YITZHAQ HAGORNI

(second half of the thirteenth century)

HaBedershi may not have given him the time of day, or bothered to save his poems, but close readers of Hebrew literature are in agreement that YITZHAQ HAGORNI was by far the more gifted poet. Born in the small and remote town of Aire, in Gascony—closer to the Atlantic than to the Mediterranean—the poet added the Hebrew translation of his hometown (goren, meaning threshing floor) to his name. Though he held Aire in high esteem, he was forced to leave it in search of work and spent most of his adult life wandering through southern France, stopping in Perpignan, Luz en Barège, Lucq, Manosque, Carpentras, Arles, Narbonne, Aix, and Draguignan. HaBedershi describes him as “a meandering man who measured the land.” Lacking anything in the way of a stable home, HaGorni suffered from the elements, poverty, and the contempt of people through whose towns he passed. He often settled his accounts in verse, and many of his poems begin by mentioning the town he is writing about and the treatment he received there. He was, in other words, a poet very much in the mold of the peripatetic troubadour—one who sang for his supper and often went to bed hungry. And as with the troubadour poets (and Meshullam DePiera), music and musical instruments figure prominently in HaGorni’s art. At least at the start, his poetry seems to have been integrally linked to its musical accompaniment.

HaGorni’s somewhat adolescent clash with HaBedershi we have already witnessed. Again, HaGorni’s side of the quarrel hasn’t survived, though we do have his initial poem of entreaty to the man he hoped would be his patron; it was, apparently, far too self-involved to open HaBedershi’s wallet or heart. From this poem we know that HaGorni saw himself as the leading Hebrew poet of his day, whose mission was to carry the banner of the Hebrew language. In his zeal he was willing to put up with considerable humiliation at the hands of his compatriots, who seem to have considered him a bohemian beggar and a nuisance. One poet called him “a drinker and a dancer in taverns,” and he was accused in various towns of having relations with local women—charges he at first denied but later admitted (also in verse).

Given the poet’s energy and the occasional nature of much of his work, it isn’t unreasonable to assume that he must have been a prolific poet and that the lion’s share of his writing has been lost. Only eighteen poems by HaGorni have come down to us. While these employ a familiar Andalusian prosody, and contain the standard self-inflation and mannerism of the time, their spirit and content are, in the Hebrew context, exceptional in every way, and it stands to reason that they were influenced by the Provençal poetry that surrounded the poet. At its best, HaGorni’s poetry is characterized by a singular directness and wholly individualistic power, as in what may have been his final poem, “HaGorni’s Lament.”

WOULD YOU TELL ME

HAGORNI’S LAMENT