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Selected Poems of Shmuel HaNagid

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Cole's translations of the poet Shmuel Hanagid, long ranked as one of the great untranslatables of medieval Hebrew poetry for his packed, punning and allusive lines, is a kind of miracle of transhistorical perfect pitch. The poems can be savored for the richness and variety of their diction on a piecemeal basis, but when the book is read whole, a man emerges with remarkable amplitude and roundness. This is a translation that ranks up there with those of Robert Fitzgerald. For all lovers of poetry, medieval studies, or the difficult art of translation, I say grab this book and savor it

This book sat on my shelf for years until I turned to it in a search of a specific poem concerning the 1013 sack of Cordoba. Unfortunately, that particular work is not included.

Nevertheless, this is an extraordinary collection of magnificent translations. The poems are as bright and fresh as far more famous classics, and the best contemporary works.

The first piece, "On Fleeing his City," is particularly heartrending. HaNagid opens, "Spirit splits in its asking,/ and soul wanting is balked;" and continues to deride those who mistake his "pitching from place to place,/ my hair wild, my eyes/ charcoaled with night--" as the results of "ease or gain."

He then pinions them as men whom "not a one speaks wisely,/ their souls blunted, or blurred,/ goat-footed thinkers."

But he rises above his tormentors, vowing to "sew the edge of desert to desert,/ and split the sea/ and every gorge,/ and sail in mountainous ascent,/ until the word 'forever' makes sense..." and "your soul which He loves be delivered,/ and the God of sentence/ send aegis,/ both beyond the sun and the moon."

Many short poems glint with wisdom of the ages. For example:

In business, don't get involved
with a man who tells all he knows;
if he can't keep track of a word,
how could you trust him with gold?

And the collection also offers many longer poems, including the second of HaNagid's 41 battle works, "The Victory over Seville," a "psalm of praise" to God, composed on Erev Sukkot, 1039, upon the miraculous defeat of Ben Abbad, the son of Seville's qadi (Islamic judge), whose followers had "slandered my people," "weakened and crushed them" and "divided their plunder,/ casting lots for their lands..." and who had "thought us already their chattel...."

HaNagid also writes of friends, and children, of his brother Isaac, of gardens and trees, and his forced exile from his home, which he describes as

"...ink
in God's book
across my soul, and every shore;
and all on whom wandering is
written...."

This is truly delightful work. All poetry lovers should read it.

--Alyssa A. Lappen