Leonardo Da Vinci In His Own Words, by William Wray
Submitted by Taran on Fri, 12/16/2005 - 11:05
I spent last night in the mind of a genius - Leonardo Da Vinci - and I am glad to say that it had nothing to do with the ever popular, 'The Da Vinci Code. No, this was just Leonardo Da Vinci - in his own words. Leonardo Da Vinci in His Own Words
There are 190 pages in this book, though I didn't notice last night - it's an amazingly easy read, where William Wray takes the reader through the notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. Quotes from the notebooks leapt from the pages on topics centered around Leonardo as a master artist, a man of scientific vision, and as a thinker.
| Few books I have picked up have the flow that this book had. Leonardo the elephant is taken in small, concentrated bites with Wray's writing linking many of Leonardo's own words into what could be called a stream of consciousness. I literally felt like I was walking through a mind in it's zenith - born in 1452, dead in 1519, but immortalized in it's many works and this tribute to not the works, but the man behind them.
How odd that some of his thoughts, original in their own time, have become so accepted almost half a millenium later. That someone known as an artist could combine science within his observations, and treat science as an art and art as a science. A true Renaissance man, and perhaps the best definition of what a polymath is. There are many memorable quotes throughout the book - but this is the one which I will leave you with as perhaps the most defining: |
Seeing that I cannot find any object of great utility or pleasure, because the men who have come before me have taken for their own all useful and necessary themes, I will do like one who because of his poverty, is the last to arrive at the fair, and not being otherwise able to provide for himself, takes all the things which others have seen and not taken but refused as being of little value.
If you're not going to buy the book, find someone who has and read it.
Post new comment