Mystical platonic love in Leo Hebrew and Elías Canetti

Abstract

Judah Abravanel, better known as Leo Hebrew, a 16th-century Sephardic intellectual, defines in The Dialogues of Love the concept that appears in the title. His work, a philosophical treatise with Neoplatonic overtones – bringing together all that previous thinkers had written on this noble sentiment – enjoyed great popularity in his time, becoming a model for his contemporaries. It was translated into Spanish by Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. Miguel de Cervantes polemicizes with it in the prologue to the first part of Don Quixote, suggesting that the love it describes is far removed from reality. The vision of an idealised love, which the lover Philo feels for the chaste Sophia, led Elias Canetti – a Bulgarian-born Sephardic thinker – to create the portrait of Dr. Sonne, a key figure in the play Das Augenspiel (The Play of the Eyes). Love for a divine Intellect, arrived at only through intellectual effort employed in philosophical dialogue, can be seen as the manifestation of a mystical love with Judaic roots. Leo Hebrew – born in Portugal in the 16th century and exiled in Italy – chose the language of his new homeland as his language of creation; Elias Canetti – born in Bulgaria in the 20th century and living in Switzerland – wrote in German. However, these characters, distant in time and space, are united by their Judeo-Spanish origin and, related to it, by the enormous baggage of the Hebrew exegetical tradition that leads both to a very similar laudation of a cold, purely intellectual love. The article presents the affinity of thought between both writers – who can be considered Spanish given their Sephardic origin- with regard to an intellectual mysticism expressed through the love for the Intellect written with a capital letter.