Welcome to the latest posting of Literary Corner. We have something special this time, a little different from the normal posts. Frances Tallarico, a wonderful woman from out on the west coast, is a person who loves literature, especially writing, and has written a number of books and short stories. She was gracious enough to submit this brief story for our enjoyment. It’s interesting, surprising, and certainly within our theme as the story itself is about a new writer. Frances also publishes a very interesting blog about her travels and experiences, and for anyone interested, here is the link: https://lifeculture.travel.blog. I hope you all enjoy this new addition to Literary Corner!
Snow Globe
By Frances Tallarico
The snow was coming down gently now that the wind had subsided. It had drifted up to the window sills of the little house on the main road of Nowhere, Montana, and all that could be seen of it from the road was the rooftop, the chimney with the plume of smoke that floated in the sky, the glow of candles, and the red neon OPEN sign pulsing behind ice crusted windows.
Lolo lived in the back of the house, and the front room served as post office and bus depot, though there was little mail and the bus passed through once a week in both directions, on different days. Lolo was a little bit of a woman, and it seemed to her that she had shrunk since she moved here twenty years ago. “Maybe one day you’ll just disappear,” she’d say to herself every time she climbed on the stepstool to get something from the top shelf in the kitchen.
She’d moved to Nowhere at the turn of the century to get away from the turmoil of New York City life. She’d written a novel, but even being in the midst of where the literary scene was happening, it was hard to get noticed, and easy to be distracted by the city lights. It was just for a little while, she promised herself, to edit and revise her novel, and then find an agent.
She’d received two hundred twenty-two rejections, and just as many no replies to her queries. After a while, she stopped sending them, but she did continue to write. There were notebooks filled with partially written novels, poems and love letters to the men she’d loved and lost, and daily entries in the stack of journals next to her bed. Sometimes she’d read her work. After a while it all sounded the same to her, with different words.
As time passed, she found that she enjoyed being alone. Here, in Nowhere, Montana, there was just enough interaction with the ranchers who came by to pick up mail, and the infrequent bus stops with passengers who needed to use the restroom. They were usually hungry as well, so Lolo started baking cookies to sell on the days the buses came through. She called them Big Sky cookies, plain vanilla cookies with a thick coating of blue icing. One customer said, “These are nothing but plain vanilla cookies with blue icing,” so the next batch Lolo made, she added a heaping spoonful of Montana sand to the cookie dough. People loved her Big Sky cookies for their unique flavor and crunch.
Winter time was hard. She was obligated to keep the walkway to the bus stop clear. That meant shoveling every day, even when the bus wasn’t due. She’d already lost one finger and two toes to frostbite in the bitter cold winter. She’d shoveled earlier in the day, but the persistent snow had put a new layer on the path. It didn’t matter. Who’d be out on a night like this? And the bus wasn’t due until tomorrow. She was tired of writing about the blanket of snow that quieted the noise of the day, and made a pot of soup with the bones of the chicken she’d roasted on Sunday and whatever vegetables were in the cellar.
She heard the buzz the bell made when the front door opened. In the front room stood a tall, thin man, carrying a duffel bag and a child in his arms. They were coated in snow. “Hello, ma’am. My car broke down about a mile up the road. I called for roadside assistance, but they said it would be several hours before someone could get to us. They suggested we stay here to keep warm. Is that all right with you?”
“Of course,” Lolo said. “Let me take your coats. I’ll hang them near the fireplace to dry.”
The man took off his coat and sat on the couch near the fireplace. He took the blanket from the child he was carrying and put him on his lap. Now Lolo could see that it wasn’t a child, but a doll dressed in jeans and a blue plaid cowboy shirt. “My name is Michael,” he said. There was the lilt of an Irish accent when he spoke. “This is Kelly the Cowboy.”
“Hubba hubba,” Kelly the Cowboy said, “You’re quite a dame. I bet all the cowboys around here are crazy about you.”
Lolo laughed. “So, you’re a ventriloquist.”
“Yes, I am.” Kelly the Cowboy replied, “and this is my dummy.”
“How would you like some soup to warm you up?”
As she placed a bowl of soup on the table next to Michael, the electricity went out. She went through the house to put oil lamps around, and stoked the fire. In the dim lamplight and flickering flames of the fire, she spoke with her guests. Kelly the Cowboy did the talking. He was quite entertaining, even if somewhat brash and bawdy.
Lolo was curled up in the chair across from them. Soon Kelly the Cowboy’s chatter was a drone amid the crackle of the fire. Her eyelids became heavy and she rode off on a wooden horse with a cowboy named Kelly.
She was aroused by the clanking noise of the tow truck on the road. “Well, there you are,” Kelly the Cowboy said. “You missed my best stories.”
Lolo yawned and stretched. “I’m sorry.” The candles had burned down to nubbins, the lamps were out of oil, and the fire was glowing embers, but the room was bright with sunlight, and the big Montana sky was as blue as the icing on her vanilla cookies.
She opened the door for the tow truck driver. “Are you ready to go, Michael?” Lolo brought his coat to him. He sat there, motionless, his eyes open in a blank stare.
“I told you he was a dummy,” Kelly the Cowboy said. “Just help us down to the car and we’ll be on our way… Did I tell you about the leprechaun who lost his pot of gold?”
I am very excited to post the first article in Literary Corner in 2022. The honor goes to Arthur Reynolds, who is not just a great writer, but he happens to be my son-in-law. Arthur has captured the true spirit of Literary Corner, and in a broad sense of literature in general. I hope you all enjoy this!
Our Stories Are Important
By Arthur Reynolds
When I was twenty, I came home from school one weekend to see my family and had the idea to ask my grandfather to tell me a story that he’d never told me before. He thought for a moment and then recounted the following:
When I was a boy, my parents brought me to the zoo. As we approached the gate to enter I heard a voice say, “Hello!” I looked around to see who had said it, but there was only my family and a crow. It was perched on top of the gate which arched over the entryway and it said “hello” to all of the guests that entered.
