Like a wooer and a husband

Abraham Gómez Silveira

First Half of the 18th Century

I devote myself to your faith

since being a husband does not imply

a courtly surrender.

Like a wooer I pursue your love

because I wish to merit

the privileges of a husband

though I must suffer to achieve it.

Even without the debt of husbandly

respect, I must love, and doing so

with gallantry and attentions,

my dearest Leonisa, is a duty.

My desire does not direct itself

to reward or gain,

for upon becoming a husband

nothing remains to possess.

I only wish, because I love you,

that you should come to believe

that I can love you without hope

of ever seeing you again.

For placed in this prison

I live while dying, and I do not know

if I shall come out of it, or if I do come out,

I do not know when I shall.

Near and far from you I live,

far, because to obey

is obligatory, even though I shed tears

at the severity of the law.

Near, because my heart

yours has been and will be,

and being yours, it is necessarily

very near to you.

The wall that divides us

provides us often with solace

which, though enveloped in fears,

tempers the disdain of fate.

But alas for me! For while imitating them

I doubt them, because I do not know

if it is you who speaks to me

or if the wall is taking pity.

Sighs are messengers

of reassurance sometimes,

but then suffering tightens

the cord around one’s throat.

Of the misfortunes that afflict me

I come to feel, my beloved,

that your cruel imprisonment

pains me more than my own.

This life that I possess

I would wish to lose, and to have,

in order to give you liberty,

many lives to lose.

Eight times have I seen the sun

vanish behind the horizon

without my eyes having seen

the shining sun of your beauty.

For the merits of loving you

they might let me,

a moth to your flame,

burn in your sight.

Because even if this suffering wanted to

stop me from loving you, it could not,

since even beyond death,

Leonisa, I will love you.

Translated by

David

Herman

Other works by Silveira: Bejamen (1682); Disertaciones sobre el Mesias (1700); Relación de la Inquisición y de lo que padeció en ella Antonio de Fonseca, con más dos historias, una de Jesucristo y de la Madalena, y una del “Sabatay Seby” (1723); Entermientos gustozos o diálogos burlescos entre un Judío, Turco, Reformado, y Católico (date unknown).

Credits

Abraham Gómez Silveira, “Romance: Como galán y marido (Like a wooer and a husband),” in Kenneth Brown and Harm den Boer, El Barroco Sefardí Abraham Gómez Silveira (Kassel: Edition Reichenberger, 2000), 84–85.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 5.

Engage with this Source

Creator Bio

Abraham Gómez Silveira

1656–1740

Abraham Gómez Silveira was born in Arévalo, Spain, to a New Christian family. As a young man, he moved to Amsterdam and formally adopted Judaism. At the age of twenty, he published his first book, consisting of seven sermons in Portuguese, which was greatly admired by the Amsterdam rabbinic establishment. For reasons that remain unclear, in the last quarter of the seventeenth century Silveira settled in Antwerp and there wrote a series of polemical works against Christianity.

Details

Like a wooer and a husband

Credits

You may also like

Engage with this Source

Language:

Places:

Categories:

Subjects:

You may also like

Like a wooer and a husband

Credits

You may also like

Dissertaciones sobre el Mesías (Dissertations on the Messiah)

Jewish Clothing from Fürth

My Astarte

Engage with this Source

Language:

Places:

Categories:

Subjects:

You may also like

Dissertaciones sobre el Mesías (Dissertations on the Messiah)

Jewish Clothing from Fürth

My Astarte