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The Revolutions Trilogy #1
Doctor Copernicus
From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea comes a novel set in sixteenth-century Europe about an obscure cleric who is preparing a theory that will shatter the medieval view of the universe—while being haunted by his malevolent brother and threatened by the conspiracies raging around him and his ideas.
Sixteenth-century Europe is teeming with change and wars are being waged by princes and bishops and the repercussions of Luther are being felt through a convulsing Germany. In a remote corner of Poland a modest canon is practicing medicine and studying the heavens, preparing a theory that will shatter the medieval view of the universe. In this astonishing work of historical imagination, John Banville offers a vivid portrait of a man of painful reticence. For, in a world that is equal parts splendor and barbarism, an obscure cleric who seeks “the secret music of the universe” poses a most devastating threat.
Sixteenth-century Europe is teeming with change and wars are being waged by princes and bishops and the repercussions of Luther are being felt through a convulsing Germany. In a remote corner of Poland a modest canon is practicing medicine and studying the heavens, preparing a theory that will shatter the medieval view of the universe. In this astonishing work of historical imagination, John Banville offers a vivid portrait of a man of painful reticence. For, in a world that is equal parts splendor and barbarism, an obscure cleric who seeks “the secret music of the universe” poses a most devastating threat.
242 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
106 people are currently reading
1380 people want to read
About the author
John Banville
133 books2,385 followersWilliam John Banville is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. Though he has been described as "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov", Banville himself maintains that W.B. Yeats and Henry James are the two real influences on his work.
Banville has won the 1976 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the 2003 International Nonino Prize, the 2005 Booker Prize, the 2011 Franz Kafka Prize, the 2013 Austrian State Prize for European Literature and the 2014 Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007. Italy made him a Cavaliere of the Ordine della Stella d'Italia (essentially a knighthood) in 2017. He is a former member of Aosdána, having voluntarily relinquished the financial stipend in 2001 to another, more impoverished, writer.
Banville was born and grew up in Wexford town in south-east Ireland. He published his first novel, Nightspawn, in 1971. A second, Birchwood, followed two years later. "The Revolutions Trilogy", published between 1976 and 1982, comprises three works, each named in reference to a renowned scientist: Doctor Copernicus, Kepler and The Newton Letter. His next work, Mefisto, had a mathematical theme. His 1989 novel The Book of Evidence, shortlisted for the Booker Prize and winner of that year's Guinness Peat Aviation award, heralded a second trilogy, three works which deal in common with the work of art. "The Frames Trilogy" is completed by Ghosts and Athena, both published during the 1990s. Banville's thirteenth novel, The Sea, won the Booker Prize in 2005. In addition, he publishes crime novels as Benjamin Black — most of these feature the character of Quirke, an Irish pathologist based in Dublin.
Banville is considered a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He lives in Dublin.
Banville has won the 1976 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the 2003 International Nonino Prize, the 2005 Booker Prize, the 2011 Franz Kafka Prize, the 2013 Austrian State Prize for European Literature and the 2014 Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007. Italy made him a Cavaliere of the Ordine della Stella d'Italia (essentially a knighthood) in 2017. He is a former member of Aosdána, having voluntarily relinquished the financial stipend in 2001 to another, more impoverished, writer.
Banville was born and grew up in Wexford town in south-east Ireland. He published his first novel, Nightspawn, in 1971. A second, Birchwood, followed two years later. "The Revolutions Trilogy", published between 1976 and 1982, comprises three works, each named in reference to a renowned scientist: Doctor Copernicus, Kepler and The Newton Letter. His next work, Mefisto, had a mathematical theme. His 1989 novel The Book of Evidence, shortlisted for the Booker Prize and winner of that year's Guinness Peat Aviation award, heralded a second trilogy, three works which deal in common with the work of art. "The Frames Trilogy" is completed by Ghosts and Athena, both published during the 1990s. Banville's thirteenth novel, The Sea, won the Booker Prize in 2005. In addition, he publishes crime novels as Benjamin Black — most of these feature the character of Quirke, an Irish pathologist based in Dublin.
Banville is considered a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He lives in Dublin.
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February 18, 2018
An Accidental Hero
What was it that inspired this book? Apparently not its subject. As portrayed by Banville, Copernicus is hardly a prepossessing character. Emotionally he is vacant and incomprehensible - at times irrationally loyal to his brother, at other times completely indifferent (ditto for his cousin-housekeeper-concubine), alienated from his female siblings for reasons that are vague, essentially friendless with a chip on one of his tradesman’s son’s shoulders toward the aristocracy, and on the other toward the better placed intelligentsia of the period. Intellectually he is a desultory scholar. His concern with astronomical theory is intermittent and hardly the driving force of his life. He is a dabbler who reacts to conditions, both of the mind and of the body, usually passively, as they arise. Although a minor cleric as cathedral canon in a Catholic region, he has no point of view on faith or the church (or on science for that matter) except as a possible impediment to the publication of his ideas.
The best that can be said of Banville’s Copernicus is that he is no fanatic, religious or humanist, in a time of fanatics. He is a medical doctor without empathy, a perennial student without a clear subject, a competent bureaucratic administrator but without perspective or judgment, a diplomat with little diplomacy, a lawyer without a practice. He is a grey personality, having no clear direction in his life except a desire for reclusion and anonymity. The world of the Reformation, global exploration, the humanist Renaissance, and Prussian militarism swirls about him but raises little concern except when he is confronted directly by their effects - and even then he barely registers a response. The overall picture is one of an accidental intellectual hero, detached and aloof to the point of psychotic depression. Not therefore an obvious candidate for a biographical novel, or a promising beginning to Banville’s Revolutions Trilogy that moves from Copernicus, to Kepler to Newton.