While this story wasn’t an epic tale spanning hundreds of pages, it brought me great joy to hear it. I could feel the magic in it. A whimsical encounter for a child that stayed with him into his nineties. He passed away a year later and I was glad to have had that moment where he shared a memory from his childhood that was special to him. Thinking about that story now brings tears to my eyes. Tears that miss him, but also tears that are overwhelmed with the joy of the memories I shared with him. I can still hear the way that he said “Hello!” like the crow, and it makes me laugh.
This is the power of stories. They carry depth and subjectivity. For me, the story of the friendly crow at the zoo carries catharsis for the loss of my grandfather but for you, it might just be a sweet little anecdote. They can mean different things to different people at different times. The words of the story barely change, but we shift throughout our lives as we create our own stories. Our experiences bring new context and appreciation for the tales we’ve heard a thousand times.
Our stories are important. They carry our history, our dreams, and the essence of the human experience. Our stories define us. They shape our futures and teach our children. So go out and tell your children or grandchildren a story you’ve never told them. They want to hear it, they just don’t know it yet.
After a much too long break from new submissions to Literary Corner, we have a special treat from a new author as another Ward has stepped up to demonstrate her excellent writing skills. Maureen (Ward) Nelson has taken up the pen to relate this short but heartfelt telling of an event that changed her life. Thank you so much Maureen!
Life Changed
by Maureen Nelson
I received the call that they had arrived. I grabbed my keys and raced the long 10 mile stretch to the hospital, praying that I would make it in time. As I drove, a mountain of worries floated through my brain-will my baby make it through the pain, will my grandbaby be ok, will I be able to handle what I am about to witness?
As my son-in-law paced the room, I tried to be like a mouse in the corner-there, but not. The contractions were getting closer and stronger, still labor continued throughout the night. Soon, the doctor calmly instructed to push. I remember seeing the little tuft of dark hair emerging. And as I stood next to my son-in-law, I thought “this is awesome and a little bit weird”!
As the sun began to rise, my baby gave birth to a teeny tiny, wrinkled, sticky, dark-haired, squealing, beautiful baby girl. I didn’t shed a tear. I just stared in awe at this perfectly formed miracle, my granddaughter. As I turned to look at my baby, I had this wave of gratitude and pride wash over me.
I kissed my daughter as she held hers, I hugged my son-in-law and left them to be alone for the first time with their new little family of three. I walked through the halls of the hospital, with the muted greens and blues, opened the door and walked out into the blaze of morning light.
As I sat in my car, I began to sob – big, gigantic ugly tears. Tears of exhaustion, tears of protection, tears of overwhelming feelings of love. I then looked up to Heaven and cried out “Lord, thank you, but now I have another person to worry about for the rest of my life!!!”.
I periodically come across a quote that seems to fit the theme of Literary Corner perfectly. I saw this the other day on a website called “Wandering Ambivert” (recommended for people who like inspiring pictures of nature). I love what this has to say.
Every time I read a great book I felt I was reading a kind of map, a treasure map, and the treasure I was being directed to was in actual fact myself. But each map was incomplete, and I would only locate the treasure if I read all the books, and so the process of finding my best self was an endless quest. And books themselves seemed to reflect this idea. Which is why the plot of every book ever can be boiled down to ‘someone is looking for something.’ —Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive
A big thank you to all who made a purchase over the past few weeks during the sale. I hope you all are enjoying your new books. Just a reminder to everyone else that the sale ends in just 3 days. If you are interested in any purchases, just go the the appropriate page of my website and the prices listed reflect the discount in effect.
And remember, my new book, The Circle of Justice, is just around the corner.
Summer’s almost over. As you get ready for the coming fall, enjoy 25% off The Seduction of Paradise and The Longest Walk. Go to the Mystery and Suspense page or the Romance page and check out the discounts for these two exciting novels. Maybe even time to start thinking about Christmas presents!
Sale period lasts until September 15. Discounts are only available directly from this website.
I came across this article on penlightener.com the other day. I feel it captures what I view as the value of literature to the human society, not just for today but throughout history. I thought some of you literature fanatics out there might appreciate this.
Why is Literature Important?
“Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.” ~ C.S. Lewis, a British scholar and novelist
This adage is perhaps the most appropriate description of the importance of literature in our lives. Literature reminds us of stories, epics, sacred scriptures, and classical works of the old and modern times. It is defined as the body of written works of a language, period or culture, produced by scholars and researchers, specialized in a given field. Why is literature important? Let us see.
Literature Adds Value As stated in the quote by C.S. Lewis, literature not only describes reality but also adds to it. Literary works are portrayals of the thinking patterns and social norms prevalent in society. They are a depiction of the different facets of common man’s life. Classical literary works serve as a food for thought and encourage imagination and creativity. Exposing oneself to good literary works, is equivalent to providing one with the finest of educational opportunities. On the other hand, the lack of exposure to good literature is equal to depriving oneself from the opportunity to grow.
Parts of Literature Prose, poetry, drama, essays, fiction, literary works based on philosophy, art, history, religion, and culture as also scientific and legal writings are grouped under literature. Creative nonfiction of the olden times and literary journalism also fall under literature. Certain extremely technical writings such as those on logistics and mathematics are also considered as a part of literature.
Literature Impacts Living Some of the great literary works like the Bible and Indian epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata, among others, provide society with the guiding principles of life. Works by poets like Homer, Plato, Sappho, Horace and Virgil, Shakespeare’s sonnets and notable poetry by W.B. Yeats, John Keats, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and William Blake, among others, are timeless. They have always amused their readers and shall continue to. The Lord of the Rings, The Godfather, A Tale of Two Cities, and James Bond Series are some of the best-selling books of all time that have entertained several generations. While some literary and poetry works carry life’s lessons, many others make us think. Some works are known for the sheer entertainment they provide, while others intrigue. Many works in literature establish a strong connect with their audience through the stories they narrate or the message the carry. Readers tend to associate themselves with the emotions portrayed in these works and become emotionally involved in them. Literature thus has a deep impact on the readers’ minds and in turn, their lives.
