Inferno Decoded
Page 20
SOLUBLON A widely used water soluble material manufactured by Japan’s Aicello Chemical Company, Solublon has many applications, include packaging laundry detergent and printing transfers. According to Aicello’s website, if you have an idea for a new use – infecting the planet with a latter-day version of the Black Death by suspending it in a Byzantine cistern, for example – ‘we can help craft the concept into a genuine product’.
VASARI, GIORGIO Painter, architect and art historian, Giorgio Vasari (1511-74) built and decorated many of the sites in Dan Brown’s Inferno, from the Vasari Corridor to various chambers in the Palazzo Vecchio to the fresco in the dome of the Duomo. A student of Michelangelo and a favourite of the Medicis, he knew everyone who was anyone in mid-sixteenth century Florence; in his Lives of the Artists he describes Botticelli’s obsession with Dante, which led, as Dan Brown writes in chapter 18 of Inferno, to ‘serious disorders in his living’.
VAYENTHA When the fictional Vayentha dismounts from her BMW motorbike and bursts into the hospital where Langdon is regaining consciousness and opens fire, the great chase begins. In fact there might have been no Dan Brown novel at all had she finished the job the day before, as intended, but she was disturbed by the cooing of a dove.
VENCI, GIORGIO Something of a deus ex machina, the possibly fictional chief designer of the real Atelier Pietro Longhi is a Wizard of Oz figure who prefers to work his magic from behind a curtain and gives Sienna a helping hand when all seems lost.
VIO, ETTORE The jovial-looking white-haired curator of the Basilica of St Mark in Venice, who’s delighted to drop everything and tease Robert Langdon with cryptic clues as to the identity of Enrico Dandolo. In real life, Ettore Vio has indeed written books about St Mark’s, so it’s presumably a slip of the keyboard when Dan Brown acknowledges the help of ‘Ettore Vito’.
Giorgio Vasari, author of Lives of the Artists.
WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION The public health agency of the United Nations primarily concerns itself with the eradication of existing diseases like smallpox, malaria and TB, and the threat posed by new ones such as HIV/AIDS and variants of bird flu. Its current director general, Dr Margaret Chan, is on record as saying ‘Access to modern contraception is a fundamental right of every woman’.
ZOBRIST, BERTRAND The fictional geneticist and Swiss billionaire Bertrand Zobrist is a Transhumanist, has developed a new line in viruses, and is a Dante enthusiast. Just the sort of fellow Dan Brown might write a book about.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Further Reading and Websites
WORKS BY DANTE ALIGHIERI
Depending on the reader’s preference, in particular as to whether to read Dante in prose or verse, the following versions are recommended. They are clear and readable, and are also highly accurate translations.
THE DIVINE COMEDY by Dante Alighieri
Translated by John D Sinclair, OUP 1961.
Italian text with English prose translation and commentary in three volumes.
THE DIVINE COMEDY by Dante Alighieri
Verse translation by C H Sisson, Oxford World’s Classics 1993.
The pick of modern verse translations.
VITA NUOVA by Dante Alighieri
Translated by Mark Musa, Oxford World’s Classics 1992.
In the Vita Nuova, the ‘New Life’, Dante tells the story of his own youthful development as a poet, and of his love for Beatrice. Written in prose and poetry before he began the Divine Comedy, it has been called a psychobiography for the insights it offers into Dante’s mind.
BIOGRAPHY
LIFE OF DANTE by Giovanni Boccaccio
Translated by Philip H Wicksteed, Oneworld Classics 2009.
The earliest authority we have for events in Dante’s life, apart from Dante himself, is his first biographer, Giovanni Boccaccio, whose researches included talking with people still alive who had first-hand memories of the poet. Boccaccio, the author of the Decameron, was one of the great writers of the Renaissance, and his brief life of Dante is a delight to read.
DANTE’S INVENTION by James Burge
The History Press 2010.