There is much ‘throbbing’ by dogs and silences in Banville’s prose, and frequent allusion to the seductive evils of the time - nominalism, Gnosticism, solipsism, and clerical homosexuality - which pervade an otherwise brutal European existence. There is the typical Banvillian expansion of one’s vocabulary with words like ‘jesses’. ‘prog’, and ‘biood-boltered’. But there isn’t much attention devoted to the intellectual challenge Copernicus confronted in overcoming the remnants of scholasticism. Banville seems to be anachronistically anticipating the ‘reality vs explanatory’ schools of quantum theory rather than developing the issue of the biblical authority for an earth-centred cosmos.
In short, Banville doesn’t give the reader a reason to be interested in Copernicus’s life other than that he is an historical celebrity. Perhaps that is the only justifiable reason. If so, is it reason enough? That science and scientists can be excruciatingly prosaic?
What was it that inspired this book? Apparently not its subject. As portrayed by Banville, Copernicus is hardly a prepossessing character. Emotionally he is vacant and incomprehensible - at times irrationally loyal to his brother, at other times completely indifferent (ditto for his cousin-housekeeper-concubine), alienated from his female siblings for reasons that are vague, essentially friendless with a chip on one of his tradesman’s son’s shoulders toward the aristocracy, and on the other toward the better placed intelligentsia of the period. Intellectually he is a desultory scholar. His concern with astronomical theory is intermittent and hardly the driving force of his life. He is a dabbler who reacts to conditions, both of the mind and of the body, usually passively, as they arise. Although a minor cleric as cathedral canon in a Catholic region, he has no point of view on faith or the church (or on science for that matter) except as a possible impediment to the publication of his ideas.
The best that can be said of Banville’s Copernicus is that he is no fanatic, religious or humanist, in a time of fanatics. He is a medical doctor without empathy, a perennial student without a clear subject, a competent bureaucratic administrator but without perspective or judgment, a diplomat with little diplomacy, a lawyer without a practice. He is a grey personality, having no clear direction in his life except a desire for reclusion and anonymity. The world of the Reformation, global exploration, the humanist Renaissance, and Prussian militarism swirls about him but raises little concern except when he is confronted directly by their effects - and even then he barely registers a response. The overall picture is one of an accidental intellectual hero, detached and aloof to the point of psychotic depression. Not therefore an obvious candidate for a biographical novel, or a promising beginning to Banville’s Revolutions Trilogy that moves from Copernicus, to Kepler to Newton.
There is much ‘throbbing’ by dogs and silences in Banville’s prose, and frequent allusion to the seductive evils of the time - nominalism, Gnosticism, solipsism, and clerical homosexuality - which pervade an otherwise brutal European existence. There is the typical Banvillian expansion of one’s vocabulary with words like ‘jesses’. ‘prog’, and ‘biood-boltered’. But there isn’t much attention devoted to the intellectual challenge Copernicus confronted in overcoming the remnants of scholasticism. Banville seems to be anachronistically anticipating the ‘reality vs explanatory’ schools of quantum theory rather than developing the issue of the biblical authority for an earth-centred cosmos.
In short, Banville doesn’t give the reader a reason to be interested in Copernicus’s life other than that he is an historical celebrity. Perhaps that is the only justifiable reason. If so, is it reason enough? That science and scientists can be excruciatingly prosaic?
February 22, 2019
He was convinced that he would be granted an insight, a vision, of profound significance, before the end. Was this why he was calm and unafraid?
For a couple years now I’ve had a small pile of books on the floor by my upstairs bookshelves, next to my reading chair: The Copernican Revolution, The Sleepwalkers, The Abyss. And on top, this book by Banville. All of them read. The first three at least rated (all right, only rated the last of those just now).
But Banville’s book, while read, still sat on my to-read shelf, unrated, unacknowledged.
Why? I knew that the books under it would need to be mentioned, maybe even referenced, in a review. And after putting it off for a couple weeks … a couple months … a couple years …
Well, it’s time. And I’m glad that I’ve delayed so long. My reading on GR since I read Doctor Copernicus has enlightened me to a few things that I somehow failed to acknowledge back then.
With the Passage of Time
What did I learn in the interim? Well, that Banville wasn’t writing a biography (duh!), rather a fictional biography; and really wasn’t all that interested in the scientific aspects of the Copernican system. That being the case, I’m a bit mystified at the credit he gives to Kuhn’s book, because he sure didn’t use much of Kuhn’s information in the novel. Perhaps as background information for his own understanding of the related science?
The lack of anything technical is one of the things that I was uncomfortable with a couple years ago. Now I realize that the novel which I the wished had been written would have been of little interest to most readers – maybe not even of much interest to me!
Historical Background
The novel is obviously about Nicolas Copernicus, the fellow who helped lift Europe and Western civilization out of the dark ages. Copernicus was born in 1473, died in 1543. He spent most of his life in Poland. So we’re talking here of the first part of the sixteenth century for most of Copernicus’ life. In Italy the Renaissance has been under way for two centuries, and is now in fact ending as a historical period. Farther north, in Poland for example, the period which might be called the Northern (or Central) European Renaissance is, on the other hand, in its earlier stages.
