Alchemical Hands in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Why It Matters for the Hypnerotomachia

The HP lacks a printed commentary in either Aldine edition. Instead, five centuries of readers' marginalia constitute an informal commentary tradition, with each annotator's notes reflecting their interpretive framework — humanist, alchemical, aesthetic, or encyclopedic.

Why It Matters in Scholarship

Russell shows that the HP's commentary tradition is distributed across annotated copies rather than published in a single apparatus. Beroalde de Verville's 1600 edition adds the first published interpretive apparatus, framed as an alchemical key rather than a philological commentary.

Key Passages / Evidence

• ... that the belief in the continued existence of the spirits of the dead originally arose, at least in part, from the influence of dream experi- ences (see Religion in Primitive Culture, pp.... [Gollnick (Apuleius dreamworld)]
• <!-- Page 62 --> Dream Interpretation in the Second Century 47 vi dual's worldview on dreams, we must not imagine that dreams can offer nothing beyond the limits of an individual's and a... [Gollnick (Apuleius dreamworld)]
• ... ... 21V Zophor is a border T* (Zophorus) =R 1051 wherin ... 22r Anagliph is smothly T* (Anaglyphum) =R 156o chased out ... 22V Clymene the mother Source unknown. E, EC, and C define... [Semler 2006 (Dallington)]

Source Documents

Gollnick (Apuleius dreamworld); Russell 2014 (PhD thesis); Semler 2006 (Dallington); The_Narrative_Function_of_Hieroglyphs_in; Trippe 2002 (text-image)