Gary Jansen - The Infernos of Dante and Dan Brown: A Visitors Guide to Hell

JEREMY P. TARCHER/PENGUIN

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Copyright 2013 by Gary Jansen

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Published simultaneously in Canada

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ISBN 978-0-698-13558-1

Dan Brown may be one of the most important writers living today. At first blush this statement may sound like hyperbole. Certainly, academics and scholars would think Im off my rocker, and would cite a recent Nobel Prizewinning author as leagues above the popular thriller novelist of such books as The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol in importance. Critics too, while probably conceding that Brown knows how to spin a good yarn, would in all likelihood list dozens of writers (many most general readers had never heard of) as being more worthy of such a description. Yet, what Brown does, in a way that appeals to tens of millions of people around the world (his books have sold collectively over 200 million copies in 52 languages), is to tell stories which drag up from our unconscious minds the innate desire for meaning embodied in symbols and symbolism. What the heck does that mean? Please allow me to explain.

Anyone growing up in the suburbs of a big American city as I did (Long Island, in the shadow of New York) knows that the commercial areas of the landscape are mostly made up of simple brick or pre-fabricated buildings adorned with signs for things like Starbucks, Chase, Exxon, and McDonalds. These signs convey important information (respectively: get your coffee here, deposit your money here, fill up your tank here, and harden your arteries here). These markersand hundreds of others, from simple street signs to giant billboardshelp us every day to get where we need to go and do what we need to do.

Signs are all around us, so much so that they can form a sort of visual white noise. More often than not, however, if we take a moment and look past the static, we can find new layers of meaning. Through our own observation, we can take what seems like an ordinary sign and at times convert it into a symbol. For example: as you down a non-fat skim latte at Starbucks, consider the emblem of the green mermaid and her trident. Depending on your frame of mind, it could symbolize community, a clean, well-lighted place where people come together to meet and discuss ideas, or it may represent brand conformity and lack of creativity. Similarly, the Chase logo symbolizes capitalism at its best or at its worst; Exxon symbolizes freedom to get where you need to go or imprisonment by dependency on foreign oil. And McDonalds? Well, you get the picture.

In the hustle and bustle of modern life, many of us, at least consciously, dont normally look past the surface. Now, you might be asking, So what? What difference does it make? Why should I care?

Maybe you shouldnt. But in a society where poetry, myth, religion, and philosophy are becoming more and more obsolete; where 1 in 10 Americans takes medication for depression; where more people are foregoing human, three-dimensional face-to-face interaction for one-dimensional, high-definition electronic substitutes like Facebook and Twitter; and where people are still asking, Whats the point?, maybe we should care.

Noted historian Heinrich Zimmer once wrote, Concepts and words are symbols, just as visions, rituals, and images are; so too are the manners and customs of daily life. Through all of these a transcendent reality is mirrored. In other words, symbols allude to an essential truth that exists beyond us. Forego them and we close the door to what makes us human. It is difficult to get the news from poems, poet William Carlos Williams wrote, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there. The same can be said for the symbolic.

Browns books, filled with mystery, intrigue, secret codes, and symbols embedded in paintings, books, churches, monuments, and buildings, remind us that there is more to the world than meets our collective eye. So its no surprise that he would use Dante Alighieri, an Italian medieval poet and author of the long-celebrated Divine Comedy, as his muse. Brown channels the works of Dante, who was the master of symbolism, for another adventure featuring the popular fictional hero Robert Langdon, Harvard symbologist and chief protagonist of three of Browns most successful novels, Angels and Demons, The Da Vinci Code, and The Lost Symbol. In Dan Browns Inferno (its title drawn from the first part of Dantes divine trilogy, its setting contemporary Florence), Langdon must once again use his expertise as a master of symbols and art to uncover a code behind a sinister plot that could have grave global repercussions. How is Dante involved in the story? And what connections are there between the 21st-century Inferno and its 14th-century predecessor?

All in due time, dear reader.

Dante may be an author you avoided in a college course catalogue, but the medieval master is not only exciting to read, but continues to be influential to this day. To illustrate this, let me first tell a story, and then Ill fill in some historical background.

Some years ago, as I was leaving work for the day and heading across town to a graduate class I was taking on Dantes Divine Comedy, I had a most unexpected encounter. Standing under the gateway of the old Bertelsmann building on 45th Street just off Times Square in New York City was none other than Clarence Clemons, legendary saxophonist for Bruce Springsteens E Street Band. Dressed all in black, standing 65, and weighing upwards of 240 pounds, he cut an imposing figure against the crowds of wearied souls released from their 95 labors; he looked like a storm cloud descended from the sky, a dark angel of smoke and retribution. More than a little nervous about approaching him, but being a huge Springsteen fan and knowing this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I walked over to him and asked him for his autograph.