SAMUEL
HA-NAGID Biography
Much
of Andalusian Jewish poetry took its cue from the established
literary styles and genres of Arabic poetry in which these Jews
were steeped. The wine-party was a time-honored tradition in 10th-century
Moslem Spain, and an entire genre of wine poetry grew around its
rituals. Though stylized and based on a preexisting genre, wine
poems such as the one below by Samuel ha-Nagid would most likely
have drawn upon first-hand experience as well, because wine parties
were part of the courtier lifestyle.[1]
The
Nagid wrote many wine poems. A significant aspect of the one below
is its mention of King David, with whom the Nagid identified and
from whom he derived his view of his own divinely favored status.[2]
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The speaker assumes
the tone of sage counselor. [However,] the opening sententious reflection
on life's insubstantiality, the closing admonition to live in accordance
with the precepts of scripture, and the allusions to biblical personages
in the body of the poem make it a parody of pietistic verse.
The Hebrew words
translated as "all such things" in verse 2 do not have a very
definite antecedent, but given the straight faced gnomic opening of
the poem, it seems to be the "pleasures and the pains" of
the material world that the listener is advised to ignore. The next
line suggests intellectual self control as the proper counterpart to
physical asceticism, a view with surprisingly deep roots in Jewish pietism.
But when verse 4 makes us aware of the poem's true message, the ironic
character of the preceding verses becomes apparent. Verse 2 is really
advising the listener to censor bothersome reflections such as that
which opens the poem. If life is nothing but sleep, then sleep! Leave
the thinking to God, and drink up. . . .
Although poetic
descriptions of wine customarily deal with its fragrance, color, age,
and effect upon the drinker, the descriptive portion of this poem, beginning
with verse 4, focuses on the wine's age and only touches on the other
themes. It was traditional to invent the most absurd hyperboles regarding
the age of the wine. This practice the Nagid has put in the service
of his parody by associating the age of the wine with biblical characters,
just as a preacher might draw upon the exempla of great men of old.
This hyperbolic
claim does not originate with the Nagid, nor is it of Jewish origin;
the eighth-century Arabic poet Abu Nuwas describes wine as coming from
the age of Adam, Eve, Seth, and Noah.
My
friend, we pass our lives as if in sleep;
Our pleasures and our pains are merely dreams.
But stop your ears to all such things, and shut
Your eyes--may Heaven grant you strength!--
Don't speculate on hidden things; leave that
To God, the Hidden One, whose eye sees all.
But
send the lass who plays the lute
To fill the cup with coral drink,
Put up in kegs in Adam's time,
Or else just after Noah's flood,
A pungent wine, like frankincense,
A glittering wine, like gold and gems,
Such wine as concubines and queens
Would bring King David long ago.
The
day they poured that wine into the drum,
King David's singer Jerimoth would strum
And sing: "May such a wine as this be kept
Preserved and stored in sealed-up kegs and saved
For all who crave the water of the grape,
For every man who holds the cup with skill,
Who keeps the rule Ecclesiastes gave,
Revels, and fears the tortures of the grave."
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But the Nagid put
his personal stamp upon the biblical motif by singling out King David
as the model drinker. King David is named both as a measure of the wine's
antiquity and because he represents a particular social model, providing
the imagination with an ideal setting for drinking wine; no fewer than
four verses are devoted to a speech by one of his courtiers that makes
wine drinking into a moral legacy bequeathed by this noble king to future
generations of discerning men.
Medieval Hebrew
poets loved to allude to out-of-the-way passages from the Bible; able
to rely on the audience's rote knowledge of scripture, they could even
draw upon the "begats" of Genesis and Chronicles for whimsical
effects. Here the Nagid has outdone himself in obscurity, choosing as
King David's spokesman a biblical personage that even a medieval rabbi
might have been slow to identify.
Jerimoth was the
fifth of the fourteen sons of Herman, who was one of the three Levites
whom David appointed with their sons to serve as Temple singers. Mentioned
only once in the Bible, in the midst of the stupefying list of names
comprising Chapters 23 through 27 of I Chronicles, Jerimoth (as well
as his thirteen brothers and numerous cousins) went unmentioned in the
Jewish literature of the next 1300 years until revived by Samuel the
Nagid, still as a musician, but with a distinctly secular function.
Although his sermon
on wine-bibbing derives a tone of mock authority from his sacerdotal
profession, Jerimoth seems to combine his role as a clergyman with that
of court poet. The Nagid must have fancied King David and the members
of his entourage to have lived like contemporary Andalusian princes;
in his imagination, the biblical Levite stood in for the poet or singing
girl, whose songs celebrated the way of life epitomized by the Andalusian
wine party. The Nagid repeatedly lays claim, through his Levitic ancestry,
to membership in the Jewish aristocracy and a hereditary gift for poetry
a status equivalent to that of a pure-blooded
descendant of Bedouins in medieval Andalusia.
Even more to the
point, the Nagid often compares himself to King David, especially in
those poems that reflect seriously on his career. In moments of self-doubt,
he looked to David like himself, a man of
God with bloody hands--as the biblical paradigm for his own career as
statesman, warrior, and poet. David became his model, patron, and vindication:
"They ask: 'Should you extol the Lord on high' / I say: the David
of the age am I!'"
The Nagid has thus
placed his role model, King David, at a wine party of the Andalusian
type, listening to the Nagid's Levitical ancestor Jerimoth singing in
praise of the wine and the drinkers. Jerimoth's song, in fact, speaks
of wine drinking as the moral legacy of King David's reign. Pietist
that he is, he cites biblical authority, saying that the wine being
laid up in David's time is to be kept for a later generation of men
who will be true to the rule of Ecclesiastes. Although he neglects to
tell us which of the many rules of life propounded by Ecclesiastes he
has in mind, verses 10 and 11 imply that he is thinking of a passage
that commends mixing revelry with piety. Ecclesiastes 11:9 fits the
purpose admirably:
Rejoice,
young man, in your youth
And let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth,
And walk in the ways of your heat
And in the sight of your eyes
But know that for all these things
God will bring you into judgment. |
As
in so many poems of the Golden Age, part of the wit lies in the overlapping
of Jewish and Arabic religious and secular motifs. The secular stock
motif here is the antiquity of the wine and the image of cobweb-covered
jars sealed generations ago. When this motif is put into Hebrew, especially
in the context of a mock sermon delivered by a biblical divine and supported
by allusion to a biblical prooftext, it must have reminded his listeners
of a theme from a completely different sphere. Steeped in traditional
Jewish lore, they would recall the legend of the wine laid up by God
for the banquet of the righteous in the world to come. It may seem surprising
that the Nagid tempers his recommendation of a life of revelry with
thoughts of the grave and the last judgment. Perhaps he is alluding
to the talmudic idea that a person will be judged after his death for
pleasures forgone in life.
SAMUEL HA-NAGID Biography
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