On Life’s Deception and Disillusion

Daniel Levi de Barrios

ca. 1665

Sonnet IX

Sad is the man who forgets God
without waking from the dream of his error,
and of the evil that awaits him is never aware
until his sin of his death is the cause.
In his obstinate and unfelt sin,
the uncertain pleasure that diverts him
is a treacherous friend that causes his death
through the very delight of living.
Happy is the one who to himself justly denies
the vain world that to harm him seeks
and where death in life he receives.
For of the one that the world injures for being humble
it cannot be said that he then lives
because he has no life until death he endures.

Translated by
David
Herman
.
Print portrait of seated figure with a dragon under his feet and an angel above him, next to an armed figure standing and holding a flag, and a boy pointing to the angel, with Spanish text around the edge and in several places in the scene.
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This phantasmagoric portrait of poet and playwright Daniel Levi (Miguel) de Barrios and his family is from Imperio de Dios en la harmonia del mundo (God’s Empire in the Harmony of the World), a messianic vision in verse of the future of the universe.

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Credits

Daniel Levi de Barrios, “Al engaño y desengaño de la vida” (On Life’s Deception and Disillusion),” in Flor de Apolo by Miguel de Barrios (i.e. Daniel Levi de Barrios) (Bruxelles: Baltasar Vivien, 1665), 201. Republished in: Antología Sefaradí, 1492–1700: Respuesta Literaria de Los Hebreos Españoles a La Expulsión de 1492, ed. María del Carmen Artigas (Madrid: Editorial Verbum, 1997), 120.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 5.

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Creator Bio

Daniel Levi de Barrios

1635–1701

A poet and playwright, Daniel Levi (Miguel) de Barrios was considered the greatest poet among Western Sephardic Jews. He was born in Montilla, Andalucía, to a family of New Christians. In the 1650s, he returned to Judaism in Livorno. For some time, however, he lived as a Catholic in Brussels, which was under Spanish rule, and he received the rank of captain in the Spanish army. In 1662, de Barrios settled in Amsterdam but occasionally traveled to Brussels, despite the prohibition imposed by the Sephardic Jewish community. He also became a follower of Shabbetai Tzvi. Some of de Barrios’s books were published in Brussels under the name Miguel Barrios, his Christian name, to the dismay of the syndics of the Amsterdam Jewish community. His poetry was influenced by the Spanish Baroque style. Among his writings are historical works about the Sephardic community of Amsterdam, with attention to its personalities and institutions.

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