Literarische Essenzen
Nr. 12
The Da Vinci Code
(Dan Brown, 2003)
Ohne dass ich es deshalb ausgewaehlt hatte (ich bin blind der Empfehlung eines Freundes gefolgt), dreht es sich auch in diesem Buch wieder um den rechten Glauben. Nicht ganz so complex wie Werke, dich ich vorher gelesen habe (s.o.), aber doch sehr interessent. Bottom line: die Kirche hat das Wunder des Femininen "vergessen". Dazu gibt's in dem Buch viel Interessantes ueber Opus Dei und die Bedeutung diverser religioeser und nicht so scheinender Zeichen.
Here a response to the book by Opus Dei: link
Author's website with pictures of the places in the book: here
"A fortunate coincidence." Langdon was feeling anything but fortunate, and coincidence was a concept he didn't entirely trust.
La Pyramide du Louvre - Goethe had described architecture as frozen music, and Pei's critics described this pyramid as fingernails on a chalkboard.
I'm trapped in a Salvador Dali painting, he thought.
...this was France. Christianity was not a religion here so much as a birthright.
His lifelong affinity for bachelorhood and the simple freedom it allowed has been shaken somehow... replaced by an unexpected emptiness that seemed to have grown over the past year.
Man is simply playing by nature's rules, and because art is man/s attempt to imitate the beauty of the Creator's hand, you can imagine we might be seeing a lot of instances of the Divine Proportion in art this semester.
Gare Saint-Lazare: grungy kids in backpacks emerged from the station rubbing their eyes, looking around as if trying to remember what city they were in now.
What was the rationale for fusing science and faith? Unbiased science could not possibly be performed by a man who possessed faith in God. Nor did faith have any need for physical confirmation of its beliefs.
"self-authorizing language" - if you are smart enough to read it, you're permitted to know what is being shared.
"Robert, you've lost weight." Langdon grinned. "And you've found some."
The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven.
Nobody is more indoctrinated than the indoctrinator.
History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is olbiteratred, and the winner writes the history books - books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, "What is history, but a faible agreed upon?"
"SEX" above the Lion King's head - a cartoonist's sophomoric prank. For more: here
Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessable. The problem arises when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors.
The blind see what they want to see.
INTERESTING "FACTS"
PHI: The number 1.618, the Divine Proportion in nature and art. 93
Rose Line: also called a meridian or lingitued was any imaginary line drawn from the North Pole to the South Pole. Before the establishment of Greenwich as the prime meridian, the zero longitude of the entire world passed through Paris, and through the Church of Saint-Sulpice. 106
Horny: Egyptian God Amon: God of masculine fertility. Amdon is indeed represented as a man with a ram's head, and his promiscuity and curved horns are related to our modern sexual slang "horny".
left vs. right: Left side is feminine, right masculine. In France and Italy, the wors for left - gauche and sinistra - came to have a deeply negative overtones. Radical thought is still left wing and anything evil was sinister.
Friday 13th (Jahr 1307): Pope Clement killed hundreds of Knight's Templars who had grown too powerful.160
Gargoyles: When it rains, the make a gargling noise. 227
Constantine and the Church: Constantin saw that Christianity was rising and created a kind of hybrid religion that was acceptable to old pagans and new Christians (old dates etc.). And made Christ "holy". Therefore Christ couldn't have had a wife (Mary Magdalen).
V-sign behind someone's head: Since old fertility gods were horned: the mocking gesture is in fact advertising the victim's robust sperm count. 317 Cathedral's long hollow nave as a secret pagan tribute to a women's womb. The Cathedral's entrance represents a women's... 326
Hieros Gamos: Sacred Marriage in Egypt; intercourse was the act through which male and female experienced god.
Early Jews in Salomon's temple: Men seeking spiritual wholeness came to the Temple to visit priestesses - or hierodules - with whom they made love and experienced the divine through physical union. 309