Children’s Literature The Adventures of Pinocchio, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Winnie-the-Pooh, as also the relatively recent Harry Potter Series are some of the greatest works in children’s literature. Due to a whole new world they create through words, or due to their characters that the readers can relate to, these books attract children. Amused by the stories they tell, kids associate themselves with these books’ characters and idealize some of them. Moral stories are an aid for parents and teachers to let the kids learn important lessons in life. Aesop, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, and Mark Twain, among many others are some of the most widely popular children’s authors. They have enriched the childhoods of so many. Their works have amused millions of children the world over.
Literature Helps Understand Life It is through reading great literary and poetic works, that one understands life. They help a person take a closer look at the different facets of living. In many ways, literature, in its different forms, can change one’s perspective towards living. Biographies of great people, real-life stories of courage, sacrifice and other good values never fail to inspire readers. Such works give the masses an insight into the lives of eminent people, and also serve as a bible of ideals.
It Provides Information Literature serves as an enormous information base. Research works by famous inventors and literary works by notable scientists often narrate stories of their groundbreaking discoveries and inferences. Ongoing developments in the fields of science and technology are documented so that the world can know about them. Several ancient scriptures relating stories of human evolution and narratives of human life in those times, have been of tremendous help to mankind. Thus, literature has always served as an authentic source of information.
Scope of Literature True, languages are the building blocks of literature. But the study of literature cannot be restricted to only studying languages. In fact, literature cannot be confined to an educational curriculum. A degree in language and literature is perhaps not able to provide one with everything that literature can offer. Its scope is so deep and wide that even a lifetime may not be enough to really ‘study’ literature.
Literature is Important For the breadth of knowledge is gives, the moral values it carries, and the enjoyment it provides, literature is important. An exposure to good literary works is essential at every phase of life as it enriches us in more ways than one. Literature is definitely much more than its literary meaning, which defines it as ‘an acquaintance to letters’. In fact, it lays the foundation of a fulfilling life. It adds ‘life’ to ‘living’.
Post Script As a post script to this article, I would like to add that an equally rewarding and beneficial aspect of literature is in creating it. Whether one has the talents of Shakespeare or Yeats, or simply the urge to express thoughts and ideas to share with others, creating literature (writing) provides its own sense of learning and understanding. Often times when one composes a piece of literature to be shared with others, the author learns more about the subject than the recipients do. Plus it’s a lot of fun!
As always, I continue to solicit fun and interesting articles from all of you, and from anyone you would like to recommend. There is nothing more enlightening than having a very diverse set of thoughts and ideas, whether serious, funny, or simply just interesting facts. So please, anyone with an interest, please feel free to submit something.
Of course, you also know that if no one submits something over an extended period of time, you will be subjected to the Philosophical Files of Kevin J. Ward. Hey, don’t blame me for this. You all have a choice to send me something. That said, what follows is a thought process that came to me one day without really trying to think about it. I jotted down some notes, and when I finished, it almost made sense. So, for better or for worse, I hope you enjoy this article.
Achieving Peace
(From the Philosophical Files of Kevin J. Ward)
I believe, like most people, that we should always try to look on the bright side of things, to see the silver lining in the clouds. I feel I have been able to do a pretty good job at this, but at the same time I recognize it is only human to want more and better things. I also realize that life isn’t always fair, but yet I am often troubled when I see how much unfairness there is in the world. I wonder, sometimes, why God allows bad things to happen, why he allows good people to suffer. No matter how I try and “look on the bright side”, the unfairness of the world is always right in front of us, almost taunting us. What would it take to be truly content in life? Not just accepting of the unfairness and of the bad things that can happen, but truly, blissfully content?
I sit back, close my eyes and begin to meditate. At first my meditation is little more than concentrating on issues that tend to bother me. What would the world actually be like if there was no suffering, no pain, no unfairness? In this mild level of meditation I envision a utopian world that we have seen in movies or read about in fictional stories. Everything is good, everybody is good. There is no evil. Conceptually I get it, but what would the world actually be like? Surprisingly, even in my meditative state, this world doesn’t seem to make sense. Even if I had everything I want, what’s to stop me from wanting more? If I always feel wonderful, why wouldn’t I want to feel even better? This new world is a nice thought, but it is not blissful, and it does not bring the peace I hope to find. In fact, it almost perpetuates the concerns I was feeling in the “real world”.
I fall deeper into my meditative state, and I begin to realize that I cannot ever find true bliss, true peace, as long as I am focused even in a small way on me. As long as I am searching for something better for myself, bliss and peace will elude me. My mind drifts to a new level, one where I truly have no concerns for myself. It is liberating in many ways, and I experience something like a great pressure being lifted from me. Is this it? Is this the perfect world? Could this be heaven?
The answer is no. Even here I do not feel true peace. In fact, I become almost more aware of the suffering of others. Why are there so many poor? Why do so many people have pain? Why does evil seem to win out over good so often? Being unselfish is a very good thing, but it does not bring me any closer to true bliss.
I allow my meditative state to deepen. My mind now begins to drift on its own and is open to thoughts and ideas that come from somewhere else. They are not my thoughts; they are an experience from allowing my mind to remain free. I suppose one could say I am reaching a true spiritual state. Now, at this level, material things have little importance. Without the concern of material things, I am free to focus on what is truly important. I have a stronger sense of God, not that I can see God, but I clearly feel closer to my creator. It is a wonderful feeling. But then, surprisingly, I somehow know this level is not one of true peace. While practical thoughts have nearly vanished, I find myself concerned about this new spiritual level. Does God truly love me? Does he love me as much as he does others? Does he love the people that were so evil in the “real world”? If so, why does he love them as much as he loves me? At this spiritual level, will I encounter loved ones who have passed away? Will I see my father?
