Tome - what is it? As a rule, this word causes us to associate with ancient times, with the name of the first printer Johannes Gutenberg, with thick, yellowed volumes with massive clasps and rich ornaments. And these associations are close to the truth. But if you need to give a specific answer to the question that this is a tome, not everyone can handle it.
What is said in the dictionary?
Regarding the meaning of the “folio,” it says that he has two, albeit rather close to each other.
- The first of these is a typographic term, which today is obsolete and refers to a book publication that has a half-page format.
- The second meaning is colloquial, observed when talking about any thick book that has a large format.
Origin of the word
The etymology of the word under study goes back to the Latin language. There it is written folium and means both a leaf of a book and a leaf of a plant. Later, this term went into German and took on the form foliant in the meaning of "leaf". That is, initially the word did not mean a book, but a sheet, and then it began to refer to a sheet of a special format. From German, it switched to Russian.
Custom format
What is a half-folio format? To understand this, let’s take a closer look at the printing sheet itself. It is a paper carrier, the area of which is 1 square. meter.
It is quite easy to imagine, because it fits exactly into the format of a modern newspaper, if you take it in an expanded form. This format is codenamed "A0", which implies dimensions in millimeters - 841 x 1189.
From here it is easy to deduce the size of the folio, equal to one second of the parameters of a standard printing sheet. The folio page and the modern A3 sheet (29 x 40 cm) approximately correspond to each other. The first of them is indicated in two ways: “fo” and “2 °”. Thus, in one printing sheet four pages of the specified format are placed - two on each of its sides.
Our simple calculation allows us to establish a connection between the meaning of the word “folio” and the size of old books.
Why big size?
As you can see, the folio is a large book that is a consequence of the technology of its creation. To “work” the book, two pages were first printed on one of the standard printing sheets — on one side and then on the other. Then the sheets folded together. Then a certain number of printed and folded sheets were sewn and bound.
But the large size of the folios is also due to another circumstance. And this is a very serious circumstance, namely, a great competition with manuscript books. The fact is that at the dawn of typography, the latter were already familiar, and therefore closer to the heart of a medieval reader.
Therefore, printed books and tried to make as much as possible similar to man-made. And they had quite impressive dimensions - both in length and width, and in thickness. This was explained by the fact that, firstly, not all scribes differed in their slim style, and, secondly, a weighty volume is not as easy to steal as a small book. And, according to contemporaries, books were then a very valuable subject.
First folio
Studying the question that this is a tome, it seems appropriate to say about one of the most famous in the world - the Gutenberg Bible. Its second name is the 42-line Bible. Johann Gutenberg, the German first printer, released it in the 1st half of the 1450s.
It was a printed version of the Vulgate, that is, the generally accepted Bible, which was a translation of the Holy Scripture into Latin. According to tradition, the creation of this tome is considered as the beginning of European printing.
However, in fact this book is by no means the first of the incunabula - publications printed before 1501. But its peculiarity is that, among other first folios, it is distinguished by its excellent quality of design.
Next, we’ll talk about the tome that appears in one of Marina Tsvetaeva’s poems.
God do not judge!
At the center of Tsvetaeva’s poem “In a Fatal Tome ...” is a generalized image of a woman who is regarded as the heiress of the ancestress of Eve. The concept of Christianity that female nature is initially sinful is clearly traced in his concept. At the beginning of the poem, the poetess repels them, but in the end she draws opposite conclusions, arguing with the theses of church doctrine.
“In the Wicked Tome” is both the name of the poem and the beginning of its first line. By this is meant the cycle of elegy that were written by Publius Ovid Nason, an ancient Roman poet, in the 1st century. In this work, he describes the methods of seducing women and men, various tricks and techniques used in the relationship between the sexes. According to researchers, this book, entitled "The Art of Love", or "The Science of Love", was the reason for the poet's expulsion to the city of Tomis, located on the banks of the Pontus of Euxinus (Black Sea).
Mentioning this work in his poem, Tsvetaeva wants to bring the idea that the source of sensual pleasures for a woman is not fictional experiences that she read in an ancient folio, but living human nature. The climax of the poem is a call to God: not to judge too hard the daughters of Eve, since he will never be able to understand how it feels to be a woman on earth.