The Witches' Waag

Seriously, I wouldn't have taken literature courses at university and picked up a thing about literary criticism if it weren't for them.

Critical reading makes you a better reader as well as a better reader.

In Chapter 10, we get the much-needed backstory for Silas, the novel's antagonist.

Turns out he was despised by his father for being born with albinism, a condition for which he blames Silas's mother. The father is a drunk who often beat his wife, and beat his son when he tried to defend her. Eventually, this father ends up beating her to death, which Silas blames on himself. He then stabs his father to death and runs away from home.

He ends up on the streets, where people treat him like he's a ghost and sometimes give him pitiful looks. He starts fighting with people and is eventually told to leave after he almost beats a girl to death for making fun of him. He then kills two men for real in another town, and is shoved in prison in Andorra for twelve years.

Some mysterious force breaks down a wall (it turns out to be an earthquake) and he manages to escape. He describes what happens to him afterwards as Opus Dei saving him, and he becomes the religious fanatic we see him as throughout the novel.

This is due to the fact that a priest (Aringarosa) nurses him back to health. This same priest eventually lets him read the part in the Book of Acts that speaks of a prison break that helps a person called Silas, who spent his days in prison singing hymns to God, escape due to an earthquake that makes all doors fly open. And therefore, the priest says he'll call Silas by that name, since Silas can't remember the name his parents had given him.

I think it's supposed to give him a somewhat sympathetic backstory, kind of like with Frankenstein's Creature – if the world hadn't rejected him, he may have been good. Granted, I might be reading a little too much into this, as we race through this description in a rather brief chapter (particularly when we compare it to how much time we spent with Langdon already).

Silas's character seems to be designed as foil to Langdon's secularism and his supposed heroism, whereas Silas seems to have stumbled into religious villainy. The issue is that we have another case of "battered people become bad".

It's no different from the childhood neglect Tom Riddle (Voldemort) suffered in Harry Potter, and we all know how nuanced Rowling designs her characters (coughcough). One of the reasons she gives for Voldy being the way he is, is that he was conceived without love. You can imagine how readers who were birthed into this world under similar circumstances felt about that reasoning behind his villainy, especially when he's explicitly stated to know nothing of love, which is what separates him from Harry.

Silas may be suffering from a very similar syndrome. His villainy seems set in stone, as if it just happened because he was abused and rejected by everyone. Realistically, people who end up rejected by absolutely everyone often exacerbate this reality themselves. If you have a nice personality, some people will want to be your friend. Even people who turned to mass murder who see themselves as total outcasts had people in life who loved them; they just didn't appreciate these people enough and often pushed them away in pursuit of that darkness they felt inside.

Hatred can certainly fester, as Silas is described as having hatred within him that he tries to control. Some people who became villains in real life actively had to lean into that darker side of theirs to meet another desire they had (which was to inflict pain on others). I don't think we'll get even halfway as deep with this villain character, as Brown designed him in the early 00s, so this stuff was seen as normal back then.

Let's put that to the test, shall we?

At the start of Chapter 10 (p. 79), we're treated to a brief description of the Saint-Sulpice church in Paris. For context, the church the text refers to is this one:

(images taken from this Wikipedia page)

Dan Brown describes this church as follows (and bear in mind I've removed nothing from his description):

Lit from beneath by banks of floodlights, the church's two bell towers rose like stalwart sentinels above the building's long body. On either flank, a shadowy row of sleek buttresses jutted out like the ribs of a beautiful beast.

A buttress is a feature retained from Gothic architecture here (this church was built halfway through the 17th century, so Gothic architecture predates this building). You might be thinking of something like a flying buttress if you think of them, as many of the great cathedrals in Europe have these.

As an example, I'll share a couple of images from my own collection.

These are Chartres Cathedral & Regensburg Cathedral. The ones in Regensburg are more elaborate and even include a small tower on top of the buttress, which yes, does help with the standard function of a buttress. (You can even spot a few flying buttresses behind the one I've circled.)

They're architectural features that have been embellished, essentially. The reason for their existence is to buttress the forces that carry the wall, which because of weight push outward. The buttresses prevent the walls from tearing and falling down.

