Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

THE HYPNEROTOMACHIA OF POLIPHILO, IN WHICH
IT IS SHOWN THAT ALL HUMAN THINGS
ARE BUT A DREAM, AND MANY
OTHER THINGS WORTHY
OF KNOWLEDGE AND
MEMORY.

An illustrated book - published 1499, attributed to Frances Colonna - about the strife of love in a dream. Poliphilo falls asleep on a deserted shore and dreams himself traveling through a strange land full of extravagant architectures and antique rituals. He searches for, and then finds, his love Polia, at which point the book branches into stories within stories and dreams within dreams. Polia at first rejects Poliphilo, but after many tribulations, she declares her love and then dissolves; the dawn's light awakens Poliphilo.

The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili was fully translated into English for the first time in the year 1999, by Joscelyn Godwin. The lateness was due to the extreme difficulty of translation: the original is written in an idiosyncratic hybrid of Latin, Italian, and Greek, with many invented or rare words. Godwin's complete translation was published with all of the original illustrations in honor of the book's 500th anniversary.

The book has had a diverse set of influences on later art and literature:

• The typography was a watershed, and the book's typeface is the source of the modern Roman font.
• The illustrations and descriptions inspired the geometrical rigor of classical French gardens and the neoclassical fantasy architectures of Ledoux and Boullee.
• The Hypnerotomachia's dream narrative is an antecedent to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.
• In its dream narrative and in its hybrid language, it is an antecedent to James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.
• The title of John Crowley's Love and Sleep is an allusion to the Hypnerotomachia ("the strife of love in a dream"). The novel also makes explicit reference to Colonna's text.