Page 265 - גנזי קדם יא

42* Wout van Bekkum

although the Geonic Babylonian academies claimed the same authority and
prevailed in many ways. Samuel’s biography is better documented than
that of any other contemporary hymnist, through a number of epistles and
poems of historical import. Shlomo Dov Goitein has already quoted from
these accounts in his Mediterranean Society, and, similarly, Moshe Gil in
his History of Palestine.

The fashioning of Samuel’s impressive corpus of yotserot is an astonishing
chapter in the history of medieval Jewish hymnography, and it is here that
we encounter lyrical aspects that, in Samuel’s hands, seem to have been
impelled by strong notions of technique and style with a clear awareness
of the historical and religious role of the Hebrew language. How can we
understand Samuel’s personal preference for the quality of expressivity
when it comes to pervasive questions of syntax and idiom or diction and
tone? Current approaches towards lyrical poetry may be helpful in adducing
a number of assumptions related to poems usually composed and read for
the sake of a religious message. To what extent is this message hidden in the
composition, and is a level of symbolic language involved? Are any strong
thoughts or feelings brought forward? If so, to what extent does a listener
or reader have to decipher the contents in order to appreciate the message
and enjoy the description of a given subject? At the surface level, Samuel’s
language is embedded in an elaborate organization of lines and a clear-cut
stanzaic structure. His guf ha-yotser usually consists of four segments,
each of which is concluded with a pizmon strophe. However, compositions
intended for a Sabbath of outstanding thematic importance follow a revised
pattern of tercets with a concluding qadosh refrain, a guf yotser qiqlari, or a
cyclic type of yotser. Remarkably enough, in the extant corpus two parallel
compositions exist for one specific liturgical destination: Sabbath Rosh
Chodesh. The first is structured as a regular guf yotser and the second as a
type of qiqlar. Subsequent segments of the standard yotser composition are
equally subverted by Samuel, who took liberties with the ofan, slightly less
with me’orot and ahavah, but certainly with the zulat and mi kamokha, the
occasional adonay malkenu, and the final we-‘ad matay. At a deeper level
within the variations of this structural framework, Samuel draws on biblical–