Shem Tov ibn Falaquera: From Logic to Ethics; A Redefinition of Poetry in the Thirteenth Century

Abstract

Shem Tov ibn Falaquera:From Logic to Ethics; A Redefinition of Poetry in the Thirteenth Century Aurora Salvatierra Ossorio (bio) In the prologue to his Sefer ha-mevaqqesh [Book of the Seeker], the thirteenth-century philosopher and poet Shem ibn Falaquera proudly presents himself as the author of more than 20,000 verses, of which at least 10, 000 are extant.1 Likewise, throughout the book, he repeatedly calls attention to his mastery of poetry. In some other works, however, Ibn Falaquera exhibits a radically different attitude as he describes himself as an ex-poet who, once his youth has passed, has renounced poetry in order to devote himself to wisdom. The following line from Sefer ha-mevaqqesh is an illustrative example of this second attitude: "I dispatch the Muses from my presence. / This treatise is [their] bill of divorcement."2 While the two self-assessments are certainly conflicting, scholars have generally lent credibility to and have taken at face value Ibn Falaquera's explicit decision to abandon completely all efforts to create poetry in order to devote himself to wisdom.3 Ibn Falaquera's works abound in reflections on the art of poetry and include small collections of poems, a fact that reveals his great interest in verse. Poetry appears in the prologues to some of his works, such as Reshit [Beginning of Wisdom] and Sefer ha-ma'alot [Book of Degrees].4 Similarly, in some other works, such as Sefer ha-mevaqqesh and Iggeret ha-musar [Treatise on Ethics], poetry is interspersed throughout a rhymed prose narrative.5 Ibn Falaquera's poems, however, were never collected in a dīwān [poetic corpus]. In fact, the first attempts to retrieve and gather his poetic production date back no further than modern scholarship. Specifically, Leopold Zunz attributed to Ibn Falaquera some liturgical poems in the style of those composed by Ibn Gabirol, and published one of his poems-the prologue to Sefer ha-ma'alot-as an independent religious [End Page 165] hymn.6 Following in his footsteps, Israel Davidson gathered some seventy poems attributed to Ibn Falaquera in his Thesaurus of Mediaeval Hebrew Poetry.7 Davidson's list is far from comprehensive, as he did not draw on the entirety of Ibn Falaquera's works. In fact, most of the seventy poems collected by him in his Thesaurus come from the Sefer ha-mevaqqesh. To these, Davidson adds the poems opening Ibn Falaquera's Reshit and Moreh ha-moreh [Guide to the Guide], as well as some other examples included in Sefer ha-ma'alot and ha-yagon [Balm for Sorrow]. In spite of these efforts, Raphael Jospe-who wrote a magnificent monograph on Ibn Falaquera's works entitled Torah and Sophia-is correct in arguing that most scholars have actually followed the position of the nineteenth-century historian A. H. Graetz, according to whom Ibn Falaquera exhibited "poor proof of poetic ability."8 In his works, Ibn Falaquera explicitly acknowledges that he writes in Hebrew on account of the "pedagogical" value of this language and his co-religionists' better understanding of it. In the prologue to his Sefer ha-ma'alot, Ibn Falaquera affirms having written in the holy language "to extend its usefulness" and the same idea is also expressed in Reshit and in the prologue to Moreh ha-moreh.9 In a similar vein, he attributes his decision to write poetry to its value as an instrument to facilitate the acquisition and diffusion of knowledge. In this regard, he affirms in Bate hanhagat guf ha-bari', Bate hanhagat ha-nefesh [Verses on the Regimen of the Healthy Body, Verses on the Regimen of the Soul] that "things said in verse in a restrained manner are more amenable to people and are easier to remember."10 This assertion is particularly true in texts written by some of his Andalusi Jewish predecessors, such Abraham ibn Ezra's poem on dietary norms, Judah version of a health regimen in verse included in Maimonides' Moreh nevukhim, and Joseph ibn Zabarra's poem on anatomy, Bate hanefesh [Verses on the Soul].11 Modern scholars seem to have given much credit to Ibn Falaquera's explanation of his reasons to write...