01-05-2016, 11:08 PM
Sam - this mostly comes down to how one is willing to interpret things, and to what extent one wants everything to match perfectly. To go over your points:
"it isn't really clear that her hands are tied, much less that her hair is being used to tie them"
Marco pointed out to me that the tying hands with hair thing is a translation error in the edition I used. In other translations, there is a moment where the king pulls the girl's hair and brings her hands behind her back, before tying her up.
"The nymphs all have different hairstyles"
In the first picture, Philomela has her hair loose because she has just been raped - it's a sign. After that, her hair is tied up again. What I conclude from this is that hairstyle is not used as a means to identify an individual, but rather a means to say something about the state of this individual.
"Same posture, different thing"
Voynich postures are limited, all in all. The "rushing" could signify a general state of excitement, be it positive or negative.
"The headgear on the nymph you identify as the queen receiving the messenger isn't obviously a crown. There are more distinctive and obvious crowns on nymphs elsewhere, including on what you refer to as the queen in disguise, which seems backwards from what you'd expect."
We don't know what looked like a crown to the Voynich author - maybe his set of "crowns" is different than ours. Also, I'm not claiming that this is an absolutely perfect depiction of the myth...
"Some parts are left out"
Yes, I noticed as well. This probably ties into the needs of the mnemonic though. Only the useful scenes were selected, enough to still make the structure of the story clear. This actually supports my interpretation as a mnemonic device for something else.
Finally, I have just written a post about how the final part of this story is used as a mnemonic in the "four winds" folio.
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"it isn't really clear that her hands are tied, much less that her hair is being used to tie them"
Marco pointed out to me that the tying hands with hair thing is a translation error in the edition I used. In other translations, there is a moment where the king pulls the girl's hair and brings her hands behind her back, before tying her up.
"The nymphs all have different hairstyles"
In the first picture, Philomela has her hair loose because she has just been raped - it's a sign. After that, her hair is tied up again. What I conclude from this is that hairstyle is not used as a means to identify an individual, but rather a means to say something about the state of this individual.
"Same posture, different thing"
Voynich postures are limited, all in all. The "rushing" could signify a general state of excitement, be it positive or negative.
"The headgear on the nymph you identify as the queen receiving the messenger isn't obviously a crown. There are more distinctive and obvious crowns on nymphs elsewhere, including on what you refer to as the queen in disguise, which seems backwards from what you'd expect."
We don't know what looked like a crown to the Voynich author - maybe his set of "crowns" is different than ours. Also, I'm not claiming that this is an absolutely perfect depiction of the myth...
"Some parts are left out"
Yes, I noticed as well. This probably ties into the needs of the mnemonic though. Only the useful scenes were selected, enough to still make the structure of the story clear. This actually supports my interpretation as a mnemonic device for something else.
Finally, I have just written a post about how the final part of this story is used as a mnemonic in the "four winds" folio.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.