If you like Voynich-themed short stories, there’s most of one posted on the Analog website here. It’s called “Guaranteed Not To Turn Pink In The Can”, by Thomas R. Dulski: I mentioned it here a few days ago. Of course, the extract stops just at the point the story starts getting interesting, to try to get you to buy a copy of the April 2008 issue (where it appears in full): but that’s fair enough, I suppose.

Voynichologically, a few minor typos (“Athansius”, “Kirchner”, “Baresche”, etc), but it’s basically all there. Yet to my jaded eyes it reads like a brandname-laden faux-noir short story and a Wikipedia article whose pages have all been shuffled together, not unlike Herbal A and Herbal B.

Turning the whole Big Jim/UFO/Voynich link on its head (as the remainder of the story undoubtedly does) is a nice idea: but writing Voynich fiction is a desperately hard balancing act, and I can’t help but feel the attempt to shoehorn plot and history into a short story needs a lighter touch than this.

It’s been a rollercoaster of a day for me at the Warburg Institute on the Early Modern Research Techniques course, like being given the keys to the world twice but having them taken away three times. I’ll try to explain…

Paul Taylor kicked Day Two’s morning off in fine style, picking up the baton from Francois Quiviger’s drily laconic Day One introduction to all things Warburgian. My first epiphany of the day came on the stairs going up to the Photographic Collection: an aside from Paul (that the institute was “built by a madman”) helped complete a Gestalt that had long been forming in my mind. What I realised was that even though the Warburg’s “Mnemosyne” conceptual arrangement was elegant and useful for a certain kind of inverted historical study, it was actually pathological to that entire mindset. Essentially, it seems to me that you have to be the “right kind of mad” to get 100% from the Warburg: and then you get 100% of what?

(The Warburg Institute is physically laid out unlike any other library: within its grand plan, everything is arranged neither by author, nor by period, nor by anything so useful as an academic discipline, but rather by an arbitrary conceptual scheme evolved to make similar-feeling books sit near each other. It’s not unlike a dating service for obscure German publications, to make sure they keep each other company in their old age.)

My second epiphany arrived not long afterwards. On previous visits, I’d walked straight past the Warburg Photographic Collection, taking its darkness to mean that it was closed or inaccessible: but what a store of treasures it has! My eyes widened like saucers at all the filing cabinets full of photographs of astrological manuscripts. I suddenly felt like I had seen a twin vision of hell and purgatory at the core of the Warburg dream – both its madness and its hopefulness – but had simultaneously been given the wisdom to choose between them.

It was all going so well… until Charles Hope (the Warburg’s director) stepped forward. Now: here was an A* straight-talking Renaissance art historian, sitting close to the beating heart of the whole historical project, who (Paul Taylor assured us) would tell it like it is. But Hope’s message was both persuasive and starkly cynical: that, right from the start, Aby Warburg had got it all wrong. And that even Erwin Panofsky, for all his undeniable erudition, had (by relying on Cesare Ripa’s largely made-up allegorical figures) got pre-1600 iconology wrong too. With only a tiny handful of exceptions, Hope asserted that Renaissance art was eye candy, artful confectionery whipped up not from subtle & learned Latin textual readings (as Warburg believed), but instead from contemporary (and often misleading and false) vulgar translations and interpretations – Valerius Maximus, Conti, Cartari, etc. And so the whole Warburgian art history research programme – basically, studying Neoplatonist ideas of antiquity cunningly embedded in Renaissance works of art – was dead in the water.

To Hope, the past century of interpretative art history formed nothing more than a gigantic house of blank cards, with each card barely capable of supporting its neighbours, but not of carrying any real intellectual weight on top: not unlike Baconian cryptography (which David Kahn calls “enigmatology”). All of which I (unsurprisingly) found deeply ironic, what with Warburg himself and his beloved Institute both being taken apart by the Warburg’s director.

The second step backwards came when I tried to renew my Warburg Institute Reader’s Card: you’re not on the list, you can’t come in. (Curiously, there were already two “Nicholas Pelling“s on their computer system, neither of them me.) It seems that, without direct academic or library affiliation, I’m now unlikely to be allowed access except via special pleading. Please, pleeeease, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease… (hmmm, doesn’t seem to be working, must plead harder). If I had a spare £680 per year, I’d perhaps become an “occasional student” (but I don’t).

