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Hebraizing Arthurian Romance: The Originality of Melech Artus

Ascribing its narrative shaping to its Hebrew author rather than a lost source corroborates Melech Artus's genuine originality and its uniqueness in the Arthurian tradition. (PRR) Melech Artus,1 'King Arthur,' is the only surviving fragment of a medieval Arthurian romance in Hebrew, as opposed to Yiddish in which there are several late- and post-medieval adaptations of the German Wigalois.2 This unique Hebrew text, contained in Vatican MS. Urbino 48, is dated 5039 by the author according to the Jewish calendar, the equivalent of AD 1279. Italian loan words in the text indicate that the author's source is a lost Italian version of a French prose romance which the author claims to have 'translated from the vernacular'3 into Hebrew. Apart from the fact that the text breaks off abruptly thirteen lines into the fifth folio, indicating that the author abandoned his endeavor for some unknown reason, the extant narrative is remarkably spare, suggesting abbreviation at some point in its history. Curt Leviant, who translated Melech Artus into English, writes, 'Since the Hebrew scribe's Italian source is lost, it is difficult to determine whether the Jewish translator abridged the text, or whether he already found [sic] an abbreviated version. Nevertheless, there is some ground for speculation that the Hebrew scribe's immediate Italian source was already shortened.'4 Here I refute this idea since, although Leviant remains speculative, his repetition of such assertions as 'Whether or not the scribe possessed an abbreviated Italian text'5 and 'If the Hebrew scribe worked from an already shortened Italian version'6 seems overly insistent. Moses Gaster, Florence Sandler, and Robert G. Warnock also seem to legitimize this proposition, at least implicitly, by referring to the writer as 'translator'7 or 'scribe'8 rather than author in their writings on the text. Leviant's 'ground for speculation' that it is the Italian author who has done the shortening is based on the observation that Malory's and the Hebrew versions of the story of Arthur's begetting by King Uter are equally brief: 'From the point of view of length and compression, Malory resembles the Hebrew Uter more than it does the long O[ld] F[rench].'9 He postulates that 'Malory's brief Uter story may be cited as possible evidence that a shortened O[ld] F[rench] version existed, and that the Italian translator, the Hebrew scribe's immediate source, also had access to a much condensed version of the Uter episode.'10 Even if this were true, it would then be the French rather than the Italian author who had done most of the cutting of material. However, that Malory and the Hebrew version of the Uter story, as Leviant puts it, 'agree in the technique of literary economy'11 is insufficient evidence for an unknown common source. Furthermore, Leviant is able to identify few specific points of agreement between Malory's and the Hebrew renderings of the tale that are not also found in the longer extant French version of the Suite du Merlin. The most specific distinguishing correlation he points out is that while 'the time lapse between Igerna's departure and the military action [against Duke Gorlois by Uter] is not mentioned' in the existing Old French version, it is specified in the other two-three months in the Hebrew and forty days in Malory.12 These are certainly not strong enough textual correspondences to be considered compelling evidence for a common source that has severely pared down the story, which is, of course, why Leviant rightly remains speculative. A more satisfying explanation than the possibility offered by Leviant that the Hebrew writer 'may have abridged even further' 'an already shortened Italian version'13 is that he is solely responsible for the radical alterations. Were this found to be so, it would make him more clearly worthy of the title author rather than 'translator,' which he humbly implies of himself, or 'scribe,' which Leviant calls him, and it would tell us a good deal more about his concerns and interests as a Jew in refitting the Arthurian tales to a non-Indo-European, non-Christian culture. …