Everything about Hypnerotomachia totally explained
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (in
English Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream, from Greek
hupnos, ‘sleep’,
eros, ‘love’, and
machos, ‘fight’), first published in
Venice, 1499, is a famous example of early printing, the most famous illustrated book among
incunabula. Presented in elegantly-designed page layout (compare the
Gutenberg canon), with refined
woodcut illustrations in an
Early Renaissance style,
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili presents a mysterious arcane
allegory in which Poliphilo pursues an erotic fantasy through a dreamlike landscape, and is at last reconciled with his love by the Fountain of Venus.
History
The book was printed by
Aldus Manutius in
Venice in December
1499. The book is
anonymous, but an
acrostic formed by the first, elaborately decorated letter in each chapter in the original Italian reads POLIAM FRATER FRANCISCVS COLVMNA PERAMAVIT, "Brother
Francesco Colonna dearly loved Polia." However, the book has also been attributed to
Leon Battista Alberti by several scholars, and earlier, to
Lorenzo de Medici. The latest contribution in this respect was the attribution to
Aldus Manutius, and arguably, a Francesco Colonna, a wealthy Roman Governor. The author of the illustrations is even less certain, but contemporary opinion gives the work to
Benedetto Bordon.
The subject matter lies within the tradition of the
genre of Romance within the conventions of
courtly love, which still provided engaging thematic matter for Quattrocento aristocrats.
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're not authentic.) Its story, which is set in
1467, consists of precious and elaborate descriptions of scenes involving the title character, Poliphilo ("Lover of Many Things", from Greek
Polú "Many" +
Philos "Beloved"), as he wanders a sort of
bucolic-classical dreamland in search of his love Polia ("Many Things"). The author's style is elaborately descriptive and unsparing in its use of superlatives.
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, in a roman typeface cut by
Francesco Griffo, which Aldus had first used in February 1495 for
De Aetna of
Pietro Bembo, for which reason the typeface was named
Bembo when it was revived in 1929 by
Stanley Morison.
The book is illustrated with 168 exquisite
woodcuts showing the scenery, architectural settings, and some of the characters Poliphilo encounters in his dreams. 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.
The
psychologist Carl Jung admired the book, believing the dream images presaged his theory of
archetypes. The style of the woodcut illustrations had a great influence on late-19th century English illustrators, such as
Aubrey Beardsley,
Walter Crane and
Anning Bell.
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili was partially translated into
English in a
London edition of
1592 by "R. D.", believed to be
Robert Dallington, who gave it the title by which it's best known in English,
The Strife of Love in a Dream. A facsimile of this edition can be seen online at the
Internet Archive
.
The first complete English version was published by Thames & Hudson in
1999, five hundred years after the original.
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, the Strife of Love in a Dream was translated by musicologist
Joscelyn Godwin and typeset in
Monotype Corporation's typeface "Poliphilus", a re-creation of Griffo's original. A smaller format paperback edition was published in February 2005. However, probably due to the difficulty of the original, the translation is recreated in standard, modern language, rather than following the original's pattern of coining and borrowing words.
For the first time, eight different monuments described in the
Hypnerotomachia have been brought to life through architectural reconstructions, by using computer generated mediums. After 10 years of research and development, this resource of more than 50 original artist reconstructions was finally published in December 2006. The author, Esteban A. Cruz, presents this work with the objective of illustrating the aesthetic and antiquarian qualities of Poliphilus' visions. This was accomplished by using graphical and architectural forms of critical analysis, and by overcoming the challenges of correctly interpreting the encyclopaedic amount of archeological and philological references.
Plot summary
The book begins with Poliphilo, who has spent a restless night because his beloved,
Polia (literally
"Many Things"), shunned him. Poliphilo is transported into a wild forest, where he gets lost, encounters dragons, wolves and maidens and a large variety of architecture, escapes, and falls asleep once more.
