The Poetry of the People of the Book
F poetry is, according to Shelley, "the record of the best and happiest moments, of the happiest and best minds," then what possibility was there for the Jews of the Dispersion period to attain to poetic expression?
One would be justified in expecting that they should succumb to the same mute despair which of old overcame their ancestors, the Judean exiles in Babylon, who hung their harps on the willow and sat there weeping, and when their captors asked them to sing songs of Zion, retorted: "How shall we sing the song of the Lord on strange ground?"
But the Jews of the last exile shared neither the pride nor the prejudice of their haughty ancestors. It is true they felt the tragedy of their position, the unpromising state of their future. But if they were a people without a country, they were still the People of the Book. Their own physical weakness was forgotten in the assurance which their great spiritual stronghold held out. The Book of books was a source of rare inspiration to the despised Jews. Their life would have been a worthless blank, their sorrow despair, their future no future, without the support and sustenance of the Book. It is not strange that, on perceiving the influence which the Holy Writ exercised on the Jews, Mahomet should call them, as early as the sixth century, the People of the Book. The Jews verified the accuracy of this appellation in their mode of life; their thoughts and actions alike were regulated by the Book. Everything that emanated from the inner or outer life of the Jews bore the stamp and showed the earmarks of the Bible. Their poetry perhaps more than anything else, for, as was already hinted, the Jews of the Dispersion cultivated a taste for poetic expression notwithstanding the pre-cariousness of their position and the consequent lack of repose and ease—factors deemed inevitable for the cultivation of the æsthetic faculties.
The Jews are found giving expression to poetic thought in all ages and in all environments. George Eliot, with her keen sense of appreciation, though not at that time otherwise elated with the boasted superiority of the Jews, still acknowledged that she "bowed to the supremacy of Hebrew poetry."
That the growth and development of Hebrew poetry were not arrested in the post exilic period when the Jews were scattered through Africa, Arabia, Spain and Italy, is nothing short of miraculous. But then the Jewish people have not only a genius for perseverance, but also for adaptability. The country and conditions were not allowed to interfere with their further cultivation of the Hebrew language, though it is true they did not wholly escape the influences of the language, thought and tradition of the country of their habitation. Though they often borrowed the Arabic meter, they still deemed the Biblical expressions the perfection of style. Especially was the peerless phraseology of the Psalms and prophets quoted and adapted by these poets of the exile. No little amount of skill and ingenuity was required in adapting the fiery outbursts of the prophets to the form and meter of Arabic poetry, a task which was nevertheless mastered.