That Hebrew poetry has a strophic arrangement is generally taken for granted as self-evident. The
• Die Projihftm in Hirer urspriingHchfn Form, 2 vols., Wien, ISOO, StropJii^nltan und RegjMjnsion, Wien, IS'JS, MiilleKe system has been adolitcd and contributions made in support of it by F. Perles. Xtir neb. Ulrophik, Wien, 180C, and J, K. Zenner, Die Chorgeaiinge im Buche der t'sabnen, 2 parts, Freiburg L B, IbiW.
POETRY (HEBREW)
POETRY (HEBREW)
ii;^lit to make this assumption is open, however, to serious question. It scarcely needs to be proved tliat there is s\ich a thing as poetry that makes up verses but not stroplies. But in tliis ease tlio postulate of strophes is already satisfied before- hand. For the parallel verse is really a strophe, a higher unit produced hy the union of smaller units, the lines. No metrical forms are shown by experience to resist more the reduction to a stropliic formation tlian such double structures which have an inward completeness of their own. It may sultice to remind the reader of the two- menibered alliterative verse of the Old German poetry and the dactylic distich of the Greeks and Komans. Upon this ground one may not, indeed, be able to dispute the possibility of strophes of a higher order, but in all probability these will form the exception, and parallel verses without any further union will be the rule.
Further, the strophe-theory finds, at all events, no support from traditiun. In particular, the term n'jD (appended 71 times in the Psalms and in Hab3) cannot be urged in its favour. Xo significance attaches to the so-called alphabetical poems, a species of acrostics in which the letters K-n are made to succeed one another at the opening of sections of equal length. These prove, as was emphasized above (p. i'^), the presence of stichoi (in Pss 111, 112), but nothing more. If we can dis- tinguish the single stichos, we can also count, according to the length designed for the poem, two (Pss 25. 34. 145, Pr 31">-3i) or four (Ps 9 f . 37) stichoi, and, if the /iiwnA-measure is an established fact (cf. La 3, where each verse bears a letter, but each letter is repealed three times), we may include two (La 4) or three (La 1. 2) of these verses under a single letter. At most it may be said that the verse as a unit is witnessed to when in Ps 119 the same letter commences eight successive verses of two lines each. But this is yet a long waj' from the same thing as a strophe of eight verses or sixteen lines.*
It is generally left entirely out of sight that any new metrical unit miLst lia\e a new formative medium. No one thinks of proving the existence of the latter. True, indeed, one framework of this kind is occasionally to be encountered in the OT, namely, the recurring verse or refrain. It must be admitted that this is in a high degree adapted to mark off strophes, especially when, as in Ps42f. (42*- " 43'), at regular intervals it interrupts a sharply defined measure in the other verses by a dillerent structure of verse. With always diminish- ing strength and imi)ortance the refrain occurs, further, in Pss 80. 40. 39. 57. 59. 49. 99. 56. 62. 67. But even if one were disposed to assvime and carry through a fixed strophic structure in all these poems, upon the ground of the refrain, after all only about a dozen of the hundreds of Heb. poems would have been proved to be strophic, while the conclusion regarding the others must at best be to the etlect that they are not constructed strophically.
As a special basis for the division into strophes, it is the custom simply to fall back everywhere upon the contents. A metric strophe is supposed to coincide with a section constituted by the sense, the sup|)Osition being that the poet divided his material into sections whose length, in virtue of certain rules, showed a rhytliniical correspondence with one another. This assumption, however, is
• A device or a precisely similar kind has lately been shown to exist in the Bab.-Assyr. literature {ZA, x. 1ft.). Kvery Hth time the same syllable stands at the commencement of a two- inemt)ered verse, and the initial syllables of 25 sections each of 11 verses form a connected sentence. Yet Zimniern does Dot think of taking each of these lon^ sections as a stroptie, but concludes that every two verses make a stroplie (of 4 lines), and that the 11th verse always stands by it.self. It may be modestly asked whether each verse should not rather be taken by i lai If and the strophic structure ^iven up.
all the harder, since the contents have alrcadj done their part in the formation of the parallel verse. Not only so, but this verj- parallelism gives to Heb. poetry in general the impression of aphor- isms linked togetlier, and renders it extremely difficult for the poet to exhibit a finely-articulated strictly progressive development of thought. Still the possibility of the nearest and easiest approach to this may be conceded, namely, that a single repetition of the parallelism, combining two verses of two lines, might fall rhythmically upon the ear, and that at the same time an idea seemed to exhaust itself in two parallel verses. * Deeper- reaching divisions of tlie sense could scarcely succeed in striking the ear as rhythmic units.