As well as being a writer, Burge directs and produces films for television, and in his excellent life of Dante he naturally responds to Dante’s visual imagination. That he does so with the freshness of someone who may be encountering Dante for the first time makes his book easy and enjoyable to read, while not lacking in authority.
DANTE IN LOVE by A N Wilson
Atlantic Books 2011.
Oddly, English author A N Wilson complained in a review of Dan Brown’s Inferno that it had obviously been written with the making of the film in mind. That is exactly how Dante himself reads, however, and especially his Inferno, the modern appeal of which very much depends on Dante’s powerful and often perversely funny talent for imagery. A lifelong Dante enthusiast, Wilson observes in this superb study how the self-proclaimed poet of love could also be the poet of hate, vengeance, implacable resentment and everlasting feuds, who dispatched personal enemies to the inferno to be mired in their own excrement, or forever be eaten by their demented neighbours.
ESOTERISM
What with his Beatrice and his numerology, and lines in the Inferno such as ‘O, you possessed of sturdy intellect, observe the teachings hidden here, beneath the veil of verses so obscure’, Dante has long served as a magnet for every kind of fantastical interpretation about what he really means.
THE CRYPTOGRAPHY OF DANTE by Walter Arensberg
Alfred Knopf 1921.
Arensberg, a wealthy American art collector and critic, also an English literature graduate of Harvard, sees Dante’s Inferno as a journey inside his mother, full of sexual symbolism; Beatrice, he maintains, was really Bella, Dante’s mum, a conclusion he supports by deciphering the many cryptograms he has found in Dante’s works.
THE ESOTERISM OF DANTE by René Guénon
Sophia Perennis 1996.
A French metaphysical writer of the early twentieth century, also known as Shaykh Abd al-Wahid Yahya, Guénon maintains that Dante must be understood on four levels of meaning: the literal, the philosophical, the political and the initiatic. The last touches on hermeticism, the Templars, Rosicrucianism, the Freemasons and extra-terrestrial journeys.
THE BLACK DEATH
THE DECAMERON by Giovanni Boccaccio
Available in numerous editions.
The best account ever written of the Black Death. Dante’s biographer Giovanni Boccaccio prefaces the tales of his Decameron with his eyewitness record of the plague’s devastating effects in Florence.
ONLINE SOURCES FOR DANTE
The following online sources provide a wealth of easily accessible material about Dante and his world, including his works in the original Italian and various English translations.
PRINCETON DANTE PROJECT
etcweb.princeton.edu/dante
DIGITAL DANTE AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
dante.ilt.columbia.edu
THE WORLD OF DANTE
www.worldofdante.org
BOTTICELLI
SANDRO BOTTICELLI: THE DRAWINGS FOR DANTE’S DIVINE COMEDY
Royal Academy of Arts 2000.
The mystery, grace and sensuality of Renaissance art achieves its zenith in such works as the Birth of Venus and Primavera by Sandro Botticelli. In the drawings he did for Dante’s Divine Comedy you recognise the form and features of Venus in Beatrice, but this is a very different world; Botticelli had become an avid supporter of the fanatical religious theocrat Savonarola. Botticelli’s Map of Hell, one of the drawings in this series, was probably done around the time that he witnessed the hanging and burning of Savonarola for heresy in Florence.
POPULATION ISSUES
FEEDING FRENZY by Paul McMahon
Profile Books 2013.
Chapter Eight of Inferno Decoded is a condensed version of one chapter of this authoritative study of ‘The New Politics Of Food’. In the rest of Freeding Frenzy, McMahon outlines the steps that need to be take
n to shape a sustainable and just global food system.
AN ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLES OF POPULATION by Thomas Robert Malthus
Oxford World’s Classics.
Whether or not you have any sympathy for his ideas, it’s worth reading Malthus’s original 1798 essay, in which they’re expressed with the utmost clarity.
TRANSHUMANISM AND THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE
AN OPTIMIST’S TOUR OF THE FUTURE by Mark Stevenson
Profile Books 2011.
Always lively and interesting, albeit undeniably alarming at times, this personal quest into what may lie ahead opens with a chapter on Transhumanism, and also looks at the possibilities and implications of nanotechnology.
