This choice: Cover, Facing Papers, Title Page • Go Back...Chapter #3Cover, Facing Papers, Title Page by: Seuzz   Cover
It's a hefty book, about the size and shape of an old encyclopedia, and is even heavier than it looks. It is bound in a lustrous cover of red leather that is shot through with threads of what appears to be gold. A gold pentagram is stamped on the spine, but there are no other identifying marks.
Facing papers
On opening the cover, you are struck by the intricate line work that covers the facing papers of the inside cover. Each line is the thickness merely of a spider's web, and like spiders' webs they cross and crisscross each other in loops and spirals and gentle curves. It is hard not to become dizzy while staring at the designs, for the patterns seem to shift and alter, and the longer you stare, the stronger the sensation that you're in danger of falling into the book and into those webs, to be caught and tangled inside them.
Later, after you have bought the book and taken it home, you are thunderstruck to find the line work has vanished, leaving a creamy page of white, blank save for a single sentence and a strange symbol. The sentence reads, Emptio me cum pecunia, possidere me cum sanguine. The online translator you consult renders this as "Purchase me with money, possess me with blood." Directly below is a dense whorl of lines that you recognize as the stylized form of a thumbprint.
Not until you have cut your thumb open and pressed blood to that mark does the title page come free from the page behind.
Title Page
At the top of the page, in bold, Gothic letters, are three words: SUMMA LIBRA PERSONAE.
Directly beneath, in smaller letters: "Personae, de Elementa, et ad Relatio Inter Se; et eorum Constructio; et Modum Repraesentationis et ejus Reflexio in Materia."
Below this is a block of text, also in Latin:
Lector diligens; in hoc opus ipsis est data sunt Personae tuus, eius familiarissimum aliquas operationes, et relationes ejus partes ad invicem ut totum constituere. Factum est compilatur et restituantur en forma singulari ex primaevis, antiquis, classici et moderni scientia, et sunt ornataque per nova et mirabile inventis. Datum sunt tibi maxime convenientis expressiones propter abstractionis et ad praesentationis de elementis Personae ad illustrationem intellectus, et Modi specifici ut per animadverto quam abstractae in materialiter, ita quod sensibus, non solum etiam intellectus.
At the bottom of the page is a row of stylized faces, gazing serenely out at you: an old man, a young woman, a hale warrior, and a child. But as you looked at them, they seemed to shift places and attitudes and ages, so that the old man would, from a different angle, come to resemble the young woman, and the child would age into a crone.
"The Latin is terrible," your friend Joe tells you one day as you're talking about it. "Mind you, I half-guess it's deliberately terrible. The asshole who wrote it seemed like to talk in double-meanings and puns, but he didn't have the talent for it. Take the title. 'Summa Libra Personae.' The literal translation is 'The Total Balance Scale of Personas,' which doesn't make a lot of sense. But he was probably trying to be metaphorical. 'Libra' means a scale, like you see statues of justice holding. It can also be one of those leveling rods that you use to determine if a surface is perfectly straight. So he's talking about the kind of tools you use to weigh and measure things, like you're constructing a model or a diagram. So 'The Total Measure of Personas' would be a better translation.
"And if you really want to draw the metaphor out," Joe continued, and he grins at you like he does when he's trying to scare you with tales of vampires and chupacabras, "just think of those measuring scales, and pretend they're being used by a butcher. Because that's what the Libra is, right? An instruction manual for taking people apart. 'Personas, Totally Dissected and Laid Out on a Table Top' is probably what the cocksucker was going for with that title. Meh. He was a superb engineer, but not much of a literary stylist.
"Mind you," Joe adds after a thoughtful silence, and he leans forward to pick up one of the masks that you made using the book, "he might have also been making a pun about these things. You've got a whole person copied up inside here, right?" He hefts the mask. "And it weighs only a little less than a pound. 'Libra' was also measure of weight for the Romans, about twelve ounces. So 'The Complete Twelve Ounce Persona' or 'Personas, Totally Wrapped Up in Twelve Ounces' might be another translation."
You ask, "You call it 'the Libra' when talking about it. Why?"
"'Cos 'Summa Libra Personae' is a mouthful. Dur. And there's too many other famous books with 'Summa' in their title. The Summa Theologica, the Summa contra Gentiles. And that's just Aquinas. There's also the Summa de poenitentia, the Summa Aurea, the Summa Codicis. You tell someone, 'I was reading the Summa', which Summa are they supposed to think you were reading? And the things the book makes are called 'personae', so that leaves 'Libra' as the best, shortest thing to call it."
You point to the title page. "So how would you translate all this?" you ask Joe.
He shrugs as he takes the book up. "I told you what the title means. The subtitle would say something like, 'Personas, On'—or 'of' maybe—their Elements and Relations to Each Other; their Construction; and their Modes of Representation and Reflection in Matter.' As for the rest of it—"
He sucks in his upper lip and studies the page for a minute.
"Well," he says, "if you were going to translate it in something like the style they would have used back in the seventeenth century, it would probably come out something like this." He reads:
"Diligent reader, in this work you are given the persona, its innermost workings, and the relations of its parts to each other so as to constitute the whole. It is compiled and reconstituted in an original manner from primordial, ancient, classical and modern knowledge, and embellished by new and marvelous discoveries. You are given the most convenient expressions for the abstraction and presentation of the elements of the persona for the enlightenment of the understanding, and the practical means by which to realize these abstractions in material form, that they may be comprehended by the senses and not only by the intellect.
Credit to Nostrum for the Latin translation.  | Members who added to this interactive
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