And in this part of Europe, something else is being born – the Reformation. Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of All Saints' Church in Wittenberg (assuming he did this at all) in late 1517. Luther was, in fact, quite contemporaneous with Copernicus – born in 1483, died in 1546. Nicholas ten years older, died 3 years earlier.
Banville’s acknowledgement of Koestler’s book indicates, I think, that he probably used that portion of it devoted to biographical information about Copernicus (about 70 pages) as a skeleton – indicating what he, Banville, would have to work with when inventing the flesh of his tale. Our author doesn’t go into details concerning all the bones Koestler dug up. He picks and chooses those which interest him, and leaves the rest unmentioned, hidden beneath what he does tell.
Copernicus was not simply a man who observed the skies, and tried to put what he saw into a coherent system. This is what we remember him for, but Banville (following Koestler) makes it clear that frankly this was only part of his life, and to Banville, the greater part of what he was doing from month to month, year to year, was quite different from that. Copernicus was, as Wiki puts it, “a polyglot and polymath who obtained a doctorate in canon law and also practiced as a physician, classics scholar, translator, governor, diplomat, and economist. Like the rest of his family, he was a third-order Dominican. In 1517 he derived a quantity theory of money – a key concept in economics - and in 1519 he formulated a version of what later became known as Gresham’s law.”
Thankfully, Banville ignores much of this. The aspects he focuses on are the religious, the medical (to some degree), and the diplomatic.
But to an admirable extent, Banville is able to hold the reader with his telling of the backstory, his setting the stage on which Copernicus performed – the stage of the late middle age power politics in central Europe that, after 1517, became increasingly intermixed with power struggles over the Reformation.
The book
There are four parts, unlike Gaul.
I Orbitas Lumenque (1473-1506) Tells of: Copernicus’s education - in 1491-2, age 18, begins four years of study at the University of Cracow, then spends ten more years in Italy at the Universities of Bologna and Padua; and significantly, his brother Andreas, very unlike Nicholas, with whom he had vacillating relations, and who followed him, almost plagued him, for years - for purposes which Banville imagines. Actually, almost everything about these years is imagined by the author, since almost no documentary evidence has survived to modern times (if such ever existed).
II Magister Ludi (1506-1539) He returns from Italy to Heilsberg. The narrative of these years deals mostly with Copernicus’s religious and diplomatic duties, and with the constant struggles for dominance between the lay rulers of city & province on the one hand, and, on the other, the Catholic Bishops of the various local sees; then later, from 1517, Luther’s swelling ranks thrown into the mix. It was a time wracked by the predations of the Teutonic Knights against these Polish territories, some of which are described in gruesome, thankfully short, detail.
Here’s an example from this section which illustrates Banville’s narrative voice. He’s describing Copernicus’s appointment as physician-in-residence at the castle of Heilsberg.
III Cantus Mundi (1539-1543) The arrival of Rheticus into Copernicus’s life. Rheticus, a young disciple, who has read the unpublished, privately distributed version of the Copernican system. Rheticus, who spends almost five years helping Copernicus put his manuscript in order for publication, who carries it to the publisher, shepherds it through the doubts that the author has over and over about making it public.
Before you open this spoiler, be advised that what it reveals is something that absolutely shocked me. So you may not wish to know.
IV Magnum Miraculum (1543) Copernicus’s departure.
Who might like this book
Answer me:
1. Do you like historical novels?
2. Do you have an interest in the late middle ages of central Europe?
3. Can you abide a very fictionalized story of a real person?
4. Can you handle some post modernism here and there?
5. Are you unafraid of a novel that can just be a bit confusing at times?
6. Does a pretty short read appeal to you?
Four “yes” might be enough. Five should certainly be.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: The Military Philosophers a dance da-da dada da da
Next review: Future Scenarios
Older review: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Previous library review: Master Georgie Bainbridge
Next library review: Weaveworld Clive Barker
For a couple years now I’ve had a small pile of books on the floor by my upstairs bookshelves, next to my reading chair: The Copernican Revolution, The Sleepwalkers, The Abyss. And on top, this book by Banville. All of them read. The first three at least rated (all right, only rated the last of those just now).
But Banville’s book, while read, still sat on my to-read shelf, unrated, unacknowledged.
Why? I knew that the books under it would need to be mentioned, maybe even referenced, in a review. And after putting it off for a couple weeks … a couple months … a couple years …
Well, it’s time. And I’m glad that I’ve delayed so long. My reading on GR since I read Doctor Copernicus has enlightened me to a few things that I somehow failed to acknowledge back then.
With the Passage of Time
What did I learn in the interim? Well, that Banville wasn’t writing a biography (duh!), rather a fictional biography; and really wasn’t all that interested in the scientific aspects of the Copernican system. That being the case, I’m a bit mystified at the credit he gives to Kuhn’s book, because he sure didn’t use much of Kuhn’s information in the novel. Perhaps as background information for his own understanding of the related science?
The lack of anything technical is one of the things that I was uncomfortable with a couple years ago. Now I realize that the novel which I the wished had been written would have been of little interest to most readers – maybe not even of much interest to me!
