Message-Id: <9206041809.AA24903@hsdndev.harvard.edu>
From: JAP.LASPAU@mhsgw.harvard.edu (JAP)
To: CAROLINGIA@BLOOM-BEACON.MIT.EDU (-)
Subject: Re: Party Proposal
Date: Thu, 04 Jun 92 13:45

To: CAROLINGIA


Since he asked...

In the 12th century in Cordoba, the most prevalent poetry was in Arabic, 
mostly because they were the people in charge.  The subject was almost 
always love.  Love, lust, clandestine sex, more love, love, more lust, 
etc...  The poet was usually male, and the object of affection could be 
male or female.  Most, if not all, poems written by female poets have been 
lost.  Bisexuality was considered to be the norm, even for most women 
(especially for harems, who were supposed to "take care of each other" 
while the man was away/occupied).  Poems could be written about just about 
anything else, and often were invented and recited on the spot to placate 
or entertain a Caliph.

I do know that the Jews borrowed a specific poetic form from the Arabs 
(discussed below), but do not know the traditional subject matter.

Spanish language poetry (not Latin church poetry) was pretty sketchy in the 
12th century.  What exists currently is found as the last 3 to 5 lines of 
the much longer Arab "moaxajas" (also Hebrew).  These short "jarchas", 
written in Spanish but with Arabic or Hebrew characters, were meant to be 
sung.  They were all sung by a woman about her lost love, and often the 
woman was singing to her mother.  Over a century later, Spanish language 
poetry quickly bloomed in Galicia (above Portugal) with the "Cantigas de 
Amigo".  These were usually sung by women, and always were about love, 
although not all of them were about lost love (they were a little happier).

Anyhow, if anyone is interested in writing *period* jarchas, s/he should 
know that they were written in a long dead dialect that had a lot of Arabic 
in it, and was still somewhat close to Vernacular Latin.  Also, considering 
that the Visigoths had ruled Spain at the time of the Arab conquest (711) 
there is probably a fair amount of Visigothic (whatever they spoke) in the 
mix.  If anyone would like to do a modern Spanish/English version, I'd be 
happy to help.  I will probably read a jarcha or two in the original 
"Mozarabe" (the name of the dialect", but with a heavy modern Spanish 
accent.

-Siubhan, the font of all 12th century Andalucian wisdom (not)

Pronunciation lesson of the day:

  moaxaja - mow-ahks-AH-*hah (* indicates something between a German ch and
     a french r - or, for those who know it, it is exactly like a European
     Spanish j)

  jarcha - *HAR-chah

  Cordoba - COR-dough-bah (there is an accent over the first o)

  mozarabe - moz-AH-rah-bey

*****************************************************************************
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Date:    Fri, 05 Jun 92  8:08:19 EDT
From: "Yaakov HaMizrachi" <lawbkwn%buacca.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu>
Subject: Poetry
To: carolingia@bloom-beacon.mit.edu

Greetings to all who read this, from
Yaakov.
Jewish poetry seems to have been a bit
more varied than what Suibhan posted.
Islamic Spain saw the development of
Jewish secular poetry (and, as a side
effect, the first really good works of
Hebrew grammar).  Topics of poetry
included love, both spiritual and physical
(some homoerotic stuff, but not as much as
in Islamic poetry); wine; philosophy (Ibn
Ezra's poverty poem is wonderful, as is the
story which caused him to write it....)
and, to a limited extent, war and nationalism.
(Shmuel HaNagid was a commander in the armies
of the Caliph, Yehuda HaLevi was a ferverent Jewish
nationalist.)
Rhyming couplets was a common form of poetry.
This was frequently combined with the
alphabetical accrostic (use all the letters of
the Alphabet in order) or an acrostic of t
author's name.  Some forms had a limited
number of sylables per verse. (ex: Dror Yikra
has 6 verses, each verse has sixteen stressed
syllables and the first letter of the four lines
of every verse spell the authors first name.

Good poets did more complicated things.
Ex: A column of Hebrew, a column of Arabic, and
a column of araic lined up next to each other.
Read each column down, it's a poem.  Read them
accross, they're a different poem.
Poetry was frequently a way for an aspiring
Jew to rise into a noble court and earn
a good living.  Many poets also had other
professions.

In Service,
Yaakov