A STUDY OF BIALIK'S POETRY
PERHAPS no other age in Jewish history can boast of so great a lyric effusion as our own. I have spoken elsewhere of the forces impelling and quickening a lyrical outburst among the Jews, in an era when this branch of poetry is on the wane among the non-Jewish nations. Suffice it here to cite the fact that perhaps the greatest representative of the lyric art in Russian literature of our time is a Jew (Frug), and that no living American poet surpasses, in song, the two Yiddish singers, Rosenfeld and Bloomgarten. Yet it has been reserved for neo-Hebraic literature to give full utterance to this poetic outpouring. Here, lyric poetry has been the distinguishing feature. And it is not by a single note that the Hebrew muse chooses to make herself heard, but by a full throated chorus of songsters, each throwing in his individuality and his own peculiar note. Towering above all these singers, whether Russian, Yiddish or Hebrew, is the subject of this article, Ch. N. Bialik.
What are the marked characteristics of Bialik's poems? They are pathos, loftiness of conception, and artistic beauty. His pathos never degenerates into sentimentality, but is of a sort that coupled with virility and strength of expression, makes a Byron or a Victor Hugo, and wedded to seriousness and loftiness of idealism, gives birth to the preacher and the prophet. And Bialik possesses these qualities in a high degree; he is, with the possible exception of Jehudah Halevi—s Hebrew poet of the Middle Ages—the most representative Jewish national poet,
inheriting the pathetic idealism and prophetic seriousness of his people, and, at the same time, giving full expression to the national grief, and, to some extent, the national aspirations.
Bialik's poems may be generally divided into national and universal. In his national poems, Bialik only at rare occasions tunes his lyre to a joyous melody. Here his muse is not the ethereal, bright being of Goethe's poems, for example, revealing herself to the poet when "Der junge Tag erhob sich mit Entzucken" imparting to the poet her cheerful mood:
"Sie lachelte da war ich schon genesen, Zu neuen Freuden stieg mein Geist heran,"
and bestowing her gift “Aus Morgenduft und Sonnenklarheit.” The Hebrew muse reveals herself to our poet:
In a darksome nook, in mournful mood And robed in garb of widowhood.”
It is a woebegone muse such as this that bestows her poetic gift upon our Hebrew poet, and, therefore, his national poems are sullenly passionate and eloquently pathetic. In them is reflected the misery and distress of a people, for centuries bereft of human rights and helpless against an overwhelming foe. To Bialik, however, the national tragedy lies deeper than in the mere persecution. It lies, rather, in aspirations unattained, in sentiments stifled for want of expression, and in national desires ungratified, because the nation feels that it has no firm ground upon which to stand, and because it is not permitted to strike root in the soil and freely