"Rhymes So Good the Likes of Which Have Not Been Seen in all the Land of Spain": Meir of Norwich and Friendship Poetry

Shamma Boyarin

Early Middle English, Volume 1, Number 2, 2019, pp. 67-71 (Article)

Published by Arc Humanities Press

For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/732812

[ Access provided at 29 Sep 2021 13:36 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] “RHYMES SO GOOD THE LIKES OF WHICH HAVE NOT BEEN SEEN IN ALL THE LAND OF SPAIN”: MEIR OF NORWICH AND FRIENDSHIP POETRY

SHAMMA BOYARIN

about Meir of Norwich, “Meir b. Elijah of Norwich: Persecution and Poetry Among Medieval English Jews,” Susan Einbinder notes that Meir’s poetics isIn “aher stubbornly essay individualistic blend of two distinct traditions”—that is, in some ways it aligns with the poetic traditions of the German–Northern French poets; in others, with the poets of Spain.1 She further speculates that “this hybrid style - sion of the Jews of England brought an end to this community and its develop- ingmight culture have inevolved 1290. into In keeping a unique with type her of Hebrewobservations, composition” I will show had here not the that expul Meir portrayed himself poetically as part of a social network, albeit a very limited one, of the Hebrew poets of Spain. While this of course neither proves nor disproves Einbinder’sconstructed bytheory and modelledabout a growing after the community social networks of Anglo-Hebrew that enabled thepoets, flourishing I argue community, if only in verse. thatThe this most Spanish relevant influence of Meir’s supports poems the are idea found that on Meir folios strove 116v andto construct 117r of Vatican such a Library MS Hebrew 402.2

Meir’s first piece in this manuscript consists of a series -to be (When individual I Recall poems, My Com each כזברי את seem ידידי of sixteen quatrains. These quatrains initially panion).marked byOnly its when own poeticone reads trick this (of second which poemmore doesin a moment).it become Theclear quatrains that the pre are- then followed by a poem with the first line - andceding both quatrains were penned are part by of Meir a single of Norwich. poem, and, These in fact,two thatpoems, the then,two units form are a small con cycle,nected: and the I arguelatter poemthat they offers belong an explanation to a genre commonof the former in the sixteen poetics-quatrain of the Spanish poem, shirei yedidut). Part) שירי ידידות Jews, a panegyric known as the friendship poem or of a class of Jews who could support poets writing in Hebrew, a patronage system of what allowed the flourishing of Hebrew poetry in Spain was the development

1 Susan L. Einbinder, “Meir b. Elijah of Norwich: Persecution and Poetry Among Medieval English Jews,” Journal of Medieval History 26, no. 2 (2012): 145–62 at 151. 2 A. . Habermann edited and published all known poems by Meir of Norwich as an appendix to V. D. Lipman, The Jews of Medieval Norwich (London: The Jewish Historical Society of England, 1967). It should be noted that these poems appear scattered among two different manuscripts, and even in the manuscripts themselves they are not located all together. Further, vowels are not impacts meter. marked. I rely here on Habermann’s edition for the vowels. This is significant because vowelling 68 Shamma Boyarin modelled after the system employed in the Muslim world of the time.3 One function of the friendship poem as a genre was to thank patrons and encode networks of patronage into one’s writing.4 Meir’s small poem cycle seems to function in a simi- lar fashion. anonymous companion and notes that the good deeds this friend has performed on the Inpoet’s the secondbehalf havepoem, stimulated “When I Recall the desire My Companion,” to form a covenant Meir reflects with him; on the however, titular ashe partcannot of makingfind sheep a covenant or fattened with calves God in with the Bible,which such to perform covenant the making ritual. wasThis, not of partcourse, of Jewishis a literary custom—and conceit. Whilecertainly Meir not alludes in the to Middle how animal Ages. So sacrifice Meir devises was used an appropriate substitute: “My thoughts answered,” writes, “that I should butcher / Meir] into sixteen parts.”5] מאיר my name

י ,() א ,(mem) מ :beginning and ending with the letters of his name in order -sixteen (mem quatrains,mem), the each sec ממis, out of the four letters of his name Meir forms his ר yod),That) מא ond with (); thus, the first couplet starts and ends with (mem aleph), and so on, to yield the sixteen quatrains that precede “When I Recall My Companion” in Vatican MS Hebrew 402. Further, and a significant somepart of places the second where poem, he was in forced which toMeir break reflects his form, on his for friend example: or patron, is dedicated to the challenges Meir he faced in writing the first sixteen-quatrain poem, including

And in the sixth part a is missing, Since two do not fuse when .will replace her ה At the end of a word, so And:

,ר The last of the pieces is missing a For in verses there is no word

3 See J. Schirmann, “The Function of the Hebrew Poet in Medieval Spain,” Jewish Social Studies 16, no. 3 (1954): 235–52 at 236. 4 Another was to praise one’s peers, i.e., other poets. Both kinds of poems served to create a literary network amongst the school of Spanish Hebrew poets. 5 All translations are my own. 69 meir of norwich and friendship poetry 6רר With two reshes at its head, except for