My third (and final) step backwards of the day was when I raced up to the Photographic Collection both during the afternoon tea-break and after the final lecture and had an Internet-speed finger-browse through the astrological images filing cabinets. Though in 20 minutes I saw more primary source material than I would see in a fortnight at the British Library, I ended up disappointed overall. Yes, I saw tiny pictures of a couple of manuscripts I had planned to examine in person next month (which was fantastic): but there didn’t seem to be anything else I wasn’t already aware of. Rembrandt Duits has recently catalogued these mss in a database (though only on his PC at the moment), so perhaps I’ll ask him to do a search for me at a later date…

Perhaps I’m wrong, but it seemed to me that even though old Warburgian/iconological art history is basically dead, the new art history coming through to replace it revolves around precisely the kind of joint textual and stylistic interpretation I’m doing with the Voynich Manuscript, with one eye on the visual sources, and the other on the contemporary textual sources. Yet the problem with this approach is that you have to be an all-rounder, a real uomo universale not to be fooled by spurious (yet critical) aspects along the way. All the same, though I’m no more than an OK historian (and certainly not a brilliant one), I’m now really convinced that I’m looking at a genuinely open question, and that I’m pointing in the right kind of direction to answer it.

Don’t get me wrong, Day Two was brilliant as a series of insightful lectures on the limits and origins of art historical knowledge: but I can’t help but feel that I’ve personally lost something along the way. Yet perhaps my idea of the Warburg was no more than a phantasm, a wishful methodology for plugging into the “strange attractors” beneath the surface of historical fact that turned out to be simply an illusion /delusion: and so all I’ve actually lost is an illusion. Oh well: better to have confident falsity than false confidence, eh?

As a curious aside, for me this whole historical angle on the Warburg also casts a raking light across the “Da Vinci Code”. The book’s main character (Robert Langdon) is a “symbologist”, a made-up word Dan Brown uses to mean “iconologist”: and as such is painted on the raw canvas of the Warburg ‘project’. What cultural archetype is the ultra-erudite, friendly (yet intellectually terrifying) Langdon based upon? A kind of Harvardian Erwin Panofsky? In my mind, the “Da Vinci Code” (and its ‘non-fiction’ forerunner, “Holy Blood, Holy Grail”) both sit astride the ebbing Warburg wave, both whipping at the fading waters: and so the surge of me-too “The [insert marketing keyword here] Code” faux-iconology books and novels is surely Aby Warburg’s last hurrah, wouldn’t you say?

R.I.P. 20th Century Art History: now wash your hands. 🙁

Some tasty bite-sized morsels for you: don’t eat them all at once, though…

The April 2008 edition of sci-fi monthly Analog has a 10,000-word Voynich-based story, “Guaranteed Not to Turn Pink in the Can” by Thomas R. Dulski. When super-bright billionaire’s daughter Pamela Roderick writes an academic book on the idea of UFOs, people are surprisingly OK: but when her second book claims that the Voynich Manuscript describes 15th century humans being taken on a journey into space, the people around her become more tense… Hey, any novelistic take on the VMs without a papal conspiracy or evil Jesuit priests is fine by me. 🙂

Incidentally, a key part of Eileen Reeves’ “Galileo’s Glassworks” surprisingly revolves around anti-Jesuit propaganda, most notably Johannes Cambilhom’s “Discoverie of the Most Secret and Subtile Practises of the Iesuites“, which claimed to dish the dirt on the Jesuits’ buried treasure, sadistic treatment of novices, sexual misadventures, and mad politicking. And the Jesuits had only been going 70 years at the time! Anyway…

Change of direction: here’s a cool picture called “Arizona” by ~HinoNeko / A. Brenner, depicting a young guy with a Voynich-themed T-shirt (basically, the centre of the ‘sun-face’ on f68v1). Yet more VMs things edging into the mainstream consciousness, one meme at a time…

Finally: I don’t know how I managed to miss the decade-old story of the Swedish parents who were fined for wanting to name their son “Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116“, in a kind of pataphysical protest at Sweden’s child naming law. Amazing: a name that makes Voynichese look sane. 😉

Having just worked my way through Vol III of Lynn Thorndike’s “History of Magic & Experimental Science”, I thought I’d give my reading eyes a rest with some fiction: and so turned to “Vellum” by Australian writer Matt Rubinstein, a 2007-vintage Voynich-themed novel I mentioned here before.

The story revolves around Jack, a translator/subtitler who, while working on a near-untranslatable Russian film, stumbles upon an unreadable (and unapologetically Voynich-like) manuscript. Many of the other characters are librarians or collectors of obscure aphorisms, who seem to share his delight not so much in etymology, but in the living texture of language, its flow. However, the book’s central irony is that though Jack can read many languages, he cannot read the people around him: while their lives are complex and conflicted, his is empty – and so he allows the strange manuscript to fill his void.

Of course, while at first he can make no sense of it, under UV light its margins yield many clues to its provenance and history: and as Jack becomes progressively more attuned to its nuances and strange ur-language, it begins to reveal details to him of a fantastical machine to build, not entirely unlike a medieval version of the one in Carl Sagan‘s novel “Contact” (you know, the one filmed with Jodie Foster).

