Praise
Ibn Gabirol sets the archetype for spiritual turbulence in all subsequent Jewish poetry. ...A bitter personality and yet a sublime visionary.
Being medieval, these poems inevitably demonstrate the scope of religious language in their explorations of nature, drink, love, sex, boasting, friendship and loneliness. They are by turns, witty, satirical, elegiac – and always allusive.
Such unpredictable, uniquely structured poems, intent on self-expression, were written...most strikingly by Solomon Ibn Gabirol. His personal poems reveal a divided spirit trying in vain to achieve wisdom and peace of mind, a man isolated from society, hated and feared by people who were unable to comprehend his philosophy...The speaker in these poems...is torn between hate, fear, and pride, but miraculously triumphs over himself...His imagery is full of surprises...Ibn Gabirol added a new dimension – searching introspection – to Hebrew poetry.
Extras
To learn more about Solomon Ibn Gabirol’s life and works, please read this guide, reprinted from The Jewish Religion: A Companion.
For a more in-depth guide to Ibn Gabirol’s philosophy, check out his entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
“Ibn Gabirol sets the archetype for spiritual turbulence in all subsequent Jewish poetry,” notes Harold Bloom in The New York Review of Books. In this review, Bloom writes about the features of the Golden Age of Hebrew poetry in Al-Andalus.
To learn more about the historical context of Ibn Gabirol’s life, watch this BBC documentary, which explores Al-Andalus as part of a broader look at the Islamic history of Europe.
Read Robert Alter on Raymond P. Scheindlin’s translation of Wine, Women, and Death: Medieval Hebrew Poems on the Good Life.
Listen to Israeli podcast Israel in Translation’s episode on Ibn Gabirol’s poetry, in which host Marcela Sulak, herself a poet and translator, reads from Vulture in a Cage.