I find myself losing the sense of peace that I thought I was feeling. Even at this level, I want to experience more of this good feeling, and not knowing how to achieve that becomes a barrier to finding true peace. And there are still things I don’t know. In this world, a very spiritual world, should I expect to meet Jesus? Is Jesus truly the Son of God? Will I discover who God actually is? I love this world, but I am still torn. What is it that will bring me, or anyone, true peace?
Then suddenly, out of seemingly nowhere, I am at peace. Total, blissful, tranquil peace. I am at the deepest level of my meditation. I have no conscious thought, but my mind is free and open to anything and everything. For the first time I understand what peace is; it is a world of complete and total nothingness. To be sure, it is not at all a world of emptiness. Far, far, from it. In fact, it is a world of complete fullness. But it is very clearly a world of nothingness.
Now my mind has expanded beyond all human thought. As a human, one can only think in terms of comparisons. Everything is seen as big or small, soft or hard, good or evil, fair or unfair. Even in the previous level of my meditative state I questioned why God would love an evil person as much as a good person. Humans view everything as unique; a unique person, a unique thought, a unique feeling. Well intentioned people, those who truly care about others, try so hard to ensure that all these unique things are equal and fair. In doing so, it emphasizes the differences between all things and makes everything a form of comparison, which in turn drives judgement, even if the judgement is positive and “fair”. Seeing things as unique creates a duality that defines not just our world, but even our subconscious thoughts. ”Strong” has no meaning if there is not something “weak” to compare it to. “Tall” has no meaning if there is not something else that is “short”. Even “good” has no meaning unless there is something “bad” or “evil” to compare it to.
This new world is not a world of equality, for equality can only exist when there are differences that are judged to be the same. One could look at two steel blocks that are alike in every possible form of measurement. Anyone would say that these two blocks are “the same”, that they are “equal”. But yet there is no doubt that they are distinctly two different blocks. In this new world I am experiencing, things are not “equal”, they are not “the same”. There is simply nothing, so there is no judgment whatsoever. Judgement cannot exist when there is nothing to judge. Nothing is “good”, and nothing is “bad”, it just is. In this world, all is one, and it is this oneness that sets this world apart from all others. Nothing is different, and nothing is the same, for it is all one.
Most of us have been taught that in heaven everything is good and happy. But at this level of meditation, I understand that that cannot be true. Good and happy can only exist if there is bad and sadness to go along with it. That is why we humans can never achieve true peace. Ironically, the very act of searching for peace prevents us from ever achieving it.
This new world I have arrived at in my deep meditative state is not good, or happy, or fair. But neither is it bad, or sad, or unfair. It is nothing, or, more accurately, it is a complete oneness, a oneness so profound that in experiencing it there is everything the soul needs to find peace.
This is a perfect world. Here I cannot say I have everything I want or need, because there is nothing, including wanting or needing. We do not need to look on the bright side here, because there are no sides. In fact, “bright” has no meaning. Everything is one, and the oneness is complete. It is complete because, in effect, it is nothing. And through this nothingness, I have everything.
Literary Corner is going to new limits with this incredible piece of work from brother Tadhg. This perfectly addresses the theme of Literary Corner and provides very interesting insights as to how modern literature got started. It’s a bit longer than most articles, but I’m sure you will all agree that it’s worth the read. This also illustrates to some degree the amazing types of books Tadhg maintains in his library. Foe anyone who has not visited it, you should definitely make it a point to do so!
The First Printed Books – Mankind’s Third Revolution
by Tadhg Mac an Bhaird
There are very few – if, indeed, any – milestones in human history that can equal the invention of the printing press. What ignited that technological spark, so profound that when it occurred over 500 years ago it changed the entire course of mankind? Two of those printed books, created during the fifteenth-century Renaissance, define the books we read today. The first book ever mass-produced using a printing press and moveable type was the Gutenberg Bible (the Biblia Sacra Latina), printed in Germany in 1455. The first “illustrated” book, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (or just Poliphilo), wherein illustrations were created specifically to compliment the text, was created in Italy about forty-five years later, in 1499, and is often considered the first of its kind. George Painter wrote in his Studies in Fifteenth-Century Printing: “The Gutenberg Bible is somberly and sternly German, Gothic, Christian and mediaeval; the Hypnerotomachia is radiantly and graciously Italian, classic, pagan and renascent. These are the two supreme masterpieces of the art of printing, and stand at the two poles of human endeavor and desire.” (See Figures 1 and 2).
The combination of methodology and technology Gutenberg used to create his Bible became conduits whereby all of civilization was revolutionized; the effect on mankind is incalculable. The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, also rendered in English as The Strife of Love in a Dream, likewise incorporated innovations that are standard in all of our books today: an easy-to-read typeface, custom illustrations, artistic formatting to reduce eye-strain, and new-fangled punctuation marks such as the semi-colon. It is considered the most beautiful book of the Renaissance and was all the rage amongst Renaissance intellectuals; ironically, the text itself is impossible to read.
All of us reading this blog have one thing in common: we read books. We flip the pages, scroll our Kindles and iPads, crank up the volume on our audio books while we drive. There is little to mystify us in the mechanical effort of reading, but many were the mysteries needing to be solved that allows us to do so. Secrecy was paramount then; it wasn’t just the printing press that was the golden key to the printing of books, it was the mundane tools and equipment needed to make presses fulfill their function – each had to be invented. Accusations, theft, and cries of, “Foul!” were rife amongst the earliest book printers, perhaps none more so than between contemporaries of Johann Gutenberg. Of course, reams of lawyers were recruited by them all in attempts to get the upper hand.
