Agreed. It's a strange work and wherever we turn we are confronted by conundrums. So, the question for me is: what amongst the strangeness is most peculiar and unusual in the sense that it defies any immediate explanation? The herbal pages are strange, but not so much on first impression. My first over-all impression is that it is a rustic work, unpolished, amateurish. Cartoonish pictures, unruled lines of text. So I was happy to provisionally put a lot of strangeness down to that. The strangeness of the herbs, I figured, could just be because the illustrator wasn't very good. And he certainly struggled with the human form. Similarly, other strangenesses. It is like so-called 'outsider' art. I think "outlandish" is exactly the right word. I gave its eccentricities some latitude.
But the nymphs are an immediate conundrum. Even at a glance, these are not simple bathing scenes and the weirdness cannot be put down to a rustic illustrator. And, as I say, I was immediately struck by the map. I thought - if there is a key to this work, this is likely to be it. See how it folds out and demands our attention. But above all I couldn't explain the script. Why is it written in this script? Or rather, I wondered: why is it not written in Roman letters, regardless of what (European) language it is? I still think that is the central question. It emerges that it is a carefully designed script apparently made just for this project. But why make one at all?
The answer must be that existing scripts were not adequate to the task. Even if the criterion was aesthetic, the existing scripts were no good. I can't see why the manuscript - an admittedly weird and somewhat outlandish astrological herbal - wasn't written in Latin or German, or whatever. And if it is, then why in this unique script? My first thought was: it means it has a small readership. The chosen script for the work narrows its readership. It's a private not a public work. I have a contextual hypothesis about the authorship (see my other post to Voynichtalk) but I struggle to explain the script. (Although I find Brian Cham's curve-and-line model suggestive in a Cusean context.)
But the nymphs are an immediate conundrum. Even at a glance, these are not simple bathing scenes and the weirdness cannot be put down to a rustic illustrator. And, as I say, I was immediately struck by the map. I thought - if there is a key to this work, this is likely to be it. See how it folds out and demands our attention. But above all I couldn't explain the script. Why is it written in this script? Or rather, I wondered: why is it not written in Roman letters, regardless of what (European) language it is? I still think that is the central question. It emerges that it is a carefully designed script apparently made just for this project. But why make one at all?
The answer must be that existing scripts were not adequate to the task. Even if the criterion was aesthetic, the existing scripts were no good. I can't see why the manuscript - an admittedly weird and somewhat outlandish astrological herbal - wasn't written in Latin or German, or whatever. And if it is, then why in this unique script? My first thought was: it means it has a small readership. The chosen script for the work narrows its readership. It's a private not a public work. I have a contextual hypothesis about the authorship (see my other post to Voynichtalk) but I struggle to explain the script. (Although I find Brian Cham's curve-and-line model suggestive in a Cusean context.)