first edition
1888 · Paris
by Flammarion, C.
Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1888. First edition.
1888 FIRST EDITION, THIS LARGE VOLUME CONTAINS THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF A WOOD ENGRAVING THAT UNTIL RECENTLY WAS ATTRIBUTED TO ANTIQUITY.
19 x 28 x 5 cm hardcover, 3/4 leather binding, brown pebbled cloth covered boards, spine with gilt title, raised bands, and compartments gilt stamped world globe with dividing compass, marbled endpapers with bookplate of Robert L Chevalier MD to front paste-down, color frontispiece, title page in red and black, 808 pp, 2 color maps, 13 color plates (including frontispiece), 2 uncolored plates, 307 wood engravings, including on p 163, missionary in Middle Ages peering through sky. Covers clean, gilt spine bright, binding tight, scattered light foxing, overall very good in custom archival mylar cover. FRENCH LANGUAGE.
CAMILLE FLAMMARION (1842 – 1925) was a French astronomer and prolific author of more than fifty titles, including popular science works about astronomy, several notable early science fiction novels, and works on psychical research and related topics. He also published the magazine L'Astronomie, starting in 1882. He maintained a private observatory at Juvisy-sur-Orge, France. As a young man, Flammarion was exposed to two significant social movements in the western world: the thoughts and ideas of Darwin and Lamarck and the rising popularity of spiritism with spiritualist churches and organizations appearing all over Europe. L'Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire (offered here) is divided into 6 books: 1) Our Planet and Its Vital Fluid; 2) Light and the Optical Phenomena of the Air; 3) Temperature; 4)The Wind; 5) Water, Clounds, and Rain; 6) Electricity: Storms and Thunder; and a "complementary chapter" on the prediction of weather. The illustrations pertain to the climate across all regions of France, with depiction of Paris and the countryside. Flammarion's interest in the history of astronomy and meteorology are reflected in his inclusion of the contributions of Torricelli, Pascal, and Lavoisier. At the beginning of Book 2 (Light and the nature of the sky), Flammarion includes a wood engraving titled, "A missionary of the Middle Ages recounts that he had discovered the point where the sky and the earth touched."
HISTORY OF THE ENGRAVING. A traveller puts his head under the edge of the firmament in the original printing of the Flammarion wood engraving, by an unknown artist, so named because its first documented appearance is in Camille Flammarion's 1888 book L'atmosphère : météorologie populaire (offered here). The wood engraving, often erroneously referred to as a woodcut, has been used as a metaphorical illustration of either the scientific or the mystical quests for knowledge. The print depicts a man, clothed in a long robe and carrying a staff, who is at the edge of the Earth, where it meets the sky. He kneels down and passes his head, shoulders, and right arm through the star-studded sky, discovering a marvellous realm of circling clouds, fires and suns beyond the heavens. The caption that accompanies the engraving in Flammarion's book reads: "A missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he had found the point where the sky and the Earth touch."
In 1957, astronomer Ernst Zinner claimed that the image dated to the German Renaissance, but he was unable to find any version published earlier than 1906. Further investigation, however, revealed that the work was a composite of images characteristic of different historical periods, and that it had been made with a burin, a tool used for wood engraving only since the late 18th century. Flammarion had been apprenticed at the age of twelve to an engraver in Paris and it is believed that many of the illustrations for his books were engraved from his own drawings, probably under his supervision. Therefore, it is plausible that Flammarion himself created the image. The decorative border surrounding the engraving is distinctly non-medieval and it was only by cropping it that the confusion about the historical origins of the image became possible. In Flammarion's L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire, the image refers to the text on the facing page (p. 162), which also clarifies the author's intent in using it as an illustration: "Whether the sky be clear or cloudy, it always seems to us to have the shape of an elliptic arch; far from having the form of a circular arch, it always seems flattened and depressed above our heads, and gradually to become farther removed toward the horizon. A naïve missionary of the Middle Ages even tells us that, in one of his voyages in search of the terrestrial paradise, he reached the horizon where the earth and the heavens met, and that he discovered a certain point where they were not joined together, and where, by stooping his shoulders, he passed under the roof of the heavens." The idea of the contact of a solid sky with the earth is one that repeatedly appears in Flammarion's earlier works.
