Sans text

It is a pity there is not a version of the Voynich available with the text removed, so that it can be viewed as a Mutus liber, a book of pictures. In fact, given the nature of the work and the extent to which it has been studied, it is surprising that a text-free version has not been prepared (to my knowledge). If we remove the text we have a much clearer view of the work. It is an important step in any thorough appreciation of the manuscript and its mysteries.

Here are a few samples I have prepared to help me visualize the work sans text:

There must have been a time when the manuscript was in this condition: illustrations but no text. With perhaps one or two exceptions (?), it appears that the illustrations were done first and then the text was added. It is not, therefore, an illuminated manuscript. It is not a text that has been illuminated with drawings. Rather, it is a set of drawings that has been annotated with text. This is why it is important to appreciate the work as a Mutus liber - a silent book - in the first instance.

(Possibly the colouring was done last of all? It is sloppy and makes the drawings look more poorly done than they are.)

What is the relationship between text and illustration? In a hundred years of study not even that question has been resolved. Was the text already composed when the illustrations were made? Did the illustrator know the text beforehand and design pages with the text in view? Or were illustrations made and then a text was composed to go with them? It is clear that the illustrator has left space for text. Was the text already known? 

To my eye, there are only a few places where the text is cramped because the illustrator has left too little space for what needed to be written. Otherwise, the text seems to fit into the vacant spaces with unusual tidiness.

I can't find any incontestable instances of text and illustration interacting. The characters and figures illustrated never seem to acknowledge the text, for example. Often, in medieval works, a figure in the margins might point to a word or letter in the text. Nothing like that happens here because the text was added after the illustrations. The text labels the illustrations but the illustrations don't seem to interact with the text. They are made to go with the text and leave spaces for text but there is no play between illustration and text.

The page is a unit of design here. The manuscript is a series of pages. The work was conceived as a series of pages. Other than in the foldouts, no text or illustrations cross the borders from one page into another. Each page is designed as a single stand alone unit. The bulk of the manuscript consists of a series of single pages each depicting a plant to which a few paragraphs of text has been added. The text is added towards the top of those pages, usually, because the herb illustrations give particular emphasis to the roots of the plants.

In some pages (such as the herbs) the picture is central and the text is added around it. In other places (the nymph section) the illustrations are in the margins and the page is designed to place the text central - there are implicit text boxes as part of the page design. And then there are pages, of course, with text only.

That is to say, there are text boxes in the design of some pages, but not in others. In most of the herbal pages the illustrator has not left a distinct text box. He has left plenty of space for text, but the text has been added wherever it fits rather than in set spaces.  Often the text will wind around or among the parts of the plant.

I am always struck by how visually abundant the work is. You would say that it is copiously illustrated. This suggests to me that the illustrations are central to the design. It is not as though someone had a precious pre-existing text to which they have added illustrations. Again: it is not an illuminated text. Rather, the pictures are as important as the text, perhaps more so, in the overall conception of the work. The text seems like notes upon the pictures. The text seems to explain the pictures rather than the pictures add to the text.

In the beginning, I posit, when someone sat down and first thought of making such a manuscript, and they asked, How will we communicate our message? the answer was: with lots of pictures, and text to explain them. It was a book of pictures from the beginning. There was no point at which the maker had a text that needed illustrating. There might have been pictures that needed a text.

An obvious scenario that might have happened at some point in the process - constructive speculation - is something like this:

*Someone - illiterate - has a collection of herb drawings.
*They are given to someone - literate - who provides notes to accompany them in the vacant spaces above and around the drawings. 

The illustrations are, for the most part, cartoonish and unsophisticated. The illustrator certainly struggles with the human form. If you compare the herb drawings with other herbal manuscripts from the period you will see that they are relatively crude as well. But the text - on the evidence of the script and what we can see of its language - is the work of a sophisticated, educated mind, probably a highly educated mind. I find a very noticeable contrast and incongruity between text and illustration over all.

R. B.