Historical Background
The novel is obviously about Nicolas Copernicus, the fellow who helped lift Europe and Western civilization out of the dark ages. Copernicus was born in 1473, died in 1543. He spent most of his life in Poland. So we’re talking here of the first part of the sixteenth century for most of Copernicus’ life. In Italy the Renaissance has been under way for two centuries, and is now in fact ending as a historical period. Farther north, in Poland for example, the period which might be called the Northern (or Central) European Renaissance is, on the other hand, in its earlier stages.
And in this part of Europe, something else is being born – the Reformation. Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of All Saints' Church in Wittenberg (assuming he did this at all) in late 1517. Luther was, in fact, quite contemporaneous with Copernicus – born in 1483, died in 1546. Nicholas ten years older, died 3 years earlier.
Banville’s acknowledgement of Koestler’s book indicates, I think, that he probably used that portion of it devoted to biographical information about Copernicus (about 70 pages) as a skeleton – indicating what he, Banville, would have to work with when inventing the flesh of his tale. Our author doesn’t go into details concerning all the bones Koestler dug up. He picks and chooses those which interest him, and leaves the rest unmentioned, hidden beneath what he does tell.
Copernicus was not simply a man who observed the skies, and tried to put what he saw into a coherent system. This is what we remember him for, but Banville (following Koestler) makes it clear that frankly this was only part of his life, and to Banville, the greater part of what he was doing from month to month, year to year, was quite different from that. Copernicus was, as Wiki puts it, “a polyglot and polymath who obtained a doctorate in canon law and also practiced as a physician, classics scholar, translator, governor, diplomat, and economist. Like the rest of his family, he was a third-order Dominican. In 1517 he derived a quantity theory of money – a key concept in economics - and in 1519 he formulated a version of what later became known as Gresham’s law.”
Thankfully, Banville ignores much of this. The aspects he focuses on are the religious, the medical (to some degree), and the diplomatic.
But to an admirable extent, Banville is able to hold the reader with his telling of the backstory, his setting the stage on which Copernicus performed – the stage of the late middle age power politics in central Europe that, after 1517, became increasingly intermixed with power struggles over the Reformation.
The book
There are four parts, unlike Gaul.
I Orbitas Lumenque (1473-1506) Tells of: Copernicus’s education - in 1491-2, age 18, begins four years of study at the University of Cracow, then spends ten more years in Italy at the Universities of Bologna and Padua; and significantly, his brother Andreas, very unlike Nicholas, with whom he had vacillating relations, and who followed him, almost plagued him, for years - for purposes which Banville imagines. Actually, almost everything about these years is imagined by the author, since almost no documentary evidence has survived to modern times (if such ever existed).
II Magister Ludi (1506-1539) He returns from Italy to Heilsberg. The narrative of these years deals mostly with Copernicus’s religious and diplomatic duties, and with the constant struggles for dominance between the lay rulers of city & province on the one hand, and, on the other, the Catholic Bishops of the various local sees; then later, from 1517, Luther’s swelling ranks thrown into the mix. It was a time wracked by the predations of the Teutonic Knights against these Polish territories, some of which are described in gruesome, thankfully short, detail.
Here’s an example from this section which illustrates Banville’s narrative voice. He’s describing Copernicus’s appointment as physician-in-residence at the castle of Heilsberg.
He liked the job well enough. Medicine was a means of concealment, whereby he might come at his true concerns obliquely and by stealth … But although he was free to work, he felt that he was trapped at Heilsberg, trapped and squirming, a grey old rat. He was thirty-three; his teeth were going. Once life had been an intense dream awaiting him elsewhere, beyond the disappointment of ordinary days, but now when he looked to that place once occupied by that gorgeous golden bowl of possibilities he saw only a blurred dark something with damaged limbs swimming toward him. It was not death, but something far less distinguished. It was, he supposed, failure.But this introspective tone is at times thrown out the window, in passages, some of them long, which seem like dream sequences. This is at the very beginning of the same Part II.
Waterborne he comes, at dead of night, sliding sleek on the river’s gleaming back, snout lifted, sniffing, under the drawbridge, the portcullis, past the drowsing sentry. Brief scrabble of claws on the slimed steps below the wall, brief glint of a bared tooth. In the darkness for an instant an intimation of agony and anguish, and the night flinches. Now he scales the wall, grinning …The sort of passage that can leave the reader guessing. Is it meant to suggest the fear and superstition of the times? Just an extravagant telling of a happening much more normal than it seems?
III Cantus Mundi (1539-1543) The arrival of Rheticus into Copernicus’s life. Rheticus, a young disciple, who has read the unpublished, privately distributed version of the Copernican system. Rheticus, who spends almost five years helping Copernicus put his manuscript in order for publication, who carries it to the publisher, shepherds it through the doubts that the author has over and over about making it public.
Before you open this spoiler, be advised that what it reveals is something that absolutely shocked me. So you may not wish to know.
IV Magnum Miraculum (1543) Copernicus’s departure.
Who might like this book
Answer me:
1. Do you like historical novels?
2. Do you have an interest in the late middle ages of central Europe?
3. Can you abide a very fictionalized story of a real person?
4. Can you handle some post modernism here and there?
5. Are you unafraid of a novel that can just be a bit confusing at times?
6. Does a pretty short read appeal to you?
Four “yes” might be enough. Five should certainly be.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: The Military Philosophers a dance da-da dada da da
Next review: Future Scenarios
Older review: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Previous library review: Master Georgie Bainbridge
Next library review: Weaveworld Clive Barker
July 31, 2017
The Heliocentric Revolution
While reading this first novel in John Banville’s "Revolutions Trilogy", I was often unclear about exactly what I had got myself into.
