Solomon ibn Gabirol
(ca. 1021/22 to ca. 1051/69)

“The most excellent city hall erected this plaque for the 900th anniversary of Aben Gabirol, poet and philosopher from Málaga”
Statue of Solomon ibn Gabirol in a park in Málaga, Spain, his birthplace. The park is down the hill and across the Paseo de Parque from the Alcazaba, the Moorish castle. In 2000, when the photograph was taken, the park was being renovated. The text on the pedestal reads:
EL EXCMO
AYUNTAMIENTO
DE LA CIUDAD
ERIGIO ESTE BRONCE
EN EL IX CENTENARIO DE
ABEN GABIROL
POETA Y FILOSOFO DE
MALAGA
(See caption for English translation.)
- A Selection of His Poems in English Translation
- The 16-Year-Old Poet
- Meditation
- In Praise of God
- I Look for You
- Morning Song
- Open the Gate
- Invitation
- A Lamentation
- Arise, O My Rapture
- Prayer
- Night-Thoughts
- From Thee to Thee
- Before My Being
- The Land of Peace
- Lord of the World
- Earth’s Embroidery
- His Answer to the Critics
- On Leaving Saragossa
THE 16-YEAR-OLD POET
I am the prince the song
‘s my slave I am the
string all singers songmen
tune my song’s a crown for
kings for ministers a
little crown am only
sixteen years old but my
heart holds wisdom like some
poet 80 year old man
Translated by Jerome Rothenberg and Harris Lenowitz
From Jerome Rothenberg and Harris Lenowitz, eds., Exiled in the Word:
Poems & Other Visions of the Jews from Tribal Times to the Present
(Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1989).
Copyright © 1978, 1989 by Jerome Rothenberg.
Reprinted by permission of the publisher and of Jerome Rothenberg.
۞
MEDITATION
Three things remind me of You,
the heavens
who are a witness to Your name
the earth
which expands my thought
and is the thing on which I stand
and the musing of my heart
when I look within.
Carl Rakosi
After Solomon Ibn Gabirol
From “Eight Songs and Meditations (1971-1975),”
in The Collected Poems of Carl Rakosi
(Orono, ME: The National Poetry Foundation/University of Maine, 1986).
Copyright © 1986 by Callman Rawley. Reprinted by permission of
Marilyn Kane, for the estate of Carl Rakosi, AKA Callman Rawley.
۞
IN PRAISE OF GOD
Morning and evening I seek You, spreading out my hands, lifting up my face in prayer. I sigh for You with a thirsting heart; I am like the pauper begging at my doorstep. The heights of heaven cannot contain Your presence, yet You have a dwelling in my mind. I try to conceal Your glorious name in my heart, but my desire for You grows till it bursts out of my mouth. Therefore I shall praise the name of the Lord as long as the breath of the living God is in my nostrils.
Translated by T. Carmi
from The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, edited by T. Carmi
(Allen Lane, 1981). Copyright © T. Carmi, 1981.
۞
I LOOK FOR YOU
I look for you early,
my rock and my refuge,
offering you worship
morning and night;
before your vastness
I come confused
and afraid for you see
the thoughts of my heart
What could the heart
and tongue compose,
or spirit’s strength
within me to suit you?
But song soothes you
and so I’ll give praise
to your being as long
as your breath-in-me moves.
Translated by Peter Cole
from Peter Cole, trans., Selected Poems of Solomon Ibn Gabirol
(Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2001).
Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University Press.
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6933.html
Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
۞
MORNING SONG
At the dawn I seek Thee,
Refuge and rock sublime,—
Set my prayer before Thee in the morning,
And my prayer at eventime.
I before Thy greatness
Stand, and am afraid:—
All my secret thoughts Thine eye beholdeth
Deep within my bosom laid.
And withal what is it
Heart and tongue can do?
What is this my strength, and what is even
This the spirit in me too?
But verily man’s singing
May seem good to Thee;
So will I thank Thee, praising, while there dwelleth
Yet the breath of God in me.
Translated by Nina Davis
from Nina Davis, Songs of Exile
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1901).
Copyright © Nina Davis, 1901.
