Juan Eduardo Cirlot - A Dictionary of Symbols

Johann Theodor de Bry, Emblemata nobiliati et vulgo scitu digna, Frankfurt, 1593.

IN THE INTRODUCTION to this volume Seor Cirlot shows his wide and learned conception of the subject-matter of this dictionary, and the only task left to me is to present the author himself, who has been familiar to me for some years as the leading protagonist of a very vital group of painters and poets in Barcelona. Juan Eduardo Cirlot was born in Barcelona in 1916, and after matriculating from the College of the Jesuits there, studied music. From 1943 onwards he was active as a poet, and published four volumes of verse between 1946 and 1953. Meanwhile the group of painters and poets already mentioned had been formed (Dau al Set), and Cirlot became its leading theoretician. For historical or political reasons, Spain had been slow to develop a contemporary movement in the arts comparable to those in other European countries; its greatest artists, Picasso and Mir, had identified themselves with the School of Paris. But now a vigorous and independent School of Barcelona was to emerge, with Antoni Tpies and Modesto Cuixart as its outstanding representatives. In a series of books and brochures Cirlot not only presented the individual artists of this group, but also instructed the Spanish public in the history and theoretical foundations of the modern movement as a whole.

In the course of this critical activity Seor Cirlot inevitably became aware of the symbolist ethos of modern art. A symbolic element is present in all art, in so far as art is subject to psychological interpretation. But in so far as art has evolved in our time away from the representation of an objective reality towards the expression of subjective states of feeling, to that extent it has become a wholly symbolic art, and it was perhaps the necessity for a clarification of this function in art which led Seor Cirlot to his profound study of symbolism in all its aspects.

The result is a volume which can either be used as a work of reference, or simply read for pleasure and instruction. There are many entries in this dictionarythose on Architecture, Colour, Cross, Graphics, Mandala, Numbers, Serpent, Water, Zodiac, to give a few exampleswhich can be read as independent essays. But in general the greatest use of the volume will be for the elucidation of those many symbols which we encounter in the arts and in the history of ideas. Man, it has been said, is a symbolizing animal; it is evident that at no stage in the development of civilization has man been able to dispense with symbols. Science and technology have not freed man from his dependence on symbols: indeed, it might be argued that they have increased his need for them. In any case, symbology itself is now a science, and this volume is a necessary instrument in its study.

HERBERT READ

THE ORIGINS OF MY INTEREST in symbols are manifold: first of all, as a means of taking into account the poetic image and the intuition that metaphor is something more than a merely ornamental substitution; also as a way of engaging with the art of the present, so fecund in visual images in which mystery is frequently a component; and, finally, as part of my art historical investigations, particularly of Romanesque and Eastern symbolism.

Simply to go on contemplating the image per se, while indulging, one might say, in an orgy of spiritual sentiments, was hardly fruitful, however. And yet my attraction to the world of symbols, an intermediate realm between the conceptual and the physical, maintained its appeal, so I resolved to undertake a systematic exploration of symbolic material, like mining for gold in a cavern, even though there were times when the whole endeavor seemed mythical minded. Still, I got down to work, consulting books and more books, books as seemingly far removed from one another as Mondo Simbolico ampliato by the most reverend Filippo Picinelli and more recent studies in anthropology and depth psychology, not to mentionhypocrite lecteur, mon semblable, mon frreoccultist works by the likes of Piobb and Shoral, always guided by the enlightening example of Carl Gustav Jungs analysis of alchemy, in which we perceive Jungs boundless humanistic spirit, as illustrious and open-minded as it is scientifically rigorous. Thus I drew near the luminous labyrinth of symbols, concerned less with interpretation than with comprehension and concerned most of all, really, with the contemplation of how symbols dwell across time and culture, doing my best to follow the examples of Marius Schneider, Ren Gunon and Mircea Eliade, to name a few.

Given the immensity of my subject, and given all the other subjects that cluster around it, I was aware that my research would inevitably take a synthetic form. Marie-Madeleine Davy points out that an investigation of even one culture at one time, say the Romanesque, must draw on an overwhelming variety of sources: theology, philosophy, mysticism, liturgy, hagiography, sermons, music, numbers, poetry, bestiaries, lapidaries, alchemy, magic, astrology, the science of dreams and the science of colors, liturgical drama, profane literature, folklore, diverse traditions and influences, superstitions, painting, sculpture, ornamentation and architecture. A monograph was of no interest to me, however. I wanted to embrace the broadest possible range of objects and cultures, to compare the symbols of the post-Roman West with symbols from India, the Far East, Chaldea, Egypt, Israel and Greece. Images, essential myths, allegories, for my purposes all these needed to be consulted, not, self-evidently, with the intention of making an exhaustive reckoning, but rather to comb out patterns in meaning, in what counts as essential, in fields both near and far. That the ribbon or knot of a British medallion, for example, bears the same meaning as an Egyptian hieroglyph, or that a hand-shaped Moroccan amulet has a counterpart in a Siberian talisman or the