Was it a novel of ideas, or an historical novel that would dramatise the Copernican Revolution, Copernicus’ proof of the theory that the universe (or at least our solar system) is heliocentric?
The ideas seemed to take a back-seat most of the time. We learn little about the cosmology for which Copernicus is best known.
Instead, it was interesting to read the novel immediately after Edmund Wilson’s "To the Finland Station", which suggested that history is not so much made by abstract forces, but by humans performing small or large acts (regardless of how courageous they were, and whether or not they believed their acts would have a significant historical impact).
Hesitation Before the Revolution
John Banville seems to be more interested in the man, Nicolas Copernicus, his daily life, and his response to the conflict between science and religion (or faith).
It’s the nature of a revolution to overturn whatever came before it (in Copernicus’ case, Ptolemy’s geocentric model of the solar system, which was endorsed and enforced by Catholicism, under threat of excommunication).
Because of his family connections, Copernicus maintained good relations with the Catholic Church for most of his lifetime. He was nevertheless torn by an internal dispute as to whether he should publish the book that set out his theory and mathematical proofs. What should prevail: faith or the truth? Is our perception of the truth just another belief? How then does science differ from religion? Is one true and the other not (necessarily)? Does either have to meet the test of common sense?
"Save the Phenomena"
When it comes to astronomy and cosmology, is it important (according to Plato) that any theory "save the phenomena" (i.e., that it be consistent with observable phenomena), or is it permissible for the theory to rely on non-observable material to explain the real underlying mechanisms that cause the astral phenomena? Was it acceptable that different mathematical models could describe (or save) the astral phenomena equally well? You can see that at the centre of this dilemma is the question of the subject or observer, and their perspective on reality. Can we describe something without access to what we cannot observe?
How can we arrive at certainty in this context? Is science subjective? Does it involve an act of faith that can take us down the wrong path, and away from the truth?
"The Act of Creation"
Yet, Copernicus was concerned to determine the truth, the real underlying truth, even if it involved an act of creation on the part of the subject:
This act of creation might not be capable of absolute proof. If so, when would the manuscript of his book be ready for publication:
"Coming Directly at the True"
Copernicus was also conscious of the effect of his revolution on the real people around him, including his family. A true revolutionary would act without regard to the impact of the turning over of the status quo. Sometimes you have to push people through the eye of a needle, to get them to the other side, to get them to the truth:
In the end, Copernicus chooses truth. The quest for truth is the highest calling:
Alliteration and Sibilance
Stylistically, the novel is not as assured as Banville's later works. It has a stony, almost Gothic tone (as if chiselled from granite) that often recalls the atmosphere of Mervyn Peake’s "Titus Groan" or Rikki Ducornet’s "The Stain".
Whether consciously or not, Banville often lapses into alliteration or sibilance that appears to have little discernible function. It happens so much that eventually I started seeking it out and trackng it, all the time, in the words of Banville, “wracking my brain for pretty metaphors and classical allusions”:
DIVERSIFICATION
[In the Words of John Banville]
The Clear Blue Unearthly Sky
Only now and then,
In the grave cold music
Of mathematics,
In the stately march of a Latin line,
In logic’s hard bright lucid,
Faintly frightening certainties,
Did he dimly perceive the contours
Of some glistening ravishing thing
Assembling itself out of blocks of glassy air
In a clear blue unearthly sky,
And then there thrummed within him
A coppery chord of perfect bliss.
Invisible Struts and Wires
Monstrous hawklike creatures were
Flying on invisible struts and wires
Across a livid sky,
And there was a great tumult far off,
Screams and roars, and howls of agony
Or of laughter,
That came to him from that immense distance
As a faint terrible twittering.
The Clamour of Tiny Deaths
The hawks, terrible and lovely,
Filled the sunny air
With the clamour of tiny deaths.
While reading this first novel in John Banville’s "Revolutions Trilogy", I was often unclear about exactly what I had got myself into.
Was it a novel of ideas, or an historical novel that would dramatise the Copernican Revolution, Copernicus’ proof of the theory that the universe (or at least our solar system) is heliocentric?
The ideas seemed to take a back-seat most of the time. We learn little about the cosmology for which Copernicus is best known.
Instead, it was interesting to read the novel immediately after Edmund Wilson’s "To the Finland Station", which suggested that history is not so much made by abstract forces, but by humans performing small or large acts (regardless of how courageous they were, and whether or not they believed their acts would have a significant historical impact).
Hesitation Before the Revolution
John Banville seems to be more interested in the man, Nicolas Copernicus, his daily life, and his response to the conflict between science and religion (or faith).
It’s the nature of a revolution to overturn whatever came before it (in Copernicus’ case, Ptolemy’s geocentric model of the solar system, which was endorsed and enforced by Catholicism, under threat of excommunication).
Because of his family connections, Copernicus maintained good relations with the Catholic Church for most of his lifetime. He was nevertheless torn by an internal dispute as to whether he should publish the book that set out his theory and mathematical proofs. What should prevail: faith or the truth? Is our perception of the truth just another belief? How then does science differ from religion? Is one true and the other not (necessarily)? Does either have to meet the test of common sense?
"It is not doubt as to the validity of his conclusions that makes him hesitate, nothing like that, no - but fear."