۞
OPEN THE GATE
Open the gate my beloved—
arise, and open the gate:
my spirit is shaken and I’m afraid.
My mother’s maid has been mocking me
and her heart is raised against me,
so the Lord would hear her child’s cry.
From the middle of midnight’s blackness,
a wild ass pursues me,
as the forest boar has crushed me;
and the end which has long been sealed
only deepens my wound,
and no one guides me—and I am blind.
Translated by Peter Cole
from Peter Cole, trans., Selected Poems of Solomon Ibn Gabirol
(Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2001).
Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University Press.
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6933.html
Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
۞
INVITATION
Come up to me at early dawn,
Come up to me, for I am drawn,
Beloved, by my spirit’s spell,
To see the Sons of Israel.
For thee, my darling, I will spread
Within my court a golden bed,
And I will set a table there
And bread for thee I will prepare,
For thee my goblet I will fill
With juices that my vines distil:
And thou shalt drink to heart’s delight,
Of all my flavours day and night.
The joy in thee I will evince
With which a people greets its prince.
O son of Jesse, holy stem,
God’s servant, born of Bethlehem!
Translated by Israel Zangwill
from Israel Davidson, ed., and Israel Zangwill, trans.,
Selected Religious Poems of Solomon ibn Gabirol
(Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1923, 1974).
Copyright © 1974 by The Jewish Publication Society of America.
۞
A LAMENTATION
Your youth is passing like smoke.
In the morning you are vital
a lily swaying
but before the evening is over,
you will be nothing but dead grass.
Why struggle over who in your family
may have come from Abraham?
It’s a waste of breath.
Whether you feed on herbs
or Bashan rams
you, wretched man,
are already on your way into the earth.
Carl Rakosi
After Solomon Ibn Gabirol
From “Eight Songs and Meditations (1971-1975),”
in The Collected Poems of Carl Rakosi
(Orono, ME: The National Poetry Foundation/University of Maine, 1986).
Copyright © 1986 by Callman Rawley. Reprinted by permission of
Marilyn Kane, for the estate of Carl Rakosi, AKA Callman Rawley.
۞
ARISE, O MY RAPTURE
Arise, O my rapture, at dawn I exclaim,
Go seeking the face of my love, the King,
I thirst at the thought of Him, burn as with flame,
And chatter like swallow upon the wing.
No gifts can I bring save of heart or of wit,
My cause to my lips I can only trust.
Desires my Redeemer a ritual fit,
How should I suffice who am based on dust?
When I with my self seek communion, I shrink,
Were I mightier far, I should still be small,
Soul and strength in adoring Thee faint and sink,
Yet sing Thee I must till the end of all.
Translated by Israel Zangwill
from Israel Davidson, ed., and Israel Zangwill, trans.,
Selected Religious Poems of Solomon ibn Gabirol
(Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1923, 1974).
Copyright © 1974 by The Jewish Publication Society of America.
۞
PRAYER
Unto thy Rock, my soul, uplift thy gaze,
His loving-kindness day and night implore.
Remember thy Creator in the days
Of youth, in song His glorious name adore.
He is thy portion through earth’s troubled maze,
Thy shelter, when life’s pilgrimage is o’er.
Thou knowest that there waits for thee always
A peaceful resting-place His throne before.
Therefore the Lord my God I bless and praise,
Even as all creatures bless Him evermore.
Translated by Alice Lucas
from Alice Lucas, The Jewish Year
(New York: Bloch, 1926).
Copyright © Alice Lucas, 1926.
۞
NIGHT-THOUGHTS
Will night already spread her wings and weave
her dusky robe about the day’s bright form,
Boldly the sun’s fair countenance displacing,
And swathe it with her shadow in broad day?
So a green wreath of mist enrings the moon
Till envious clouds do quite encompass her.
No wind! and yet the slender stem is stirred,
With faint slight motion as from inward tremor.
Mine eyes are full of grief—who sees me asks,
“Oh wherefore dost thou cling unto the ground?”
My friends discourse with sweet and soothing words;
They all are vain, they glide above my head.
I fain would check my tears; would fain enlarge
Unto infinity, my heart—in vain!
Grief presses hard my breast, therefore my tears
Have scarcely dried ere they again spring forth.
