Epic
שירי תפארת
Not translated into English
Naphtali Herz Wessely · 1789
Opening lines
אֵל יוֹשֵׁב הַכְּרוּבִים! נוֹרָא הוֹדֶךָ,
גַּם רוּם גַּם תַּחְתִּיּוֹת מַעֲשֵׂה יָדֶיךָ,
גַּם חַיּוֹת וּשְׂרָפִים לִהְיוֹת צִוִּיתָ,
אֵל נוֹרָא! מָה אָדָם כִּי תֵדָעֵהוּ,
אֶת לִבּוֹ תַחְקוֹר, תָּבִין אֶל מַעֲשֵׂהוּ,
וּבְתוֹכָם לִהְיוֹת מָעוֹן לָךְ אִוִּיתָ?
God who sits upon the cherubim! Awesome is your majesty,
the heights and the depths alike are the work of your hands,
the living creatures and the seraphim you commanded to be,
Awesome God! What is man that you should know him,
search his heart, consider his deeds,
and desire to have a dwelling among them?
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from benyehuda.org
Synopsis
The epic follows the account of the Exodus and the life of Moses, from the beginning of the enslavement of the Hebrews in Egypt: the call of Moses, the plagues that strike the country, the departure from Egypt, the pursuit by Pharaoh's army, the battle against Amalek. Each of the eighteen cantos is titled with a name of God, and the first opens with an invocation to Him who sits upon the cherubim, where the ancient epic called on the Muse. Wessely invents nothing: he fills the silences of the biblical text with dialogues and thoughts attributed to the characters, and pours into it material from the Talmud and the Midrash.
Context
Wessely introduced the alexandrine into Hebrew verse, the twelve-syllable line of the French of his time, which became established among Hebrew poets after him. His work has been compared with the German biblical epics, Klopstock's Messiah first of all; in his German preface, Wessely distanced himself from them, saying he invented nothing and was giving both a didactic work and a commentary on Scripture. After the first Berlin instalments, an edition appeared in Prague in 1809; the last three cantos were published only after his death, in Prague, in 1829. Hufnagel and Spalding gave a German translation of it.
Who it is for
A long narrative in verse, in Biblical Hebrew, which follows the second book of the Torah closely while commenting on it; only extracts have been translated into French.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the major literary work of the German Haskalah, it went through numerous editions and was read even in Orthodox circles.
Sources for this page 9
The pages consulted to check this page.