"Save the Phenomena"
When it comes to astronomy and cosmology, is it important (according to Plato) that any theory "save the phenomena" (i.e., that it be consistent with observable phenomena), or is it permissible for the theory to rely on non-observable material to explain the real underlying mechanisms that cause the astral phenomena? Was it acceptable that different mathematical models could describe (or save) the astral phenomena equally well? You can see that at the centre of this dilemma is the question of the subject or observer, and their perspective on reality. Can we describe something without access to what we cannot observe?
How can we arrive at certainty in this context? Is science subjective? Does it involve an act of faith that can take us down the wrong path, and away from the truth?
"Astronomy does not describe the universe as it is, but only as we observe it. That theory is correct, therefore, which accounts for our observations. Ptolemy's theory is perfectly, almost perfectly valid insofar as pure astronomy is concerned, because it saves the phenomena. This is all that is asked of it, and all that can be asked, in reason."
"...Science aims at constructing a world which shall be symbolic of the world of commonplace experience…"
"The Act of Creation"
Yet, Copernicus was concerned to determine the truth, the real underlying truth, even if it involved an act of creation on the part of the subject:
"The birth of the new science must be preceded by a radical act of creation. Out of nothing, next to nothing, disjointed bits and scraps, he would have to weld together an explanation of the phenomena...What mattered was not the propositions, but the combining of them: the act of creation."
This act of creation might not be capable of absolute proof. If so, when would the manuscript of his book be ready for publication:
"Yet if they should come, sneering and snarling and bellowing for proof, smash down his door and snatch the manuscript from his hands, dear God, what then?"
"Coming Directly at the True"
Copernicus was also conscious of the effect of his revolution on the real people around him, including his family. A true revolutionary would act without regard to the impact of the turning over of the status quo. Sometimes you have to push people through the eye of a needle, to get them to the other side, to get them to the truth:
"The people - peasants, soldiers, generals - they are my tool, as mathematics is yours, by which I come directly at the true, the eternal, the real...The generations may execrate us for what we do to their world, but we and those rare ones like us shall have made them what they are."
In the end, Copernicus chooses truth. The quest for truth is the highest calling:
"How are we to perceive the truth if we do not attempt to discover it, and to understand our discoveries?"
"We are the truth. The world and ourselves, that is the truth. There is no other, or, if there is, it is of use to us only as an ideal, that brings us a little comfort, a little consolation, now and then."
Alliteration and Sibilance
Stylistically, the novel is not as assured as Banville's later works. It has a stony, almost Gothic tone (as if chiselled from granite) that often recalls the atmosphere of Mervyn Peake’s "Titus Groan" or Rikki Ducornet’s "The Stain".
Whether consciously or not, Banville often lapses into alliteration or sibilance that appears to have little discernible function. It happens so much that eventually I started seeking it out and trackng it, all the time, in the words of Banville, “wracking my brain for pretty metaphors and classical allusions”:
DIVERSIFICATION
[In the Words of John Banville]
The Clear Blue Unearthly Sky
Only now and then,
In the grave cold music
Of mathematics,
In the stately march of a Latin line,
In logic’s hard bright lucid,
Faintly frightening certainties,
Did he dimly perceive the contours
Of some glistening ravishing thing
Assembling itself out of blocks of glassy air
In a clear blue unearthly sky,
And then there thrummed within him
A coppery chord of perfect bliss.
Invisible Struts and Wires
Monstrous hawklike creatures were
Flying on invisible struts and wires
Across a livid sky,
And there was a great tumult far off,
Screams and roars, and howls of agony
Or of laughter,
That came to him from that immense distance
As a faint terrible twittering.
The Clamour of Tiny Deaths
The hawks, terrible and lovely,
Filled the sunny air
With the clamour of tiny deaths.
June 8, 2020
One of the strangest novels I’ve read, but at times, brilliant.
June 18, 2025
Biografía novelada de Nicolás Copérnico (Niklas Koppernigk) quien vivió s. XVI –XVII. Describe la vida y obra de este clérigo, tímido y brillante.
Tendiente a refugiarse en la belleza y precisión del descubrimiento científico como expresión de la armonía platónica, y contra el horror del mundo y el contacto con otros hombres. Pese a ello desarrolló una carrera como correcto administrador en organizaciones eclesiásticas, en situaciones de gran inestabilidad política, con el trasfondo de la reforma luterana, en la región entre Polonia y la actual Alemania.
La imagen del horror del mundo queda reflejada en el diálogo con el fantasma de su disipado hermano Andreas. Por otra parte, al comienzo se hace una insinuación del nominalismo (el árbol era, pero aún no tenía nombre).
La tragedia de Koppernigk es que para huir del mundo vuelca su inteligencia a la ciencia astronómica, y su búsqueda lo lleva a concusiones que ponen en crisis el modelo geocéntrico, que por entonces formaba parte parte del dogma de la Iglesia, a la que pertenecía, y consideraba su refugio de un mundo al que temía. Por ello fue remiso a publicar sus conclusiones, que prefirió presentar, luego de mucha insistencia, como una simple hipótesis más, que podría "justificar los fenómenos".
Una novela muy ilustrativa y atrapante.
PD: La obra de Copérnico fue utilizada como base para los estudios astronómicos de Galileo Galilei, quien, con la ayuda del recientemente inventado telescopio, afirmó, con carácter de certeza, lo que Copérnico insinuó como hipótesis (aunque después debió retractarse ante la Inquisición).
