Capitolo 48
Ezra.--Abraham Ibn Ezra.--The Biblical Commentaries of Ibn Ezra
and the Kimchis.
"In the days of Chasdai", it says Charizi, "the Israelite poets started
songs." We have seen that the new-Hebrew poetry was older than Chasdai,
but the affirmation of Charizi is true. The Israelite poets of Spain are
melodious, and Kalir is only clever. Again it was in Spain, that
Jew was used for secular poetry, for songs of love and ballads before,
for encomiums of nature, for the expression of all the human feelings. In more
of this the poets found their models in the Bible. When Jehuda Halevi
sung in Jewish of love, he played again her/it "Song of Songs." When Moses Ibn
Ezra wrote penitential hymns or Ibn Gebirol divine meditations, the
Psalms witnessed never them as an inspiration. The poets often devoted
all of their ambition to finding proper quotations from the sacred text. But
in a their respect they didn't succeed in imitating the Bible and this failure
seriously made to come the cramps to their genius. The poetry of the Bible depends for his
beauty partly on his/her form. This form is that of which you/he/she has called _parallelism
line_. The effect musical and excellent product repeating as an echo the idea
already express it is lost in the poetry of the Spanish Hebrews.
This way poetry Spanish-Jewess suffers, on the one side, because you/he/she is a
the imitation of the Bible, and therefore the originality of lacks, and on the
other side of which it suffers, because it doesn't sufficiently imitate the
Biblical style. Despite these limitations, it is the true poetry. In the
Psalms there is deep understanding for the wildest and more terrible phenomenons of
nature. In the poetry of the Spanish Hebrews, nature is beloved her
kinder humors. One of these poets, Nahum beautifully wrote of his/her garden;
another, Ibn Gebirol sang in autumn; Jehuda Halevi, in spring. Again,
in their songs of love it is freshness. There are them a characteristic
mixing some pity and love; they doesn't say that beauty it is a vain thing,