- -Commentary by Nicolas Barker, editor of The Book Collector and retired Head of Conservation, British Library
-Essay on architecture in the Hypnerotomachia by Ian White
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The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (The Strife of Love in a Dream) is generally considered to be the finest illustrated book of the Renaissance – some might even describe it as the first artist’s book. Its woodcuts are beautiful and can stand by themselves, the printing is remarkably handsome and executed by the leading scholar-printer of the age (Aldus Manutius), and the text – composed in a distinctive compound of Latin and Italian, with scraps of Arabic, Greek, and Hebrew – is one that remains open to a fascinating range of interpretations, both worldly and esoteric. Much effort has been expended to unravel the identity of the anonymous author of this etherial romance: it is traditionally attributed to a Dominican monk, Francesco Colonna, whose name may be found in an acrostic formed by the initial letters of each chapter. The possibility that additional messages lay encoded in the work offers grounds for particular attention to the original edition, here reproduced with unprecedented fidelity and detail. Even a casual reader may discover in the text fascinating traces of Neoplatonism as well as a quasi-pagan eroticism. Although the philological and cryptographic dimensions of the Hypnerotomachia offers the greatest intellectual challenge today, it is nonetheless as the quintessential illustrated book that it has achieved immortality. It has perhaps the longest continuous history of bibliophilic reverence of any printed book, exceeding even that of the Gutenberg Bible, and had no rival in its genre until Bonnard and Picasso.
The original book imaged for this digital edition:
12 7/8 x 8 3/4 inches (327 x 222 mm)
The original book imaged for this digital edition:
12 7/8 x 8 3/4 inches (327 x 222 mm)
Tonguetwisting Title
Beyond its visual loveliness, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is known for posing many challenges, including its formidable title. This polysyllabic coinage – the first word a combination of the Greek hypnos (sleep), eros (love), and mache (battle), the second meaning “lover of many” – is a parody of earlier Greek poems written in the style of Homer, Gigantomachia (battle of giants) or Batrachomyomachia (battle of frogs and mice). The text is not in verse but prose, prose of a curious high-flown sort. Like the plot, it owes something to late classical tales such as the Aethiopica of Heliodorus, in which the standard romantic formula, “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl” is acted out amid mythical figures in an increasingly wild and strange landscape. The language itself is Italian, but it is very strange, full of neologisms invented by the author and based, like the title, on classical forms.
Beyond its visual loveliness, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is known for posing many challenges, including its formidable title. This polysyllabic coinage – the first word a combination of the Greek hypnos (sleep), eros (love), and mache (battle), the second meaning “lover of many” – is a parody of earlier Greek poems written in the style of Homer, Gigantomachia (battle of giants) or Batrachomyomachia (battle of frogs and mice). The text is not in verse but prose, prose of a curious high-flown sort. Like the plot, it owes something to late classical tales such as the Aethiopica of Heliodorus, in which the standard romantic formula, “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl” is acted out amid mythical figures in an increasingly wild and strange landscape. The language itself is Italian, but it is very strange, full of neologisms invented by the author and based, like the title, on classical forms.
Authorial Acrostic
The identity of the author of the Hypnerotomachia has been a matter of much learned speculation. At least seven different names have been put forward, but it is very difficult to escape the obvious conclusion to be drawn from the book itself. Each of the 38 chapters begins with a decorative initial, evidently by the same hand as the illustrations, and these letters spell out in order POLIAM FRATER FRANCISCVS COLVMNA PERAMAVIT (“Brother Francis Colonna deeply loved Polia”). The name in this acrostic is that of a real and identifiable person. Colonna seems to have been born about 1433, and is first noticed in 1467, by then a priest and member of the Dominican order, living in Treviso in the north of Italy. By about 1480 he had moved to Venice and the monastery of SS. Giovanni and Paolo there, which remained his base, off and on, for the rest of his life. At some point he became prior, an office from which he was released in 1496, becoming later “syndic and procurator,” with responsibilities for the monastery’s finances. In 1500 he was “sfrattato,” given dispensation to live outside the convent, as other religious members were sometimes allowed to do. Significantly, a series of financial transactions in which he was involved included an order to him to repay a sum provided by the Dominican Order for the printing of a book. His relations with the monastery became increasingly acrimonious, and in 1516 he was banished to Treviso. But in 1519 he had returned, and in 1523, by now very old, he was allowed some extra comforts; he died in 1527. These details of his life provide a convincing background to the pagan and hedonistic imagery of the Hypnerotomachia, even though others have sought alternative authors, whose lives seem more directly connected with the classical revival.
The identity of the author of the Hypnerotomachia has been a matter of much learned speculation. At least seven different names have been put forward, but it is very difficult to escape the obvious conclusion to be drawn from the book itself. Each of the 38 chapters begins with a decorative initial, evidently by the same hand as the illustrations, and these letters spell out in order POLIAM FRATER FRANCISCVS COLVMNA PERAMAVIT (“Brother Francis Colonna deeply loved Polia”). The name in this acrostic is that of a real and identifiable person. Colonna seems to have been born about 1433, and is first noticed in 1467, by then a priest and member of the Dominican order, living in Treviso in the north of Italy. By about 1480 he had moved to Venice and the monastery of SS. Giovanni and Paolo there, which remained his base, off and on, for the rest of his life. At some point he became prior, an office from which he was released in 1496, becoming later “syndic and procurator,” with responsibilities for the monastery’s finances. In 1500 he was “sfrattato,” given dispensation to live outside the convent, as other religious members were sometimes allowed to do. Significantly, a series of financial transactions in which he was involved included an order to him to repay a sum provided by the Dominican Order for the printing of a book. His relations with the monastery became increasingly acrimonious, and in 1516 he was banished to Treviso. But in 1519 he had returned, and in 1523, by now very old, he was allowed some extra comforts; he died in 1527. These details of his life provide a convincing background to the pagan and hedonistic imagery of the Hypnerotomachia, even though others have sought alternative authors, whose lives seem more directly connected with the classical revival.
Smaragdine Smidgens
The Hypnerotomachia has long attracted attention by dint of its mysterious esoteric subtexts, which suggest veiled levels of meaning dependent upon the individual reader. The Hermetic scholar and musicologist Joscelyn Godwin has published an acclaimed English translation, and the work serves as the plot focus of the 2004 novel The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason. As writer Peter Lamborn Wilson (Hakim Bey) has suggested, “it appears ... that the work can be seen as «fractalĄ in some strange way, such that even a tiny piece of it somehow infolds and recapitulates the whole.” Never before has the totemic 1499 edition been as accessible to minute scrutiny and investigation as in this Octavo Edition; after 500 years, the work’s cloaked portals have at last been thrown open to all comers.
The Hypnerotomachia has long attracted attention by dint of its mysterious esoteric subtexts, which suggest veiled levels of meaning dependent upon the individual reader. The Hermetic scholar and musicologist Joscelyn Godwin has published an acclaimed English translation, and the work serves as the plot focus of the 2004 novel The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason. As writer Peter Lamborn Wilson (Hakim Bey) has suggested, “it appears ... that the work can be seen as «fractalĄ in some strange way, such that even a tiny piece of it somehow infolds and recapitulates the whole.” Never before has the totemic 1499 edition been as accessible to minute scrutiny and investigation as in this Octavo Edition; after 500 years, the work’s cloaked portals have at last been thrown open to all comers.
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