RENAISSANCE MAN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 735, 14 August 1953, Page 12

RENAISSANCE MAN

SELECTIONS FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF LEONARDO DA VINCI, edited with commentaries by Irma A. Richter; Oxford University Press (the World’s Classics). English price, 5/-. "THE genius of Leonardo da Vinci has been held to be representative of the spirit of the Renaissance-diverse, vital and emphasising the dignity of man. The first two qualities are: certainly apparent in this selection from his notebooks; but the bent. of his mind would seem to be, if anything, anti-humanist. As in Chinese and Japanese painting, man occupies a minor functional position in the order of things. The laws which govern the movements of air and water interest him more than the actual fate of people swept away by a deluge; the balance of stresses in the arch of a bridge, more than the peasants who walk across it. He invented diving suits, helicopters, machine-guns; but their function concerned him more than the social use, good or bad, to which they might be put. In this, he is undoubtedly representative of the main tradition of modern thought. The kind of comment he does make on human nature. is clearest in negative matters: "Avarice: The toad feeds on earth and always remains lean, because it never satisfied itself-it is so afraid lest it should be without earth." His preoccupation with imminent apocalyptic disaster seems to lie at the centre of his study of natural phencmena: I venture that opinion. But however repellent and strange the gist of his arguments, there is no doubt that his cold curiosity and scientific objectivity give an unequalled range to his understanding of natural order. In a time when men imagined that fossil shells wey created by the agency of the stars, he argues cogently for a different origin; he develops theories of perspective, of precipitation and evaporation, of flight and motion, all from strict observation of Nature. Nature is his deity, benignant or malignant. This selection from his works, cheaply priced, is likely to, be a source of interest and admiration to many readers. _ ;

James K.

Baxter