VMs: RE: Voynich as Divine Comedy

[<elillie@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Elmar and Jean.

Sorry to take so long to get back to you.

In answer to the points you both raised:

1)"choosing one of the most frequent words to represent Dante":

Here's how I arrived at using the string "daiin" to represent Dante. When
it became clear to me that I was dealing with the graphic elements of
Divine Comedy and that the manuscript represented that story in some form,
I focused on two figures with identical character strings in their labels:
the one at the top of 84R which had a single word string and tha one at
the bottom of 66R which has a multiple word string. As the figure on 84R
has only one word, it makes sense that this single word is a name. If this
string represents a name, then it stands to reason that the person named
here is the same person being referred to in the sentence on 66R. While
84R gives no clues on its own as to this person's identity, the person
"awakening" on 66R can only be Dante in the context of Divine Comedy.
Thus, here is an example of the label "daiin" being used twice to name a
person: Dante.
2)As to my deciding that the subject of the VMs was the Divine Comedy:

That is the theory that I'm putting forward based on the internal graphics
of the VMs. My locating what I think is the character string that
represents "Dante" came only after defining the sections of the VMs
representing the three books of the Divine Comedy.
3)As to my matches being far-fetched and arbitrary:

I'll be the first to admit that some of my correspondences are
speculative, some more than others. However, I don't consider them all
that far-fetched. I feel that I've provided a logical basis to support my
theories.
4) As to the mention of Aries. I agree with you, Elmar, The translation
that I foavored in my quotes did take the liberty of inserting "Aries"
directly into its rendering of Dante's text into English. As you quoted:
"The hour was morning's prime, and on his way
  Aloft the sun ascended with those stars,
  That with him rose, when Love divine first mov'd"

is the version that is used in the Gutenberg translation.

In addition to the Ciardi's translation of the Comedy, I also have access
to nine other versions. In all of them, the stanza in question reads
something like:
"The time was the beginning of morning;
the sun was rising now in fellowship
with the same stars that had escorted it
when Divine Love first moved those things of beauty"

The thing about the Gutenberg version, however, is that it has no
explanatory endnotes to go with it. In the other versions that I mention,
all explain the text of this stanza by stating that medieval tradition
held that the world was created in the spring, with the sun in the
constellation of Aries.
5) The "in order" matching that I refered to is the fact that I've been
able to link the diagrams and drawings in the sections of the VMs referred
to respectively as Astronomical, Biological and Rosettes and link them to
the three books of the Divine Comedy: Inferno, Pugatory and Paradise. In
all three sections of the manuscript, the details of the drawings follow
the descriptions given in the narrative of the Comedy precisely.
6) My identification of King Minos is an educated guess. The diagram
located here is surrounded by a "wolkenband" which I have indicated
denotes the beginnings of Hell proper. In the text of Divine Comedy, much
is made of the Travellers' encounter with Minos at this point in their
journey and it is at this point that Dante gets into an exposition about
the workings of this part of Hell. My identification of this individual as
King Minos is logical in that the text of Divine Comedy places him at this
point with respect to the Circles of Hell. In the section of my thesis
dealing with the Inferno, I have identified this folio as one representing
an individual being rather than a Circle and as it(he) appears at the
point where King Minos is discussed, I have identified it as him.
7) What I'm saying with my comments about Virgil being given short-shrift
in the VMs and the relative expansion of other parts(like the Siren) is
that the attention (or lack thereof) given to certain parts of the Comedy
appear to be highly subjective on the part of the author/illustrator. This
is NOT the normal Divine Comedy --- this is the version created by the
Voynich author(s). Some parts of the story were probably much more
relevantto their needs than others and they wrote the VMs accordingly.

As to why they were so paranoid about encoding it, perhaps the version of
Dante in the VMs is so embarrassingly personal that they would have been
humiliated if it were discovered. The church was also frequently "not
amused" by things of a non-conformist or heretical nature.
As with so many of our questions(and speculations) only the eventual
cracking of the Voynich code will put them to rest.

Erni


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