Jewish Poetry and Homeland

I am a master's student in music composition, and for more that a year off and on, I've been working on a song cycle about the refugee experience. I started the project with an idea in mind, that I wanted to use poetry that was Jewish in nature and yet universal, and which reflected the feelings of many diaspora refugees I have known. More specifically, I wanted to find poetry that conveyed a sentiment of longing for the place the refugee left, the lost homeland.

This turned out to be more difficult than expected. You see, there has been a formula used in Jewish diaspora poetry which seemed almost universal. You see, homeland must refer to Israel. Always. I'm not going to cite poets right here and now, because it's been a while, and this is not an academic treatise on the subject. And I want to finish the post before Shabbes. I suppose I could have written my own, but as Tzipporah says, I should keep my day job and leave lyrics to the professionals.

But I lucked out. I found an amazing book of poetry by marrano (converso) authors. [A side discussion about whether they were actually jewish might be interesting.] The book is Marrano Poets of the Seventeenth Century, and in it are several works by some amazing poets. I found the works of Antonio Enríquez Gómez to be particularly inspiring. He was a man who fled the Spanish Inquisition, and wound up in France. Eventually, for unknown reasons, he went back to Spain and was imprisoned, and died awaiting trial. One particularly moving epic is the Ballad in honor of the divine martyr, Judah the Believer, martyred at Valladolid at the hands of the Inquisition. In three parts, it covers the martyr's execution, an argument for following Torah, and a prophecy that will stand your hair on end. One day I will set this piece as a monumental work, when I am a better composer than I am now. This poem will blow you away.

It was another poem, When I consider that glorious past of mine, that was exactly what I needed. It is a long poem and I chose the following stanzas. (These translations are by Oelman; I set the Spanish text.) Some time in the future I will link to a recording. So far only a few individual songs (one per stanza) have been performed, and it will only be performed in its entirety next winter.



"To Thessaly I would go and suffer there

(so as to erase the visions of the beast)

The one who lights the day to consume me.

When I consider that glorious past of mine

Where I am found no more, the remembrance

Of my state, I fear, is bound to die with me.

I mourn my homeland, from her I am absent,

An accident of birth must have been its cause—

The cross of origin the unsuspecting bear

I left behind my sweet and tender dwelling

And left behind my free will with my soul,

For on foreign soil I stand bereft of all.

Such a bird my homeland was, but who would say

That it should be without the nest of my soul

And that it should lose the wings of my love?

Laughing, I went off to a different clime,

Fondly imagining, like a tender child,

That what I was seeing was my own homeland.

In an instant I found myself surrounded

by more Babels than on the plain of Shinar

that giant of unyielding pride constructed.

I speak and they do not understand me; this

I feel so keenly that I am struck dumb,

Sweeping aside, unsure, my understanding."

Text quoted from:
Oelman, Timothy, ed. and trans., Marrano Poets of the Seventeenth Century: an anthology of the Poetry of João Pinto Delgado, Antonio Enríquez Gómez, and Miguel de Barrios. The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. Rutherford, Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh University Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1982.