John Banville (Irlanda, 1945) es un escritor polifacético que ha pasado de la novela histórica-científica, a la novela clásica, con obras como El mar y Eclipse entre otros; también ha escrito novela policial con el seudónimo de Benjamin Black.
Tendiente a refugiarse en la belleza y precisión del descubrimiento científico como expresión de la armonía platónica, y contra el horror del mundo y el contacto con otros hombres. Pese a ello desarrolló una carrera como correcto administrador en organizaciones eclesiásticas, en situaciones de gran inestabilidad política, con el trasfondo de la reforma luterana, en la región entre Polonia y la actual Alemania.
La imagen del horror del mundo queda reflejada en el diálogo con el fantasma de su disipado hermano Andreas. Por otra parte, al comienzo se hace una insinuación del nominalismo (el árbol era, pero aún no tenía nombre).
La tragedia de Koppernigk es que para huir del mundo vuelca su inteligencia a la ciencia astronómica, y su búsqueda lo lleva a concusiones que ponen en crisis el modelo geocéntrico, que por entonces formaba parte parte del dogma de la Iglesia, a la que pertenecía, y consideraba su refugio de un mundo al que temía. Por ello fue remiso a publicar sus conclusiones, que prefirió presentar, luego de mucha insistencia, como una simple hipótesis más, que podría "justificar los fenómenos".
Una novela muy ilustrativa y atrapante.
PD: La obra de Copérnico fue utilizada como base para los estudios astronómicos de Galileo Galilei, quien, con la ayuda del recientemente inventado telescopio, afirmó, con carácter de certeza, lo que Copérnico insinuó como hipótesis (aunque después debió retractarse ante la Inquisición).
John Banville (Irlanda, 1945) es un escritor polifacético que ha pasado de la novela histórica-científica, a la novela clásica, con obras como El mar y Eclipse entre otros; también ha escrito novela policial con el seudónimo de Benjamin Black.
July 8, 2019
L'importanza di guardare fuori dalla finestra
Il romanzo inizia con una bella immagine vivida: qualcosa che si agita fuori dalla finestra nell'aria dorata e un bimbo piccino nel lettino che lo guarda. Albero e tiglio sono fra le prime parole che impara.
Banville ci racconta la laboriosa vita di Copernico. Nicolaus Koppernigk studiò a Cracovia e poi a Padova, finanziato dallo zio vescovo, quindi fu richiamato a guadagnarsi il pane. Banville non entra nelle teorie dell'astronomo se non per far comprendere quanto fossero avanzate e originali, dipinge piuttosto un interessante quadro storico di quello che accadeva in Europa ai tempi di Martin Lutero fra Italia, Germania e Polonia. Erano tempi grami, lo zio, vescovo dell'Ermland, usava tutte le sue fini doti di politico per mantenere l'indipendenza del piccolo stato stretto fra la Polonia della dinastia Jagellone e la Prussia dei cavalieri teutonici e il nipote fece per decenni il funzionario e l'amministratore, scegliendosi gli appartamenti nelle torri in modo da poter coltivare con discrezione l'astronomia e dimenticare almeno la notte quello che succedeva nelle campagne squassate dai cavalieri teutonici (flagello dei paesi baltici).
L'uomo tratteggiato dal libro è distaccato e rinuncia presto agli affetti, per paura di essere coinvolto e distratto. E' prudente e schivo al punto da non voler quasi parlare delle sue teorie, sembra che siano state divulgate quasi per sbaglio, per indiscrezioni di persone con le quali aveva conversato e che siano state stampate per iniziativa di un suo ammiratore, che lo aveva corteggiato per anni per convincerlo a renderle pubbliche. Il libro è interessante, Banville è uno scrittore eccellente, ma secondo me la figura che ne esce rimane irrisolta.
Inoltre mi sembra che si dia troppo spazio al Copernico anziano raccontato da Retico, l'ammiratore astronomo. Per quanto nelle intenzioni dell'autore questa parte sia funzionale al romanzo, poiché introduce movimento e una seconda voce, secondo me risulta stonata e non contiene la poesia del mite Koppernigk.
Il romanzo inizia con una bella immagine vivida: qualcosa che si agita fuori dalla finestra nell'aria dorata e un bimbo piccino nel lettino che lo guarda. Albero e tiglio sono fra le prime parole che impara.
Banville ci racconta la laboriosa vita di Copernico. Nicolaus Koppernigk studiò a Cracovia e poi a Padova, finanziato dallo zio vescovo, quindi fu richiamato a guadagnarsi il pane. Banville non entra nelle teorie dell'astronomo se non per far comprendere quanto fossero avanzate e originali, dipinge piuttosto un interessante quadro storico di quello che accadeva in Europa ai tempi di Martin Lutero fra Italia, Germania e Polonia. Erano tempi grami, lo zio, vescovo dell'Ermland, usava tutte le sue fini doti di politico per mantenere l'indipendenza del piccolo stato stretto fra la Polonia della dinastia Jagellone e la Prussia dei cavalieri teutonici e il nipote fece per decenni il funzionario e l'amministratore, scegliendosi gli appartamenti nelle torri in modo da poter coltivare con discrezione l'astronomia e dimenticare almeno la notte quello che succedeva nelle campagne squassate dai cavalieri teutonici (flagello dei paesi baltici).
