The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, Vol. I

so peculiar that it requires considerable practice to read even a few detached phrases, much more to solve with any certainty the numerous difficulties of alternative readings, and to master the sense as a connected whole. Vasari observes with reference to Leonardo’s writing: “he wrote backwards, in crude characters, and with the left hand, so that anyone who is not practiced in reading them cannot understand them.” The aid of a mirror in reading reversed handwriting appears to me useful only for a first experimental reading. Speaking from my own experience, the persistent use of it is too fatiguing and inconvenient to be practically advisable, considering the enormous mass of Manuscripts to be deciphered. And as, after all, Leonardo’s handwriting runs backwards just as all Oriental characters run backwards—that is to say, from right to left—the difficulty of reading directly from the writing is not insuperable. This obvious peculiarity in the writing is not, however, by any means the only obstacle in the way of mastering the text. Leonardo made use of a spelling system peculiar to himself; he had a fashion of merging several short words into one long one, or, again, he would quite arbitrarily divide a long word into two separate halves; added to this, there is no punctuation whatever to regulate the division and structure of the sentences, nor are there any accents—and the reader may imagine that such difficulties were almost sufficient to make the task seem a desperate one to a beginner. It is therefore not surprising that the good intentions of some of Leonardo’s most reverent admirers should have failed.

Leonardo’s literary labors in various departments of both Art and Science were essentially those of an inquirer; hence, the analytical method is what he employs in arguing out his investigations and dissertations. The vast structure of his scientific theories is consequently built up of numerous separate researches, and it is much to be lamented that he should never have compiled and arranged them. His love for detailed research—as it seems to me—was the reason that in almost all the Manuscripts, the different paragraphs appear to us to be in utter confusion; on one and the same page, observations on the most dissimilar subjects follow each other without any connection. A page, for instance, will begin with some principles of astronomy, or the motion of the earth; then come the laws of sound, and finally some precepts regarding color. Another page will begin with his investigations on the structure of the intestines and end with philosophical remarks regarding the relationship of poetry to painting; and so forth.