As in most stories of the heart, the tale of how this book came to be is filled with disappointment and delay, rejection and renewal. But it ends as it should, happily.

For the past four decades, Laughlin has studied the Mayan culture and, in particular, one of its languages, Tzotzil, which is still spoken by the highland Indians of Chiapas in southern Mexico. He has published two Tzotzil dictionaries, collections of Tzotzil legends, myths and dreams; a study of plant lore and a history of a Spanish proclamation. In the 1970s, Laughlin learned of a rare manuscript-a colonial Spanish-Tzotzil dictionary-housed in the library of his alma mater, Princeton University.

An anthropologist's discovery about a Mayan language leads to a heartfelt tale

A bright red heart pierces the book's rough, black cover. Inside, some of the words are written in a mysterious language-but even in translation they read like poetry: "My heart aches: I am in love." "You perfume my heart: you give me pleasure." Wood-block images of hearts and lovers, birds and suns scatter across the pages in vibrant red and black.

Called Mayan Hearts, the hand-made book is a collection of 20-some metaphors used in the Mayan language Tzotzil. Just published, it is the work of Robert M. Laughlin, an anthropologist at the National Museum of Natural History, book designer Ambar Past and printmaker Naul Ojeda.

An anonymous Dominican friar working in Chiapas in the late 1590s compiled the dictionary of 10,000 Spanish words and their Tzotzil equivalents, recording more than 80 metaphors that refer to the heart-a testament to the Mayans' deep reverence for what they believe to be the locus of all that is human. Repentance, for example, is expressed in five different Tzotzil metaphors: "my heart cries," "my heart grows small," "my heart hurts," "my heart withdraws," and "my heart becomes two."

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