Re: About Thaddeus Hajek

[Zandbergen@xxxxxxxxxxx (Rene Zandbergen)]

Prompted by Stolfi, I went back to Svitak's book about Dee
and finally found (after previous failed attempts) the part
where he writes about the VMs: Zahadna kniha - the enigmatic
book.

In fact, there is a Dee quote in the header of this chapter
which I can only partly follow, but which seems intriguing.
If Rafal could translate it, then it would be interesting to
find out from where it originates. The copy quality is not 
great so there may be one or two i/l confusions. I'm trying
to indicate hac'ecks with apostrophes:

  Snaz'il jsem, se objevit s'ifru rukopisiu, materialu, ktere
  mi E.K. pr'inesi, jak si pr'al. Nalezi je v Huet's Cross,
  s knihou o kouzlech a alchimii, ke ktere ho pr'ivedlo
  duchovni stvor'eni.

My impression is that Svitak is equating the book of St. Dunstan
(or whatever Kelly found in Wales) with the VMs. Also,
he seems to use the name Huet's Cross for this location.
The above really looks like a specific reference of Dee to his
attempts of deciphering the VMs, brought by Kelly, but perhaps
the word s'ifru above is misleading me.

Rafal wrote:

> Which ones do you have? There were 4 books by him - written
> in California between 1980 and 1989:
> 
> Kouzelník z Londýna : John Dee v Cechách, 1584-1589
> Sir Edward Kelley : ceský rytír, 1555-1598
> Malostranská Sapfo : opozdená recenze díla Elizabethy Johanny

Yes, these three, which were presented by Svitak as a 'Bohemian
trilogy'.

> If you can scan a few critical pages and mail to me, I could
> try to see what value those books have. Please make them
> black-and-white GIF's to save bandwidth.

Will do.

> Also, if he spelt the name "Georg Baresch" rather than "Jiri Bares",
> it strongly suggests (at least to me) that he picked it from
> some other publication.

... ve vlastnictvi Georgia Barschia.

He uses the non-Czech spelling of Raphael Missovski's name (like
I just did) but the proper equivalent of Voynich (Voynic').
He mentions Newbold and Kent (which should leave us no doubt
about one of his main sources) and also Strong. He does also
mention Brumbaugh (the only source for Baresch' name as far as
I am aware) as Stolfi correctly remembered.

> The "factoid" of Dee's ownership of VMs seems to be based on
> the comparison of folio numbering with those in Dee's MSS.

Of course, this is very much advertised in the Newbold/Kent
book as being the truth.
 
> > For Kelly's death year one can read 1595 and 1597.
> The title of his book seems to say "1598" 

You could be right. Michal Pober, in Prague, suggested that 
1595 should be correct. I think it is fair to say that it is
still contested :-).

> There are more sources - also in English (I would have to find my
> e-notes on her) but mainly concerned with her poems. You may
> like to compare the portrait you mention with her true effigy
> on my Web page at:
> 
>    http://main.amu.edu.pl/~rafalp/HERM/SENDI/westonia.htm

I no longer trust the picture used by Svitak, but if the above
is from Pelzel (>100 years later), how can we be sure it is her
true likeness? (No criticism, just curious....)

Cheers, Rene