In December 1499 one of the most beautiful and strange books ever printed came out in Venice from the press of Aldus Manutius: the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. The title, built from Greek words, can be rendered as "Poliphilo's strife of love in a dream". It is an allegorical romance, a treatise on architecture, an encyclopaedia of antiquities and, for many readers, an initiatory journey.
A hidden author
The book is anonymous. But the initial letters of its thirty-eight chapters, read in sequence, form a Latin sentence meaning "Brother Francesco Colonna loved Polia intensely". This acrostic has led to the work being attributed to a Francesco Colonna. There is still debate, however, about which Francesco Colonna this was: the most widespread hypothesis points to a Venetian Dominican friar, but other scholars have proposed a Roman nobleman of the same name or other authors altogether. The question remains unresolved.
The plot
The protagonist, Poliphilo, meaning "lover of Polia", falls asleep and dreams. In the dream he finds himself in a dark forest, then in a landscape filled with ancient ruins, pyramids, obelisks, temples and gardens. He meets nymphs, witnesses triumphal processions and passes through gates and thresholds until he finds his beloved Polia again. Together they reach the island of Cythera, Venus' realm, where their union is celebrated.
The second part of the book changes voice: Polia tells her own story and how she came to accept Poliphilo's love. At the end, just as the beloved is about to be embraced, she vanishes, and Poliphilo wakes up.
An invented language
One of the book's most surprising features is its language. The text is written in a heavily Latinised Italian, rich in Greek words, architectural terms and neologisms. It also contains inscriptions in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic, and sequences of pseudo-hieroglyphs. This hybrid language makes the book extremely hard to read, but it contributes to its fascination: the reader faces a text that is at once word, image and riddle.
The woodcuts
The Hypnerotomachia is famous above all for its illustrations: about one hundred and seventy woodcuts by an unknown artist, perfectly integrated with the text. They show architecture, processions, gardens, fountains, inscriptions and ritual objects. The layout of the pages, in which text and images converse, is regarded as one of the high points of Renaissance printing.
One of the most famous images shows an elephant carrying an obelisk on its back. This figure is commonly cited as the inspiration for the monument of the elephant with the obelisk in front of the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome, designed in the seventeenth century by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
The hieroglyphs
The book contains numerous "hieroglyphs", compositions of symbolic images that the text interprets as sentences. They are not real Egyptian hieroglyphs, which would be deciphered only in the nineteenth century, but Renaissance inventions based on the idea that Egyptian symbols expressed concepts directly. These compositions greatly influenced emblem literature and the visual culture of the sixteenth century.
A European fortune
The book did not remain a purely Italian phenomenon. In 1546 a French translation was published in Paris, with new illustrations inspired by the originals, and at the end of the sixteenth century a partial translation appeared in England. Architects, gardeners, painters and poets drew motifs and images from it: the symbolic gardens, the fountains and the enigmatic inscriptions of Poliphilo's dream thus entered the shared repertoire of European culture.
The esoteric reading
The book's allegorical character has encouraged initiatory readings. Poliphilo's path through the forest, the ruins, the trials and the thresholds, up to his union with the beloved, lends itself to being interpreted as the soul's journey towards unity.
In 1600 a French edition appeared in Paris preceded by an introduction by François Béroalde de Verville, who proposed an alchemical reading of the romance: the stages of the journey became phases of the Work, and the union of the two lovers the conjunction of opposites. Since then the Hypnerotomachia has had a permanent place in the library of students of Hermetism.
How to approach the text
Anyone wishing to read the Hypnerotomachia can follow a few suggestions:
- start with the images, leafing through the book like a symbolic atlas;
- read a modern annotated translation, given the difficulty of the original language;
- pay attention to thresholds, gates and passages, which structure the narrative;
- treat the alchemical readings as later interpretations, not as the author's certain intentions.
In short
- The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili was printed in Venice by Aldus Manutius in 1499.
- An acrostic in the chapters attributes it to a Francesco Colonna, whose identity is debated.
- It is written in a hybrid language and illustrated with about one hundred and seventy woodcuts.
- The elephant with the obelisk is cited as the source of Bernini's monument in Rome.
- In 1600 Béroalde de Verville proposed an alchemical reading, the basis of its esoteric fortune.
