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Tag Archives: alchemy

Book of the Week — Duineser Elegien

10 Monday Sep 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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abstractions, alchemy, angel, birth, Castle of Duino, Count Harry Kessler, Cranach Press, crush, destruction, discontent, disdain, driven, E. Prince, Edward Johnston, Edward Sackville West, endure, English, Eric Gill, fugitives, G. T. Friend, Gaspard and Aristide Maillol, German, Germany, Hans Schulze, heart, Hogarth Press, humanities, Insel -Verlag, italic type, itinerants, landscapes, Leipzig, London, Maillol-Kessler paper, Max Goertz, metaphysical, Rainer Maria Rilke, sobs, Tavistock Square, terrible, terror, visions, Vita Sackville-West, Walter Tanz, watermark, will, Willi Laste, wood initials


Who would give ear, among the angelic host,
Were I to cry aloud? and even if one
Amongst them took me swiftly to his heart,
I should dissolve before his strength of being.
For beauty’s nothing but the birth of terror,
Which we endure but barely, and, enduring,
Must wonder at it, in that it disdains
To compass our destruction, every angel
Is terrible, and thus in self-control
I crush the appeal that rises with my sobs.

Duineser Elegien
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
London: Printed for the Hogarth Press, 1931
First edition in English

From the translator’s note: “Something remains to be said of the actual content of the poem (for it is really a single poem in ten sections). This is admittedly exceedingly complex and arcane, and will not yield to a first, or even to a second reading. For Rilke’s poetry is of the metaphysical order and consists for the most part of an elaborate alchemy of hypostatised ideas, in the expression of which the invention of grammatical quips and subtleties plays…is an important part. His imagination seems naturally to have dealt in visions of embodied abstractions, and…he pushed the vision as far as possible, creating detailed landscapes and humanities of abstract categories…”


But tell me, who are these itinerants,
These fugitives more hasty than ourselves,
Urgently driven from the start, — by whom?
To gratify what discontented will?

From the colophon: “Count Harry Kessler planned the format of this volume. Eric Gill designed and himself cut on wood the initials. The Italic type was designed by Edward Johnston and cut by E. Prince and G. T. Friend. The paper was made by a hand process devised in joint research by Count Harry Kessler and Gaspard and Aristide Maillol. The book was printed in the winter and spring of 1931. Count Harry Kessler and Max Goertz supervised the work of setting the type and printing. Compositors: Walter Tanz and Hans Schulze. Pressman: Willi Laste.

The book was printed for the Hogarth Press, 52 Tavistock Square, London W. C. 1, and both the English and the German texts were reproduced by the courtesy of Insel-Verlag in Leipzig who are also the Agents for the book in Germany.

The whole edition consists of two hundred and thirty numbered copies for sale on handmade Maillol-Kessler paper with the watermark of the Cranach Press, and signed by the translators; and eight numbered copies on vellum for sale with hand-gilded initials, signed by the translators. This is copy Nr. 63.”

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On Jon’s Desk: Forkel’s Allgemeine Litteratur der Musik crosses paths with Harry Potter

29 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by Jonathan Bingham in On Jon's Desk

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1792, alchemy, Allgemeine Litteratur der Musik, Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J. K. Rowling, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, Jonathan Bingham, Leipzig, Nicolas Flamel, Philosopher's Stone, Schwickert

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I knew it! I knew it! ”
“Are we allowed to speak yet?” said Ron grumpily. Hermione ignored him.
“Nicolas Flamel,” she whispered dramatically, “is the only known maker of the Philosopher’s Stone!”
This didn’t have quite the effect she’d expected.
“The what?” said Harry and Ron.
“Oh, honestly, don’t you two read? Look — read that, there.”

― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone


Allgemeine Litteratur der Musik; oder, Anleitung zur kenntniss musikalischer bu̇cher, welche von den ȧltesten bis auf die neusten zeiten…

Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1749 – 1818)

Leipzig: Schwickert, 1792

First edition

ML105 F72


It seems to me that a person either loves the Harry Potter series or hates it. Some people even refuse to read it despite the pleas of HP lovers close to them. As we fanatical fans know because our hearts tell us it is so, the abstainers would love it too if they would just finally read it. But for those of us who aren’t able to convince the last hold outs of our generation, at least we can experience the magic of sharing J. K. Rowling’s world with the children we are raising as they become old enough to join the Harry Potter fan club. It is in this light, that of needing to be the expert of all things Harry Potter in order to guide my nine year old son as he reads the series this summer, that I contemplate a recent important discovery.

