Pardes Shoshanim…Asirei Hatikvah [Garden of Roses…Prisoners of Hope]

PENSO [DE LA VEGA], JOSEPH.

Santini

Livorno

1770

Second Edition. With signature: Zemah di Moise Lunel. An uncut copy.

Vinograd, Livorno 117.

First dramatic poem written in Hebrew, calling for the victory of ones will over ones passions. This allegorical drama was written by Penso at the young age of seventeen. A poet of considerable talent, he was a member of the Academia de los Floridos, where the Sephardic poets of Amsterdam would meet to recite Spanish and Hebrew verses and stage plays. Penso’s drama “was more reminiscent of a medieval Christian mystery play than of a fashionable French drama, but nonetheless, it was the first Hebrew play to portray true drama.” See: M. H. Gans, Memorbook (1977), p. 117.