The Philosophy of Love

page 9
a 5

adding to or diminishing it, as we might do in some other work of lesser substance. Also, although he speaks of matters so high that they seem difficult in themselves, nevertheless his style is purely didacticoriginal: "didascalic," meaning intended for instruction or teaching., and suitable for people who teach and instruct others, as he does, with a method and deduction of discourse so Aristotelianreferring to the rigorous, logical structure used by the philosopher Aristotle, often seen in the 16th century as the peak of intellectual perfection. (that is to say, perfect, or very nearly reaching perfection) that one would, in my opinion, do him a great wrong by not following him while translating. Furthermore, he himself provides a certain reason on leaforiginal: "fueillet," referring to a single sheet of paper in a book, which contains two pages. 58, page 2, in the Italian edition of 1541 and 1545 (which is page 213 in our French version), by which he shows clearly enough that he would not be satisfied if one undertook to say much more than he did: so much so that this made me restrain myself, such that when I had first translated it as a paraphrasea translation that summarizes or rewords the original to make it clearer, rather than following the exact words. to make it more understandable (as you may see a certain page of it at the end of our book), I abandoned that translation, beginning again, and setting myself to follow him more closely. It is true that I have been con-