THE TRANSHUMANIST READER by Max More and Natasha Vita-More (eds)
Wiley-Blackwell 2013.
A primary reference point for Chapter Nine of Inferno Decoded, containing 42 punchy essays and extracts that deal with the philosophy, science, politics and technology of Transhumanism.
THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR by Ray Kurzweil
Duckworth Overlook 2005.
If anyone would know whether we’re approaching the Singularity – the moment when artificial intelligence definitively outstrips human intelligence – it has to be Ray Kurzweil, who came up with the idea, and was appointed Google’s director of engineering in 2012. Dan Brown specifically recommends Kurzweil’s doorstop of a book to readers of Inferno.
HUMANITY+
humanityplus.org
Humanity+ is a membership organisation of Transhumanists that publishes H+ magazine, organises conferences and has local ‘chapters’. The FAQ section on its website covers all aspects of Transhumanist philosophy.
FLORENCE
BLUE GUIDE FLORENCE by Alta Macadam
Blue Guides.
Alta Macadam has lived in the hills above Florence for many years and knows the city inside out. Small wonder that Dan Brown cites the Blue Guide as one of his sources for Inferno. Our map on p.203 is based, with permission, on a map from this guidebook.
THE MUSEUMS OF FLORENCE
www.museumsinflorence.com
Not all of the seventy-two places covered on this site are what you would think of as ‘museums’. Most of the places mentioned in Dan Brown’s Inferno are here, including the Boboli Gardens, the Palazzo Pitti, the Vasari Corridor, the Palazzo Vecchio and the Baptistery.
CONSTANTINOPLE
BYZANTIUM 1200
www.byzantium1200.com
This website provides three-dimensional recreations of Constantinople, today’s Istanbul, including the Hagia Sophia.
THE WORKS OF DAN BROWN
DIGITAL FORTRESS, 1998
ANGELS AND DEMONS, 2000
DECEPTION POINT, 2001
THE DA VINCI CODE, 2003
THE LOST SYMBOL, 2009
INFERNO, 2013
www.danbrown.com
www.facebook.com/DanBrown
Dan Brown’s own website has details of all the novels and film versions and a ‘Secrets’ feature where, if you type in the word ‘Pythagoras’ you go through to a video of Dan emerging through a ‘secret door’ in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. Or you could join the 2.6m visitors to Dan’s Facebook site, where the author posts regular photos and text relating to his novels.
Index
Figures in italics refer to illustrations.
A
Adesina, Akin 170
Adoration of the Magi 137
Adrianople 124
alchemists 79
Alexander the Great 75
Alighieri, Antonia 31, 52
Alighieri, Bella 28, 87
death of 30
dreams of Dante’s birth 29
Alighieri, Dante see Dante
Alighieri, Giovanni 31
Alighieri, Jacopo 31, 92
Alighieri, Pietro 31
Allen, Woody 189
Alvarez, Marta 241
Amherst College 232
Ammut 18, 19
Amor 55
Anastasis of St Saviour 126
Anderson, William 86
Angels and Demons 229, 235, 237
Antenora 80
Antonucci, Eugenia 242
Apollo 87
Apollo Skinning Marsyas 88
ARCA 242
Arensberg, Walter 87, 261
Argenti, Filippo 72
Aristotle 90
Atelier Pietro Longhi 242
Attila the Hun 75
avarice, in Hell 72
B
Badia, the 97, 208
Bailey, Ronald 196
Baptistery of San Giovanni 18, 94, 111, 209
Bargello, the 97, 207
Basilica of St Mark 212, 213
Battle of Marciano, The 137
Beatrice 32, 41, 254
death of 48
eats Dante’s heart 45
