Rhythmus* in folding** a page
by Enrica Colabella

….folding a page in a rhythmic double linear action……

Fold the white page, writing with your blood,
Fold, please, fold
No, please, no tears,
Take your blood from your heart:
Directly from your heart. No tears.
Fold as a breath in lighting,
Mirrored on the smile of a child,
In lighting, just lighted in a double folding.
This is a new day, unrepeatable for you and me:
It is a fold from darkness in this white instant.
Three Angels are looking for your passage beyond the corner
They sing a song with yellow, red and white colours.
With flowers and always green leaves on their heads.
But they don't open their lips singing:
Their sound rises directly from their hearts to yours
As in a mute space unknown for the gained enemies.
Take care of your hearing, my darling, take care of it in your mind.
Preserve as an art nest your ability to listen to the beauty in the sounds.
Smiles inside your milk cup a white un visible butterfly
That you can see when your breath folds the milk in 2 small holes,
As a sweet rhythmic double linear action in a folding:
Please listen to the sound of a white page of milk, folded in a small cup.

Next
Fold your page with your breath
Fold, without hesitations, fold:…
Please only with your breath..
Take the power from your voice
Inside your voice. Until your least bass note.
Fold your page toward the river water under the bridge.
Fold at the moonlight when the bees are sleeping
You might generate a reflecting light on your page, for an instant:
Istina, a personal truth in a double vision for an eternal fragment of time.

• homage to Rhythmus 21 - Hans Richter (1921)

• homage to William S. Burroughs Cut-ups, d'apres Surrealist

Past/Next

'Some historical information about:
the evolution of folding a page
by Daniela Scialanga, Biblioteca Angelica, Rome, Italy

In the first centuries of the Christian era the book changes its form: from the roll to the codex to the book, and it has sustained the same aspect until today.
The actual form of the book affirms itself with the diffusion of the works of the Church Fathers in the first centuries of the Christian era. For the reason that they were impossible to contain in the rolls of parchment, that were too heavy in comparison to the slender papyrus.
The whole Medieval era is crossed by the codex.
But the paper is making its way from east to west to realize the perfect connection with the mobile characters of Gutenberg and the birth of the press.
What the reading room of an ancient library and, particularly, the vaso vanvitelliano of the Biblioteca Angelica, offers is an imposing collection of books, handicraft manufactured, that from '400 to '800 century vary little in their technique and realization.
The large number of volumes line the imposing wooden shelves from top to bottom and are illuminated with an undulating movement of light.Great books, small books, huge books, dwarfish books.. It is not a white notebook that offers itself to the writing and to the press but an original nucleus, the gathering, that multiplies itself. There is initially the mash obtained through a series of operations starting with the patient picking, selecting and maceration of the cotton rags. The mash entangles and interlaces its fibres together giving life to the sheet.
The miracle or rather the cleverness of the typographers is the binding of all the pages that will constitute the gathering. Then the blank sheet will receive the printing and folding which will facilitate the reading.
http://www.biblioangelica.it

The Book of Esther

17th century – parchment roll, wound around a wooden handle, mm 5200 long

The so-called “Roll of Esther”, a Book of the Bible used during the liturgy service and owned by Moshé, son of Yosef Del Monte (1662).
Before incipit there is an illustration with the coat of arms of the owner, unfortunately bleached.
The roll is accompanied by an other strip of parchment (mm 830 long) that contains the blessings to say before and after public reading aloud of the roll.
In this richly decorated strip appears the name of the copyist, the father of the owner.

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Liber memorialis – Remiront Abbey

9th – 12 th centuries – parchment, ff. 71, mm 300 x 240

One of the seven medieval liturgical memorials still conserved in Europe. The Liber Memorialis was a sort of list of people to be mentioned in prayers. It contains obituaries and services for the dead. The oldest manuscript of the Angelica, from the convent of the Augustinians of L’Aquila, was already in the library at the time of the prefect Giorgi (1752 - 1797).

Marcus Tullius CICERO, De oratore

Subiaco, Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, before 30 IX 1465
4°, rom.

First book printed by movable type in Italy. It was printed in Subiaco in 1465 by the german printers Sweynheym e Pannartz. The Angelica’s copy is one of the seventeen in the world, including three in Italy. Three of the initials of the angelica’s copy are beautifully decorated in different colours and gold leaf.

Aurelius AUGUSTINUS (S.), De civitate Dei

Subiaco, Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, 12 VI 1467
fol., rom.

De civitate Dei is a major work of Augustinus on his religious philosophy. In this particular edition the type used is especially interesting as it consists of roman type uppercase letters and gothic lowercase letters. On the bottom of fol. 15r Augustinus is depicted sitting at the desk. On either side of the image of Augustinus there are two coats of arms belonging to the family of Fano, called Martinozzi.
This book is considered the third and final incunabulum printed in Subiaco by the German printers Sweynheym e Pannartz, but some scholars believe it was printed in Rome.

Origin: Domenico Passionei (1762).

Colonna, Francesco, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Venezia, Aldo Manuzio, 1499
fol., rom.

Euripides, Tragoediae septedecim

Venezia, Aldo Manuzio, 1503
8°, cors.

Respublica, sive Status Regni Galliae diversorum autorum

Leida, Elzevier, 1626
12°

De Rossi, Giovanni Bernardo, Epithalamia exoticis linguis reddita

Parma, Tipografia Regia, 1775
fol.

Vivio, Giacomo, The true portrait of the mirabil'opera of low relief in wax stuccata
Engraver: Ambrogio Brambilla
Rome, 1590

Miscellany of presses, centuries XV - XVII

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