mr. h, at Giornale Nuovo has a couple of posts of two amazing books by Luigi Serafini.

Pulcinellopedia

In the course of my search for the Codex Seraphinianus (see below), I gathered that Luigi Serafini had one other book to his name, the intriguingly titled Pulcinellopedia Piccola. I scanned thousands of bookshop shelves during my two years in Italy, but never caught sight of a copy.

How I Found the Codex

About thirteen and a half years ago I first learnt of the existence of a strange and remarkable book called the Codex Seraphinianus. I read about it in Douglas Hofstadter’s Metamagical Themas. In a postscript to a piece therein entitled Sense and Nonsense, which strove to illustrate the grey zone between these acronymous poles, he wrote:

…it is a highly idiosyncratic magnum opus by an Italian architect indulging his sense of fancy to the hilt. It consists of two volumes in a completely invented language (including the numbering system, which is itself rather esoteric), penned entirely by the author, accompanied by thousands of beautifully drawn colour pictures of the most fantastic scenes, machines, beasts, feasts, and so on. It purports to be a vast encyclopedia of a hypothetical land somewhat like the earth, with many creatures resembling people to various degrees, but many creatures of unheard-of bizarreness promenading throughout the countryside. Serafini has sections on physics, chemistry, mineralogy (including many drawings of elaborate gems), geography, botany, zoology, sociology, linguistics, technology, architecture, sports (of all sorts), clothing, and so on. The pictures have their own internal logic, but to our eyes they are filled with utter non sequiturs.