Hitherto manuscripts were the source of written texts in Europe and the Middle East, preceded by the papyri of the Egyptians, a surprising number of which survived in the dry climate of the Egyptian desert. Manuscripts were tedious to produce and copy, and monasteries and universities employed myriad numbers of scribes to do the writing. The finished texts would be passed on from one academic to another, between churches, schools, governmental departments, and eventually wear out or fall to pieces. Contracting for new manuscripts was expensive, and scribes, in their haste to do the work, often made mistakes. Inevitably, errors were more pronounced when a scribe copied a text in a language he did not fully understand. By the High Middle Ages (c. 1000-1350 AD), Latin was the international language of church, government and academia but scribes often had insufficient fluency in Latin to ensure the nuances of an author’s text were being carried over into the copies they were making. Long hours in cold, damp, or overheated scriptoriums often played upon the accuracy of their efforts and the quality of their materials, too. Slowly, those chronic irregularities were pondered and studied by parties interested in such matters – they were not printers or publishers, of course, because no such crafts existed. People interested in precision, however, began to look at ways to standardize texts without having to use outmoded techniques such as the endless carving of woodblocks, introduced by the Chinese in the twelfth century, and the inadequate moveable type introduced by a Korean emperor in the fourteenth century. Those blockbooks, with carefully and laboriously hand-carved words and sentences, had limited practical applications – only a few texts could be done before new blocks were necessary.
Enter Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg. Born about 1400, a goldsmith by trade in the German city of Mainz, by the 1440s he was driven by the idea of producing a Latin Vulgate Bible that could be made in quantity for the use of clergy in every church. He jump-started the Modern Age in 1450 by doing just that, and the rapid changes that occurred following his legal battles – lawyers had their say – are the stuff of legend and intrigue. His covert research and his secretive development program, while overcoming some huge personal setbacks, changed world history. In 1444, for example, at the end of a five-year contract with three partners in Strasbourg, and still not having produced his printing press, the threat of war from an army of ragged French mercenaries had Gutenberg fleeing the city. He returned to Mainz and continued his work, finally printing his first book about 1450, a rudimentary, uninspiring little booklet of Latin grammar usually referred to as a Donatus, after the name of its fourth-century author; it was a mere token attempt, and no copies survive. The initial arrival of a printed book in Germany caused little fanfare. Striving mightily to keep his entire bible project secret until he was ready for business, Gutenberg in the 1450s had to expend ceaseless amounts of time and energy to overcome technological challenges. Lastly, to finance his momentous project, he had to raise capital and set up reserve funds to keep the business moving. Eventually, Johann Fust, Gutenberg’s financial backer, sued him for non-payment of debt, a debt Gutenberg struggled with for the rest of his life, and Fust eventually took control of Gutenberg’s printing presses and his bibles. The end result for Gutenberg was a small pension from the local archbishop, honoring his contribution to printing, but that was all.
Yet, he was a man of considerable stamina, and after printing Donatus he forged ahead with his plan to print the entire Vulgate bible (from the Latin “vulgata”, meaning “commonly used”). The most widely used bible of the Catholic Church, it was a late fourth-century translation by St. Jerome, a brilliant scholar who translated multiple Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac manuscripts into a single Latin text. Despite Gutenberg’s ultimate success and the enormous cost of each printed bible, all of which were sold before the printing was completed, he never made a pfenning from his invention. Nevertheless, within fifty years, although the number of hand-copied manuscripts in libraries, monasteries and various collections in Europe numbered in the thousands, that number was dwarfed by an estimated 15-20 million printed books produced by the rapid expansion of printing on the Continent. That overwhelmed the production of manuscripts and within a few years the centuries-old craft of the scribes was made redundant. Science, literature, and the study of history exploded; Christian unity collapsed as controversial ideas were disseminated at lightning speed and questions began being raised by an impertinent public; explorers presented their amazing discoveries in never-imagined “new worlds”; kings began consolidating information about their territories, leading to the formation of nation-states, an altogether new concept for the Europeans. The wide and quick dissemination of information about trade and economic systems provoked sweeping changes in regional economies throughout Europe.
What, however, was his secret to making the printing press a reality, if not the press itself? As noted above, the Chinese and Koreans had earlier produced books using the same basic concepts Gutenberg did, but using carved wooden blocks for each page which were only useful for short works. The idea was virtually unknown in Europe. The Korean emperor Sejong, who lived at almost exactly the same time as Gutenberg, even simplified the Korean alphabet and created a moveable type, but resistance by the Korean aristocrats, who were unhappy about the conversion from Chinese characters to the new Korean Hangul, stifled any progress. There was no market for mass producing books in Asia – such an idea would take many decades to catch on in the Far East. Likewise in Europe – there was no urgency to mass produce books and little inclination to do so for the millions who had no idea how to read or write, anyway. Most of them would never see a manuscript in their lives except, perhaps, a glimpse during a church service. This was not so onerous as we may imagine: since only academics and clergy could read, a mass-market for manuscripts never existed.