I remember when I first entered the world of Harry Potter. It was the summer after my first year of college and I was looking for my summer fiction fix, an annual college ritual created by restricting myself from fiction during the school year in an effort to achieve better grades. In May 2003, as classes were ending, the release of the fifth book in the Harry Potter series (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) was eagerly anticipated the next month (June). I had been hearing about the series for a couple of years and it was finally time to take the plunge. And I dove deep. I read the first four books in the series at a pace of about a book a week and was ready for the fifth installment of the series when it was released in June. Needless to say I, like so many millions of others, was hooked on HP from then on. I have to admit to having read the series in its entirety several times in the years since I joined the club.

And strangely, at no point in any of those readings did it occur to me that a certain important character in the first book (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) is an actual historical figure. Every time I read about Professor Dumbledore’s association with Nicolas Flamel I assumed J. K. Rowling had created Flamel as a fictitious character. It wasn’t until this week and a chance encounter with Allgemeine Litteratur der Musik while conducting research on a separate topic that I discovered how all these years I had been missing something.

But let me back up and provide a little context. The plot of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone [spoiler alert] follows Harry Potter, a young wizard who discovers his magical heritage on his eleventh birthday, when he receives a letter of acceptance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry makes close friends and a few enemies during his first year at the school. With the help of his friends Ron and Hermione, Harry faces an attempted comeback by the dark wizard Lord Voldemort, who killed Harry’s parents, but failed to kill Harry when he was just 15 months old.

During his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry the successful enterprise of preventing his nemesis’ return hinges on Hermione’s deductive reasoning in deducing what Professor Quirrell is after, and Professor Dumbledore is hiding, within the school. This artifact, the Philosopher’s Stone, is the creation of the alchemist Nicolas Flamel – an associate of Professor Dumbledore. And this is where Rowling’s fiction intersects with historical fact.

Nicolas Flamel (1340 – 1418) was a successful French scribe and manuscript seller. After his death, Flamel developed a reputation as an alchemist. Lore has it that he discovered the Philosopher’s Stone and achieved immortality. These legendary accounts first appeared in the 17th century. I had no idea that Nicolas Flamel was an actual person until I found him, completely by coincidence, in Forkel’s Allgemeine Litteratur der Musik (1792).

Johann Nikolaus Forkel was a German musician, musicologist, and music theorist. The son of a cobbler, he received early musical training (especially in keyboard playing) from Johann Heinrich Schulthesius, who was the local Kantor. In other aspects of his music education he was self-taught, especially in regards to theory. As a teenager he served as a singer in Lüneburg. He studied law for two years at the University of Göttingen, and then remained associated with the University for more than fifty years. There he held varied positions, including instructor of music theory, organist, keyboard teacher, and eventually director of all music at the university. Forkel is often regarded as the founder of Historical Musicology because through his vision the study of music history and theory became an academic discipline with rigorous standards of scholarship. He was an enthusiastic admirer of Johann Sebastian Bach, whose music he did much to popularize. He also wrote the first biography of Bach (in 1802), which is of particular value today due to his decision to correspond directly with Bach’s sons Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (thereby obtaining valuable information that would otherwise have been lost). Forkel’s Allgemeine Litteratur der Musik (Dictionary of Musical Literature) is a survey of musical texts arranged by author’s last name in alphabetical order, with dictionary-style entries.

On page eleven is an entry for Nicolas Flamel. Loosely translated from the German, in part it reads, “A French poet, painter, philosopher, and mathematician in Paris at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries, born in Pontoise … He was especially known for alchemy…” Forkel’s description includes the texts written by Flamel (easily distinguished in this work because the Latin titles were printed in a Roman typeface rather than the Gothic) which relate in some way to music. He provides references to important passages in regards to music within Flamel’s texts as well.

In addition to being able to share this new insight with my nine year old son as he reads Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, this experience has led me to conclude two things: there is more depth to the Harry Potter series than some people want to give it credit for and more importantly, the rare books collections are an incredible source of knowledge and insight. Irreplaceable is how I would describe them, actually. It wasn’t through the internet that I found out that a character in one of my favorite books is actually a historical figure. Rather, like Hermione with the information that allowed Harry to defeat Lord Voldemort and stop his return, I found it in an old book in the library.