I have to say that at one point while reading Vellum, I did find myself completely immersed: this was when Jack’s growing obsession for his pet manuscript (and his disconnection from the world) suddenly lurched and exceeded my own. I felt the urge to try to pull him back from going over the brink: perhaps this was Matt Rubinstein’s focus for the book, to help readers find and explore the point where they felt uncomfortable with the change in Jack’s downward arc.

Though it has a contemporary European vibe to its vocabulary, Vellum is firmly situated in the Australian geographical and historical landscapes (spinifex, First Fleet, etc): and is all the fresher and more engaging for it. The paradoxical idea of an inland desert lighthouse recurs through the book, and (surprisingly to me) one such does exist, at Point Malcolm: I think this nicely mirrors various Voynich-like conundrums, which I’m sure you can work out for yourself.

In short, I like Vellum: though not perfect (plot-wise, the explosion is a bit clumsy, for example: and half-quoting Foucault’s quoting Borges don’t really work), it does have a lot going for it. For the mass market, though, I think the issue is whether Rubinstein manages to find just the right balance between research and story, between exposition and narrative: even though a few times he does err a little too far towards the former, overall I think he earns enough goodwill from the latter to get away with it. Buy it, read it, enjoy it! 🙂

A quick update on Michael Cordy’s forthcoming Voynich-themed oeuvre: it has now been retitled “The Source” (let’s just pray it’s not re-released later on as “The Source Code”, that would be awful), is due for hardback and softback release in August 2008, and can already (inevitably) be pre-ordered from Amazon.

I also dug up a (possibly deleted?) snippet from Google’s cache of the My Irrationalities blog. This mentioned translations for France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Israel, and Poland: and Warner Bros optioning the film rights, with Akiva Goldman’s Weed Road to produce. It sounds like it’s all getting up a head of steam, let’s hope the book delivers the goods.

You know, I’d really like to write The Source screenplay: that would be a lot of fun. Any offers, Mr Goldman? 😉

Today, I stumbled across yet another Voynich book: which then led me to a whole cache of them, like a hidden nest of gremlin eggs high atop a mountain. Don’t give them any water, whatever you do…

First up was “Les Livres Maudits” (1971, J’ai Lu) by Jacques Bergier, chemical engineer and [al]chemist, French resistance fighter and spy, writer and journalist: in it, he painted a picture of the VMs as containing a secret so powerful that it could destroy the world. Could it have simply been an idea: like “being nice to people doesn’t work“? According to my old pal Jean-Yves Atero, Bergier was convinced this secret was so devastating that (basically) Men In Black will always track its progress, and will stop at nothing to keep the truth about it from being brought into the open. Errrm… hold on a minute, there’s someone at the door…

Rather more recently, there was “The Magician’s Death” (2004) [published in French as “Le livre du magicien” (2006)] by prolific historical mystery writer Paul C. Doherty, in his ‘Hugh Corbett’ series. This has Roger Bacon writing an unbreakable code, various English and French factions trying to crack it, and loads of people getting killed (or something along those lines).

Coming out in the same year was “Shattered Icon” (2004) (later re-released as “Splintered Icon” (2006), and published in German as “Der 77. Grad.” (2007)] by Bill Napier. As far as I can tell, this uses the deciphering of a Voynich-style 400-year-old journal / map to tease out a mystery thriller take on the Roanoke Island expedition.

Scarlett Thomas‘s novel PopCo (2004) also mentions the Voynich Manuscript (it claims on the German Wikipedia page), as part of a “richly allusive” [Independent on Sunday] pop-culture novelistic riff on cryptography. She now lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Kent in Canterbury. I find this a bit worrying: it conjures up an image of a classful of uber-literate proto-writers, all looking at the VMs and thinking “Hmmm… an ‘unreadable book’, eh? An excellently ironic leitmotif for my postmodern anti-novel…” [*], which I will then have to laboriously add to the Big Fat List, and perhaps even to try to read (Lord, protect me from any more Generation X knockoffs). Blogging can be hell, I’ll have you know.

Other VMs-linked novels mentioned on various language Wikipedia sites include:

  • “L’intrigue de Il Romanzo Di Nostradamus” by Valerio Evangelisti apparently has Nostradamus battling the VMs and its black magic ilk;
  • Dan Simmons’ 832-page epic “Olympos” (2006) apparently namechecks the Voynich as having been bought in 1586 by Rudolph II (though how this gets fitted in to a story about Helen of Troy is a matter for wonder: I’m sure it all makes sense, really I do); and
  • “Datura tai harha jonka jokainen näkee” (2001) by Finnish writer Leena Krohn (published in German as “Stechapfel”) is centred on the hallucinogenic plant Datura (AKA jimsonweed, Magicians’ weed”, or Sorcerors’ weed), and it is an easy step from there to the Voynich Manuscript. Back in 2002, I posted to the VMs mailing list about various plants such as Datura: so this is no great surprise.

