(Abu Ayyub Sulaiman Ibn Yahya Ibn Jabirul, Avicebron) (ca. 1021-1058) poet, philosopher
Solomon Ibn Gabirol, one of the giants of Hebrew poetry, was born in Malaga, Spain, around 1021. His deeply personal poems are the source of most of what is known of his life, though two critiques from those days also survive. One Arab poet called him a brilliant if shy student of philosophy, while the Hebrew literary historian Moshe Ibn Ezra wrote of his “angry spirit” and “his demon within.”
The poet was raised in Saragossa and educated in literary Arabic, biblical Hebrew, and Greek philosophy. Frail, short, and ugly by his own description, he was beset in his teens by the painful ailments that would embitter his life. In T. Carmi’s translation (The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse), Ibn Gabirol writes: “Sickness burned my innards with a fever like fire, till I thought my bones would melt.”
Ibn Gabirol suffered one reversal after another, beginning with his father’s death, followed by the death of his court patron Yequtiel Ibn Hasan. Still, by age 19, Ibn Gabirol had made his name as an accomplished poet.
After his mother died, Ibn Gabirol moved to Granada and attached himself to its vizier (minister of state), Samuel HaNagid, himself a great Hebrew poet who influenced the young Solomon. His ambition stymied by court intrigues and the jealousy of lesser men, whom he skewered in verse, Gabirol departed for Valencia, where he died while still in his 30s. Over 400 of his poems survive, covering the full range of secular, religious, and philosophical Hebrew forms. He also wrote a major work of philosophy, Fons Vitae (The Well of Life), an ethical treatise, On the Improvement of the Moral Qualities; and some 20 other books that have apparently been lost.
Ibn Gabirol was one of the founders of the “An-dalusian school.” Nourished in the aristocratic courts of the region, these poets derived their secular subject matter and their “quantitative” meters from Arabic models while continuing to embellish the rhyming traditions of the earlier Jewish religious poets (paytanim). They helped revive biblical Hebrew as a literary medium, building on the linguistic studies of such scholars as the 10th-century Babylonian rabbi Sa’adia Gaon.
Ibn Gabirol’s nature and love poems can be intensely lyrical, as evidenced in his poem “The Garden”: Its beads ofdew hardened still, he sends his word to melt them; they trickle down the grapevine’s stem and its wine seeps into my blood.
These secular verses, written for a sophisticated public or for wealthy patrons, are considered less innovative than Ibn Gabirol’s religious poetry. His most famous work, Keter Malkhut (A Crown for the King) is still read on Yom Kippur in Sephardic congregations. It combines exalted visions of the creation according to Ptolemaic cosmology with a humble plea for divine mercy, totally out of keeping with the poet’s otherwise arrogant persona. “Adon Olam” (Master of the Universe), perhaps the most popular hymn in the Jewish liturgy, is usually attributed to Ibn Gabirol as well.
The poet’s religious works attest an ecstatic love of God as his only consolation. In the poem “In Praise of God,” he professes:
I sigh for You with a thirsting heart; I am like the pauper begging at my doorstep….
Other poems, such as “Pitiful Captive,” show a yearning for Jewish national redemption that may have influenced the later poet Judah Halevi.
Ibn Gabirol is considered one of the transmitters of Neoplatonism to the Christian scholastics of the high middle ages. They knew only the Latin translation of his Fons Vitae (The Well of Life), and thought the author to be a Muslim or Christian. The 19th-century discovery of Hebrew excerpts rendered from the Arabic original helped identify Ibn Gabirol as the true author.
In the Fons, Ibn Gabirol connects the earthly and heavenly realms, composed alike of matter impressed with form. By a spiritual effort, we can exploit this similarity to achieve divine wisdom and bliss. His treatise On the Improvement of the Moral Qualities was the first systematic Hebrew work of ethical philosophy. He claims a close correlation between moral impulses and physical senses, which can be trained to promote right conduct.
From his day to the present, Ibn Gabirol has kept his place in the Jewish literary canon. His original mix of secular and religious achievement influenced Hebrew poets for 400 years in Muslim and Christian Spain and continued to bear fruit in other lands even after the decline and destruction of the fabled Spanish Jewish community.
English Versions of Works by Solomon Ibn Gabirol
The Fountain of Life: Fons Vitae by Solomon Ibn Gabirol (Avicebron). Translated by Harry E. Wedeck. New York: Philosophical Library, 1962.
Keter Malkhut: A Crown for the King by Solomon Ibn Gabirol. Translated by David R. Slavitt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Selected Poems of Solomon Ibn Gabirol. Translated by Peter Cole. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Works about Solomon Ibn Gabirol
Halkin, Abraham S. “Judeo-Arabic Literature.” In The Jews: Their Religion and Culture. Edited by Louis Finkelstein. New York: Schocken, 1971.
Loewe, Raphael. Ibn Gabirol. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1989.
