Leonardo's notebooks  

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Leonardo da Vinci kept a series of journals[1] in which he wrote almost daily, as well as separate notes and sheets of observations, comments and plans which were left to various pupils and were later bound. Many of the journals have survived to illustrate Leonardo's studies, discoveries and inventions. Most of the journals were written backwards in mirror script. His journals were later published, 165 years after his death. Several editions have been published: J. F. Rigaud, 1809; Jean Paul Richter, 1883; Edward McCurdy, 1908; etc.

Contents

The codices

After Leonardo's death in 1519, the notebooks of Leonardo fell into the possession of Francesco Melzi. Due to negligence of Melzi's son Orazio, the collection was dispersed. "In 1630 Pompeo Leoni, a sculptor in the Court of the King of Spain, got a hold of much of the material and tried to organize it by subject. This unfortunatley resulted in the books being taken apart and the original order, which might have told us much about Leonardo's thinking, was lost. Each of the new books created by this process was a Codex."(Lee Krystek, Unmuseum.org)

On the act of procreation

On_the_beauty_of_the_human_genitalia#Leonardo_da_Vinci

In a famous passage from Leonardo's notebooks he says: "The act of procreation and anything that has any relation to it is so disgusting that human beings would soon die out if there were no pretty faces and sensuous dispositions".

Alternatively translated as "The act of coition and the members employed are so ugly that but for the beauty of the faces, the adornments of their partners and the frantic urge, Nature would lose the human race." (Leonardo Da Vinci quoted in Bataille’s Erotism: Death and Sensuality, translation by Mary Dalwood).

Full text

Full English text of 'The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci' translated by Jean Paul Richter

See also




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