Oh well, back to my day job (whatever that is)…

This 2006 oeuvre by Matthew Thomas Farrell in three PDF parts (1, 2 , and 3) seems destined for the Big Fat List of Voynich books/screenplays. Lots of mysterious international dealers in information, Referees, odd (code) names, odd conspiracies, a little bit of Area 51, you get the idea. It’s a bit hard to describe (and, frankly, to read): but maybe that’s the whole point.

*sigh* I think I’d better sit down and update the List soon, it’s starting to get out of control…

Today’s addition to The Big Fat List is “L’UOMO NELLA LUCE” by Walter Martinelli (2007), published on-demand by Lulu. Though I’m not quite sure whether bundling the Voynich Manuscript in with the Templars, the Masons, the Pyramids, Hitler, JFK, Christopher Columbus and the Bermuda Triangle is a brilliantly sensible idea: it sounds more like a kind of obsessive trainspotter take on conspiracies (why include one when you can include them all?)… but maybe they are all out to get us, so who knows? 346 pages, 6″ x 9″, $22.96.

However, you can buy the ebook version of it for a measly $4.66. Which is nice.

Another Voynich-inspired (I’m yet sure whether or not “Voynich-themed” might be putting it a bit strongly) novel to add to the ever-fattening Big Fat List. Australian writer Matt Rubinstein‘s novel was called “A Little Rain on Thursday” (the picture is from f75r) when it was published last June in Oz by Text Publishing: it appeared here last July (published by Quercus) under the title “Vellum“. Amazon Marketplace has copies for £1.98 + £2.75 UK p&p: I’ve ordered one & will post a review here ASAP. It doesn’t appear to have any evil Jesuit priests in it, which has to be A Very Good Thing Indeed.

What’s sort of appealing (well – to me, at least) is the way he casually slips the words “marginalia” and “forensic” into the cover blurb. However, this may well be a weakness, given that to keep him fed and watered in writerland, his book has to sell to a large number of non-Voynicheros, to whom such things are usually fairly alien (even if they do watch CSI).

Oh, and the stuff in the story about the manuscript decipherer being obsessive may also have alienated him from passing VMs-ologists. We’re not obsessive, I tell you: we count the number of stars on each section of each page for scientific reasons, damnit! Errrrrrrrrrm…

…maybe he’s got a point. Oh well… :-((((

From the apparent tsunami of Voynich fiction about to crash down on our literary shores over the next year, it might seem that the VMs had never previously appeared in a novel. Yet this is not exactly true…

For example, “Indiana Jones and the Philosopher’s Stone” (Max McCoy, Bantam Books, 1995) is based entirely around the Voynich Manuscript: set in March 1933, a mad scholar called Sarducci has stolen the VMs (which is actually a map), and so Indy chases him through Mussolini’s fascist Italy all the way to an amazing alchemical crypt in the desert… From what I’ve read of this book, it actually seems to be a pleasantly pulpy read, very much in tune with the actual VMs, and with a refreshing lack of power-mad Jesuit priests. However, I should warn you that it will be re-released on 29th April 2008, presumably to try to ride the whole 2008 Voy-niche publishing wave. *sigh*

Another pair of VMs-themed books came to my attention via the Bellairsia blog, which is devoted to books by the writer John Anthony Bellairs. His most famous novel was “The Face in the Frost” (1969), a fantasy novel in which Prospero and Roger Bacon fight against a mysterious grimoire that sounds not at all dissimilar to the VMs. After Bellairs’ death in 1991, his estate commissioned author Brad Strickland to complete and continue Bellairs’ various series: and it is in one of these that protagonist Johnny Dixon faces “The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost” (1999), which features the VMs in a starring role.

Connections between J.R.R.Tolkien and the VMs have been suggested in the past. According to Voynich mailing list member Anthony, Tolkien did indeed own a copy of at least one page of the VMs, which may have played a small part in influencing his choice of the fantasy scripts in his books. As I recall, there were a number of people in Tolkien’s Oxford circle that had an interest in early modern scientific manuscripts, so this does seem a perfectly sensible idea.

Many people have also wondered about the relationship between H.P.Lovecraft’s Necronomicon and the Voynich Manuscript: Colin Wilson based a short story called “The Return of the Lloigor” around this, and returned to the theme at the end of his novel “The Philosopher’s Stone”.

All the same, this modest pile of Voynich fiction looks set to triple in height this year… interesting times!