“A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams.”
codex
A letter from Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra, cross written to save paper, February 8-9, 1807
Zeeatlas. Frankrijk, 1538. Perkament, 39 folia, 440 x 312 mm. – 129 A 24, fol. 16r
“In the south of Brazil, in the centre of the picture, two opponent Tupi-tribes are fighting against each other. Further southward a Native American lumberjack is felling a tree for a European merchant. In the north tree-trunks are transported and a second group of natives is moving westward, accompanied by two Europeans. The Europeans are probably Frenchmen, although Brazil had been held by the Portuguese since 1500. As neither gold nor silver was found, Portuguese interest rapidly decreased, and for many years only French privateers came there after Brazilian wood.”
“This chart, displaying part of the Atlantic coast of South America, with Uruguay and the mouth of the Rio de la Plata at the top as the most southern point, and the area around Pernambuco as the most northern region, is one of the charts in an atlas that was made in Dieppe about 1538. The Dieppe cartographers were known for their reliable cartographic material, which they also presented in a very artistic way. They had excellent contacts with Portuguese cartographers, the experts *par excellence *of maritime cartography at the time. No wonder that the basic material for this atlas also came from the Portuguese: the geographical representation, the windroses indicating the points of the compass, and the spelling of the plotted place-names, all point to this origin.”
Drawings on Manuscript by Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
more at Russian Culture.
via Ben Katchor
DA VINCI’S BLOBS
Looking at a rapidly flowing stream or a thunderstorm leaves a strong visual impression, but many aspects of what is actually happening remain hidden from or are simply beyond the reach of observation, either by the naked eye or instruments. They have to be inferred from what can be observed, and this is a matter of interpretation, of imagination. It is very much the method Albert Einstein used in developing his theories of Relativity, because he could not directly observe objects moving close to the speed of light, or the movements of stars in interstellar space. In science it is called making a hypothesis, and the application of this method took modern physics far beyond empiricism (Newton had proudly claimed, “I make no hypotheses”), which was based strictly on what could be observed. Da Vinci, in this way as in others, anticipated future developments—he created hypothetical worlds that revealed the hidden structures of nature. These, in turn, helped him create paintings of great originality that are imbued with a lasting aura of conceptual power.
more here
Chansons d’Amour : (Thott 291 8º ) : 37 verso
‘This Chansonnier, named by Knud Jeppesen as the perhaps most interesting and valuable medieval music handwriting in the Royal Library, occupies a special position among the relatively few manuscripts that surrender the French-Burgundian Chansons repertoire from the late 1400s. The script contains text and nodes for 33 three-star songs. A song – “Iactens secours” – was added in the 16th century. In conclusion, there are a number of “modulation exercises.”‘
Crash by J.G. Ballard
via ekstasis and marginalgloss
“No symbols where none intended”
“Although popularly thought of as a rather dour and ascetic writer, there is a wonderfully playful aspect to Samuel Beckett’s creative output: the pictorial array of raggle-taggle characters and baroque broidery that scampers through his notebooks and manuscripts. Continuously—from decorating 1930s exercise books to embellishing the scraps of paper bearing his 1970s Mirlitonnades—doodling provided an amiable outlet when, yet again, he found himself up against the obduracy of words.
Beckett’s interest in the visual arts is well known. During his exhaustive travels around Germany in the 1930s he kept notes detailing his responses to the Old Master and more modern paintings that he had seen. More communally, throughout his life he formed close friendships with a number of artists including Jack B. Yeats, Bram Van Velde, Henri Hayden, and Avigdor Arikha. However, his appreciation of Fine Art seems to have had no discernibly direct effect on his own spontaneous drawings, which repeatedly appear to have earthier, and more mixed, antecedents.”
Naples Dioscurides
Paul Greer 