|
|
|
|
|
|
Stranger than fiction - The Da Vinci Code through the magnifying glassJameson Maluleke
Dan Brown's popularity as one of the world's famous writers is beyond dispute. His novel The Da Vinci Code has sold more than 20 million copies in 44 languages worldwide. The print and electronic media, literary institutions and individual readers agree Brown's work is a fascinating and absorbing read. It has been hailed as a "thriller", "brainy stuff", "a mystery", "a blockbuster", "perfection" etc (amazon.com). For all this, critics have branded Brown a downright liar and his book a mere fabrication. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary (2004) defines a lie as an "intentionally false statement". However, in the case of The Da Vinci Code, the lie is supposedly not just a single statement, but an entire book of more than 600 pages - and a novel at that. The business of this paper is to explore the element of a lie in the works of fiction, with special reference to The Da Vinci Code. But before we investigate the issue, let us turn the focus briefly to The Da Vinci Code itself. A decision by the Vatican to suspend its support for the Opus Dei organisation because its controversial practices are a liability and embarrassment to the Church (DVC 2003) sets the narrative in motion. A stranger, known only as the Teacher, fools Bishop Aringarossa into believing that if he acquires a sacred relic - the Holy Grail - he will become so powerful the Vatican will bow before him. He is also led to believe that the Grail will bring power enough to save The Faith. A decision to search for the Grail is made, and the payment of 20 000 euros agreed to. Then, a Harvard professor of iconology, Robert Langdon, on a lecture tour in Paris, is awakened by a late-night call. A renowned curator of the Louvre, Jacques Sauniere, has been brutally murdered inside the museum. Beside his body are a series of baffling codes. Langdon, working with French police investigator Sophia Neveau, begins to work through the bizarre riddles. They are stunned to find a trail that leads them to the works of Leonardo da Vinci - suggesting the answer to the mystery lies deep in the vaults of history. Judging by the summary alone, we can deduce that The Da Vinci Code has all the features of a detective story. So the question arises, why is Brown branded a liar? Is it because he has a personal grudge against the Roman Catholic Church - and is viewed as a heretic who seeks to shake Christianity to its very foundation? Or it is jealousy on the part of his detractors, angered to see him benefiting at the expense of the Church and the faithful? Whatever the reasons, his critics are adamant Brown is not truthful. And most of his detractors are Church leaders: one of the fiercest is a Jesuit priest, Father Mike Austin, who is adamant that Brown got it wrong (The Southern Cross, March 9, 2005). Fr Austin argues that The Da Vinci Code is all about secrets: secret societies; secret knowledge; secret documents; and secret families. The most important secrets concern Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Fr Austin accuses Brown of using anti-Christian and anti-Catholic calumnies to reduce Jesus - the Son of God - to the level of a human man, with human drives, including sex, and whom the Church has kept hidden behind the façade of his divinity for the past 2 000 years. Brown writes in The Da Vinci Code that Jesus married, and sired a daughter, Sarah, by Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene, after the death of Jesus, took her daughter and set up home in the south of France. Jesus intended his Church to be in her hands - not run by Peter and the Apostles, according to the premise of the book. The Church was supposed to be about the re-integration of the "sacred feminine" into human consciousness. One of the clues to this, according to The Da Vinci Code, is to be found in Da Vinci's famed "Last Supper". The painting, on a wall in the refectory of a Dominican friary in Milan, shows a woman at the supper (DVC 2003). According to The Da Vinci Code, the Holy Grail is not - as convention has it - the cup used at the Last Supper, but the womb of Mary Magdalene. At the end of the novel it is said that her bones lie under a glass pyramid at the Louvre. Fr Austin asks that since Mary Magdalene is mentioned only a couple of times in the gospels, where does the "factual" information for the book's hypothesis come from? Brown is also criticised for not consulting the gospels, but rather rushing to the Gnostic Gospels of the 1st and 2nd century - which were rejected by the Church as inaccurate. He uses them as his source and claims there were "thousands" of accounts of Jesus written during these two centuries, but of these, only four were chosen by Emperor Constantine in 325 for use in the New Testament. Fr Austin points out that in most editions of the Bible there will be an essay on the formation of