Peter Cole, the foremost translator of Hebrew poetry from Al-Andalus, argues in his book The Dream of the Poem that a major legacy of the Moorish writers was to inspire Jewish poets to emulate their work. Just as Roman authors had recast Latin to emulate Greek epic form, Jewish writers reconfigured the style of classical Hebrew. The innovations were initiated in the 10th Century by Dunash Ben Labrat, who counselled his fellow poets:
Controversially, Ben Labrat adopted Arabic poetic metre, and was accused of ‘destroying the holy tongue’ and ‘bringing calamity upon his people’. But the Hebrew renaissance that followed produced some of the most beautiful poetry in the language, and the period became known as the ‘Golden Age’ of Iberian Jewish culture.
The literary forms are diverse – devotional hymns, erotic verses, prophecies of doom and dissolution – and the subject matter is broad, encompassing war, wine, friendship, poverty, deceit and the folly of youth. The tone is sometimes coy, often playful, frequently sensual and metaphysical; the shorter verses are full of wily epigrams and proverbs of worldly wisdom.