He then awakens in a second dream, dreamed within the first. In the dream, he's taken by some
nymphs to meet their queen, and there he's asked to declare his love for Polia, which he does. He is then directed by two nymphs to three gates. He chooses the third, and there he discovers his beloved. They are taken by some more nymphs to a temple to be engaged. Along the way they come across five triumphal processions celebrating the union of the lovers. Then they're taken to the island of
Cythera by barge, with
Cupid as the boatswain; there they see another triumphal procession celebrating their union. The narrative is uninterrupted, and a second voice takes over, as Polia describes his
erotomachia from her own point of view.
Poliphilo resumes his narrative after one-fifth of the book. Polia rejects Poliphilo, but Cupid appears to her in a vision and compels her to return and kiss Poliphilo, who has fallen into a deathlike swoon at her feet, back to life. Venus blesses their love, and the lovers are united at last. As Poliphilo is about to take Polia into his arms, Polia vanishes into thin air and Poliphilo wakes up.
Characters in Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
Gallery
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Allusions/references from other works
Re-discovering Antiquity Through the Dreams of Poliphilus
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Re-Discovering Antiquity Through The Dreams Of Poliphilus by Esteban Alejandro Cruz features more than 50 original colour reconstructions of the architecture and topiary gardens of eight monuments described in the
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: A Great Pyramid, A Great Hippodromus, An Elephant bearing an Obelisk, A Monument to the Un-Happy Horse, the Grand Arch, The Palace and Gardens of Queen Eleutirillide (Liberty), The Temple to Venus Physizoa, and the Polyandrion (Cemetery of Lost Loves).
Gargantua and Pantagruel
It is also briefly mentioned in
The Histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34) by
François Rabelais:
» "Far otherwise did heretofore the sages of Egypt, when they wrote by letters, which they called hieroglyphics, which none understood who were not skilled in the virtue, property, and nature of the things represented by them. Of which Orus Apollon hath in Greek composed two books, and Polyphilus, in his Dream of Love, set down more.."
::–Book. 1, Ch. 9.
Polyphilo : or The Dark Forest Revisited - An Erotic Epiphany of Architecture
Polyphilo : or The Dark Forest Revisited - An Erotic Epiphany of Architecture is a modern re-writing of Polyphilo's tale by
Alberto Pérez-Gómez. The non-fictional preface to this book by this eminent architectural historian is an excellent introduction to the Hypnerotomachia.
The Club Dumas
The
1545 edition of the
Hypnerotomachia is mentioned in the third chapter of the
novel The Club Dumas by
Arturo Pérez-Reverte.
Gypnerotomahiya (animation)
In 1992, director Andrey Svislotskiy of Russia's Pilot Animation Studio made an 8-minute animated short film based on the novel (titled "Гипнэротомахия" in Russian).
(External Link)
Love and Sleep
The title and many themes of
John Crowley's
1994 novel,
Love and Sleep, were derived from the
Hypnerotomachia. Significantly,
Love and Sleep was written prior to the renewed popularity of the
Hypnerotomachia resulting from the 500th anniversary of its publication.
The Rule of Four
In
2004,
Ian Caldwell and
Dustin Thomason wrote a
novel titled
The Rule of Four about two
Princeton University students who try to decode the mysteries of
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. In the novel, an alternative theory of authorship is advanced, in which the author is a patrician Roman by the name of
Francesco Colonna, rather than the Venetian monk. As a companion and commentary to the novel
Joscelyn Godwin wrote
The Real Rule of Four: The Unauthorized Guide to The New York Times Bestseller (2004, ISBN 1-932857-08-7) in which he investigates the history of
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and its use in the novel.
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
Umberto Eco's 2004 novel
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana features an amnesiac protagonist, a bibliophile and dealer in rare books nicknamed Yambo, whose doctoral thesis was written on the Hypnerotomachia.
In 1999
Roman Polanski made a film about books and the devil staring
Johnny Depp. During a scene where he's trying to scam some antique books from a collector's family he mentions that the family "might want to hold on to" their copy of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili amongst other super rare books.
Allusions/references to actual history, geography and current science
Further Information
Get more info on 'Hypnerotomachia'.
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