Paper or Porphyry?The importance of a medium can perhaps best be measured by its impact on other med
Paper or Porphyry?The importance of a medium can perhaps best be measured by its impact on other media. Film gained enormous artistic credibility when novelists started to use cinematographic narrative techniques. Likewise, the best sign of the success of Twitter is the fact that newspapers and magazines now print tweets in their paper editions.Above are two images from the 1593 edition of De poeticsche werken (‘The Poetical Works’) of Jan van der Noot (ca. 1540-ca. 1595), an important Dutch Renaissance author from the Southern Low Countries. This large (32 by 21 cm.), luxurious and expensive object is a celebration of what late sixteenth-century book printing in the Low Countries was capable of. Yet another textual medium, that of the inscription, is omnipresent. The top image shows the title page of De poeticsche werken. It depicts a Roman monument with the title of Van der Noot’s book, the name of the author, the place and date of printing and name of the printer. These are centrally engraved into the stone in so-called Roman, a type based on the letters used by the ancient Romans for their monumental inscriptions. This sort of architectural construction with inscriptions on the title page was not uncommon in early modern printed books. But Jan van der Noot and Daniël Vervliet, the printer of De poeticsche werken, went a significant step further. The suggestion of inscription is not only present on the title page but throughout the book. Every one of the 61 pages of text is decorated with a frame, as if it were an engraved slab of stone on a wall.The second image contains an additional reference to the medium of the inscription. On the bottom of the page an epigram has been printed. The epigram dates back to Greek and Roman antiquity and was the genre par excellence for literary inscriptions on walls and monuments.The relationship of a Renaissance poet like Jan van der Noot to monuments and monumental writing is less straightforward then the above examples from De poeticsche werken might seem to suggest. Monuments, and the writings that adorned them, were erected to be durable and perpetuate the memory of who- or whatever they celebrated. However, in literature, they could also become a symbol of the very opposite, namely transience and oblivion. In a sonnet addressed ‘to his muse’ Van der Noot gave a charming variation on Horace’s famous ode Exegi monumentum aere perennius (‘I have built a monument more lasting than bronze’) (Ode 3.30.1). The text opens an earlier collection of his poetry, entitled Het Bosken (London: Henry Binneman & John Daye, [1570]). Veel herder dan in stael, in coper of pourphier, Heb ick dit werck volbrocht so dat de loop der Iaeren, Den reghen noch den wint, noch ooc Mulsibersscharen, Dat selfde nymmermeer en sullen schenden fier: Als mynen lesten dach my sal doen slapen schier, Dan en sal Vander Noot niet al gaen inde baren: Want synen boeck sal dan synen naem bet verclaren Dan Marmer of Pourphier, al en ist maer pampier (‘Tot sijn muse’, v. 1-8) [Far harder then if it were from steel, from copper or from porphyry / I have made this work, so that neither the course of time, / Nor rain or wind, or the gods of fire, / Can ever haughtily damage it; / When my final day will put me to eternal rest, / Then not all of Vander Noot will be carried on the bier: / For his book will glorify his name more / Then Marble or Porphyry could ever do, even if it is only made of paper] Like the Horatian text, Van der Noot’s sonnet is about literary fame and posterity. However, contrary to his classical example, it is also – even primarily - about the materiality of writing. Horace opposes the work of the sculptor to that of the poet. According to his ode literary works will last longer than bronze monuments because they are not dependent on a particular kind of (transient) matter. Horace thus presents text as something essentially immaterial.Van der Noot’s sonnet, however, is all about text and matter. He opposes two material manifestations of text, that of the inscription and that of the book. He does not so much suggest that his poems will last because they are immaterial but because of their specific kind of materiality, that of the book. Sure, the book is only made of paper and paper is far less durable then steel, copper or porphyry. But the book will still outlive these materials used for inscriptions. The reason for this, of course, is that books like Van der Noot’s are printed on multiple copies, while inscriptions are generally unique. Van der Noot’s ‘to his muse’, then, can be read as an adaptation of Horace’s Ode Exegi monumentum for the early age of print.Nevertheless, inscriptions did have a strong attraction for Van der Noot, because of their monumentality, no doubt, their visual attractiveness or their association with antiquity. Hence his urge, two decades later in De poeticsche vverken, to make something that is both the matter of monuments and of books: steel, copper, porphyry ánd paper. -- source link
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