![]() ![]() Some texts were discovered in a secret room at the Collegio Romano, and were summarily seized by the state. ![]() The collection Voynich purchased in 1912 was at the time the possession of Italian Jesuits who, since the unification of Italy in the latter half of the 19th century, and the subsequent government-ordered confiscation of their libraries, had been hiding their books. During one of his regular trips to Europe, he writes, he “came across a most remarkable collection of precious illuminated manuscripts,” most of which, he surmised, “must formerly have belonged to the private libraries of various ruling houses of Italy.” In comparison to the other manuscripts, which were embellished with arms and various hues of gold, the Voynich appeared to be an “ugly duckling.” Voynich bought the manuscript that now bears his name in 1912, though the precise circumstances surrounding the purchase aren’t entirely known. Though he started out by collecting fifth- and sixth-century books, after several years in the trade he turned his eye toward higher-end items, like early Bibles. According to Arnold Hunt, author of a biographical essay included in Yale’s volume The Voynich Manuscript, Voynich quickly established himself as one of the most knowledgeable and well-read booksellers in the business. It was this man, well-placed in British cultural and intellectual circles, who introduced the young Pole to the exciting world of bookselling.įollowing Stepniak’s unexpected death in 1895, Voynich opened his first bookshop three years later. ![]() Voynich quickly bonded with other exiles, including Sergey Kravchinsky, famously known as Stepniak. In 1890 Voynich escaped and went on the run, making his way through Mongolia, China and Germany before finally arriving in London, where he used his past as a political revolutionary to his advantage. After being held prisoner for 18 months in Warsaw, he was exiled to Siberia to live out his five-year sentence. While studying law and chemistry at the University of Moscow, Voynich became sympathetic to the Polish Nationalist movement, and eventually became a member of the social-revolutionary party, which led to his arrest in 1885. The book is named after its discoverer, the eccentric Lithuanian-born Polish bookseller Wilfrid Voynich, whose biography is anything but typical. But if judging a book by its cover were ever misguided, it’s particularly wrong to do so with this manuscript, which, as far as we know, has never been decoded, though not for a lack of effort. Roughly 10 by 7 inches, its 234 pages-some have been lost since its original composition-are bound by a limp vellum, the Renaissance counterpart to today’s paperback. But that kind of analysis would require someone to pull off a literary feat that has thus far proven impossible: reading it.Īt first glance, the Voynich Manuscript is rather unassuming it’s “unglamorous, even somewhat shabby,” writes Eamon Duffy in The New York Review of Books. This might well be true of the Voynich Manuscript Eco was so taken with-maybe its story is as old and banal as any other. Perhaps as he examined the Voynich Manuscript, turning its 600-year-old pages over in his hands, he recalled his own words from his 1980 novel: “Books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.” Perhaps the late Italian novelist wanted to see the manuscript because it, like his masterpiece The Name of the Rose, is something of a literary puzzle requiring its would-be interpreters to be equally proficient in medieval history, semiotics and good old-fashioned detective work. When author Umberto Eco visited Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library in the fall of 2013, he asked to examine only one text: Manuscript 408, popularly known as the Voynich Manuscript. Print has been acquired by an independent group of collaborators-Deb Aldrich, Laura Des Enfants, Jessica Deseo, Andrew Gibbs, Steven Heller and Debbie Millman-and soon enough, we’ll be back in full force with an all-new look, all-new content and a fresh outlook for the future! In the meantime, we’re looking back at some of our favorite pieces from PRINT magazine, such as this one by Brandon Ambrosino.
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