CHAPTER IX

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THE SONG OF SONGS.

The praise of the virtuous woman, at the close of the Proverbs, is given a Jahvist turn by verse 30: "Favour is deceitful and beauty vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised." But the Solomonists also had their ideas of the virtuous woman, and of beauty, these being beautifully expressed in a series of dramatic idylls entitled The Song of Songs. To this latter, in the original title, is added, "which is Solomon's"; and it confirms what has been said concerning the superstitious awe of everything proceeding from Solomon, and the dread of insulting the Holy Spirit of Wisdom supernaturally lodged in him, that we find in the Bible these passionate love songs. And indeed Solomon must have been superlatively wise to have written poems in which his greatness is slightly ridiculed. That of course would be by no means incredible in a man of genuine wisdom--on the contrary would be characteristic--if other conditions were met by the tradition of his authorship.

At the outset, however, we are confronted by the question whether the Song of Songs has any general coherency or dramatic character at all. Several modern critics of learning, among them Prof. Karl Budde and the late Edward Reuss, find the book a collection of unconnected lyrics, and Professor Cornill of Königsberg has added the great weight of his name to that opinion (Einleitung in das Alte Testament. 1891). Unfortunately Professor Cornill's treatment is brief, and not accompanied by a complete analysis of the book. He favors as a principle Reuss's division of Canticles into separate idylls, and thinks most readers import into this collection of songs an imaginary system and significance. This is certainly true of the "allegorical" purport, aim, and religious ideas ascribed to the book, but Professor Cornill's reference to Herder seems to leave the door open for further treatment of the Song of Songs from a purely literary standpoint. He praises Herder's discernment in describing the book as a string of pearls, but passes without criticism or denial Herder's further view that there are indications of editorial modifications of some of the lyrics. For what purpose? Herder also pointed out that various individualities and conditions are represented. This indeed appears undeniable: here are prince and shepherd, the tender mother, the cruel brothers, the rough watchman, the dancer, the bride and bridegroom. The dramatis personæ are certainly present: but is there any drama?

Admitting that there was no ancient Hebrew theatre, the question remains whether among the later Hellenic Jews the old songs were not arranged, and new ones added, in some kind of Singspiele or vaudeville. There seems to be a chorus. It is hardly consistent with the general artistic quality of the compilation that the lady should say "I am swarthy but comely," or "I am a lily of the valley" (a gorgeous flower). Surely the compliments are ejaculations of the chorus. And may we not ascribe to a chorus the questions, "Who is this that cometh up out of the wilderness?" etc. (iii. 6-10.) "What is thy beloved more than another beloved"? (v. 9.) "Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved"? (viii. 5).

As in the modern vaudeville songs are often introduced without any special relation to the play, so we find in Canticles some songs that might be transposed from one chapter to another without marring the work, but is this the case with all of them? The song in the first chapter, for instance, in which the damsel, brought by the King into his palace, tells the ladies of the home she left, and of maltreatment by her brothers, who took her from her own vineyard and made her work in theirs, where she was sunburnt,--this could not be placed effectively at the end of the book, nor the triumphant line, "My vineyard, which is mine own, is before me," be set at the beginning. This is but one of several instances that might be quoted. Even pearls may be strung with definite purpose, as in a rosary, and how perfectly set is the great rose,--the hymn to Love in the final chapter! Or to remember Professor Cornill's word Scenenwechsel, along with his affirmation that the love of human lovers is the burden of the "unrivalled" book, there are some sequences and contrasts which do convey an impression of dissolving views, and occasionally reveal a connexion between separate tableaux. For example the same words (which I conjecture to be those of a chorus) are used to introduce Solomon in pompous palanquin with grand escort, that are presently used to greet the united lovers.

"Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness like pillars of smoke?" (iii. 6.)

"Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness Leaning on her beloved?" (viii. 5.)

These are five chapters apart, yet surely they may be supposed connected without Hineininterpretation. Any single contrast of this kind might be supposed a mere coincidence, but there are two others drawn between the swarthy maiden and the monarch. The tableau of Solomon in his splendor dissolves into another of his Queen Mother crowning him on the day of his espousal: that of Shulamith leaning on her beloved dissolves into another of her mother pledging her to her lover in espousals under an apple tree. And then we find (viii. 11, 12) Solomon's distant vineyards tended by many hirelings contrasted with Shulamith's own little vineyard tended by herself.

The theory that the book is a collection of bridal songs, and that the mention of Solomon is due to an eastern custom of designating the bridegroom and bride as Solomon and Queen Shulamith, during their honeymoon, does not seem consistent with the fact that in several allusions to Solomon his royal state is slighted, whereas only compliments would be paid to a bridegroom. Moreover the two--Shulamith and Solomon--are not as persons named together. It will, I think, appear as we proceed that the Shelomoh (Solomon) of Canticles represents a conventionalisation of the monarch, with some traits not found in any other book in the Bible. A verse near the close, presently considered, suggests that the bride and bridegroom are at that one point metaphorically pictured as a Solomon and Solomona, indicating one feature of the Wise Man's conventionalization.

Renan assigned Canticles the date B. C. 992-952, mainly because in it Tirza is coupled with Jerusalem. Tirza was a capital only during those years, and at any later period was too insignificant a town to be spoken of as in the Song vi. 4:

"Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, Comely as Jerusalem, Dazzling as bannered ranks."

But the late Russell Martineau, a thorough and unbiassed scholar, points out in the work phrases from Greek authors of the third century B. C., and assigns a date not earlier than 247-222. [19] But may it not be that the Alexandrian of the third century built on some earlier foundation, as Shakespeare adapted the "Pound of Flesh" and the "Three Caskets" (Merchant of Venice) from tales traceable as far back as early Buddhist literature? or as Marlowe and Goethe used the mediæval legend of Faustus?

The several songs can hardly be assigned to one and the same century. The coupling of Tirza and Jerusalem points to a remote past for that particular lyric, and is it credible that any Jew after Josiah's time could have written the figleafless songs so minutely descriptive of Shulamith's physical charms? Could any Jewish writer of the third century before our era have written iv. 1-7 or vii. 1-9, regarding no name or place as too sacred to be pressed into his hyperboles of rapture at every detail of the maiden's form, and have done this in perfect innocency, without a blush? Or if such a poet could have existed in the later Jahvist times, would his songs have found their place in the Jewish canon? As it was the book was admitted only with a provision that no Jew under thirty years of age should read it. That it was included at all was due to the occult pious meanings read into it by rabbins, while it is tolerably certain that the realistic flesh-painting would have been expunged but for sanctions of antiquity similar to those which now protect so many old classics from expurgation by the Vice Societies. These songs, sensuous without sensuality, with their Oriental accent, seem ancient enough to have been brought by Solomon from Ophir.

On the other hand a critical reader can hardly ascribe the whole book to the Solomonic period. The exquisite exaltation of Love, as a human passion (viii. 6, 7), brings us into the refined atmosphere amid which Eros was developed, and it is immediately followed by a song that hardly rises above doggerel (viii. 8, 9). This is an interruption of the poem that looks as if suggested by the line that follows it (first line of verse 10) and meant to be comic. It impresses me as a very late interpolation, and by a hand inferior to the Alexandrian artist who in style has so well matched the more ancient pieces in his literary mosaic. Herder finds the collection as a whole Solomonic, and makes the striking suggestion that its author at a more mature age would take the tone of Ecclesiasticus.

Considered simply as a literary production, the composition makes on my own mind the impression of a romance conveyed in idylls, each presenting a picturesque situation or a scene, the general theme and motif being that of the great Solomonic Psalm.

This psalm (xlv.), quoted and discussed in