Modern Hebrew Poetry
NOTHING is to be found in true literature that does not exist in life. The literature of a people is the reflection of the life of the people, its past and its present. The richness of a people's literature depends on the variety of its life. When its life is poor and monotonous, its literature cannot be otherwise. Therefore, Hebrew literature is poor as regards variety. Latterday Hebrew epic poetry is also very weak, while there is scarcely any cultivated Hebrew drama. Further, the disposition of the Hebrew poetical mind has always been to a great extent lyrical. It is obvious that in such circumstances the lyrical element became the centre of gravity in Hebrew literature, ancient as well as modern. But what is the source from which the Hebrew lyrical poet draws his inspiration, seeing that the life of his people is so poor? In no other literature is the lamentation and the curse so developed; nowhere do they play such a rôle as in Hebrew.
The Hebrew poet looks at the poor and narrow reality of his people's life, and finds continuous persecution, pogroms in many forms, external and internal, and bondage which weaken their morality and courage, and he laments or he curses. As the conditions of Jewish life have not undergone any real change during the last two thousand years, the Hebrew poer has either lamented or cursed, or perhaps both. And the lamentation and the curse are the most characteristic features in Biblical literature; in fact, I do not know of any book in the whole world’s literature in which there is such intense cursing and bitter lamentation as in the Bible. I need only refer to chapters 27 and 28 of Deuteronomy, and the heart-rending lamentations of Teremiah.
In Hebrew literature of the Middle Ages the Kinoth and Slichoth play an important part. Many go even so far as to contend that the whole history of Hebrew literature is nothing more than a history of lamentations and curses. It is, therefore, only natural that the greatest Hebrew poet of to-day, C. N. Byalik, who, because of his lyrical genius, would be a jewel in any European literature, is also the greatest lamenter. One can forget many things in Byalik’s poetry, but one can never forget his lamentations. Another feature of Byalik’s poetry is the sincere and naive confession which is also most characteristic of ancient Hebrew literature. St. Augustine and Rousseau were also, of course, great confessors, but what are they in comparison with the psalmists or the great Hebrew poets of old? As a matter of fact, St. Augustine and Rousseau have only succeeded in mildly imitating the ancient Hebrew confessors. It is, therefore, no exaggeration when Byalik, the great lamenter and confessor, is characterised by modern critics as being intellectually a grandson of the ancient Hebrew poets. But the truth is that Byalik, by his power of expression, by his passionate words, and by the terrible images he paints, not only resembles the great prophets, but equals them in some respects. For Byalik’s vision is more plastic, and at the same time more vigorous and more poetic than many of the ancient prophetic visions. Byalik does not suffer any more from subjectiveness to form than did the ancient Hebrew poets. The
rhythm of his expression harmonizes with his passionate words, but we must remember that a man of such eruptive and passionate temperament as Byalik is not always rhythmical and musical. All this is specially true of his “Songs of Anger,” one of which begins with a characteristic outcery: “Call to the serpents that they shall bear your fury to all corners of the world,” and which concludes: “Call to the clouds that they shall spread your sadness to the vast seas.” These visions could only be written by a man in whose great and passionate soul a spark of the ancient Hebrew prophets lives. I remember that the early Fathers of the Church, in order to strengthen the belief of the Faithful, painted hell in the most -terrible of colors, and described the pains and sufferings ot the banished in such language that one would imagine they had really been present during Satan’s rule in the dark underworld. But these terrible images of the early Christian Fathers cannot be compared with the most gloomy visions of Byalik, in his “Songs of Anger.” In these poems elements of nature and unknown forces of creation are portrayed, and all nature changes its entire course, thus creating a state of affairs in which human life is only one long martyrdom— one terrible suffering. The same booklet contains the little poem, “Slaughter in the City of Murder,” and a third little poem without title. The book is unique in the world’s literature, for in it a first-rate Iyrical genius voices the indescribable sufferings of an ancient people and a loud protest against the murder and slaughter of a whole race, the children of which are massacred in the middle of the day, when the sun is at its zenith, and in the presence, of the whole of humanitv.
Cursed be he who says revenge.Such revenge: revenge for the blood of a little child has not yet been created by Satan.
In the “City of Murder” Byalik has shown his fine descriptive genius. If there exists a poetical realism in Hebrew literature which is at the same time realistic and Hebrew, it is in this terrible poem in the “City of Murder.” This song is, in short, strongly descriptive of pogroms. With an apparent feeling of rest, which is obviously the outcome of an indescribable despair., Byalik paints the terrible St. Bartholemew’s Day of Kishineff. This piece of modern Hebrew poetry is not only a historic document on the fate of the Jewish people at the beginning of the 20th Century, but a document vividly portraying the human capacity for cruelty. Every stage of the national catastrophe is followed, and reproduced with such painful detail that we are baffled, and we ask how a man with such a passionate soul as Byalik could sing thıs song of Hell:- For the Lord called the spring and the executioner together, The sun shone, the feathers flew. and the killer killed.
Byalik’s plasticity and care for detail in this song of Hell and pogrom deserve our double admiration. because, although the song is written with blood and tears, he very nearly attains the plastic genius of the ancient Greeks. The terrible pain under which he has written these songs of suffering and martyrdom can best be judged by the verse which concludes the bonklet :.
One star to the other tremblingly exclaims.There is the horrible lie,