Pirḥe ha-aviv (Spring Flowers)

Introduction

This small volume which I now present to you, my fellow readers, is an offshoot of the numerous saplings that I have planted for myself over the course of many days, nay years; for ever since the time when I attained adulthood, I have toiled away and worn myself out so as to be of benefit to my younger brethren in every way I could; for who is there who cannot feel pain for this nation, the understanding of whose sages has remained concealed for so long? Like cast-out paupers, they gather gleanings and forgotten sheaves of corn in the corners of the fields of others. All this is on account of the transgression of those fools who bound themselves with a bond not to open their eyes to perceive the light of wisdom and of the sciences. They drive a wise man off their backs—they cry out against him as though he were a thief; and one who employs elegant language is deemed by them a great sinner!

But while I was still in my youth, and my soul yearned for the Hebrew language and its mellifluous expressions, I raised my hands unto the Most High God, and uttered a vow, as follows: “If Your right hand will assist me in assembling a full hand of ears of the grain of understanding plucked from the fields of discernment, I shall wave them as a sacred offering to the Almighty, and offer them in thanksgiving for acceptance by the young folk. Let them eat the flesh of the bulls and be sated from their fine taste, so that their souls may bless me when the time arrives for them likewise to take a vow to bring the first fruits of reason as an offering to future generations.”

However, as I could not bring along to the publishing house all the poems and prose works that I had among my writings, so as to avoid adding to my expenses a burden that I would be unable to bear, I have chosen, for the time being, to publish the small quantity of material which is now before you, while the remaining mass of material, laid up in store with me, I shall publish in days to come if the Almighty will be with me, to preserve me in life as at this day. Now this little volume includes both poems and prose. Of the poems, some are the fruits of my reflections on various occasions, times when my thoughts meandered to and fro in exploration of the deeds of the Almighty and the spirit of the muse asserted itself within me, and some are translations from foreign languages; in regard to such poems as have been translated, I have recorded on the sheet below the names of the original authors. And as for the prose writings now presented to you, good reader, in the format of letters written by one man to another, do not imagine that they deal with business affairs and the like, for I have not set out with the objective of teaching the members of my nation the rules regarding the construction of letters pertaining to business affairs, but rather, my aim has simply been to improve linguistic style and raise moral standards, and to walk in the light of the intellect, which the fools—those who have regard for lying vanities—have rejected; or to clarify the meaning of a particular verse or idea appearing in the sacred writings or of an epigram of our rabbis of blessed memory. And since I have written the major part of the matters comprised in these compositions for the benefit of my friendly coreligionists, some of them with a view to offering them guidance, and others to inform them of my opinions and to elicit their opinions, they have inevitably emanated from me in the form of letters, and I had no desire to alter their format. In addition to this, there is the fact that this work does not, in its entirety, lead toward a single overriding purpose and goal, but rather, each letter is to be treated as an independent entity.

Now I will not deny, I fully acknowledge, that I will not escape the slander of many linguistic experts. Some of these will find fault with my poems, and others with my letters, for the following two reasons: a) with the poems, as I have not conformed to the rules governing syllables and have not trodden the path of those who have regard to the final product, to make the rugged parts level, so as to enable oxen to be placed there, and to substitute a donkey for a cow, to place it on a mountain of myrrh; for of what importance is the even metrical balance of syllables to the genuine interpreter, who will set his focus upon the merit of the idea being conveyed? What extra benefit can precision in the number of syllables employed confer upon him if the contents of the poem are totally lacking in spirit? The essence of a poem lies within itself, in its subject matter and in the lucidity of its expression—and as for the syllables and the rhyming stanzas, it is up to the poet to handle these at his discretion, one individual producing these in greater measure, and another in lesser degree, so long as he does not spoil the beauty of the style—on the contrary, the even balances of the syllables are in fact like gates and bars impeding access into the ideas of the composer of the poem; accordingly, I have not been particular over them, or over the metrical balance of the various stanzas in places where my hand grew short as it were, as I had seen that the overall style and mode of expression would be ruined because of them (as the reader may see in the middle of the poem entitled “Solitude”), so as to allow the wings of my ideas to soar to whatsoever destination the spirit of the poem had the desire to travel; and besides this, these conventions do not have their source within our sacred writings, but have been bequeathed to us from the languages of foreign nations; b) insofar as the prose writings are concerned, the critics’ complaint will be that I have on numerous occasions employed words not found in the twenty-four sacred books of the Bible, but rather in the Mishnah, and sometimes in the Talmud. However, who is not aware of the poverty of our language, on account of the destruction of the works of antiquity, and that only a tiny fraction out of a great multitude of literary works have been left to us? Are not the twenty-four sacred books those which Divine Providence has preserved for us for a great deliverance, for it is they that constitute the essence of our religion, which has been set fully in order and preserved for eternity, while the remaining works, of a secular nature, perished by human hand, just like the works of the other nations of antiquity who suffered numerous exiles and enforced wanderings, as we did (and this constitutes a valid proof as to the Providence of the Almighty and of the sanctity of these books). It was as a result of the loss of our remaining literature that the vocabulary of our language became diminished. It became a dead language, one which was not spoken. Why, therefore, should we not supplement it with the numerous fresh words to be found in the books of the Mishnah and the Talmud, with a view to the enhancement of the Holy Tongue? Were the ancients not more familiar with the language than we are? Go forth and consider those nations whose languages are still living, how they are daily adding words from other languages. Should we, the Children of Israel, then be ashamed to accept what our ancestors, the Sages, had already established and accepted for themselves? Such a notion can only spring from an evil heart! In conclusion, then, I have written in a manner faithful to my ideas, and anyone wishing to accept them from me may gladly do so, and as for anyone who is not of similar inclination, let him act in accordance with whatever he may desire.

This small offering which I am now presenting to you was composed and completed while I was in my youth, in the springtime of my life, for I am now twenty-six years of age, and the majority of the things written here are already antiquated so far as I am concerned. It is for this reason that I determined, advisedly, to give this work the title Pirḥe he-aviv (Spring Blossoms), to serve both as a memorial to me and as a pointer to the critic who, in case he comes along with a view to censuring me, will be able to take a look at the title of the book and say: “These are merely spring blossoms—let them be, and one may hope that their author will, in the fullness of time, bethink himself to increase the power of his literary abilities so that his next offering will be superior to this!” These are the words of him who loves all who seek the good.