Selected Poems (Engelse vertaling)

xxviii INTRODUCTION

Perhaps, too, Heine's description of Jehudah
Halevi as a Minnesinger is badly conceived.
An essential feature of the Minnesinger was his
wandering life, passing continually like Sir Walter
Scott's Minstrel from court to court, from
castle to castle. Worthy of close study as
are Jehudah Halevi's love songs, wedding odes,
elegies, epigrams, epistles, satires and riddles, yet
it is not in these that he reached the summit of
his genius. His noblest work is to be found in
his religious and national meditations and songs.
It is not always easy to distinguish between his
so-called sacred and secular poems. Harkavy's
division into secular and sacred is thus scarcely
justified. A better distinction is Brody's,
into liturgical and non-liturgical. For while
some of Halevi's poems were intended for use
in prayer and others were not so intended,
the great mass of his work is impregnated with
religious feeling. This is seen even in his love
poems. These, often outspoken enough, are
never coarse: a spiritual restraint is discernible
amid the amatory abandonment. Often such
a poem, in its opening words, indicates a human
relationship; we read on and find that the lovers
are God and Israel. It is as though to a lover
that the poet sings: