“JE ME CROIS UNE MISSION”

WEILL, Alexandre. Mysteres de l'Amour: Philosophie et Hygiene. Paris: Amyot, 1868. 12mo, early half brown crushed morocco gilt, raised bands, marbled boards and endpapers. $600.

Early edition in French of Alsatian author Alexandre Weill’s translation from Hebrew of his mentor’s treatise on the philosophical and practical elements of love.

Alexandre Weill "was a prolific author, publishing over 40 books and hundreds of articles in a variety of French and German journals. …His friends [in Paris] included Balzac, Nerval, and Hugo" (Encyclopaedia Judaica). In 1830, when Weill was studying the Talmud in Frankfurt (he later abandoned rabbinical studies), he caught scarlet fever and was cared for at the Jewish hospital by a Doctor Goldschmid. The 84 year-old physician took Weill under his wing; together they spent hours discussing different exegeses. Upon the doctor's death, his son entrusted Weill with a manuscript. In Lois et mysteres de L'Amour, Weill found a medical philosophy that coincided almost exactly with the Talmud. It became his mission to translate the doctrine on love, marriage, monogamy, and the laws of nature and generation, which, as Weill states on the title page of the volume, "are not translated to be read to women; but by father to son." Text in French.

Concluding pages lightly foxed. A near-fine copy, handsomely bound.