Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Riproduzione dell'edizione italiana aldina del 1499-Introduzione, traduzione e commento

Ever since I learnt that the creation of the Park of the Monsters in Bomarzo was inspired by Hypnerotomachia Poliphili – a book written by a Dominican priest and monk Francesco Colonna I had a strong wish to read this exotic tale. The novel is written in the frilly and flowery rococo style so dear t Leggi tutto

"....he heard a most delightful harmony, which made him forget to drink, and followed after the voice..." You can easily tell by some of the illustrations that it is, indeed, an enigmatic book. Poliphilus is after [a nymph called] Polia. Through a dream he'll have acce

I should qualify my 4 star rating. The book itself is easily one of the most boring and insipid I've read in a long time. As an object, though, it's very gratifying to own, and Godwin deserves considerable credit for rendering the text into lucid English. However, he admits that this was at the cost Leggi tutto

The Strife of Love in a Dream, or, I Love Cusps Francesco Colonna was obsessed with architecture, for sure, in a didactically ordered, religiously literate, and, I’ll say it!, fascist kind of way. Yet, the book itself, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (The Strife of Love in a Dream), is a formally Anti-Fasc Leggi tutto

Vnder her nofe to her lyppes paffed a little valley to her fmall mouth of a moft fweete forme, her lyppes not blabbered o fwelling, but indifferent, & of a rubye collour, couering two vniforme fets of teeth, like yuory, and fmall, not one longer and fharper than an other, but in order euenly difpofe Leggi tutto

This seems to be the story of how an unfortunate woman was harrassed by a deranged lunatic, who dreamt about buildings and temples which he described in tedious detail, and then dreamt up a narrative in which the woman actually loved him. Does for imagined classical Greek architecture what Moby Dick Leggi tutto

Boring book. So why the 5 stars? Because it has some of the most exciting and unexplained illustrations. Something like participating in a arcade video game of the late 1980s.

This book is a bit of an enigma -- but not because of the mystery surrounding its author, conception, intended purpose, or the layers of hidden messages embedded inside it (and these mysteries certainly remain). Instead, I think this book is enigmatic because although the quality of the text itself