[In Hebrew]: Sefer Ruah hadashah... [BOUND WITH] Zemirot Yisrael... Ruach hadascià: seu, Nova methodus versificationis hebraicae.

Reggio Emilia: by the author, 5582 [i.e., 1822]. First edition. Very Good. Two titles bound together. 12mo (16cm); xii, 108 pages; [16] leaves. Text in Hebrew. Apparently bound together in 1822 in original publisher's blue printed wraps, perhaps with remaindered copies of the second title, which was published at Livorno in 1792. Wraps stained, portions of spine perished. Text clean. Preserved in custom clamshell case. Busi, #28; Cf. Salah, "La République des lettres," #243.

From modest origins, Anania Coen emerged as a principle Jewish intellectual who established a Hebrew school and a Hebrew press in his native Reggio Emilia. Later (truncated) he became the rabbi of the Jewish community of Florence and established one of the first Hebrew printing presses there. His mature work is devoted primarily to issues of language, style, and rhetoric (as opposed to the vast body of Hebrew publishing devoted to religious and Talmudic arguments). He was extremely interested in developing a model for spoken Hebrew that would be based in the scriptural language but include neologisms, anticipating the spoken Hebrew of the Zionist movement.

As a lexicographer, he wrote a Hebrew-Italian dictionary (Ma'aneh ha-lashon, 1811-12), and a lexicon of Talmudic Hebrew with definitions in Hebrew and Italian (Sefer Safah ahat, 1822).

In addition to his Hebrew publications, Coen published several translations into Italian of British rationalists such as Pope and Hume, and some of the Romantic novels of Walter Scott!

In 1822, Coen published this essay on language and prosody. According to Giulio Busi's monograph on Coen, Ruah Hadasha "is perhaps the most significant document of Jewish poetic theory in Italy during the 18th and 19th centuries, ... offering a clear and original treatment of the intricate matter of Hebrew versification." Busi continues, "In effect, Ruah Hadasha is the synthesis of the long literary process that detached Italian Judaism from Medieval Judeo-Arabic models" (Anania Coen: editore e letterato ebreo tra sette e ottocento, Bologna, 1992, p. 27-28). The citations in the text include examples of modern Hebrew poetry (by Yeshua Hai Carmi, among others) alongside biblical and Talmudic selections. (Inventory #: 5952)