ABRAHAM IBN EZRA AND THE METAPHORS
OF IMAGINATION
by Henry Rasof
Abraham
Ibn Ezra was born in
Ibn
Ezra was a polymath who, according to Leon Weinberger, wrote “over one hundred
books on medicine, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, poetry, Bible, Talmud,
and linguistics” and “was the model itinerant sage.” He also “was one of the
best known and admired Jewish figures in the West. His Pisan Tables in astronomy were the authoritative guides for Roger
Bacon…, Nicolas of Cusa…, and Pico della Pirandola…,
and he was remembered for his pioneering efforts in introducing the mathematics
of the Arabs to the Europeans” (9). According to David Goldstein, “he
endeavored to bring the culture of the Spanish Jews to those living in Italy,
France and England, and it is primarily due to him that schools of poetry began
to flourish in Italy and Provence…” (153).
In his poem “I Have a Garment,”
Abraham Ibn Ezra creates what could be seen as an emblem of his life and work,
as an emblem of the life of the poet in general, and
more broadly as an emblem of the life of the imagination. As with much
information about the medieval Hebrew poets and their work, Ibn Ezra’s
authorship of this poem is not one hundred percent certain. Regardless of
authorship, however, the poem still is emblematic of his life, since Ibn Ezra
was poor in material wealth but rich in spiritual and creative wealth.
On one level, the poem
acknowledges this duality and expresses, as David Goldstein puts it, “his
religious humility before the Creator” (153). On another level the poem
expresses profound theories of the imagination and of interpretation that, like
Ibn Ezra’s famous biblical commentary, foreshadow approaches taken many
hundreds of years later.
The author says: The
“garment…is like a sieve/Through which girls sift
barley and wheat” (this and other quotes from the poem are from Weinberger).
Like a threadbare garment the poet has little in the way of material wealth,
and this garment in particular has holes large enough through which girls can
be seen. On the other hand, the poet can see the stars through it, along with
the moon and the constellations: by day, girls sifting grain; by night, the
seven sisters of the Pleiades. Night is when the imagination blossoms a
thousandfold, when the “thousand stars pierce” the blackness of the sky as well
as the holes in the garment.
At night the simple,
threadbare cloak becomes a tent and then the sky itself. The garment of the
imagination transforms the physical garment into the sky itself. Lights—the
stars—now pierce the garment of the sky, illuminating the humdrum activities on
earth. This is what the poetic imagination (at least to many modern poets) does
via the vehicle of metaphor: It elevates, then
transforms, the ordinary. After the poet reaches the realm of the celestial
bodies, he comes back down the earth. Now the holes in the garment are like
“the teeth of many saws,” and the holes are beyond repair. And yet the thread
that might be used “to sew up all the other threads” is “superfluous.” Not only
is the cloak beyond repair, but the holes do not need
to be repaired: They surround just the right amount of thread. Thus the
imagination has a foundation that sometimes appears shoddy and other times appears exactly as it should be.
All fabric has holes, even
good physical fabric, and threadbare fabric has still larger holes. The poetic
imagination requires both fabric and holes—there needs to be something to
transform, and transformation occurs only when the material world and
descriptions can be penetrated by the starlight of imagination. One is reminded
of the line in William Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”: “If the doors
of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is:
infinite.” The cloak is the covering over this sort of cosmic perception, and
the holes allow us to peer through. And, like the door, which still remains
even after it is cleansed, the cloak requires a certain amount of thread in
order to remain a cloak. The light of the imagination requires a physical world
to illuminate. Without anything to transform, the imagination is of no value.
As mentioned earlier,
Abraham Ibn Ezra was, in addition to being a poet, an important biblical
commentator. Levels of hiddenness in the Hebrew Bible are also referred to as
garments of Torah, and so the poet’s garment may be seen to refer, even if
unintentionally, as well to the garments of the divine. To penetrate the
different levels of meaning of the Torah requires a great deal of light, the
light of reason and the light of the imagination. Orion the hunter seems an apt
image for the biblical commentator, who uses his interpretative “club” to fend
off the large illusions and wrong interpretations and his sword to cut through
the finer illusions, illuminated by the bright stars in his shield. Thus the
poem can be taken as an adjunct to the biblical commentary and, on another
metaphorical level, as a metaphor for the imaginative process at the heart of
his commentary.
The poet sees the moon
through the holes in his cloak. This too can be interpreted in many ways. For
example, if biblical text is like the sun, then
commentary is like the moon; the light of the latter cannot exist without the
former. Likewise, if the moon is a symbol of the imagination, what does he want
us to think by describing the moon as seen through the tattered cloak? But perhaps
this symbolism is a dangerous backward projection of the lunar literary
cosmology of the French symbolists and their spawn, and scholars will take
issue with these ruminations. Nevertheless, I like the way Ibn Ezra’s imagery,
lunar or otherwise, plays to the modern sensibility.
Ibn Ezra also wrote a book
on astrology, and his astrological beliefs and their connection to creativity
emerge in this poem as well. Could he also be implying that astrology can be
used to unravel the secrets of the Torah. Orion can be
taken as a metaphor for astrology and its “weapons” in its own search for
truth. The Pleiades can be interpreted in many ways, depending on whether the
focus is on the number of stars (seven), on the gender of the stars (feminine),
or on some other symbolic system. One wonders whether Maimonides’ sharp criticism
of astrology wasn’t in part a reaction to people like Ibn Ezra.
However
Ibn Ezra means that the constellations help in the process of revealing the
truth, ultimately only God can bring about the ultimate truth. We have to
address God directly and ask for His help, and since God is ultimately
responsible for the constituents and process of the poet’s mind, the faculty of
the imagination, and the universe itself, we need in the end to transform what
we see through and can learn from the cloak into praise for God. And we
especially need to thank God for the beautiful and magical properties of “these
poor rags.”
Works
Cited
Goldstein,
David, trans. The Jewish Poets of
copyright
© 2006, 2007 by Henry Rasof and medievalhebrewpoetry.org.