He even notes that three(But of she the for words a letter he of must love substituteis not fitting). are taken from the Talmud, of Spain used in their poetry. While Meir has to break his formal principle,another indication the fact that that he he lists is influenced this as a break by medieval is telling. Spanish Further, poetics, he explains as the that, poets in addition to using the letters of his first name to frame the poem,

Meir inside it And the name of my father and his signs written. You will find my name - ters of the middle words in each line, to spell out: Meir son of Rabbi Elijah the Seer. ThatHaving is, in the signed final hisquatrain name hein hasthis addedway, Meir another compares acrostic, the created poem bycreated the first by letthe placement of the letters of his name on both sides of each line to one of the most sig- the pieces”: “And it came to pass that, when the sun went down, and there was thick nificant covenant-making moments in the Bible, known as “the covenant between pieces” (Gen 15:17). In this biblical episode, Abraham has followed God’s command todarkness, cut up several behold animals—a a smoking furnace,heifer, a she-goat,and a flaming and atorch ram, that and passedthe covenant between is sealed these between the pieces of the animals. In the last line of “When I Recall My Companion,” when God’s fire (the furnace and torch) consumes the sacrifice while Abraham is that he has written for his benefactor: Meir explicitly links the covenant of the pieces to the act of reading the quatrains

If you, my friend, pass through its pieces,

My covenant with you is made and fixed. benefactor allows Meir to develop this rich allusion, based on the covenant of the pieces,The conceit and theof not resulting being ableidea toof findthe poet a suitable butchering animal his to name make and a covenant using the with pieces his to form a poem that he can gift to a friend is a suggestive one. Meir, with an allusion - tionship a divine one. thatIn is addition both self to-confident a high degree and self of -rhetoricaleffacing, in sophistication, this way makes Meir’s the poet two-poem-patron cyclerela - works. In addition to the poems’ underlying narrative structure, the creative acros- ticdemonstrates strategy unpacked a remarkable in the refinement previous paragraph in terms ofresonates its use of with poetic the forms poetics and of net the

.rir means “pus” or “discharge” in English ,רר 6 70 Shamma Boyarin skills by composing whole poems with similar limitations, such as starting each line school of the Jews of Spain, where authors frequently showcased their technical poem—usedwith the same anywhere letter, avoiding else ina specificmedieval letter Hebrew throughout, poetry, and however, so on. Iand have the not result seen Meir’s specific formal device—using predetermined letters to frame each line of a- bornly individualistic” one drawing on multiple traditions including, but not limited would therefore seem to confirm Einbender’s view that his approach was a “stub - ersto, Spanishdo not. poetics. Similarly, while some of Meir’s sixteen quatrains employ the preciseOne quantitativeof the functions metrical of the system friendship developed poem genre by the here, Hebrew I think, poets is to of discursively Spain, oth construct the school of Hebrew poetry in Spain, where creators (the poets) and sup- porters (the patrons) are written into the tradition through the poems dedicated to them. We can certainly understand Meir’s poems, even in this brief overview, as his attempt to construct an English school of Hebrew poetry from mixed traditions that include and evoke the Spanish. It is of course impossible to speculate about where Anglo-Hebrew poetry might have gone from there had it not been interrupted. In Vatican Hebrew MS 402, however, a contemporary marginal assessment can be found after the cycle I have just discussed: חרוזות לא היו כמותן בכל ארץ ספרד לטובה Rhymes so good, the likes of which have not been found even in all of the land of Spain.7

7 Meir’s poetry is found. Free digital access to Vatican MS Hebrew 402 is now possible via the online DigiVatLibMy thanks (DVL to ),Pinchas at https://digi.vatlib.it Roth for sending (searchme scanned “Vat.ebr.402”). microfilm pages from the manuscripts where 71 meir of norwich and friendship poetry SHAMMA BOYARIN is Director of Religious Studies at the University of Victoria, where he also teaches in the English Department and the Medieval Studies Program. His research interests include medieval Jewish literature of Spain, the Near East, and England; comparative literature (Hebrew and ); translation studies; and connec- tions between religion and pop culture. His recent publications include “The Contexts of the Hebrew Secret of Secrets” in Trajectoires européennes du Secret des secrets du Pseudo-Aristote Alexander, Aristotle, and the Medieval Jewish Audience” in Alexander the Great in the (2015), “Hebrew Alexander Romances and Astrological Questions: Middle Ages (2016), and “‘Changing the Order of Creation’: The Toldot Ben Sira Disrupts the Canon” in Talmudic Transgressions (2017).

Abstract: This short essay explores Susan Einbinder’s observation that the poetics of the poetic schools of both Ashkenaz and Sepharad. Boyarin argues that Meir was discur- the medieval Anglo-Jewish poet Meir of Norwich show a unique mix of borrowing from sively creating a school of Anglo-Hebrew poetics, one that he imagined drew from both of these established schools. Focused on two linked poems dedicated to an anonymous poem—that was at the heart of the medieval Hispano-Hebrew poetic school and argues benefactor, this essay shows how Meir used a specific genre of poetry—the friendship that Meir was constructing a (perhaps aspirational) English parallel.

Keywords: Meir of Norwich, Anglo-Jewish literature, friendship poems, Spanish Jews, Vatican MS Hebrew 402