For these are streams no furnace heat may quench,
Nebuchadnezzar’s flames may dry them not.
What is the pleasure of the day for me,
If, in its crucible, I must renew
incessantly the pangs of purifying?
Up, challenge, wrestle and o’ercome! Be strong!
The late grapes cover all the vine with fruit.
I am not glad, though even the lion’s pride
Content itself upon the field’s poor grass.
My spirit sinks beneath the tide, soars not
With fluttering seamews on the moist, soft strand.
I follow Fortune not, where’er she lead.
Lord o’er myself, I banish her, compel
And though her clouds should rain no blessed dew,
Though she withhold the crown, the heart’s desire,
Though all deceive, though honey change to gall,
Still am I lord and will in freedom strive.
Translated by Emma Lazarus
from Emma Lazarus, The Poems of Emma Lazarus, vol. 2
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1888).
Copyright © Emma Lazarus, 1888.
۞
FROM THEE TO THEE
When all within is dark,
And former friends misprise;
From them I turn to Thee,
And find Love in Thine eyes.
When all within is dark,
And I my soul despise;
From me I turn to Thee,
And find love in Thing eyes.
When all Thy face is dark,
And Thy just angers rise;
From Thee I turn to Thee,
And find Love in Thine eyes.
Translated by Israel Abrahams
from Israel Abrahams, Festival Studies
(London: Macmillan, 1906; rpt. ed. also available).
۞
BEFORE MY BEING
Before my being your mercy came through me,
bringing existence to nothing to shape me.
Who is it conceived of my form—and who
cast it then in a kiln to create me?
Who breathed soul inside me—and who
opened the belly of hell and withdrew me?
Who through youth brought me this far?
Who with wisdom and wonder endowed me?
I’m clay cupped in your hands, it’s true;
it’s you, I know, not I who made me.
I’ll confess my sin and will not say
the serpent’s ways, or evil seduced me.
How could I hide my error from you when
before my being your mercy came through me?
Translated by Peter Cole
from Peter Cole, trans., Selected Poems of Solomon Ibn Gabirol
(Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2001).
Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University Press.
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6933.html
Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
۞
THE LAND OF PEACE
Whose works, O Lord, like Thine can be,
Who ‘neath Thy throne of grace,
For those pure souls from earth set free,
Hast made a dwelling-place?
There are the sinless spirits bound
Up in the bond of life,
The weary there new strength have found,
The weak have rest from strife.
Sweet peace and calm their spirits bless,
Who reach that heavenly home.
And never-ending pleasantness—
Such is the world to come.
There glorious visions manifold
Those happy ones delight,
And in God’s presence they behold
Themselves, and Him, aright.
In the King’s palace they abide,
And at His table eat,
With kingly dainties satisfied,
Spiritual food most sweet.
This is the rest for ever sure,
This is the heritage,
Whose goodness and whose bliss endure
Unchanged from age to age.
This is the land the spirit knows,
That everlastingly
With milk and honey overflows,
And such its fruit shall be.
Translated by Alice Lucas
from Alice Lucas, The Jewish Year
(New York: Bloch, 1926).
Copyright © Alice Lucas, 1926.
۞
LORD OF THE WORLD
Lord of the world, O hear my psalm,
And as sweet incense take my plea.
My heart hath set its love on Thee
And finds in speech its only balm.
This thought forever haunts my mind,
Some day to Thee I must return,
From Thee I came and backward yearn
My very fount and source to find.
Not mine the merit that I stand
Before Thee thus, since all is Thine,
The glorious work of force divine,
No product of my heart or hand.
My soul to Thee was humbly bent
Even before she had her birth,
Before upon the sphere of earth
Her heav’nly greatness made descent.
Translated by Israel Zangwill
from Israel Davidson, ed., and Israel Zangwill, trans.,
Selected Religious Poems of Solomon ibn Gabirol
(Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1923, 1974).
Copyright © 1974 by The Jewish Publication Society of America.
۞
EARTH’S EMBROIDERY
With the ink of its showers and rains, with the quill of its lightning, with the hand of its clouds, winter wrote a letter upon the garden, in purple and blue. No artist could ever conceive the like of that. And this is why the earth, grown jealous of the sky, embroidered stars in the folds of the flower-beds.