However, the Chinese did revolutionize paper manufacturing – another critical step on the road to a usable printing press. In Europe, the real keys to Gutenberg’s creation of an efficient mechanical press were a new kind of linseed oil-based ink which wouldn’t smear on the newly devised paper, allowing a clear and precisely printed copy. But perhaps his most inspired invention was the type, i.e. the letters needed for printing. Gutenberg had at one time run a business stamping small, cheap metal mirrors for pilgrims visiting holy sites. That idea, and his training as a goldsmith, inspired him to create a type-casting hand mold for the letters of the alphabet. It also required a new metal alloy that would harden quickly, and the combination of tin, lead, and antimony he used had a relatively low melting point, cast clearly, and proved durable. Following an agonizingly long period of trial and error, he created 290 metal master characters of upper and lower case letters and punctuation which could be rapidly duplicated in the hand mold he’d invented. That was the real breakthrough. It was a simple, easy-to-use machine that is nonetheless frightfully difficult to describe or explain (the instructions are fourteen pages long), but he could quickly create as many letters as were needed and keep them readily available in his shop. There is almost no documentation explaining the workings for creating his hand mold, and the very few cryptic references to it in his correspondence only note “the four pieces”. This immediately replaced the cumbersome and labor-intensive method of hand-carving wooden blocks for each letter or page, useless for mass producing printed matter, and progress quickened. The original printing of the bibles took three to five years and each page used an average of 2,500-2,600 characters; with four to six presses being used at once, each with two lock-ups of type on the sliding base, with likely another one or two each being produced at the same time, an estimated 50,000 characters of type needed to be on hand. That seems like a conservative number but is thought to be the amount that would have been in Gutenberg’s shop. Six pages of over 15,000 characters could be printed at one time. The development of the technical details remains obscure, and scholars have been involved in endless debates for centuries about what, precisely, Gutenberg invented – the debates continue full-steam ahead into the twenty-first century. Most Gutenberg bibles contained 1,286 pages bound in two volumes, yet almost no two are exactly alike. Of the 180 copies, some 135 were printed on paper, while the rest were made using vellum, a parchment made from calfskin. Due to the volumes’ considerable heft, it has been estimated that some 170 calfskins were needed to produce just one Gutenberg Bible from vellum. His method for printing books would remain essentially unchanged for the next 400 years. Less than thirty copies of that original run remain intact, and the last sale of a complete volume was in 1978, for $2.2 million. It is estimated that a complete text coming on the market today would fetch somewhere in the neighborhood of $35 million.
These large, heavy bibles, often hand-decorated by artists (“rubricators”) for wealthy patrons, quickly captured the imagination of scholastic Europe, and the race was on for books. Book production today remains comfortably in the millions. In the year 1999, Time Magazine recognized Gutenberg as the “Man of the Millennium”. John Man, in ‘Gutenberg: How One Man Remade the World with Words’, calls Gutenberg’s invention the ‘Third Revolution’ in the course of mankind’s four turning points during the past 5,000 years. The First Revolution was the invention of writing itself; the Second Revolution, the invention of the alphabet; the printing press was the Third, and the Fourth Revolution was the creation of the Internet.
Despite attempts by the craftsmen to keep the invention under wraps, printing presses swiftly became established in Europe, especially Germany and Northern Italy, as those who learned the book printing trade from the early masters began setting up their own shops. Those new shops often provoked contentious backlashes from other printers, and it was not uncommon for a printer to pack up and get out of town to save his presses from legal authorities and his skin from indignant mobs. The books devised by those print shops between 1455 and January 1501 are collectively referred to as incunables (incunabula is the plural Latin form), meaning “cradle” or “swaddling clothes”, i.e. the earliest stages or first traces in the development of books – the Gutenberg Bible is the first of those books. Most incunables are rare, but considering their sheer quantity, they can still readily be found for sale by rare booksellers on many websites. Printing throughout this period continued to expand into France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Britain. By 1500, about 40,000 titles had been printed in millions of copies – compared to the output in manuscripts, this was a mind-boggling achievement, and it was only the beginning.
The writing of books, also, progressed at an astonishing rate. During the incunable period, atlases and geographies, mathematical, scientific and theological books were followed by the latest discoveries in medicine, husbandry, and engineering, which in turn were followed by Classical learning, all at a lively pace. A village plagued by flooding could learn how to drain the surrounding bogs; recurring medical afflictions could now be explained to remote doctors and known cures described. Obscure and nearly lost works by ancient philosophers excited public debates. The books were not, as yet, practical to use. They were cumbersome and they were unbound; printers created hundreds of copies but binding was up to the book buyer to arrange. Printers were also quick to catch on to the financial burden of printing texts that were poor sellers: the enormous investments required in paper, ink and multiple mechanical devices, along with the training and wages of craftsmen, required a decent return on their investments if they were to stay in business. To make the most of their sales, they also required prompt and reliable transport: a printer in Italy spending weeks to prepare the works of Tacitus or Petrarch, for example, would be dismayed to hear of a Dutch or French printer doing the same and would put his own presses into high gear trying to beat his competitors to the new book fairs appearing in major cities, an undertaking that bordered on cutthroat. Europe’s first book fair was held in Frankfurt in 1478, and as the general public began to read, they clamored for more. Transport was an essential component.
A vexing problem for the printers was book size, exacerbated by the practice of many authors who included annotations alongside their texts. Books were usually printed in two columns per page, and their annotations or notes, expounding upon specific points within the main text (footnotes weren’t invented yet), consumed considerable space. That required larger pages to squeeze everything in. The problem was eventually tackled head-on by an Italian scholar with a passion for the classical authors of Greece and Rome, a teacher named Aldo Manuzio, better known by the Latin form of his name, Aldus Manutius. He became, arguably, the world’s first publisher, beginning his legendary Aldine Press in Venice in the 1490s. Printing, although still in its infancy in historical terms, was now spread throughout Europe, and printers like Aldus would implement key changes into how books were formatted, printed, marketed, and presented to the public.
Aldus Manutius was driven to bring the nearly forgotten ancient Greek texts and language to the eager scholars of Western Europe. Already, one of the most significant beneficiaries of printing was the humanities: works about poetry, grammar, history, moral philosophy and rhetoric, the very things that many of our modern authors utilize in novels to tell a story, were being printed by the thousands. Ancient Roman and Greek texts from Ovid, Virgil, Cicero, and from Aristotle, Plato, Herodotus and Polybius, could now be preserved and printed en masse for scholars throughout Europe and the Middle East. Aldus led the way and he was enormously successful at innovation. For example, he created punctuation marks such as the semi-colon that we still use. He banned the lengthy notes and annotations that swelled the size of books, and working with other craftsmen such as Francesco de Bologna, he created an italicized roman type that was much easier to read than the heavy Gothic texts produced in Germany. The clarity of the type allowed fonts that were much smaller, so much so that Aldus began creating books that a man could carry in his pocket – an extraordinary concept that allowed people to carry and read their books in public houses, in parks and parlors, and even, to the astonishment of many, in bed! His books were eagerly sought out, and famous authors such as Erasmus of Rotterdam would move into Aldus’ house to supervise the printing of their own books. During the course of his publishing ventures, at the very end of the fifteenth century, he printed, almost as a sideline, what is now considered the most beautiful book of the Renaissance and the most famous book in the world: the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.