the Canon of the New Testament, on which the bishops of the Church, not the Roman Emperor, decided and decreed. Their motive was not to oppress women or safeguard some arcane secret about Jesus, but to ensure an accurate account of his life, his teachings and miracles, his death and resurrection. According to Brown, secret documents were passed on to the Knights Templar and preserved in the "Priory of Sion". These apocryphal documents had been rejected by the early Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, because of the inaccuracy of some of the content and the deliberate misconceptions on the life and ministry of Jesus propounded by heretical Gnostic authors. Fr Austin holds that the Knights Templar were founded in the Holy Land at the time of the Crusades to guard the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Christianity's most sacred shrine. "At the end of the Crusades, in the 14th century, they established priories in France and England, where they acted as bankers. As their wealth grew, the bankrupt King Philip IV of France looked enviously at their wealth. He had charges of misbehaviour trumped up and requested the Pope to suppress the order" (DVC 2003). Brown claims that it was Pope Clement V who burned the Templars and had their ashes "tossed unceremoniously in the River Tiber". But Fr Austin points out that Clement, a Frenchman, lived in Avignon in the south of France and never went near Rome. Fr Austin further refutes the claim that the Templars invented and propagated the Gothic style of architecture as a means of promoting the "sacred feminine". "Nor was the traditional shape of their churches circular to honour the sun - they were orthodox Catholics. The shape of their churches commemorated the "temple", or church, of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem that they were dedicated to guard and preserve from the infidels and from which they took their name" (DVC 2003) He also showed that the "Priory of Sion" was never a real organisation. Its origins were exposed as the fabrication of an eccentric Frenchman, and the documents supporting it, to have been forgeries fabricated by him some 60 years before. Brown also makes use of Opus Dei to further his conspiracies in the person of an albino priest, Fr Austin charges. Another critic is the Archbishop of Genoa, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone (March 27 2005), who urged the faithful not to "read it, and above all, don't even buy The Da Vinci Code". The Vatican has also condemned the book's theme that Jesus Christ married and sired a child as a collection of "shameful and unfounded lies". Church leaders at Westminster Abbey have grown so tired of answering questions about The Da Vinci Code that they announced they would issue information sheets to correct "fatal errors" in the runaway best-seller (Press Association, Tuesday May 31, 2005). The Dean and Chapter at Westminster Abbey, one of the Church of England's most historic buildings, had this to say about The Da Vinci Code: "Although a real page turner, The Da Vinci Code is theologically unsound and we cannot commend or endorse the contentious wayward religious and historic suggestions made in the book - nor its views of Christianity and the New Testament." If The Da Vinci Code is a misrepresentation of facts and history, why is it that so many readers buy into its premise? What does it offer its readers? Amazon.com's listing of the book, and the accompanying opinions, indicate that many are buying into this heady mix of conspiracy theory, romance novel and pseudo-scholarship. No doubt, many of The Da Vinci Code's readers peruse the work out of curiosity - to search for the truth about Christianity and its leading biblical figures. According to Abanes (2004:5) the curiosity is fuelled by treachery, religious fanaticism, murder, an ancient conspiracy, secret societies, erotic spirituality, feminism, and inspiring legends which are integrated into the texts as plot elements. The book raises questions such as the reliability and historicity of the Bible, the true nature of Jesus, the origin and development of Christian beliefs, as well as the activities of church leaders during the Christian Church's formative years. Brown's critics are unjustified in tearing his book to pieces in that, as a novelist, Brown cannot be accused of lying. Those who abide by the literary norms and values would agree Brown is entitled to his thoughts, however different. Brown should be understood as a humble storyteller and not as an academic researcher. Seymour-Smith (1980:11) reminds us: "(L)iterature is superior to history (real facts) because it imitates not what ought to be - fiction is better than history in that it is based on probability." Brown (danbrown.com) emphasises the point that his work is meant for entertainment, like any literary work. "This book is not anti-anything. It's a novel. I wrote this story in an effort