Solomon Ibn Gabirol (1021-1058) of Spain was a Jewish philosopher and moralist who is perhaps best known for the beautiful forty-stanza poem Keter Malkhut (The Kingly Crown). Hailed by scholars as one of the most important classics of Hebrew literature, The Kingly Crown employs the metaphor of a king in his palace to describe the relationship between humanity and God. This medieval poem is full of vivid imagery and scriptural references. Within its many layers of meaning, readers will find not only an extended prayer and meditation, but also signs of the neoplatonic philosophy that formed the...
Solomon Ibn Gabirol (1021-1058) of Spain was a Jewish philosopher and moralist who is perhaps best known for the beautiful forty-stanza poem Keter Mal...
Poet, philosopher, and sensitive misanthrope, a spectacular fly in the ointment of the refined eleventh-century Andalusian-Jewish elite, Solomon Ibn Gabirol comes down to us as one of the most complicated intellectual figures in the history of post-biblical Judaism. Unlike his worldly predecessor Shmuel HaNagid, the first important poet of the period, Ibn Gabirol was a reclusive, mystically inclined figure whose modern-sounding medieval poems range from sublime descriptions of the heavenly spheres to poisonous jabs at court life and its pretenders. His verse, which demonstrates complete...
Poet, philosopher, and sensitive misanthrope, a spectacular fly in the ointment of the refined eleventh-century Andalusian-Jewish elite, Solomon Ib...