painting of 43
reality of 50
tomb of 50
Behind The Mask 243
Bellincione, Alighiero di 28
Basilios Bessarion 121
betrayal, in Hell 79
Birth of Venus, The 130
Black and White factions in Florence 34
Black Death 93
as contributing factor in Renaissance 104
history of 101
reaches Constantinople 124
Blade Runner 195
Blake, William 59
blasphemers, in Hell 76
Blue Guide Florence 263
Boboli Gardens, the 202
Boccaccio, Giovanni 27, 44, 49, 59, 100, 133, 260
Bologna 38
Bonfire of the Vanities, the 142
Boniface VIII, Pope 34, 35, 63, 68, 78
Bostrom, Nick 184, 196
Botticelli, Sandro 54, 61, 74, 81, 129, 130, 143, 147, 148–49, 243, 262
Brave New World 194
Brooks, Sienna (biography) 243
Brown, Dan
Angels and Demons 229, 235, 237
biography 229
claustrophobia 227
Da Vinci Code, The 137, 221, 235, 238
Deception Point 237
Digital Fortress 229, 232, 237
education 232
Lost Symbol, The 225, 235, 239
marriage 235
writing career 235
Brown, Lester 166
Brown, Richard G 231
Brüder, Cristoph (biography) 244
Brunelleschi, Filippo 109, 115, 245
Bruni, Leonardo 27, 31
Buontalenti Grotto 202, 204
Burge, James 260
Bush, George W 191
Busoni, Ignazio (biography) 245
Byzantine Empire, the 121
C
Caiaphas 78
Caïna 80
Campaldino 33
Capek, Karel 191
Casa di Dante 39, 208
Catholic Church, the 18
Cavalcanti, Cavalcante dei 74, 132
Cavalcanti, Guido dei 35, 36, 54, 74, 132
Celestine V, Pope 67
Chan, Dr Margaret 258
Charles VIII 140
Chaucer, Geoffrey 59
Ciacco 71
Clarke, Arthur C 195
claustrophobia 223, 227
Clement V 78
Club of Rome, the 165
Cocytus 79
Collins 245
Columbus, Christopher 119
Condorcet, Nicolas de 160, 161, 181
Consortium, The 245
Constantinople
Black Death in 124
fall of 127, 215
sacking of 122
contrapasso 23, 60
Corot, Jean-Baptiste-Camille 64
Council of Florence 119
Council on Bioethics 191
Council on Foreign Relations 246
D
Dandolo, Enrico 122, 123, 217, 246
Danikova 246
Dante
and his mother 87
banishment from Florence 36
becomes a prior 35
begins to write Inferno 38
born 28
Casa di Dante 39, 208
completes Divine Comedy 40
Convivio, the 89
Dante’s church 46, 208
death mask 206, 207
death of 40
death of father 30
death of mother 30
De Monarchia 89
Digital Dante 261
Doré portrait of 32
exile of 37
heart eaten by Beatrice 45
marriage of 31
meaning of name 30
meets Beatrice 42
numerology 89
starts writing Divine Comedy 27
Vita Nuova 27, 42, 48, 51
Darwin, Charles 161
David, Michelangelo’s 207
Da Vinci Code, The 137, 221, 235, 238
da Vinci, Leonardo 137
Decameron, the 27, 100, 229, 237, 261
Deception Point 237
Della Scala, Can Grande 38
De Monarchia 89
Dick, Philip K 195
Digital Dante 261
Digital Fortress 229, 232, 237
dim mak 204
Divine Comedy, the 57
eroticism in 87
numerology of 62
structure of 58
Domesday Book 168
Donatello 111
Donati, Gemma 31, 53
Doomsday Clock 246
Doré, Gustave 22, 32, 59
Duomo, the 97, 116, 209
E
Ehrlich, Paul R 164, 166
Eliot T S, 59, 60
Elisei, Cacciaguida degli 27
Embryo Protection Law, Germany 193
Epic of Gilgamesh 180
Ernst, Max 247
Escher, M C 247
Esfandiary, Fereidoun 182, 247
Etruscans, the 93
eugenics 23
European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control 248
Exeter, New Hampshire 231
Extropy Institute, the 183
F
Faithful Followers of Love 31, 54, 83
Fantastic Voyage 187