Translated by T. Carmi
from The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, edited by T. Carmi
(Allen Lane, 1981). Copyright © T. Carmi, 1981.
۞
HIS ANSWER TO THE CRITICS
Where are the men with the strength to be men?
Where are those who have eyes and can see?
Looking around, I see nothing but cowards and cynics,
And slaves, slaves to their own senses.
And every one of these poor beggars
Thinks of himself as another Aristotle.
You tell me they have written poems—
You call that poetry?
I call it the cawing of crows.
It’s time for the prophet’s anger to purify poetry,
Left too long to the fingers of aesthetes and time-wasters.
I have carved my song in the high forehead of Time.
They know it and hate it—it is too much.
Translated by Robert Mezey
Copyright © Robert Mezey, 1973.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
۞
ON LEAVING SARAGOSSA
My tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth,
my throat is parched with pleading,
my heart is loud, my mind confused
with pain and continual grieving.
My sorrow swells and will not bear
sleep’s gift to my eyes:
How long will this rage and yearning
like fire inside me burn?
Who could I turn to for help,
who could I tell of my plight?
If only someone would offer me comfort,
someone have mercy, take hold of my hand,
I’d pour out my heart before him
and manage to reach but the edge of my grief—
though maybe in putting my sorrow to words
my heart’s rushing would find release.
You who seek my peace, come near—
and hear the roar of my heart like the sea.
If your heart has grown hard it will soften,
faced with the hate that faces me.
How could you call me alive,
when you know of my distress;
is it nothing to live among people
who can’t tell their right hand from left?
I’m buried, but not in a graveyard,
in the coffin of my own home.
I suffer with neither father nor mother,
indigent, young, and alone—
on my own without even a brother,
not a friend apart from my mind:
I mix my blood with my tears,
and my tears into my wine.
I’ll be consumed in my thirst
before my thirst for friendship is quenched,
as though the sky and its hosts were arrayed
between me and all that I crave.
I’m treated here as a stranger, despised—
as though I were living with ostriches,
caught between crooks and the fools
who think their hearts have grown wise.
One hands you venom to drink,
another strokes you with words
and lies in wait in his heart,
addressing you: “Please, my lord . . .”
—people whose fathers were not fit
to be dogs to my flock of sheep—
their faces have never known blushing,
unless they were painted with crimson cheeks.
They’re giants in their own eyes,
grasshoppers here in mine.
They quarrel with all my teachings and talk,
as though I were speaking Greek.
“Speak,” they carp, “as the people speak,
and we’ll know what you have to say”—
and now I’ll break them like dirt or like straw,
my tongue’s pitchfork thrust into their hay.
If your ears aren’t able to hear me,
what good could my harmonies do?
Your necks aren’t worthy of wearing
my golden crescents and jewels.
If these boors would only open their mouths
to the rain that descends from my clouds,
my essence would soon come through them
with its cinnamon scent and myrrh.
Have compassion for wisdom,
compassion for me, surrounded by neighbors like these—
people for whom the knowledge of God
is a matter of spirits and ghosts.
Therefore I mourn and wail,
and make my bed in ashes,
and bow my head like a reed and fast on
Monday and Thursday and Monday.
Why should I wait any longer
with nothing like hope in sight?
Let my eyes in the world wander,
they’ll never glimpse what I want:
Death grows daily sweeter to me,
the world’s gossip means less and less;
if my heart returns to that path,
thinking its intrigue might offer success,
whatever I do will come round,
my scheming against me revolve.
So my soul refuses its glory
for its glory brings only disgrace.
I’ll never rejoice again in the world,
my pride will find there no pleasure,
though the stars of Orion call me to come
and take up my station among them.
For the world has always been
like a yoke around my neck—
and what good does it do me to linger
by blindness and grief beset?
My soul in my death will delight
if it leads to the Lord and his rest—
I’d put an end to my life,
an end to this dwelling in flesh.
My delight’s in the day of my downfall,
my downfall the day of my greatest delight,
and I long for heart’s understanding—
the exhaustion of sinew and strength.