to explore certain aspects of Christian history that interest me. The vast majority of devout Christians understand this fact and consider The Da Vinci Code an entertaining story that promotes spiritual discussion and debate ... It is important to remember that a reader does not have to agree with every word in the novel to use the book as a positive catalyst for introspection and exploration of our faith." Since classical times, writers have expressed themselves freely within the confines of literature, as Hesiod, in shepherd's guise tending his flock on Mount Parnassus, learned from the Muses themselves. "We know how to say many false things that seem like true sayings, but we know also how to speak the truth when we wish to." (Quoted by Nelson 1973:3.) A literary practitioner - poet, dramatist or novelist - does not write in isolation. The practitioner chronicles words and deeds of the society in which he or she lives - basing his or her artwork on observation and experience. Wellek and Warren (1982:212) see a novel as a form of art associated with entertainment and escape rather than serious art. "There is a danger, however, in taking the novel seriously, as a document or case history, as, what for its own purposes of illusion it sometimes professes to be - a confession, a true story, a history of a life and its times." Brown (danbrown.com) has this to say about his work of fiction: "The Da Vinci Code is a novel and therefore a work of fiction. While the book's characters and their actions are obviously not real, the artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals depicted in this novel all exist (for example, Leonardo Da Vinci's paintings, the Gnostic Gospels, Hieros Gamos, etc). These real elements are interpreted and debated by fictional characters. While it is my belief that some of the theories discussed by these characters may have merit, each individual reader must explore these characters' viewpoints and come to his or her own interpretations. My hope in writing this novel was that the story would serve as a catalyst and a springboard for people to discuss the important topics of faith, religion, and history." Although The Da Vinci Code has all the qualities to be called fiction as understood by the literary scholars quoted, critics also assail Brown's appeals to scholarship and history, with comments ranging from "questionable" to "outlandish" and even "outrageous". Abanes (2004:9) points out that while spreading one's views via fiction is certainly a freedom guaranteed to all Americans, "what is problematic (…) is the way that Brown, his publisher, and the media have been presenting The Da Vinci Code as a fact-based expose wherein the characters reveal truths long hidden from, or at the very least ignored by, the general public." In the first pages of the book, Brown (2003:16) makes the bold assertion that the content in his book is true. All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate. During an interview, Brown (danbrown.com) reiterated the accuracy of his work in the following lines: "If you read the FACT page, you will see it clearly states that the documents, rituals, organizations, artwork, and architecture in the novel all exist. The FACT page makes no statement whatsoever about any of the ancient theories discussed by fictional characters. Interpreting those ideas is left to the reader." In putting a stamp of credibility to his book, Brown transgresses one of the fundamental rules of literature - that of depicting fiction as a scientific discourse. For this reason, he has been honest neither as a writer nor as a budding theologian - it would therefore be safe to call him someone skilled in manipulating baseless information into facts. In doing so he has shown a lack of respect for other religions. He is the kind of liar endowed with romantic imagination - one who imagines things as they are not, confuses fairytales and ends up in bad-tempered disappointment with the real world. As Wilson (1979:5) puts it, "... a romantic masquerading as a realist: an opportunist, a bender of truth, a wishful thinker with a remarkable capacity for self-deception. This weakling who found the real world too much for him used his talent for rhetoric to present romantic day-dreaming as a realistic assessment of society." But before we accuse Brown of being a lover of falsehood and things immoral, let us look at the society from which he comes. American society detests corruption in the Roman Catholic Church, where priests have been embroiled in scandals of abuse of women and children, as Abanes (2004:10) reveals. The corruption might have badly affected Brown's perception of Christianity and he chose the novel as the medium to voice his misgivings about the way in which the Church conducts itself. America is often perceived as a society that worships the god of profits, which has tempted critics to infer that Brown may have been motivated by fame