The Book of Delight and Other Papers
"THE BOOK OF DELIGHT" Joseph Zabara has only in recent times received the consideration justly due to him. Yet his "Book of Delight," finished about the year 1200, is more than a poetical romance. It is a golden link between folk-literature and imaginative poetry. The style is original, and the framework of the story is an altogether fresh adaptation of a famous legend. The anecdotes and epigrams introduced incidentally also partake of this twofold quality. The author has made them his own, yet they are mostly adapted rather than invented. Hence, the poem is as valuable to the folklorist as to the literary critic. For, though Zabara's compilation is similar to such well-known models as the "Book of Sindbad," the _Kalilah ve-Dimnah_, and others of the same class, yet its appearance in Europe is half a century earlier than the translations by which these other products of the East became part of the popular literature of the Western world. At the least, then, the "Book of Delight" is an important addition to the scanty store of the folk-lore records of the early part of the thirteenth century. The folk-lore interest of the book is, indeed, greater than was known formerly, for it is now recognized as a variant of the Solomon-Marcolf legend. On this more will be said below,
It was a beautiful night, with the Hunter's Moon set high and bright
in its ocean of flickering stars, like nothing else than moon and
stars in the same old blue canopy, brocaded and embossed with
incorrigible little gray clouds, ducking in and out of lacy paths
and shadowy skyscapes.
Beneath, on Wellington campus, the dormitories stood up like tiny
cottages here and there, the more important building, Madison Hall,
towering pompously over the smaller flock. It was in Madison that
Jane and Judith as juniors were housed, while over in a west corner
grouped about the big walled entrance was, among the lesser
landmarks, Lenox, one of the first erected of the Wellington
buildings; quaint, roomy and just now decidedly "spooky."
The scene was fascinating in its silence, for only the dimmest of
path lights seemed alive over the big place, and not a breath of
wind stirred the tenacious oak leaves or other rugged foliage, too
sparse to be counted, now that winter had given warning and was on
his ruthless way.
The two figures creeping along like some elfin prowlers were Jane
and Dozia, and they made straight through that bold moonlight for
Lenox Hall.
"Doesn't it seem silly?" Jane took time to remark. "The very idea of
expecting trouble on such a night."
"THE BOOK OF DELIGHT" Joseph Zabara has only in recent times received the consideration justly due to him. Yet his "Book of Delight," finished about the year 1200, is more than a poetical romance. It is a golden link between folk-literature and imaginative poetry. The style is original, and the framework of the story is an altogether fresh adaptation of a famous legend. The anecdotes and epigrams introduced incidentally also partake of this twofold quality. The author has made them his own, yet they are mostly adapted rather than invented. Hence, the poem is as valuable to the folklorist as to the literary critic. For, though Zabara's compilation is similar to such well-known models as the "Book of Sindbad," the _Kalilah ve-Dimnah_, and others of the same class, yet its appearance in Europe is half a century earlier than the translations by which these other products of the East became part of the popular literature of the Western world. At the least, then, the "Book of Delight" is an important addition to the scanty store of the folk-lore records of the early part of the thirteenth century. The folk-lore interest of the book is, indeed, greater than was known formerly, for it is now recognized as a variant of the Solomon-Marcolf legend. On this more will be said below,