Codex Seraphinianus

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The Codex Seraphinianus is a book written and illustrated by the Italian architect and industrial designer Luigi Serafini during the late 1970s. The book is approximately 360 pages long (depending on edition), and appears to be a visual encyclopedia of an unknown world, written in one of its languages, an incomprehensible (at least for us) alphabetic writing.

Cover of Abbeville edition

1 Structure
2 Graphics
3 Writing system
4 Editions
5 Review
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Structure

The Codex is divided in eleven chapters, partitioned in two sections: the first about the natural world, the second about humanities. Each chapter seems to treat a general encyclopedic topic. The first two sections describe what seem to be the flora and the fauna. The third section deals with what seems to be a separate kingdom of odd bipedal creatures. The following chapter deals with something that seems to be physics and chemistry, and is by far the most abstract and enigmatic. The second section deals with various aspects of human life: there are chapters apparently dealing with clothing, history, cuisine, architecture and so on.

[edit] Graphics

The illustrations are often surreal parodies of things in our world: bleeding fruit; a plant that grows into roughly the shape of a chair and is subsequently made into one; a lovemaking couple that metamorphoses into a crocodile; etc. Others depict odd, apparently senseless machines, often with a fragile appearance, kept together by tiny filaments. There are also illustrations readily recognizable, as maps or human faces. On the other hand, especially in the "physics" chapter, many images look almost completely abstract. Practically all figures are brightly coloured and rich in detail.

[edit] Writing system

The false writing system appears modelled on ordinary Western-style writing systems (left-to-right writing in rows; an alphabet with uppercase and lowercase letters, some of which double as numerals) but is much more curvilinear, not unlike cursive Georgian in appearance. Some letters appear only at the beginning or at the end of words, a feature shared with semitic writing systems. The language of the codex has defied complete analysis by linguists for decades. The number system used for numbering the pages, however, has been cracked (apparently independently) by Allan C. Wechsler [1] and Bulgarian linguist Ivan Derzhanski [2]. It is a variant on base 21.

[edit] Editions

A rare and expensive work, the original edition was issued in two volumes (Luigi Serafini, Codex Seraphinianus, Milano: Franco Maria Ricci [I segni dell'uomo], 1981, 127+127 pp., 108+128 plates, ISBN 88-216-0026-2 + ISBN 88-216-0027-0). A single-volume edition was published by Abbeville Press in the U.S. (1st American edition, New York: Abbeville Press, 1983, 250 pp., ISBN 0-89659-428-9) and by Prestel in Germany (München: Prestel, 1983, 370 pp., ISBN 3-7913-0651-0). These editions were out of print for many years, but as of 1993 a new, augmented, single-volume edition of the book was being sold in Europe (French augmented edition, with a preface by Italo Calvino, transl. by Yves Hersant and Geneviève Lambert, Milano: Franco Maria Ricci [I segni dell'uomo], 1993, 392 pp., ISBN 88-216-2027-1 / Spanish augmented edition, with a preface by Italo Calvino, transl. by C. Alonso, Milano: Franco Maria Ricci [I segni dell'uomo], 1993, 392 pp., ISBN 88-216-6027-3). A Dutch edition was also issued (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, ISBN 90-290-8402-2). The book can occasionally be found in large public libraries, especially University libraries, and/or obtained by inter-library loan requests.

In Italy has been released, as of late 2006, a new, relatively unexpensive (89 Euro) edition (Milano:Rizzoli, ISBN 88-170-1389-7).

[edit] Review

From a review by Baird Searles in Asimov's Science Fiction, April, 1984:

What we have, is an encyclopedia guide, only partially comprehensible, to an alien universe. It's really an art book, but don't expect the slick illustrative pictures of a Boris or Rowena. The artwork has the odd quality of textbook illustrations, except for the magnificent color. The artist's work has been compared to Escher, and that's partly valid; the book lies in the uneasy boundary between surrealism and fantasy, given an odd literary status by its masquerade as a book of fact.