The Cabala of Pegasus (Translated) (Annotated) - With notes and commentary by Giovanni Gentile #1013357

This edition includes:
• New English translation
• Critical introduction
• 26 editor's notes

An ass knocks at the door of a Pythagorean academy, asks to be examined, and is told that it is not fitting for asses to enter the academy together with men. That refusal is the spark of Giordano Bruno's wildest, funniest and most subversive dialogue, a book in which the humble beast of Scripture — the creature that carries the redeemer into Jerusalem — becomes the emblem of a wisdom that begins exactly where self-important learning ends.

In the praise of "asinity" that runs through these pages, holy ignorance, simple faith and humility are set against the presumption of pedants, theologians and doctors, and the whole machinery of learning is turned inside out: the seats of the heavens are rearranged, the Scriptures are read for their asses, and a talking candidate submits to an examination, to two years of enforced silence, and to the judgement of a school that has already decided against him. Bruno is asking who is licensed to speak, and he does it with comedy as his instrument rather than his ornament.

This translation is made for readers today: natural, alive, and faithful to the substance, the voice, the tone and the images of Bruno's Italian. His paradoxes, his sarcasm and his sudden flights of lyricism all come through in prose you can follow at speed and read aloud. A critical introduction opens the volume and lays out the argument, the ideas and the traditions behind the dialogue before you meet the text itself.

Let an ass talk you out of a few certainties — add this volume to your library and keep it within reach.