We'll look at another image of Saint-Sulpice, and this time I'll help you identify the buttresses there.

What did Dan Brown say about them again? On either flank, a shadowy row of sleek buttresses jutted out like the ribs of a beautiful beast.

How do these in any way remind anyone of a beast? Besides, the word 'sleek' refers exclusively to the top portion of each buttress, because as you can see they end into something with an edge at the bottom.

[T]he church's two bell towers rose like stalwart sentinels above the building's long body.

We have a specific word for these towers (westworks), but I'll let that one slide. What I cannot let slide is the implication that the church has a particularly long façade (you'll note that Brown avoids using the word façade for the front of the church when he's clearly talking about that portion). It's broader than certain medieval examples, sure, but not necessarily when compared to other 17th century churches.

I decided to be fair and honed in on similar structures in Paris, since this was essentially what I did in year 2 of art history, when we specifically compared the Panthéon to other churches in Paris too (the Panthéon never ended up being used as a church due to the French Revolution and its Napoléonic aftermath, but it was originally designed as such).

What I found was the Val-de-Grâce. It began construction in 1645, while work on the Saint-Sulpice started a year later in 1646.

Note how its façade protrudes. This could clue you in to the fact that the outer sections were added later, but that shouldn't even matter in this case. It is a simple fact that this church is a lot longer than the one Brown described as having a 'long body'. Because of the Saint-Sulpice's height, the rectangular front appears almost square, and personally, as a student of art history who is somewhat familiar with this architectural period, the thing that stood out to me most was the façade's height, and not its length.

I suspect this is due to the fact that this period in history became ever more centred on Roman and Greek architecture, thanks in part to the increasing popularity and new discoveries of Classical architecture. Not all features disappeared (you can see columns being popular throughout every single architectural period in the vaguely identifiable "West", but let's say Western Europe to make this a bit clearer, although effectively each country the Romans so much as touched use features of theirs, so that includes places like Turkey and Lebanon).

Although we can't necessarily say that Brown's descriptions of architecture are wrong as such, it is rather clear to me that he's woefully overestimating his own ability to convey what architecture looks like and why something supposedly looks so special.

As it stands, I would have described a car scene with a character who's extremely religious and sees this church as follows (and I'll make it as similar to Brown's description as I can):

Lit from beneath by floodlights, the church's westworks rose above the building's façade. It was too Roman for Silas's liking – he never cared much for the pagan tastes of the modernisers. On the north and south sides, though it was hard to see in the dark, he knew buttresses in an experimental style that would put Michelangelo's Mannerism to shame interrupted the Roman work to make a mockery of spiritual Catholicism a mere century before the French Revolution destroyed it all.

(original below for comparison so you don't have to scroll back up)

Lit from beneath by banks of floodlights, the church's two bell towers rose like stalwart sentinels above the building's long body. On either flank, a shadowy row of sleek buttresses jutted out like the ribs of a beautiful beast.

I decided to shove a bit of characterisation in there, with the added anger I know traditional Catholics constantly express against modernism. Granted, they are often too clueless to identify the first vibrations of what they hate so much, as they absolutely love Renaissance work and its aftermath, but the fact remains that things like the Mannerism of Michelangelo laid the foundation for ever less religious architecture in the construction of religious buildings.

But it's not as if Brown can let Silas express any real tradcath thoughts here – his whole point with this section is to call the people Silas needs to take the keystone from heathens who've used a house of God to conceal it. It's not like you can point out that the architecture of said house of the Lord is actually a lot more reminiscent of pagan architecture than earlier examples, but I think it could've added an interesting angle (not to mention a tangible knowledge of architecture and Catholicism on the part of the author, which as you know is not something I think he has).

The experimental architects did a lot of interesting things, but in the end they designed buildings that became further removed from medieval spirituality, which is exactly why people in the 19th century started bringing back Gothic elements and why Romanticism became associated with the religious, and its opposite Neoclassicism was more associated with values we see now as the foundations of liberalism (reason, logic, civic duty, etc.). Mysticism dies in the hands of Neoclassical features, whereas a sort of secularism seems to thrive in it.

But that is basically a topic for a whole thesis, so I'll leave it at this. Thanks for spending your time to be an art history nerd with me today.