While easily recognized as a work of extraordinary refinement, the book itself is an enigma. To start with, no one really knows how to pronounce the title. The University of Texas Ransom Center, holding three copies, suggests the pronunciation “hip nair otto MOCK ee a PAHL if eel ee.” Adding to that bit of excitement, William H. Irvins, Jr., the curator of prints at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, writing in 1923 (Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 18, no. 11, Nov. 1923), called it “so dull that only the most pugnacious of readers can force his way through it.” (Considering the number of Renaissance-inspired bibliophiles who have actually read it, one could make a solid case that pugnaciousness is a nearly extinct attribute.) It is still disputed who the author was – Aldus, who printed the book on commission (it was backed by independent financing), published it anonymously and perhaps was uninterested in the true author since he was paid up-front. Scholars have variously attributed it to the famed Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti, to Lorenzo de Medici, and even to Aldus Manutius himself. It may have been the governor of one of the Roman provinces or a Dominican monk, both with the same name: Francesco Colonna. Most of the evidence, however, points to the latter, a randy, hard-living monk who was disciplined more than once for his loose living and whose abbot finally gave him the bill for reimbursing the cost of the printing. The Italian language was not yet standardized when Colonna penned his mind-twisting love story, and the text, a bizarre hybrid mix of the Tuscan Italian vernacular, Latin, and other languages, is virtually unintelligible. When the author couldn’t find quite the right word, he’d make one up. Jason Kottke, in his article Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Kottke.org, June 12, 2008), cuts to the quick: “The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is one of the most unreadable books ever published. The first inkling of difficulty occurs at the moment one picks up the book and tries to utter its tongue-twisting, practically unpronounceable title. The difficulty only heightens as one flips through the pages and tries to decipher the strange, baffling, inscrutable prose, replete with recondite references, teeming with tortuous terminology, choked with pulsating, prolix, plethoric passages. Now in Tuscan, now in Latin, now in Greek – elsewhere in Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldean and hieroglyphs – the author has created a pandemonium of unruly sentences that demand the unrelenting skills of a prodigiously endowed polyglot in order to be understood.” The description by the eminent twentieth-century bibliographer E.P. Goldschmidt in The Printed Book of the Renaissance (1947) is no less amusing: “Aldus Manutius … brought out Francesco Colonna’s Hymerotomachia Poliphili, which is in its essence a repertory of classical archaeology … it painfully incorporates the sketch-book of an archaeologist and the fruits of reading of a classical scholar within the framework of a laborious romance … The Poliphilo is a famous book because of its illustrations, but like some other great books it is written by a lunatic. Colonna was a cleric, locked away in a quiet provincial town, Treviso, who became so intoxicated with the new words, the new forms, the classic phrase and the classic ornament, that he burst into a voluminous and confused rhapsody into which he crammed all of his New Learning and he illustrated it with all the antique shapes and figures recently revealed to him and to the world. The Poliphilo is written neither in Latin nor in the vernacular, but in a strange hybrid new language of Colonna’s own devising, neither quite Latin nor quite Italian, and the book is as unintelligible as Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake.”
It is, however, the artistic and printing aspects of the book that we modern readers benefit from the most, but we are still not off the hook for answers. The 172 stunning woodcuts used to illustrated Poliphilo remain another source of mystery: while the actual author of the book is still disputed, even less is known about the artist who did the woodcuts – no one has a clue. Their design is generally attributed to Benedetto Bordon(e) of Padua, who was active in Venice from 1488 until his death in 1530. The spare and elegant illustrations reveal a careful study of ancient art as well as an interest in the new science of one-point linear perspective. The beauty of these anonymous woodcuts has led scholars through the years to associate their design with such famous artists as Andrea Mantegna, Gentile Bellini, or the young Raphael. They are only speculative. The unfortunate result of all those amazing woodcuts was that copies of the book were routinely cut up for the illustrations and the text discarded – sacrilege! Anthony Blunt, the British art historian-turned-Soviet spy, remarked in the 1940s that Polifilo “is one of those books which have suffered from being too well printed and too beautifully illustrated.” It does retain its hold as the finest book of the Renaissance.
These two enormously influential texts, the first and the last of the incunabula, and the methods used for their creation leave their mark on every printed book we read today. Their conception was nurtured through dogged determination, their physical creation was touched by genius and unrelenting tenacity, and their significance and influence on modern books and books trades today remains undiminished.
Figure 1 – The Gutenberg Bible, c. 1455 (facsimile copy)
Gutenberg’s invention of a practical moveable-type printing press in the mid-fifteenth century changed the entire world. The ability to mass-produce books at a vastly lower cost than handwritten manuscripts allowed, for the first time, knowledge and information to be disseminated rapidly amongst everyone who could read. Universities, for example, no longer had to rely on tedious oral lectures to educate students – books allowed students to quickly assimilate course work together. His printing press launched the Renaissance, paved the way for the Reformation and initiated the rise of the modern European nation-states; within fifty years, millions of books had been printed. The effect of this man’s legacy is incalculable. Copies of his magnificent Latin Vulgate Bible are priceless treasures – this is a photo of a facsimile copy in The Mac an Bháird Library. It weighs twenty-three lbs. and is the heaviest book on my shelves. Note the fine artistic scrollwork and ornate decorations; those were added after printing by artists or “rubricators” hired by the book buyers to enhance their valuable new books.
