A soul, splendid

Moses Dar‘ī grapples with Neoplatonic ideas regarding the temporary union between the mortal body and the immortal soul in this poem. Several Hebrew words—and epithets—for the soul are grammatically feminine, and the soul is called hi throughout, the Hebrew pronoun that can mean it (for a feminine inanimate object) or she (for a woman or girl). Here the translator has opted to personify the soul and translate she throughout. The poet meditates first on the incongruity of a pure and incorporeal soul trapped in a physical human body, then on how, having forgotten her source in the divine, she sinned, and finally on the punishments (or rewards) awaiting her after death. The headnote is in Arabic, but the poem itself is in Hebrew.