Important note: I call the features Neoclassical, as you can clearly see A LOT of classical influences here, but the actual style in this case is Baroque. As one of my professors says, you can tell apart Baroque architecture from Mannerism, because it is absolutely impossible to take a picture of Baroque architecture. I was struggling a lot with the images Wikipedia provided, simply because I can't show you the angles properly. It's only the façade that's clear; the rest would require an in-person view to properly convey.

It seems like we don't have enough leisure time, as well as the fact that we're expected to be constantly available through our phones and have to work a bunch only to be underpaid and having to deal with an awful economy.

When exactly are we supposed to have enough energy to read, for example?

It's said that this is by design, to prevent us from engaging with material that will make us question the status quo. A docile populace will not develop into revolutionaries.

They're underestimating our resilience, I think. For ages, I've been blaming myself for not reading. It's kind of by neoliberal design that we "all take responsibility for the problems we face", despite the fact that it's extremely obvious that we have essentially no influence over them.

That is if we try to face everything alone, which is exactly what this type of thinking promotes. But since I don't believe in the selfishness of mankind (but rather the selfishness of the neoliberal ruling class), I know that the odds are stacked against me when it comes to reading or ever owning my own home.

So I stay mindful of this reality. It's not my fault that the world tires me out; it's not my fault I can't find the energy to read in the evenings. It's a habit that's frequently mentioned in the 70s song by ABBA, 'The Day Before You Came', wherein the speaker reads several newspapers and relaxed with a novel she can't quite remember, all on a regular workday.

Our world has ceased to have this level of normalcy. While the algorithm rewards those who can fight it and succeed in reading a ton, this is also a further sign of dystopia, considering it tips towards monetisation of a simple hobby.

Another nonfiction post for today~

I want to make a real effort to read up on a bunch of things before the two months I have until university starts are up. It's been a frustrating time for me, given that I've been poorly for over a week and during that time we also got this massive heatwave over Europe.

Seems like a perfect time to pick up something that attacks one of the global instigators of this unprecedented release of fossil fuels (through enormous cars, constant flights, and of course the relentless bombings of countries that are not in the "West").

Like many books, I started reading it and just didn't finish it for whatever reason (I'm an extremely easily distracted reader, but just like Judith Butler's book that I've been reading for ages, this also required a lot of thought). I'm just sinking further into personal development, and I always feel like I have to kick it up a few notches whenever I begin to sense that soon I won't have this amount of free time anymore.

Chris Hedges is a fantastic journalist who's actually seen a lot of places the US attacked. He's fluent in Arabic, so he's able to engage in a different way and offers an alternative perspective. If I could recommend anything as introduction to who he is and what he's like, it'd be the video I'm going to share below.

Here's Mr Hedges's letter to the children of Gaza.

Mercedes Lackey was born in 1950 in Chicago, and she's the author of fantasy novels. I'd recently begun rereading the only one of her books I currently own, Arrows of the Queen, (which is my horse girl fantasy basically) which is the first in a series of novels called the Valdemar saga (Valdemar being the fictional country they're set in).

What's also interesting, especially considering it's pride month, is that her series of novels called the Last Herald-Mage trilogy is the first high fantasy series featuring a gay protagonist. The book I'm currently reading also has two of the Herald characters in a relationship with one another (they're both women), and the protagonist is fine with it when she discovers it. (She even states that it's also a bit of a secretive thing where she's from, as she comes from a family of 'Holderkin' where a man has multiple wives, and the wives don't marry for love and are often without a partner for obvious reasons.)

Happy birthday to Mercedes Lackey, who wrote the books I never knew I was searching for as a child. ♥️

I'm going to pretend I didn't stay up all night two days ago because I was suddenly really into a bit of historical fiction I was working on for no reason. The heatwave we have here currently (🇳🇱) paired with the absolutely insane thunderstorms certainly isn't helping.

Effectively, reading has become extremely hard for me, but writing is fine. I don't get it either. Our climate very much didn't require things like air conditioning in years past, but here we are today. If only our government wasn't run by a bunch of (neo)liberals who loved their corporate investors and their investments in big oil more than the planet and the people they make all the decisions for (i.e. the rest of us). 🙄