Figure 2 – The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, or The Strife of Love in a Dream, 1499
The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, or Poliphilo, or The Strife of Love in a Dream, is an allegorical work published by Aldus Manutius’ (Aldo Munuzio’s) legendary Aldine Press in Venice, Italy, in December 1499. It is something of a dream within a dream, and Renaissance intellectuals throughout Europe avidly read it (or tried to read it). The author and illustrator are unknown; most scholars attribute the authorship to Francesco Colonna, a ‘dubious’ Dominican friar, others make a solid case for Leon Battista Alberti, others for Lorenzo de Medici, some even claim the author was Manutius himself. The illustrator who created the 172 celebrated woodcuts is thought to be Benedetto Bordon(e) of Padua but others surmise it may have been Andrea Mantegna, Gentile Bellini, or the young Raphael. It is considered the most beautiful of the incunabula, those books printed between 1455 and 1501, and amongst bibliophiles it is the most famous book ever published. Note the exquisite illustrations, done by hand-carving wood blocks specifically for this text, and the text itself, in the shape of wine goblets. Although the text is virtually impossible to read, it is easy to see how clearly the roman type face is presented on each page. The illustrations, text formatting and type selections are standard in today’s books. This exact replica was handmade for me in Italy using medieval paper, inks, glues and medieval binding techniques with precisely reproduced illustrations.
Bibliography
A variety of works from my own library were utilized for this article. The list may be useful for anyone wishing to pursue their own further studies:
Aldus and His Dream Book: An Illustrated Essay; Helen Barolini; New York: Italica Press, 1992;
Aldus Manutius: Printer and Publisher of Renaissance Venice; Martin Davies; Malibu, California: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1995; originally published London, The British Library, 1995;
Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to Medieval Texts and Manuscripts; Mary A. Rouse and Richard H. Rouse; Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991;
The Beginning of the World of Books, 1450-1470. A Chronological Survey of the Texts Chosen for Printing During the First Twenty Years of the Printing Art. With a Synopsis of the Gutenberg Documents; Margaret Bingham Stillwell; New York: The Bibliographical Society of America, 1972;
The Book in the Renaissance; Andrew Pettigrew; New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2010;
The Bookseller of Florence: The Story of the Manuscripts that Illuminated the Renaissance; Ross King; New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2021;
Bound in Venice: The Serene Republic and the Dawn of the Book; Alessandro Marzo Magno, trans. Gregory Conti; New York: Europa Editions, 2013;
The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450-1800 (Foundations of History Library); Lucien Paul Victor Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, eds., Geoffrey Nowell-Smith and David Wootton, trans. David Gerard; London: NLB, 1976; originally published in French as ‘L’Apparition du Livre’, Paris, Editions Albin Michel, 1958;
Editio Princeps: A History of the Gutenberg Bible; Eric Marshall White; Turnhout, Belgium: Harvey Miller Publishers, an imprint of Brepols Publishers, 2017;
Gothic & Renaissance Bookbindings. Exemplified and Illustrated from the Author’s Collection. Volume I: Text; Volume II: Plates and Photographs (2 vols. complete); Ernst Philip Goldschmidt; Nieuwkoop, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: B. de Graaf–N. Israel, 1967; originally published London, Ernest Benn, and Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1928;
Gutenberg: How One Man Remade the World with Words; John Man; New York: MJF Books, 2002;
The Gutenberg Bible (Biblia Sacra Latina): Facsimile of the Gutenberg Printing; Johannes Gutenberg, printer; Norwalk, Connecticut: Easton Press, 2019;
The Gutenberg Bible: Landmark in Learning; James Thorpe; San Marino, California: Henry B. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, 1999;
Johann Gutenberg: The Man and His Invention; Albert Kapr, trans. Douglas Martin; Aldershot, Hampshire, England: Scolar Press, 1996; First English-language edition (third edition, revised by the author for first publication in English translation); originally published in German as ‘Johannes Gutenberg, Persönlichkeit und Leistung’, Munich, C.H. Beck, 1987;
Johann Gutenberg and His Bible. A Historical Study; Janet Ing [now Freeman]; New York: The Typophiles, 1988;
The Printed Book of the Renaissance. Three Lectures on Type, Illustration, Ornament; Ernst Philip Goldschmidt; Cambridge: Cambridge at the University Press, 1950;
The Printed Word: Its Impact and Diffusion (Primarily in the 15th-16th Centuries); Rudolf Hirsch; London: Variorum Reprints, 1978;
Printing and Publishing at the Aldine Press 1495-1585: An Introductory Handbook to the Life and Work of Three Generations of the Manutius and Torresani Families; Adam Mills; Cambridge, England: Adam Mills Rare Books, 2020;
Printing, Selling and Reading, 1450-1550: Second Printing with a Supplemental Annotated Bibliographical Introduction; Rudolf Hirsch; Wiesbaden, Germany: Otto Harrassowitz, 1974;
Printing and the Renaissance: A Paper Read before The Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York; John Rothwell Slater; Forest Hills, New York: Battery Park Book Company, 1978;
Studies in Fifteenth-Century Printing; George D. Painter; London: Pindar Press, 1984;
The World of Aldus Manutius: Business and Scholarship in Renaissance Venice; Martin Lowry; Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1979
Do not be fooled. Today is not the first day of the rest of your life. It cannot be, for in today’s perspective, there is no “rest of your life”, there is just today. However, yesterday was truly the last day of what had been your life. It is now gone. It is now, in a very real sense, dead.
There is no future, for the future is just an idea and it has no existence. There is no experience of tomorrow, because tomorrow has no reality. When tomorrow comes, when it has reality, it is no longer tomorrow, but today. It is no longer your future, but your present. When tomorrow passes, it becomes your past. It is then gone. It is then dead. All you are, all you have ever been, is wrapped up into today. Happiness. Sorrow. Joy. Fear. Everything.
You are you, here today. There is no yesterday, for that is gone. There is no tomorrow, for that has no reality. There is you, here today.
Whether you like who you are or you do not, whether you are happy or you are not, There is no one, and no time, to hold accountable. There is no one, and no time, to blame. There is only you, here today.
Release the baggage of yesterday. Stop waiting for tomorrow. Be you, here today. Be happy.
Kevin J Ward 