Negotiating Renaissance Harmony: The First Spanish Translation of Leone Ebreo’s Dialoghi D’amore

NEGOTIATING RENAISSANCE HARMONY: THE FIRST SPANISH TRANSLATION OF LEONE EBREO’S DIALOGHI D’AMORE by Damian Bacich The effect of Leone Ebreo’s Dialoghi d’amore (Dialogues of Love) on the Platonic esthetic of the Golden Age of Spanish literature (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) has been recognized and studied for decades .1 The Spanish version of the work most often cited is the celebrated translation by Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (Madrid 1590), the first literary endeavor of the first published author born in the Americas. Yet prior to 1590, Spanish-speakers read Leone Ebreo’s Dialogues in two translations that preceded Garcilaso’s, published in 1568 and 1584, respectively. Thus the Inca was, knowingly or unknowingly, competing against two other translations when he published his own. What forces then drove diverse writers to bring this distinctive Neoplatonic work to Spanish readers? This study is an attempt to provide a partial answer by examining the first Spanish translation of the Dialogues of Love, published in Venice in 1568. In it I argue that the translation served the purpose of reclaiming the Jewish and Spanish identities of the author at a time when both had been almost forgotten. Furthermore, this evocation of Leone Ebreo’s origins can be seen as an appeal to the Spanish king to remember and re-consider the situation of the Sephardic exiles, which many did not yet consider definitive. The translation contains 117 recto and verso numbered folios divided into two columns each, including a ten-page appendix. In addition it contains an unnumbered two and a half-page dedication, though it lacks any of the apparatus of “aprobaciones” and “licencias” common to Spanish works of the era. Though written in Castilian, it was printed Venice. Nevertheless, on this Venetian-printed, Spanish language book by a Hebrew author the frontispiece of the 1568 edition claims to have “privilegio de la Ilustrísima Señoría” and to have been printed “Con Licenza delli Superiori.” No such approvals appear in the work, how1 Cervantes referred to the work in his prologue to Don Quixote. For the beginnings of modern scholarship on Leone Ebreo in Spanish letters, see Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Historia de las ideas estéticas en España, vol. 1 (Madrid 1909). NEGOTIATING RENAISSANCE HARMONY 115 ever, nor are the names of any of the “Superiori” listed.2 We know it achieved a degree of success in that it was reprinted in 1598,3 and that it found its way into the hands of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza,4 descendent of Sephardic exiles. Moreover, we also know that it was rendered into an aljamiado version (Spanish written in Hebrew characters ).5 Despite the issue of the book’s unknown censors the other unique feature to draw the reader’s attention is the title itself. The first edition of the Dialogues, published in 1535, bore the title Dialoghi d’amore di Maestro Leone Medico Ebreo, and subsequent Italian editions all maintained a variation on that theme. The title of the Spanish work instead reads LOS DIALOGOS DE AMOR DE MESTRE LEON ABARBANEL MEDICO Y FILOSOFO EXCELLENTE. DE NUEVO TRADUZIDOS en lengua castellana, y deregidos ala Maiestad del Rey FILIPPO (THE DIALOGUES OF LOVE BY MASTER LEON ABARBANEL EXCELLENT PHYSICIAN AND PHILOSOPHER NEWLY TRANSLATED into Castilian and addressed to his Majesty King PHILIP ).6 A striking characteristic of the title is the inclusion of the author ’s full name: LEON ABARBANEL. In Italian, the author’s name had always appeared simply as “Leone Ebreo, Medico.”7 The prologue 2 The 1520 editio princeps of the Dialogues of Love had been printed in Rome “con gratia, et prohibitione del sommo Pontefice, del’eccelso Senato di Venetia, de l’Illustrissimo Duca di Milano, de l’Illustrissimo Duca di Fiorenza, et altri Principi d’Italia, che nissuno possi stampare detta opera sotto pene che ne lor privilege si contiene ” (“with the grace and prohibition of the supreme Pontiff, of the most high Senate of Venice, of the illustrious Duke of Milan, of the illustrious Duke of Florence, and other Princes of Italy, that no one may print said work under the penalties contained in their privileges”). 3 A copy of...