Codex Seraphinianus

The Codex Seraphinianus is an artist's book of the Italian architect, industrial designer and artist Luigi Serafini, he has written and illustrated in 30 months 1976-1978.

It includes, depending on the edition, about 360 pages, and seems an illustrated encyclopedia from another, alien world to be. The text is printed in a fantasy language with invented characters and lush equipped with colored, surrealist and detailed drawings. It reminds in its look at the Voynich manuscript, the reader associates of extinct cultures that are no longer legible for us writings.

Literary and artistic godfather of the book are on the one hand Diderot's Encyclopedia, is the combined knowledge of the 18th century and introduced order and illustrated with detailed illustrations as well as the fantastic imagery of Hieronymus Bosch and quoted by Borges - fictitious - Chinese encyclopedia.

The book was first edited and published, who specializes in careful and costly facsimile editions of outstanding certificates of book art and the promotion of young artists and a complete edition of the works of 1981 in a two -volume edition by the Italian artist and publisher Franco Maria Ricci Borges has in the program. The paper of expensive manufactured and printed in a limited edition book is handmade, it is bound in silk with gold embossing and protected with a wallet made ​​of cardboard and half-linen.

A one-volume edition followed in 1993, 2006, a revised Italian edition with new illustrations.

Construction

Treats the book if one concludes from the images, in 11 chapters, presumably following topics:

Writing of the Codex

The writing and language in which the Codex is written, could not be deciphered until today. The font is similar to an italic, it seems written in the direction from left to right in horizontal lines from top to bottom, and it has upper and lower lengths.

The numbering system used in the book was allegedly by Allan C. Wechsler and the Bulgarians Ivan Derschanski that deals with the occult, are cracked. It should be a system based on the number of 21.

In a discussion of the Oxford University Society of Bibliophiles from May 8 2009 said Serafini that the writing of the Codex " asemisch " was, and that his experience in writing the same with the " automatic writing " and that he hopes to achieve through his alphabet that the reader same sensations experience like children who sit in front of books that they can not read yet, but which they know that they have meaning for adults.

Expenditure

• First edition Luigi Serafini Codex Seraphinianus, Milano: Franco Maria Ricci [I segni dell'uomo, 27-28 ]. Two-volume edition in 1981. ISBN 88-216-0026-2. ISBN 88-216-0027-0.

• American edition: New York: Abbeville Press, 1983 ISBN 0-89659-428-9; .
• German edition Munich: Prestel. 1983 ISBN 3-7913-0651-0. ;
• Dutch edition: Amsterdam: Meulenhoff / Landshoff, 1983, ISBN 90-290-8402-2. .