Poetic Obituaries: [Professor Raphael Loewe] brought to his teaching

an encyclopedic grasp of Jewish heritage, and a rare ability to understand--and an even rarer capacity to reproduce--the richly allusive Hebrew poetry of medieval Spain, focusing especially on the works of the 11th-century poet and philosopher Solomon Ibn Gabirol.

Loewe mastered the complex language and metres of such works, and deployed these in poems exploring a subtle theology based on Greek and later sources. His education allowed him to write about matters for which most others lack a vocabulary even to think. At times he claimed to be aware of "the ghost of Ibn Gabirol over my shoulder as I wrote".

He rendered English poetry, including sonnets by Milton and Donne and Gray's Elegy, into appropriate Hebrew forms, as well as medieval Hebrew verse into English metres that echo those of the originals, and occasionally worked in Latin and Greek.

from The Telegraph: Professor Raphael Loewe

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