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Wessely and Mendes obliterated the last vestiges of the Middle Ages, and many of the litterateurs of the period bequeathed models of the classic style to posterity. But the return to the manner of the Bible had its disadvantages. It went to extremes, and led to the creation of a pompous, affected style, the Melizah, which has left indelible traces in neo-Hebrew literature.
Mendes and Wessely, leaders of literary revivals, the one at Amsterdam, the other in Germany, are but the disciples and successors of the Italian poet. The intellectual emancipation of the Jews in Germany anticipated their political and social emancipation. That is a truth generally acknowledged.
"These few lines," says a writer, "contain a more thorough course of study than Wessely suggested in his Words of Peace and Truth. Though they did not entirely change the system in vogue for great is the power of habit they produced a wholesome effect, which was visible in a short time among the people."
A poem by Wessely forms a rare exception. It extols the residents of Basle, who, in 1789, welcomed Jewish refugees from Alsace. And if we turn from its poetry to its historical contributions, we find that the biographies, as of Abarbanel and Joseph Delmedigo, are hardly scientific; they occupy themselves with external facts to the neglect of underlying ideas.
The early German Maskilim, in trying to escape the Scylla of Rabbinism, fell victims to the Charybdis of Germanism. They possessed originality neither of style nor of sentiment, neither of rhyme nor of reason. Hebrew poetry was an adaptation of current German poetry. The very best the period produced, the Mosaïde of Wessely, was influenced by and largely an imitation of Klopstock and others.
When Mendelssohn emerged from obscurity, and, despite ill-health and ignorance, attained culture and breeding, his associate, who was with him the most important factor in German Haskalah, was the renowned Naphtali, or Hartwig, Wessely, whose grandfather Joseph Reis had been among the fugitives from the Cossack massacres in 1648.
Germany was to the Jewish world, during the early Haskalah movement, what France, according to Guizot, was to Europe during the Renaissance: both received an impetus from the outside in the form of raw ideas, and modified them to suit their environment. Berlin was still, as it had been during the days of Mendelssohn and Wessely, the sanctuary of learning, the citadel of culture.
Thanks to the efforts of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, Mendes, and Wessely, it rose for a brief moment to the rank of a truly literary medium, very soon, however, to make way for the languages of the various countries, while it receded to the narrow confines provided by the Maskilim. Its final destiny was to be decided in Slav lands.
His mental mould was determined by his thorough study of the Bible and Hebrew grammar, which was good form in Wilna as early as his day, and the works of Wessely, for whom he always professed warm admiration, had a decided influence upon his poetic bias.
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