VMs: RE: VGBT - Call for critical reviews

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxx>]

Philip Neal wrote:
> I think this is good work and you should definitely go
> on to the end.
> Your speed so far has been truly impressive. I am eager
> to see the
> biological and recipes sections which I have always
> concentrated on
> rather than the herbal.
>
> Where I have checked your readings I have not come
> across any cases
> where I think you are definitely wrong. There are some places
> where an indistinct character might be read as ch or
> ee, s or r and
> you sometimes choose the alternative which I would
> think less likely
> for reasons concerning the internal structure of the words.
>
> I am not convinced that all the distinctions you detect
> are more than
> variants of the same character, but we are certainly better off
> having a record of them.


Philip, thanks for the encouragement.  I fully agree that many of
my distinctions are calligraphic variants, but I'm trying to
record as much detail as I can.  If anything, I'm often afraid I'm
not recording enough detail.  For instance, I neglected to record
a couple of instances where the 8 is laying on its side.  I
consider these significant to the author, or he wouldn't had done
them this way.

It might help to know how I come up with some of these glyph
representations.  I first copy the image and then transcribe line
by line, inserting a ? where I'm not certain.  I let it sit a few
days while I'm working on other pages, then I come back and proof
it line by line.  For any questionable glyphs I refer back to the
original and magnify the image (at 300 dpi) as big as I can get
it.  The ch, ee you refer to are probably there because the
magnification process reveals some telltale streak or something
that makes me go one way or the other. I let the page sit a few
more days while working on other pages, come back to it and add
line and word numbers, and proof it once again.  Even then, I may
have an error or two here and there.

I have an established set of rules for things, such as the <ch> cc
or C, or the o and the a.  If there is no sign of an attempt at a
diagonal mark, an o remains an o and is not called an a, etc.
This turns out to give me more 8om than I expected, when I'm
really used to seeing 8am, as an example.

I'm just trying to record what I see given the poor images
available.  If you look closely at the few color images available
and compare them to the copyflo, you'll see that much of the faint
and faded stroking has disappeared on the copyflo, a tradegy in my
view.  This makes some distinctions more guestimation than fact,
unfortunately.  But what I hope to have built when this is all
over is a method of chosing a questionable glyph, searching all
instances of it rapidly, and instantly seeing it aligned with its
image.  This saves countless hours of page turning and is
extremely informative to see each in succession while the memory
is fresh.  Hopefully Beinecke will come through with permission
for this format, which will allow me to unlock the files and
present them in an editable format that can be tailored to each
user.  Nick's idea of the online database is unfortunately on hold
while I wait for Beinecke to respond.  My hope is that ultimately
others will benefit from my deviant point of view.

Some of this detail is very important in my view.  Variant glyphs
such as the lazy 8 are critical to the understanding of the
Voynich.  Many of these variants MUST be signals to the author's
memory, telling him that something different is happening at this
point.  I obviously don't hold the view that it's a forgery or
scribal copy.  As to the forgery, I noticed under magnification
that there are some instances of slightly darker areas in the form
of a square, and wondered what they could be.  I first noticed
this at 78r.27.12.  If you view the color image supplied by
Beinecke, it appears that the idea of scraping off an unwanted
character is a very good explanation for this and similar
"smudges".  The vellum is slightly rougher in these areas, and
over time the roughness has filled in with a little more dirt than
the rest of the page.  If this proves to be true, why would a
forger scrape off a glyph?  This and other oddities have me
convinced that this is an original work, and not a copy or
forgery.  That also would explain why there are no more copies
referenced by anyone else throughout history.

I am also of the belief, not through the handwriting of the
foliation, but for other significant reasons, that John Dee had
this manuscript in his possession at one time.  If this is of
English origin, as I believe it is, this is highly plausible.  If
it proves to be other than English origin, (low probability of
that happening), Dee's ownership is of course questionable.

My pepperoni is on the bloody English.  After all, ask an Italian
for pepperoni on your pizza and what do you get?  Pepperoncini, a
Greek pickled pepper! Actually, I seem to recall that the spicy,
hard sausage was of Arabic descent.  My friends from Yemen (not
popular friends to have these days) were expert at making very
spicy sausages, hung in a sock on the front step for days to dry
and cure, and it was they who explained to me the ancient art of
this culinary delight.  Pepperoni was apparently spiced with green
and black peppercorn, but apparently not so nowadays.  This could
of course be simply a Checkov complex on their part - (Checkov on
StarTrek was convinced everything was a Russian invention), but
when one views the wide variety of spicy hard sausage available in
the Arab world, it becomes very obvious that if they did not
invent the process, they certainly perfected it.

GC