A Fragment of a Secular Poem of Judah Hallevi [שדיד משיד חול לדבי יהודה הלוי]
Among Yehudah Hallevi's poems which have come to light since H. Brody's edition of the Diwan (1894-1930), the great majority are liturgical and only very few are secular poems. Here a new fragment of an unknown secular poem by Hallevi is published according to two Genizah manuscripts, T-S...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
University of Pennsylvania Press
1980
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| In: |
AJS review
Year: 1980, Volume: 5, Pages: H21-H24 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Among Yehudah Hallevi's poems which have come to light since H. Brody's edition of the Diwan (1894-1930), the great majority are liturgical and only very few are secular poems. Here a new fragment of an unknown secular poem by Hallevi is published according to two Genizah manuscripts, T-S NS 96.18 and MC IV 136. The T-S manuscript, our main source, is a single torn sheet, which contains the first three lines (written as six hemistichs) and traces of the fourth. It explicitly attributes the poem to Yehudah Hallevi. The verso contains the end of a known piyyut by Abraham Ibn Ezra and two anonymous poems (one of them homonymic) whose unusual meter and awkward phrasing seem to point to a later period.Hallevi's poem, “Shalom lekha shemesh be-'et hillo” (Peace upon you, radiant sun) is a panegyric addressed to a patron or friend. It starts in medias res with highflown eulogies, dispensing with the introduction often found in other poems of this genre. With regard to style and meter the fragment is adroitly written; however, its imagery and attitude are largely conventional. The patron or friend is extolled as a sun, a star, a mast and a cedar tree—all of which are conventional materials in panegyrics. Moreover the images are linked only by their common subject and not at all on the metaphorical level, and the formulation is impersonal. These traits were very common to contemporary panegyrics, one of the more conventional genres of the school, but Yehudah Hallevi usually took care to interweave the images in various subtle ways. Of course, he may also have done this here, in the lines that did not survive—probably the greater part of the poem. The text is printed with a commentary that includes parallels from Hallevi's and Moses Ibn Ezra's poetry illustrating the more conventional imagery |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4541 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Association for Jewish Studies, AJS review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0364009400011892 |