Eleazar Ben Killir - Poetic Style

Poetic Style

The "Kallir style" had a profound influence on the poets who succeeded him in Palestine and in the Near East. He made radical innovations in diction and style, while employing the full range of post-biblical Hebrew. It may be that the stories of Yannai growing jealous of him are based in fact, for the patterns of rhyme, acrostic, repetition, and refrain in his piyut are much more complex than those of his master.

His use of neologisms and other oddities has earned him a reputation as an enigmatic writer, to the point where some have criticized him for being obscure, and having a corruptive influence on the Hebrew language. Ben Kallir, however, was capable of writing in simple and direct language, as poems like his Epithalamium demonstrate.

Kalir was the first to embellish the entire liturgy with a series of hymns whose essential element was the Haggadah. He drew his material from the Talmud, and from Midrash compilations, some of which latter are now probably lost. His language, however, is not that of his sources, but Biblical Hebrew, enriched with daring innovations. His predilection for rare words, allegorical expressions, and haggadic allusions make his writings hard to understand – some describe him as a "Hebrew version of Robert Browning". His linguistic peculiarities were followed by many a succeeding payyetan (Hebrew poetic liturgist); and they influenced to some extent even early prose, especially among the Karaites.

Some beautiful renderings of Kalir's poems may be found in the volumes of Davis & Adler's edition of the German Festival Prayers entitled Service of the Synagogue.

With the awakening of linguistic studies among the Jews and with the growing acquaintance of the latter with Arabic, his linguistic peculiarities were severely criticized (e.g., by Abraham ibn Ezra on Eccl. ch 5, v. 1); but the structure of his hymns remained a model which was followed for centuries after him and which received the name "Kaliric" . While some of his hymns have been lost, more than 200 of them have been embodied in the Mahzorim, i.e., prayer-books for Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kipur. Most of the kinot of Tisha B'Av have been composed by him too.