Article

Solomon Ibn Gabirol

January 18, 2006

Solomon Ibn Gabirol was born in Málaga (Spain) in 1021 or 1022 and died more than thirty years later in Valencia. An orphan, Ibn Gabirol grew up in Zaragoza, whose atmosphere was permeated with Moslem asceticism. Under this influence, and perhaps that of his teachers, the young boy tended toward solitude. Central to his education were, on one side Jewish culture and on the other, Arabic literature and culture; he evinced an interest in both the science of his time and in Jewish mysticism. Ibn Gabirol suffered from what is now assumed to be a serious skin disease, which shortened his life and left its mark on his writings. He preferred isolation to mixing with society; there is no way of knowing whether his deep pessimism was a mark of his character or a product of the vagaries of his life. His very genius drove a wedge between him and members of his own generation. He saw the purpose of his life in poetry and learning, despised ordinary life and had contempt for ordinary people.

He became a poet at an early age – sixteen. The only short period of light occurred when Yequtiel, a Jewish notable, took him under his wing, but this happy period came to a sudden end when Yequtiel was executed for perjury. Afterwards, Ibn Gabirol had to leave Zaragoza, where he had lived since childhood, because of his enemies. The poet’s wanderings in Spain after leaving Zaragoza are unknown; the events of his life, and his difficult personality, have been eclipsed by his poetry.
Ibn Gabirol wrote both secular and devotional poetry. In his secular poetry he is revealed as flesh and blood, driven by his impulses. In the devotional poetry he overcomes his nature and the circumstances of his time and place. From the first this contradiction was prominent. On the one hand, philosophy and learning distanced him from the material world. On the other hand his hypersensitive nature overcame his learning. His war against the world and fate was uncompromising, yet he does not have to be portrayed as someone whose mortifications removed him from the sphere of life entirely. His human and poetic spirit exposed him to the wonders of this world. There are dozens of poems about nature and landscape, feasts and pleasures.

But life and its joys are tangential to Ibn Gabirol’s poetry: God stands at its center. The poet found refuge from his fate in solitude, with God. His religious poems arise from these happy moments of genuine tranquility. Ibn Gabirol’s greatness in liturgical poetry lies in its personal quality. In the form of a hymn the poet spills his soul before God in a discussion of prayer and a return to religious observance: the greatness of God and the nothingness of man. Ibn Gabirol’s poems received notice and praise shortly after his death; his poetry has stood the test of time and is seen to this day as the choicest Hebrew creation of the Spanish period.

This article is a shortened version of the Hebrew text, published originally by Am Oved (Tel Aviv, 1978) in Yalkut Shirim: Selected Poems of Solomon Ibn Gabirol and Yehuda Halevi.

© 1978, Am Oved
From: Yalkut Shirim: Selected Poems of Solomon Ibn Gabirol and Yehuda Halevi.
Publisher: Am Oved, Tel Aviv, 1978