Inferno Decoded

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Inferno Decoded Page 20

by Michael Haag


  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

 

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