“Album Orbis” by Cyprian Norwid and the idea of “ beautiful book”

Abstract

The author attempts to indicate one unnoticed aspect which was omitted in the research on Album Orbis. It referred to the relation of the work to the idea of “beautiful book” which was connected with the editorial movement that developed at the end of the nineteenth-century – its significant indication occurred in the 1850s (i.a. owing to Edward Moxon’s publications). The article presents three factors which contributed to putting forward a thesis regarding both interpretation and the movement’s influence on Album Orbis. First of them is associated with a specific relation of the word and the illustration in Norwid’s work, based on the principle of interference, completion, conjunction of forms etc., where the picture is independent or even dominant. The second factor, which is the aesthetics of forms, corresponds to Norwid’s attention to detail in the spatial distribution of objects and reflects his concern pertaining to the final effect of artistic actions. Finally, the third factor is connected with the category of totality. Not only does it refer to historiosophical paradigm important to the author of Vade- -mecum (the work presents the history of world culture), but also determines the order of components included in his collection. All cards in Album Orbis create an impression of entirety whose parts, including vacancies, convey semantically and artistically consistent information. Even if the idea of “beautiful book” is not the exclusive notion that influenced the final form of episodic and multidimensional Album Orbis, the presented similarity is remarkable because of the work’s artistic values.