The Mysteries of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
shaqyl


Trying to pronounce the title?Don’t be yourself up; it took me several tries before I could do it.

This post is about a fascinating book that has as many mysteries surrounding it as UFOs. If you have read the book ‘Rule of Four’ by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, you would recognize this book as it is the featured text in the gripping novel.

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (in English Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a D

ream, from Greek hypnos, ‘sleep’, eros, ‘love’,

and mache, ‘fight’) is a romance by Francesco Colonna and a famous example of early printing.

First published in Venice, 1499, in an elegant page layout, with refined woodcut illustrations in an Early Renaissance style,

Hypnerotomachia P

oliphili presents a mysterious arcane allegory in which Poliphilo pursues his love Polia through a dreamlike landscape, and is at last reconciled with her by the Fountain of Venus.

The original title of the book is 'Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, ubihumana omnia non nisi so-mnium esse ostendit, at-que obiter plurimascitu sanequamdigna com-memo-rat' (HA! You think the simplified version was hard, try this. I surrender!)

Reading this book make me wonder how people lived their lives in the earlier day, and added to that works from those times are full of wonder and quite frankly the language is beautiful!

The text of the book is written in a bizarre Latinate Italian, full of words coined based on Latin and Greek roots without explanation. The book, however, also includes words from the Italian language, as well as illustrations including Arabic and Hebrew words; Colonna also invented new languages when the ones available to him were inaccurate. (It also contains some uses of Egyptian hieroglyphs, but they are not authentic.)

The book has long been sought after as one of the most beautiful incunabula ever printed. The typography is famous for its quality and clarity. It is also the most curious of books ever published.

The illustrations are perhaps the best part of the book; delicate and evocative, they depict scenes from Poliphilo's adventures, or the architectural features over which the text rhapsodizes, in a simultaneously stark and ornate line art style which perfectly integrates with the type. These images are also interesting because they shed light on what people in the Renaissance fancied about the alleged æsthetic qualities of Greek and Roman antiquities.

Until this day there are still undiscovered mysteries surrounding the book….

Several Facts about Colonna’s Book

- The psychologist Carl Jung admired the book, believing the dream images presaged his theory of archetypes.

- In the 2004 novel The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, two students try to decode the mysteries of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.

- Umberto Eco's 2004 novel The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana features a protagonist whose doctoral thesis was written on the Hypnerotomachia.

- The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is one of the most unreadable books ever published.

- The overall composition of text and image into a harmonious whole, which allows the eye to slip back and forth from textual description and corresponding visual representation with the greatest of ease – a rarity even today.

Links you might wanna check out:

The PDF version of the book in its original form can be found here

More info on the book and its mysteries here

You can find an audio of part of the book here

Here is an anime music video (which was an entrant in the Manifest 2008 AMV awards!) based on the concept of the book


and you can download the full video here


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34 Responses
  1. Anonymous Says:
    9 October 2009 at 17:31

    If he invented new language, how would other people have translated it? And what is incunabula?


  2. yuen Says:
    11 October 2009 at 21:33

    love the illustrations!!..keep up the good work!..


  3. Anonymous Says:
    11 October 2009 at 21:39

    The illustrations are very intricate; it's quite amazing.

    "The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is one of the most unreadable books ever published."- so true.


  4. Anonymous Says:
    14 December 2011 at 03:12

    This book is an elaborate hoax, a parody written by a monk who didn't take the renaissance idea's too seriously - see also the story of the tower of Babylon; the intention is to create confusion:
    BROTHER COLONNA LOVED POLIA DEARLY... :-)
    Yeah right.


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