El <em>calambur</em> en la obra poética «Neot Midbar» de R. Raphael Aharón Monsonego

Tamar Lavi

doi:10.3989/sefarad.015.004

Authors

Tamar Lavi Giv‘at Washington Academic College for Education / Hemdat Hadarom Academic College for Education

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3989/sefarad.015.004

Keywords:

Rabbi Rafael Aharon Monsonego, Calembour, Intertextuality, Consonant and Vowel Pronunciation, Literal Meaning of Nouns, Lexical Ambiguity, Metaphor, Union and Disassembly

Abstract

Rabbi Raphael Aharon Monsonego was a Moroccan rabbi who lived in the 18th-19th centuries. His literary creation is extensive, and apart from halachic texts he wrote a series of poems that are characterized by abundant use of the calembour technique. The calembour (in English, pun) is a specific type of allusion used by North African Jewish poets and writers. Like all allusions it is based on “a meeting of two texts, one implicit – i.e., in our consciousness and memory, and the other explicit – i.e., in the actual text in front of us.” A calembour differs from other types of allusions in that it consists of “phonetic and spelling changes in the words, idioms and fragmented verses in order to gain a humorous effect and other associative allusion.” Namely, in the calembour a word or phrase from a biblical or rabbinic text is presented “with a minimal change in letter or vowel etc. […] creating a witticism or a new meaning.” The author assumes, then, that the reader is able to intuitively identify the original text despite the changes made and even enjoy and appreciate the linguistic witticism since he is well-versed in the Jewish sources (especially the Hebrew Bible and halachic literature). The aim of this paper is to examine the use of the calembour in Monsonego’s poetry through several examples of its different forms and especially through the analysis of one of the poems that features a larger use of this technique: “Im omar avo ha-‘ir” (‘If I resolve to arouse lament’).

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