Non-Arabic Semitic Poetry

[Zaarin]

Anyone know where I can find some information on the formal elements of Aramaic/Syriac poetry? Or any Northwest Semitic poetry from ca. 500 BC to AD 500. Or even Akkadian poetry. Arabic is the only Semitic language I've been able to find detailed poetic information on.

[Whimemsz]

Well, there are the poems/songs in the Tanakh. (Basically all of Psalms, Job, and the Song of Songs, at least parts of some of the prophets, etc., as well as the shorter poetic or song insets like the Song of the Sea in Exodus or the Song of Deborah in Judges. The last two are probably very old, but the first three, with the exception of some psalms, fall within your date range.) So just looking up resources on poetry in the Bible should help with that. For much older stuff there's the sizeable Ugaritic poetic corpus (which Biblical poetry shows continuity with to a decent extent, being largely [though not entirely!] based on parallelism between the two halves [or more parts, sometimes] of each line*). I have a couple books on Ugaritic I got from Libgen so I'd just look there first for stuff on Ugaritic texts and Biblical poetry. I don't know anything about Syriac/Aramaic or Akkadian poetry so I can't help you there.



*An example from Psalm 144 (verses 3-4) that illustrates this well is [with "person" substituted for "man" because the Hebrew uses two different words for "man"...]:

YHWH, mā ʾādām wattēdāʿēhū, / ben ʾĕnōš wattəḥaššəbēhū?
ʾādām lahebel dāmā, / yāmāw kəṣēl ʿōbēr.
"YHWH, what is a person that you should know him, / a son of man, that you pay him mind?
A person is like unto breath, / his days like a passing shadow."


An couple of examples from Ugaritic:

bḥrb tbḳʿnn / bḫṯr tdrynn / bʾišt tšrpnn / brḥm tṭḥnn / bšd tdrʿnn
"With a sword she splits him, / with a sieve she winnows him, / with a fire she burns him, / with a hand-mill she grinds him, / in a field she sows him"

l ysʿ ʾalt ṯbtk / l yhpk ksʾa mlkk / l yṯbr ḫṭ mṯpṭk
"Surely he will remove the support of your throne, / surely he will overturn the seat of your kingship, / surely he will break the scepter of your rule"

["Parallelism" isn't always a thing where the parts are quasi-synonymous or anything like that, though; there's other ways one part of the line can respond to or build on the previous part, including the famous Ugaritic line which has a very close parallel in Psalm 92:10: ht ʾibk Bʿlm, / ht ʾibk tmḫṣ, / ht tṣm tṣrtk! "Look, your enemy, O Ba‘al, / look, your enemy, smash, / look, your foe, vanquish!" = Ps 92:10 Kī hinnē ʾoyəbe^ykā YHWH, / kī hinnē ʾoyəbe^ykā yō(ʾ)bēdū, / yitpɔrdū kɔl poʿălē^y ʾāwen "For look, your enemies, O YHWH, / for look, your enemies perish, / all the wrongdoers are scattered"]

[mèþru]

Also, there is plenty of Modern Hebrew and medieval Hebrew poetry, such as Hatikvah.

[Zaarin]

@Whimememsz: Yeah, I'm very familiar with Biblical Hebrew parallelism. I'm hoping to find something based on measure and/or rhyme, because that seems to be the case with Syriac poetry (based on the oblique hints in The Mind of the Middle Ages) and is definitely the case with Arabic (at least for the ghazal).

@mèþru: Thanks, I'll see what I can find. I'm hoping for something earlier and less influenced by European poetic traditions, but that's definitely better than nothing.

[mèþru]

Well, there are the piyutim. They are all religious; Hebrew generally wasn't used for non-religious works until the Haskalah. Someare from Talmudic times, but I think most were made in the late medieval era.

[Zaarin]

Well, there are the piyutim. They are all religious; Hebrew generally wasn't used for non-religious works until the Haskalah. Someare from Talmudic times, but I think most were made in the late medieval era.

Thank you, I'm finding some formal metrics for these.