SHEM TOV IBN FALAQERA

(c. 1225–after 1290)

The attack on the old secular poetry and all it implied is taken up more directly by SHEM TOV IBN FALAQERA. In the introduction to his major work, Sefer HaMevaqesh (The Book of the Seeker), Ibn Falaqera resolves to turn his back on his youthful literary ways and, instead of flattering the wealthy and impugning misers, and pursuing vain songs of desire, “to compose a treatise to teach [men] the proper path.” First, however, he would have to divorce the Muse, something he does explicitly, in verse: “I’ll send the daughters of song away—and with this tract our bonds I’ll sever—and take instead the daughter of wisdom and reason—to be my wife, forever.” Noting that he has already composed some twenty thousand lines of verse, Falaqera then proceeds to write a belletristic ethical work in rhymed prose (interspersed with poems—to help the reader remember!) that will serve as a conclusion to his poetic project and the beginning of a life without song and all it implies. The “ritual exorcism” of The Book of the Seeker records a young man’s encounters with a variety of types, including a wealthy man, a soldier, a craftsman, a physician, a pietist, a linguist, and more—all of whom he seeks out on his quest for knowledge. At the end of the first, rhymed-prose half of the book, he turns his attention to the poet, whom he finds wanting with respect to truth and morality. Having dispensed with poetry as a worthy endeavor, Falaqera abandons the rhymed prose and metrical verse of part 1, as he continues his exploration of other (scientific) disciplines in the second half of his book.

Its confessional nature notwithstanding, The Book of the Seeker reveals little in the way of hard facts about its author’s life, and Falaqera’s other sixteen volumes treating science, philosophy, medicine, psychology, biblical studies, Maimonides’ work (he was a disciple), and ethics barely add to our knowledge of him. He seems to have come from a prominent family and lived in Tudela—then a Christian town that preserved much of its Arabic heritage. He received a traditional education in the secular sciences and humanities, as well as in Jewish religious studies, and may have been trained as a physician. He also translated numerous philosophical works from Arabic to Hebrew. Apart from The Book of the Seeker and a collection of epigrams called Iggeret HaMusar (The Epistle of Morals), he is best known for his abstract of Ibn Gabirol’s Fountain of Life, which figured prominently in the discovery of that work in the nineteenth century. He was married, it seems, and had at least one son.

CAREER COUNSELING

A MYSTERY

ON POETS AND POETRY

WHY GOD MADE YOU

THE FOOL THINKS

POVERTY’S WAR