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versions of this tradition in the Voynich ms. have hilarious silly expressions on their
faces. Of course, and this is where the trickster edge is introduced, it could be an ingenious
hoax, either perpetrated by Wilfred Voynich, who discovered the ms. in an Italian Jesuit
seminary in 1912, or a medieval demon-possessed jester. And then there is the argument
that the manuscript, if a hoax, automatically by its complexity and strangeness falls into
the category of art, or a fantastic madness—with the further consideration that the ms.
is not actually an encryption of some other language but rather a language in its own
right, written fluently in fast-flowing ink without a single cross-out or alteration. Perhaps
its author was possessed, and a solipsistic language, an idiolect, spewed onto the pages.
The first claim of decipherment of the Voynich ms. came in lectures given in April
1921 in Pennsylvania by Professor William Romaine Newbold, who died in 1926 leaving
extensive notes and draft chapters which were published posthumously. (W R Newbold,
The Cipher of Roger Bacon. Edited by R G Kent, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1928.)
Newbold’s ideas, though initially gaining enthusiastic supporters, were soon decried
and debunked. Nonetheless, Newbold had a seductive theory, still of appeal to the
student of crazy theories. He said the book was the magnum opus of the 13 th century
eccentric scientific genius and friar Roger Bacon who encrypted his ownership of
inventions not yet invented. Bacon had seen cell nuclei and spermatozoa with his
microscope and drawn them, he had seen spiral nebulæ with his telescope and drawn
them. It is never quite explained why he drew lots of naked ladies all over his scientific
notebook. Yet Newbold honestly admitted on one of his pages, in passing as if it wasn’t
particularly important, that he frequently found it “impossible to read the same text
twice in exactly the same way”. It is surprising that Newbold did not find this telling,
and go on to consider that his difficulty in being able to read the same text twice in the
same way could be accounted for by the idea that what he was seeing had no objective
existence.
Newbold began as a respected scholar of medieval philosophy and gifted classicist,
and ended up spending the last eight years of his life on an obsessive and lunatic pursuit
screwing up his eyes to read the manuscript into the early hours of the morning by a
storm lantern. I was aghast as I read his description of the method by which he came by
his deciphered revelations. In all scholarly earnestness, Newbold said that each letter of
the strange script, if viewed under a powerful magnifying glass, was actually composed
of about 20 other tiny letters, and that it was out of these tiny letters he was forming
words and reading the text, seeing mainly a language based on ancient Greek shorthand
but which was capable of metamorphosis into other formations and interpretations.
But Newbold didn’t stop there, having discovered that the text concealed Bacon’s use of
his own invented compound microscope Newbold had an idea:
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