and wealth. Yet his revulsion of the Church and his ambition fail to justify the lie he crafted in The Da Vinci Code. Having said this, it would be naive to think that The Da Vinci Code will lose its impetus. It will continue to enchant readers far into the future and people will still call Brown a "writer of world stature" and his book a "masterpiece". What then should be done to confront Brown's fanciful conspiracy? Instructing the faithful not to buy or read the book, as the Archbishop of Genoa, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, has suggested, is obviously not the solution. People are entitled to their ideas. They will read the book to find out the other side of the coin. This means that the Church needs to be proactive, not reactive, and educate the masses about the truth about Christian faith. Abanes (2004) in his The Truth Behind The Da Vinci Code has set an example of how the Church, or anyone concerned about the truth, can confront and interrogate The Da Vinci Code. Abanes (2004) points out that Brown dragged artist Da Vinci into his lies but failed in his bid to co-opt him - as is clear in Da Vinci's message from his Morals. He says, "To lie is so vile, that even if it were in speaking well of godly things it would take something from God's grace; and Truth is so excellent, that if it praises but small things they become noble. Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness ... [T]he truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects, though not of wandering wits." (Quoted by Abanes 2004:75.) The Bible, the Holy Scripture on which Christian faith is founded, reminds, us that "truthful lips will be established forever, but a lying tongue is only for a moment" (Abanes 2004:78). The Lincoln Cathedral in Britain has taken The Da Vinci Code as an opportunity to proclaim the truth about Christianity by filming parts of the novel. The Dean of Lincoln Cathedral, Dr Alec Knight, has defended the Church's stance saying, "but the world doesn't often give the Christian Church an opportunity on a plate to engage in speaking about the gospel and salvation of humankind, and as a Church, we should do so, like Paul in Athens." (Church Times, May 27/2005:2.) Ironically, Brown comments positively about clerical scholars attempting to "disprove" his book, engaging the Church in discussing the truth about Christian faith. "The dialogue is wonderful. These authors and I obviously disagree, but the debate that is being generated is a positive powerful force. The more vigorously we debate these topics, the better our understanding of our own spirituality. Controversy and dialogue are healthy for religion as a whole. Religion has only one true enemy - apathy - and passionate debate is a superb antidote" (danbrown.com). In the light of this, I would like to end my paper by saying "Ntiyso a wu hundzuki - truth never changes. Inkomu - thank you for a fat calf."
References Abanes, Richard. 2004. The Truth Behind The Da Vinci Code. Eugene Oregon. Harvest House Publishers. Brown, Dan. 2004. The Da Vinci Code. Corgie Books. Transworld Publishers. 61-63 Uxbridge Road, London. Church Times, Britain's Anglican Weekly Newspaper The Concise Oxford English Dictionary. Nelson, William. 1973. Fact or Fiction - The dilemma of the renaissance Storyteller. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard University Press. Press Association, Tuesday May 31, 2005. Seymour-Smith, Martin. 1980. Novels and Novelists - a guide to the world of fiction. Shuckburgh Reynolds Ltd, London. Wilson, Colin. 1979. "Man is born free, and everywhere in chains". Lying
Truths - A critical scrutiny of current beliefs and conventions, compiled by Ronald Duncan and Miranda Weston-Smith. New York: Pergamon Press.
Send your comments to webvoet@litnet.co.za to continue the discussion on SêNet, our interactive opinion page.
|
||
© Kopiereg in die ontwerp en inhoud van hierdie webruimte behoort aan LitNet, uitgesluit die kopiereg in bydraes wat berus by die outeurs wat sodanige bydraes verskaf. LitNet streef na die plasing van oorspronklike materiaal en na die oop en onbeperkte uitruil van idees en menings. Die menings van bydraers tot hierdie werftuiste is dus hul eie en weerspieël nie noodwendig die mening van die redaksie en bestuur van LitNet nie. LitNet kan ongelukkig ook nie waarborg dat hierdie diens ononderbroke of foutloos sal wees nie en gebruikers wat steun op inligting wat hier verskaf word, doen dit op hul eie risiko. Media24, M-Web, Ligitprops 3042 BK en die bestuur en redaksie van LitNet aanvaar derhalwe geen aanspreeklikheid vir enige regstreekse of onregstreekse verlies of skade wat uit sodanige bydraes of die verskaffing van hierdie diens spruit nie. LitNet is ’n onafhanklike joernaal op die Internet, en word as gesamentlike onderneming deur Ligitprops 3042 BK en Media24 bedryf. |
|||
Click here and subscribe to our fantastic free newsletter - for your
weekly cultural fix!