Dialoghi di Amore, composti per Leone Medico Hebreo.

Bookseller Notes

The third edition (first published 1535) of this neoplatonic treatise on the nature of spiritual and intellectual love by Isaac ben Juda Abarbanel (c. 1460-1523), a Jewish-Portuguese philosopher, doctor and poet who was one of 'the most important philosophers and writers of his time' (Zepp and Kummer). The work takes the form of three dialogues. The first dialogue discusses the nature of love, and whether it is compatible with desire, crowned with an explanation of the allegory in the myth of the birth of Cupid. The second dialogue considers the universality of love, while the third treats God's love. The dialogues are a synthesis of early sixteenth-century neoplatonism, Socratic wisdom, mythological symbolism, Kabbalah and Arabic philosophy.Expelled from the Iberian peninsula in 1492, following the Alhambra Decree, and later from Genoa, Abarbanel ultimately settled in Naples, where he became the viceroy's personal physician. After his death, 'publisher Mariano Lenzi rescued the work from oblivion [...] The exact date of its composition is unknown, but the author mentions in the text that he had finished half of the third dialogue by 1502. A fourth dialogue is announced in the work but was never published.' It appeared first in the Italian vernacular before being translated into Latin and other European languages, which explains the enduring Italianised version of Abarbanel's name, 'Leone Hebreo'.See: Susanne Zepp and Insa Kummer, 'An Aesthetics of Love: Leone Ebreo's Dialoghi d'amore (1505/1535)', An Early Self: Jewish Belonging in Romance Literature, 1499-1627 (Redwood City, CA, 2014).