For a sigh settles into repose,
and my leanness leads to my meat,
and as long as I live I’ll seek out in search
of all that the elder Solomon preached:
perhaps the revealer of depths, the Lord,
will show me where wisdom lurks—
for it alone is my reward,
my portion and the worth of my work.
Translated by Peter Cole
from Peter Cole, trans., Selected Poems of Solomon Ibn Gabirol
(Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2001).
Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University Press.
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6933.html
Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
۞
Further Reading
Essay
Hebrew Sources
Bialik, Hayim Nahman, and Y.H. Ravnitzky, eds. Shirei Shlomo ben Yehudah Ibn Gabirol [Poems of Shlomo ben Yehuda Ibn Gabirol] 5 vols. Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1924-1932. Five volumes (titled Shirei Shlomo Ibn Gabirol) available as documents 117-121 (.pdf) at http://www.teachittome.com/seforim2/seforim5.html.
Brody, Hayim, Jefim Schirmann, and Israel Ben David, eds. Shlomo Ibn Gabirol: Shirei Hol. Jerusalem: Schocken Institute, 1975.
Schirmann, H., ed. Shlomo Ibn Gabirol: Shirim Nivharim. 4th ed. Jerusalem-Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1967.
Yarden, Dov., ed. Shirei Hakodesh leRabbi Sholmo Ibn Gabirol im Perush. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Dov Yarden, 1971-3.
Yarden, Dov., ed. Shirei Hahol leRabbi Shlomo Ibn Gabirol im Perush. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Dov Yarden, 1975-6.
Translations (all of these books also contain commentary and biography)
Carmi, T., ed. and trans. The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse. New York: Penguin, 1981.
Cole, Peter, trans. Selected Poems of Solomon Ibn Gabirol. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Davidson, Israel, ed., and Israel Zangwill, trans. Selected Religious Poems of Solomon Ibn Gabirol. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1974.
Goldstein, David., trans. The Jewish Poets of Spain, 900-1250. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971.
Ibn Gabirol, Solomon. A Crown for the King. Translated by David R. Slavitt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Lewis, Bernard, trans. The Kingly Crown by Solomon Ibn Gabirol. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003.
Loewe, Raphael. Ibn Gabirol. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990.
Scheindlin, Raymond P. The Gazelle: Medieval Hebrew Poems on God, Israel, and the Soul. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991 (paperback: New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
Scheindlin, Raymond P. Wine, Women, and Death: Medieval Hebrew Poems on the Good Life. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1986 (paperback: New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
Scholarship and Biography
Brann, Ross. The Compunctious Poet: Cultural Ambiguity and Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.
Cole, Peter, trans. Selected Poems of Solomon Ibn Gabirol. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Davidson, Israel, ed., and Israel Zangwill, trans. Selected Religious Poems of Solomon Ibn Gabirol. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1974.
Goldberg, Isaac. Solomon Ibn Gabirol: A Bibliography. Word Works Books, 1998.
Lewis, Bernard, trans. The Kingly Crown by Solomon Ibn Gabirol. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003.
Loewe, Raphael. Ibn Gabirol. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990.
Scheindlin, Raymond P. “Contrasting Religious Experience in the Liturgical Poems of Ibn Gabirol and Judah Halevi.” Prooftexts 13 (1993): 141-162. A careful examination that concludes that although some of the poems of these two great poets seem very similar, in fact they reflect very different persepctives.
________. “Ibn Gabirol’s Religious Poetry and Sufi Poetry.” Prooftexts 13, 2 (1993): 141-162.
________. The Gazelle: Medieval Hebrew Poems on God, Israel, and the Soul. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991 (paperback: New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). In print.
________. “Poet and Patron: Ibn Gabirol’s Poem of the Place and Its Gardens.” Prooftexts 16 (1996) 31-47.
________. Wine, Women, and Death: Medieval Hebrew Poems on the Good Life. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1986 (paperback: New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). In print.
Silver, Warren A. The Green Rose. New York: The Dial Press, 1997. A historical novel about Solomon ibn Gabirol.
Zinberg, Israel. A History of Jewish Literature. Vol 1, The Arabic-Spanish Period. Translated and edited by Bernard Martin. Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University, 1972.
Links to Other Web Sites with Information on Solomon Ibn Gabirol