ריאליזם ומקבריות בשירת שמואל הנגיד

Samuel ha-Nagid employed, in poems dealing with death, sickness and danger, a realistic style quite uncommon in contemporary Hebrew-Spanish poetry. This style gives them a gruesome, macabre mood. The prevalent contemporary view that regarded Tevel — world and worldliness — as evil and inferior, made it difficult to express love for life in a direct, positive manner. It also dictated that such positive motifs as praise or love be treated in a lofty un-realistic mode, but allowed for a realistic expression of lowly matters. Constrained by this poetic code, ha-Nagid expresses his love for life-on-this-earth by depicting death in a realistic way, as its abhorrent opposite.