During December of 1499 in Venice, Aldus Manutius finished printing Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife of Love in a Dream, a brilliantly designed folio filled with elaborate engraved plates that may have bankrupted its publisher and has nearly bankrupted collectors ever since....It is hard to think of any book quite so sensuous. It intoxicated European writers for two centuries, although few were so foolish as to try imitation, for Colonna invented his own language, an Italian so crammed with words borrowed from recondite Latin sources that it bewildered even his learned countrymen. At last, Joscelyn Godwin, a professor of music at Colgate University known widely for studies of ancient mystical religions, provides the first clear English version. No translation, if it is to be useful, could reproduce the effect of the original, but Godwin gives a hint, rendering a small passage literally and hilariously.
