have

composed verses about you, which are never repeated by anyone," which should read "I have (verses) about you which have never (before) been said" {wa-liftka m? lam yaqul q?Hlun). Sometimes the English is simply incomprehensible, e.g., (p. 205), "when the night was on its skin" for "as the night receded" (wa-l-laylu ft ma'?bihi). It is unclear how hadyuhu l-mutayassir ("his generous ways") has become "his unfortunate soul." I was unable to check the Arabic behind the bizarre phrase (referring to a characteristic of feminine beauty) "the bending of the fissures outside the cheek" (p. 182).

Some of the translation problems have to do with the author's English, which is not native and is frequently unidiomatic. The general demise of the copy editor in the publishing industry, lamentable in any case, is a true disaster for a book like this. Errors in hyphenation such as wit-hout (p. 330) and invi-tes (p. 332) are

merely a petty annoyance, as are such infelicities as "a new innovation" (p. 328) and "[t]he descriptive side of poetry description" (p. 344) and the consistent

misspelling of "address" as "adress." But we also find, in the poetry, such ugly locutions as "hairlocks" (p. 178), and, worse, the strange "the bow of your arrow

[i.e. the whimpers]" which turns out to mean eyelashes ("whimpers" being presumably a faux ami from Dutch). More generally, one's eyes tend to glaze over when reading such lines as the following:

Is there a grave [lahd], that has ever contained the snake of the heretics [hayyat al-mulhid?n], while fresh earth [ludnu tharan]



Prooftexts 111

prevents access to richness (al-thir?; i.e. Kh?lid, who was used to

give generous gifts).

(Alternatively, this might be rendered "Has a grave, then, encompassed the bane of the heretics, and has the moist earth cut (us) off from (his) bounty?") In such circumstances, the author's occasional recourse to older translations (by Lyall, Arberry, and others) is welcome indeed.

It is, of course, useful to have documentation of the degree to which the standard lexicon of Arabic poetic imagery was taken over almost entirely by the Andalusian Hebrew poets. From this book, Arabists can get a better idea of how this imagery looks in Hebrew dress, if only a few hints about other aspects of such

cognate verse; Hebraicists not fully acquainted with the Arabic tradition will have

brought home to them just how massive the borrowing was. But for subtle

analyses of either the Hebrew tradition itself or its relation to the Arabic, not to mention effective conveyance of the beauty of the verse in either language, English-speaking readers will do better to turn to the studies by Scheindlin, Brann, and others.

EVERETT K. ROWSON Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies University of Pennsylvania



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