The Flammarion engraving appeared in C. G. Jung's Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies (1959). The first color version to be published was made by Roberta Weir and distributed by Berkeley's Print Mint in 1970. That color image spawned most of the modern variations that have followed since. Donovan's 1973 LP, Cosmic Wheels, used an extended black and white version on its inner sleeve (an artist added elements extending the image to fit the proportions of the record jacket). The image also appeared in The Compleat Astrologer (pg. 25) by Derek and Julia Parker in 1971. The Flammarion engraving appeared on the cover of Daniel J. Boorstin's bestselling history of science The Discoverers, published in 1983. Other books devoted to science that used it as an illustration include The Mathematical Experience (1981) by Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh, Matter, Space, and Motion: Theories in Antiquity and Their Sequel (1988) by Richard Sorabji, Paradoxes of Free Will (2002) by Gunther Stent, and Uncentering the Earth: Copernicus and On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (2006) by William T. Vollmann. Some books devoted to mysticism which have also used the engraving include Love and Law (2001) by Ernest Holmes and Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing (2002) by Stephan A. Hoeller. The image was reproduced on the title page of the score of Brian Ferneyhough's Transit: Six Solo Voices and Chamber Orchestra, published by Edition Peters in 1975. British artist David Oxtoby made a painting inspired by the Flammarion engraving (Spiritual Pilgrim), showing the face of David Bowie near the painting's right margin where the sun should be. David Oxtoby's painting does not show the crawling man at left. An interpretation of the image was used for the animated sequence about the cosmological vision of Giordano Bruno in the March 9, 2014 premiere of the TV series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, hosted by the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. That TV series was dedicated to the popularization of science and astronomy, as had Flammarion's own work 150 years before. In the German-language video series Von Aristoteles zur Stringtheorie, (From Aristotle to String Theory), which is hosted on YouTube and produced by Urknall, Weltall, und das Leben, and features Professor Joseph Gaßner as lecturer, a colored Flammarion engraving was selected as a logo, but the man is peering at a background filled with the important equations of physics.
Some commentators have claimed that Flammarion produced the image to propagandize the myth that medieval Europeans widely believed the Earth to be flat. In his book, however, Flammarion never discusses the history of beliefs about the shape of the Earth. His text suggests that the image is simply a fanciful illustration of the false view of the sky as an opaque barrier. (Inventory #: 1774)
1888 FIRST EDITION, THIS LARGE VOLUME CONTAINS THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF A WOOD ENGRAVING THAT UNTIL RECENTLY WAS ATTRIBUTED TO ANTIQUITY.
19 x 28 x 5 cm hardcover, 3/4 leather binding, brown pebbled cloth covered boards, spine with gilt title, raised bands, and compartments gilt stamped world globe with dividing compass, marbled endpapers with bookplate of Robert L Chevalier MD to front paste-down, color frontispiece, title page in red and black, 808 pp, 2 color maps, 13 color plates (including frontispiece), 2 uncolored plates, 307 wood engravings, including on p 163, missionary in Middle Ages peering through sky. Covers clean, gilt spine bright, binding tight, scattered light foxing, overall very good in custom archival mylar cover. FRENCH LANGUAGE.
CAMILLE FLAMMARION (1842 – 1925) was a French astronomer and prolific author of more than fifty titles, including popular science works about astronomy, several notable early science fiction novels, and works on psychical research and related topics. He also published the magazine L'Astronomie, starting in 1882. He maintained a private observatory at Juvisy-sur-Orge, France. As a young man, Flammarion was exposed to two significant social movements in the western world: the thoughts and ideas of Darwin and Lamarck and the rising popularity of spiritism with spiritualist churches and organizations appearing all over Europe. L'Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire (offered here) is divided into 6 books: 1) Our Planet and Its Vital Fluid; 2) Light and the Optical Phenomena of the Air; 3) Temperature; 4)The Wind; 5) Water, Clounds, and Rain; 6) Electricity: Storms and Thunder; and a "complementary chapter" on the prediction of weather. The illustrations pertain to the climate across all regions of France, with depiction of Paris and the countryside. Flammarion's interest in the history of astronomy and meteorology are reflected in his inclusion of the contributions of Torricelli, Pascal, and Lavoisier. At the beginning of Book 2 (Light and the nature of the sky), Flammarion includes a wood engraving titled, "A missionary of the Middle Ages recounts that he had discovered the point where the sky and the earth touched."
