Page 258 - גנזי קדם יא

Lyrical Aspects of Samuel the Thirdʼs Poetry 49*

Hebrew ways to express things. An obvious conclusion is that, quite vividly,
his concept of Hebrew involves innovative elements of properness and
exercise that can be understood as a personal attempt to bridge the gap
between canonical texts and contemporary poetic practice. The question of
normativity in the world of medieval Jewish hymnography is an exciting
one, because our scholarly quest for norms and criteria can easily be tied
to certain generic demands. Samuel the Third mainly composed yotserot,
so that first and foremost we tend to investigate the genre of the yotser,
in accordance with Ezra Fleischer’s influential The Yoẓer: its emergence
and development (Ha-Yotserot be-Hithawwutam we-Hitpatchutam, 1984).
However, should Samuel’s verbal register and his literate playfulness be
set in a much broader perspective than this single genre of piyyut, further
research would be recommended. His oeuvre qualifies him as a gifted
composer whose lyrical achievements need to be studied at the crossroads
of medieval Hebrew poetics and medieval Hebrew linguistics. The Yahalom
and Katsumata edition offers all the necessary means to gain new insights.
Let me finish by quoting Sahlan ben Abraham, who wrote an elegy mourning
the death of Samuel the Third, attributing to him the epithet “an expert in
rhymes,” ‫( ָּב ִקי ַב ֲחרּו ִזים‬baqi va-charuzim). After one thousand years, this
elegant characterization has been restored to its owner.