Songs of Sion. Galevi Jehuda

“The star of his era”, “the sun of his people”, “the first of the poets” “a huge, miraculous, fiery pillar of art” called the outstanding Jewish poet, philosopher and doctor Jehudu Galevi (1075-1141) the great German poet Heinrich Heine.

Galevi was born somewhere in Castile, education received education in the Arab part of Spain in Cordoba, already at the age of 13 wrote poems that amaze contemporaries. He later created the famous poem “Zion, already about the faithful, who is captivated by you, | You won’t ask. ”, Having laid the foundation for the whole genre of Jewish classical poetry - the songs of Zion, or, as they are also called, Zionids.

What was Jehuda Galevi, the great poet of the Jewish Golden Age in Muslim Spain, and and What are the poems that brought him unfading glory, the book “Songs of Zion” tells about this. Translations of the poems by Jehuda Galevi into Russian, made by Shlomo Krole, for the first time reflected all the features of the nun poetics - the medieval sizes and laws of rhyme, borrowed from the Arab poetry of the path and figures, rich in biblical allusions. The cycle “Song of Zion” introduces the reader to the pearls of the Jewish national lyrics of the XII century, which inspired poets of subsequent generations and encouraged to compose their own poems, based on these samples.

In addition to the “Song of Zion”, the Zionids of other authors were included , works about Jehude Galevi, some of which are published in Russian for the first time, as well as scientific articles. They talk about the literary life of Jews in the Middle Ages; The facts of the poet’s biography are recreated on the basis of the latest searches of Israeli scientists who studied ancient manuscripts; It is shown how the poetic genre of Zionida changed over time and what resonance found in the reading public; Other genres that existed in the Hebrew poetry of the “Golden Age” were considered: poems about love passion, feasts, panegirics and friendly messages, poetry poems, synagogue poetry (Piyuti) and others.

In our time the Middle Ages often often He comes to life on the pages of postmodern novels and short stories, which are a bizarre mixture of fiction with genuine scientific data. Modern Serbian author Milorad Pavich, one of the pillars of postmodernism, made Jehudu Galevi the acting face of his “Khazar dictionary”, and his philosophical composition “Cuzari” was one of his subtexts. The reader's curiosity, awakened by the artistic word, directs our interest in the primary sources - literary and historical monuments of the Middle Ages, colorful and multifaceted, rich in thought and works of elegant literature, the Middle Ages, which prevailed not so long for prejudice sometimes called “dark.”