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Updated: May 29, 2025
In that marvellous poem, outspoken praise of earthly beauty, frank enumeration of the physical charms of the lovers, thorough unreserve of imagery, are conspicuous enough. Just these features, as Wetzstein showed, are reproduced, in a debased, yet recognizable, likeness, by the modern Syrian wasf a lyric description of the bodily perfections and adornments of a newly-wed pair.
But even in this realm of metaphor and image and symbolism, the North-Semitic wasf and even more the Hebraic parallels given in other parts of the Bible are closer far. The only genuine resemblance arises from identity of environment. If Theocritus and the poet of Canticles were contemporaries, they wrote when there had been a somewhat sudden growth of town life both in Egypt and Palestine.
The wasf is to the Song as Lovelace is to Shakespeare, nay, the distance is even greater. The difference is not only of degree, it is essential. The one touches the surface of love, the other sounds its depths. The Song of Songs immeasurably surpasses the wasf even as poetry. It has been well said by Dr.
Still, if we choose to regard the Song of Songs as poetry merely of the wasf type, the Hebrew is not only far older than any extant Arabic instance, but it transcends the wasf type as a work of inspired genius transcends conventional exercises in verse-making. There are superficial similarities between the wasf and Canticles, but there is no spiritual kinship.
The vindication of the Hebrew song from degradation to the level of the Syrian wasf is easy enough.
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