Dictionary of Symbols
This classic encyclopedia of symbols by the renowned Spanish poet illuminates the imagery of myth, modern psychology, literature, and art.
J. E. Cirlot’s A Dictionary of Symbols is a feat of scholarship, an act of the imagination, and a tool for contemplation, as well as a work of literature—a reference book that is as indispensable as it is brilliant and learned. Cirlot was a composer, poet, critic, and champion of modern art whose interest in surrealism helped introduce him to the study of symbolism.
This volume explores the space between the world at large and the world within, where nothing is meaningless, and everything is in some way related to something else. Running from “abandonment” to “zone” by way of “flute” and “whip,” spanning the cultures of the world, and including a wealth of visual images to further bring the reality of the symbol home,
A Dictionary of Symbols is a luminous and illuminating investigation of the works of eternity in time.
J. E. Cirlot
J. E. Cirlot lived in Zaragoza, Spain, among culturati drawn to Surrealism, with, most notably, the artist Alfonso Buñuel. He and Buñuel translated the Surrealist poetry of Paul Éluard, André Breton, and Antonin Artaud into Spanish. Through Surrealism, Cirlot developed beliefs in mysticism. In 1949 he met ethnologist and musicologist Marius Schneider who cultivated in Cirlot a fascination with symbology. Compatriot art historian José Gudiol assisted him in Gothic art studies. Cirlot’s first book on symbolism, El Ojo en la Mitología, was published in 1954. That same year, he became a founding member of the Academia del Faro de San Cristóbal. Together with American art historian George Kubler he co-authored a volume in the art encyclopedia Ars Hispaniae in 1957. In 1958, he published his Diccionario de Símbolos Tradicionales, translated into English in 1962 as A Dictionary of Symbols. Diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 1971, he worked to publish a volume on Picasso before his death. He passed away in his home in Barcelona in 1973.
