A TRUE RENAISSANCE MAN

The visions of R Murray Schafer
by GORDON RUMSON

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Along with these aspects of musical scores, their representations and performance, R. Murray Schafer has written several novels using graphic formats. In these works Schafer tells tales that could not be told in the usual linear typeface format, or he tells tales that have utterly different effects when placed in such formats.

Dicamus and Labyrinthos which is designed as a journal describing investigations into ancient inscriptions purportedly concerning the Minotaur and Labyrinth is prime example of the range of Schafer's imagination. Neatly written text jostles with sketches of the inscriptions, quotations for sources, blotted ink and diagrams of mazes. At times the book must be turned this way and that to be read!

Example 7: Dicamus and Labyrinthos, (Indian River, Ontario: Arcana Editions, 1984), n.p.
Reproduced here with permission.

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