HISTORY OF THE ENGRAVING. A traveller puts his head under the edge of the firmament in the original printing of the Flammarion wood engraving, by an unknown artist, so named because its first documented appearance is in Camille Flammarion's 1888 book L'atmosphère : météorologie populaire (offered here). The wood engraving, often erroneously referred to as a woodcut, has been used as a metaphorical illustration of either the scientific or the mystical quests for knowledge. The print depicts a man, clothed in a long robe and carrying a staff, who is at the edge of the Earth, where it meets the sky. He kneels down and passes his head, shoulders, and right arm through the star-studded sky, discovering a marvellous realm of circling clouds, fires and suns beyond the heavens. The caption that accompanies the engraving in Flammarion's book reads: "A missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he had found the point where the sky and the Earth touch."
In 1957, astronomer Ernst Zinner claimed that the image dated to the German Renaissance, but he was unable to find any version published earlier than 1906. Further investigation, however, revealed that the work was a composite of images characteristic of different historical periods, and that it had been made with a burin, a tool used for wood engraving only since the late 18th century. Flammarion had been apprenticed at the age of twelve to an engraver in Paris and it is believed that many of the illustrations for his books were engraved from his own drawings, probably under his supervision. Therefore, it is plausible that Flammarion himself created the image. The decorative border surrounding the engraving is distinctly non-medieval and it was only by cropping it that the confusion about the historical origins of the image became possible. In Flammarion's L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire, the image refers to the text on the facing page (p. 162), which also clarifies the author's intent in using it as an illustration: "Whether the sky be clear or cloudy, it always seems to us to have the shape of an elliptic arch; far from having the form of a circular arch, it always seems flattened and depressed above our heads, and gradually to become farther removed toward the horizon. A naïve missionary of the Middle Ages even tells us that, in one of his voyages in search of the terrestrial paradise, he reached the horizon where the earth and the heavens met, and that he discovered a certain point where they were not joined together, and where, by stooping his shoulders, he passed under the roof of the heavens." The idea of the contact of a solid sky with the earth is one that repeatedly appears in Flammarion's earlier works.
The Flammarion engraving appeared in C. G. Jung's Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies (1959). The first color version to be published was made by Roberta Weir and distributed by Berkeley's Print Mint in 1970. That color image spawned most of the modern variations that have followed since. Donovan's 1973 LP, Cosmic Wheels, used an extended black and white version on its inner sleeve (an artist added elements extending the image to fit the proportions of the record jacket). The image also appeared in The Compleat Astrologer (pg. 25) by Derek and Julia Parker in 1971. The Flammarion engraving appeared on the cover of Daniel J. Boorstin's bestselling history of science The Discoverers, published in 1983. Other books devoted to science that used it as an illustration include The Mathematical Experience (1981) by Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh, Matter, Space, and Motion: Theories in Antiquity and Their Sequel (1988) by Richard Sorabji, Paradoxes of Free Will (2002) by Gunther Stent, and Uncentering the Earth: Copernicus and On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (2006) by William T. Vollmann. Some books devoted to mysticism which have also used the engraving include Love and Law (2001) by Ernest Holmes and Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing (2002) by Stephan A. Hoeller. The image was reproduced on the title page of the score of Brian Ferneyhough's Transit: Six Solo Voices and Chamber Orchestra, published by Edition Peters in 1975. British artist David Oxtoby made a painting inspired by the Flammarion engraving (Spiritual Pilgrim), showing the face of David Bowie near the painting's right margin where the sun should be. David Oxtoby's painting does not show the crawling man at left. An interpretation of the image was used for the animated sequence about the cosmological vision of Giordano Bruno in the March 9, 2014 premiere of the TV series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, hosted by the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. That TV series was dedicated to the popularization of science and astronomy, as had Flammarion's own work 150 years before. In the German-language video series Von Aristoteles zur Stringtheorie, (From Aristotle to String Theory), which is hosted on YouTube and produced by Urknall, Weltall, und das Leben, and features Professor Joseph Gaßner as lecturer, a colored Flammarion engraving was selected as a logo, but the man is peering at a background filled with the important equations of physics.
Some commentators have claimed that Flammarion produced the image to propagandize the myth that medieval Europeans widely believed the Earth to be flat. In his book, however, Flammarion never discusses the history of beliefs about the shape of the Earth. His text suggests that the image is simply a fanciful illustration of the false view of the sky as an opaque barrier. (Inventory #: 1774)
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