Keys to the great, difficult works of literature, art and the mind.
Some works are famous for being hard. Each key is a single page that opens one of them up. It’s visual, you can play with it, and it’s written in plain words. You don’t need to have read the work first, though you may want to afterwards.
The keys so far
2 keysKey 02 · Literature
Dante’s Inferno
Dante Alighieri, about 1308–1321
Down through the nine circles of Hell to the center of the Earth, and out the other side to see the stars.
Inside: a map of Hell you can explore, a quiz on the logic of its punishments, the rhyme that pulls the poem forward, and a page that sinks from fire into ice.
Open the keyKey 01 · Literature
Finnegans Wake
James Joyce, 1939
The book that begins in the middle of a sentence and ends in the middle of the same one.
Inside: a sentence you can put to sleep, a hundred-letter thunderclap, a family that turns into a landscape, and a page that never ends.
Open the keyMore keys are on the way.
How the keys are made
Plain words first.
Every idea is said simply before anything clever happens on screen.
Show the mechanism.
The pictures show how the work actually works: its structure, its tricks, its hidden patterns.
The page takes the work’s shape.
Finnegans Wake is a circle, so its page loops back to where it began. The Inferno is a descent, so its page narrows as it sinks.
Quote briefly, point further.
Short quotations, and a path to the scholars and guides who know more.