Haskalah and Beyond by Pelli Moshe

Author:Pelli, Moshe.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of America
Published: 2010-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

The Melitzah in Modern Scholarship

To address these questions, a brief review of the state of contemporary scholarship on the use of melitzah and its definition will be conducted. Regrettably, scholarly discussion of the melitzah in the early Haskalah was deficient for some time. This writer has published several papers and a chapter in a book in Hebrew on the subject, which detailed various definitions and perceptions of the melitzah by the early Maskilim.18 Several scholars, though, have written on the subject matter in the context of Haskalah language or poetry.

Boaz Shahevitch already addressed this topic in his studies of the language of the early Haskalah and Maskilim in the 1960s. Among literary critics, one should mention Dan Miron’s in-depth analysis of Abraham Mapu’s (1808–1867) use of melitzah in mid-nineteenth century, and Bracha Fischler and Iris Parush’s study of Shalom Yaakov Abramovich’s (1835/6–1917) use of the biblical shibutz. Yehuda Friedlander and Uzi Shavit also cited melitzah as part of their discussions of Haskalah poetry.

A review of these scholars’ discussion on melitzah follows.

Shahevitch’s definition: Among scholars studying the Hebrew language of the Haskalah, Boaz Shahevitch examined the writings of Naphtali Herz Wessely for his linguistic style and his use of the Hebrew language.19 As part of his studies, Shahevitch explored the various definitions of melitzah in dictionaries and scholarly works and found that the general use of the term is a derogatory one. His conclusion is that as the term developed in our times, the current use of melitzah for a non derogatory meaning is an exception. Shahevitch observed that even historians of Hebrew literature such as Lachover and Klausner used the term melitzah interchangeably in its different meanings, usually with a derogatory effect.20

He noted that the word originally denoted ‘rhetoric’—aesthetic and artistic use of language—but later it “fell into disrepute and acquired a pejorative meaning” to denote a bad use of language. He gave examples of such use of melitzah in early Haskalah, citing briefly Wessely, David Friedrichsfeld, Moses Mendelsson, and Meir Halevi Letteris. Afterwards, he examined the definition of melitzah and its attributes in the writings of later scholars.

Shahevitch then proceeded to enumerate all the ‘accusations’ leveled at melitzah: that it is verbose, superfluous and redundant, that it is imprecise, a patchwork of verses and snatches of verse, that it is ornate; it employs puns excessively, it cherishes biblical hapax legomena (a word or phrase appearing only once in the bible), it is cliché, it is hollow and bombastic. Shahevitch argued that this long litany of argumentations failed to provide a unique characterization of melitzah; and that these faulty qualities are equally applicable to other styles of writing.21

In assessing these criticisms of melitzah, Shahevitch concluded, that their common denominator is that, in the main, they all relate to excess, or to extreme. Thus, “The verbosity as a quantitative extreme, the shibutz—‘inlay’ of biblical verse segments—as an extreme of associations, the ornamental as a qualitative extreme, the use of rare words as an extreme of the unique and the unusual.” The

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