~ Contributed by Jon Bingham, Rare Books Curator

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Book of the Week — Lexicon Tetraglotton…

10 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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alchemy, alphabet, anatomist, anatomy, architecture, Aristotle, Ben Jonson, Benjamin Franklin, cats, Charles, chemistry, clothing, dictionary, England, English, engraver, engraving, Europe, France, French, frontispiece, history, horsemanship, hunting, Italian, Italy, James Howell, Kenelm Digby, Kings, lexicography, lexicon, library, London, Machiavelli, Oxford, physician, political, Poor Richard's Almanac, proverbs, reference, Restoration, Samuel Thompson, Spain, Spanish, tracts, travel, trees, Wales, William Faithorne, William Harvey, women

lexicon-tetraglotton-frontis

lexicon-tetraglotton-title

“A catt may look on a king”

Lexicon Tetraglotton, an English-French-Italian-Spanish…
James Howell (1594? – 1666)
London: Printed by J.G. for Samuel Thompson, 1660
First and only edition

James Howell, born in Wales and educated at Oxford, began his literary career in 1640 with the political allegory, Dendrologia: Dodona’s Grove, or, The Vocall Forest, an account representing the history of England and Europe through the framework of a typology of trees. He continued to write political tracts throughout the 1640s and 1650s, drawing material from Aristotle, Machiavelli, and others. Howell befriended many literary figures, including Ben Jonson and Kenelm Digby. In 1620, he became ill and was treated by physician and anatomist William Harvey.

Howell wrote Instructions for Forreine Travel in 1642, a book of useful information about safe travel in France, Spain, and Italy. Traveling in his own country proved to be hazardous, however. On a visit to London early in 1643, he was arrested in his chambers and imprisoned for the next eight years. He spent this time writing. He was released from prison at the Restoration of Charles to the throne and in 1661 was made Historiographer Royal.

Howell was a master of modern romance languages. Lexicon is a dictionary but also contains epistles and poems on lexicography; characterizations of most letters of the alphabet; and vocabulary lists organized in 52 sections, such as anatomy, chemistry, alchemy, women’s clothing, horsemanship, hunting, architecture, and a library. Howell collected proverbs in English, Italian, Spanish and French which are added in Proverbs, or, Old Sayed Savves & Adages. Benjamin Franklin used this book as a reference for his own Poor Richard’s Almanac.

In the frontispiece, engraved by William Faithorne (1616-1691), four female figures, emblematic of England, France, Spain and Italy, stand among trees with a helmeted figure to the right standing guard. This copy contains a later state of the engraving with initials identifying the countries represented. Half-title and title-page in red and black. Rare Books copy gift of Anonymous, for whose generosity and friendship we are ever grateful.

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Book of the Week – Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica

30 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by scott beadles in Book of the Week

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Age of Reason, Albert Einstein, alchemy, Alexander Pope, Aristotle, astronomy, calculus, Copernicus, Edmund Halley, Enlightenment, Galielo, gravity, history of science, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, laws of motion, Leibniz, London, mathematics, Principia, telescope, The University of Utah, theory of relativity, William Wordsworth

QA803-A2-1687-titleQA803-A2-1687-pg1QA803-A2-1687-pg283

Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
London, J. Streater, 1687
First edition
QA803 A2 1687

Although Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler had shown the way by describing the phenomena they observed, Isaac Newton explained the underlying universal laws of those phenomena. Newton’s theories overthrew the subjective interpretations of nature that had dominated science and natural philosophy since the time of Aristotle and ushered in the Age of Reason. By age forty-three, Newton had invented calculus, broken white light into its component colors, and built a telescope whose design is still used today. When he was forty-seven he published the book that profoundly changed the way we see the world and established his brilliance as an astronomer and mathematician. It is likely that no more than three hundred copies of the first edition were printed.

Principia gave us the three laws of motion, defined gravity, and provided the precise mathematical equations by which it could be measured. Edmund Halley was instrumental in getting Principia into print. Halley wheedled, flattered and bullied Newton, a recluse, into preparing his manuscript. Halley paid the cost of printing it out of his own pocket. Leibniz admired Newton’s math but was appalled by his fascination with alchemy. Of the birth of the Age of Reason, Alexander Pope wrote, “Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night;/God said ‘Let Newton be!’ and all was light.” William Wordsworth wrote of Newton, “for ever Voyaging thro’ strange seas of Thought, alone.” Albert Einstein said that Newton “determined the course of western thought, research, and practice like no one else before or since.”

In the twenty-first century, Principia is still considered one of the greatest single contributions in the history of science.

University of Utah copy: Second and third books printed by different printers, evidenced by different type in the headings and a break in paging between the two books. Diagram on p. 22

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