L'uomo tratteggiato dal libro è distaccato e rinuncia presto agli affetti, per paura di essere coinvolto e distratto. E' prudente e schivo al punto da non voler quasi parlare delle sue teorie, sembra che siano state divulgate quasi per sbaglio, per indiscrezioni di persone con le quali aveva conversato e che siano state stampate per iniziativa di un suo ammiratore, che lo aveva corteggiato per anni per convincerlo a renderle pubbliche. Il libro è interessante, Banville è uno scrittore eccellente, ma secondo me la figura che ne esce rimane irrisolta.
Inoltre mi sembra che si dia troppo spazio al Copernico anziano raccontato da Retico, l'ammiratore astronomo. Per quanto nelle intenzioni dell'autore questa parte sia funzionale al romanzo, poiché introduce movimento e una seconda voce, secondo me risulta stonata e non contiene la poesia del mite Koppernigk.
December 7, 2025
This book is historical fiction about Nicolas Copernicus (aka Canon Koppernigk) set mostly in the sixteenth-century in what is now Italy and Poland. The storyline follows the development of his heliocentric theory of the universe. It covers his fear of heresy charges and musings about the nature of truth. The novel comprises four sections that cover the chronology of his life. Main themes are isolation and the ramifications of progress. It portrays the conflicts between emerging scientific thought and Church dogma. Copernicus appears as an introspective figure driven by curiosity who is hesitant to publish his findings. I enjoyed the depiction of Renaissance life and the psychological portrait of Copernicus. It is low key in style and occasionally includes lengthy expository segments, which caused my interest to ebb and flow.
3.5
3.5
June 29, 2012
I really liked the early portions of this book: Copernicus is clearly a very different, individual thinker, and his perceptions of things and people, his frequent in ability to understand them, as well as his joy in ideas, was fascinating. The later portions, especially the third section, narrated by "Rhetoricus", a young astronomer who tried to get him to publish, were frustrating -- not only because his narrative voice was less appealing, but because the historical fact that Copernicus hemmed and hawed and postponed publishing is narratively frustrating.
October 2, 2019
I so wanted to read a historical fiction about Nicolas Copernicus, but this story is so descriptive. It was simply unbearable to read.
March 5, 2017
"Scritto bene" è riduttivo. Banville fa un uso artistico e acrobatico della lingua, finalmente un anglofono che non si limita al subject+verb+object e scrive frasi di cinque righe.
Review in progress.
Review in progress.
March 31, 2011
This book was a dismal view of life in the Renaissance and Copernicus's personal life. It is fictional, of course, developed from the few known details of his life (dates, places, relatives and who he might have studied with or under). The author makes Copernicus out to be a wimpy, tortured soul while inadequately portraying any development of genius, feeding the tired cliche' that a person of such extraordinary abilities could have any positive relationships or experiences. In the absence of any evidence to validate this, the reading of the pervasively dark narrative was laborious and painful. It would have been more enjoyable to imbue Copernicus with the other stereotypical persona of a genius; that of the absent-minded professor.
That said, there are passages where Banville wrote beautifully; like a poet. And he was masterful at evoking suspense and trauma when a portrayed event called for it. But his "account" of the life and reasoning of Copernicus reveals more, in my view, of his own dismal view of the human experience than any gems about Copernicus. If you want to learn more about the old mathematician, astronomer, physician and general all-around Renaissance Man (if a Catholic priest could qualify as such), you'd be better off on Wikipedia.
That said, there are passages where Banville wrote beautifully; like a poet. And he was masterful at evoking suspense and trauma when a portrayed event called for it. But his "account" of the life and reasoning of Copernicus reveals more, in my view, of his own dismal view of the human experience than any gems about Copernicus. If you want to learn more about the old mathematician, astronomer, physician and general all-around Renaissance Man (if a Catholic priest could qualify as such), you'd be better off on Wikipedia.
July 11, 2012
It seems that who suffers the most from Copernicus's essentially (but not actually) heliocentric view of the solar system is not the Church or any professor stuck in a Ptolemaic view of the solar system; instead, it is Nicolas Copernicus himself. He knows that this revelation will hurt people who have so little to feel important about and so he keeps it mostly to himself, not publishing his great book until he is near death. While the beauty of the creative connection he makes is clear to him and to the readers, it is not enough to keep his own life from degenerating into bitterness, anger, and misery. The presentation of the late medieval, early Renaissance time period is incredibly bleak, and Copernicus's life is anchored deeply in that bleakness. As he will say, "There is no contact, none worth mentioning, between the universe and the place in which we live." In his head he saw the beauty of his construction of the universe, but all the days of his life he remained very much stuck in the ugliness of everyday life, saying, "Our lives are lived in such a tiny, confined space, and in such disorder, that this perception [of the heliocentric theory with its accurate elliptical orbits] is not possible."
Banville's presentation somehow makes life as he imagine that it was somehow ordinary, as if we of course knew how things were. As if he knew we might tire of the darkness of Copernicus's take on life, he assigns the third section of the book to Georg Rheticus, Copernicus's student and the one who finally gets the book to the publisher. Despite the lesser mind, the book moves faster there.
Definitely worth reading, even if what the book says is often unpleasant.
Banville's presentation somehow makes life as he imagine that it was somehow ordinary, as if we of course knew how things were. As if he knew we might tire of the darkness of Copernicus's take on life, he assigns the third section of the book to Georg Rheticus, Copernicus's student and the one who finally gets the book to the publisher. Despite the lesser mind, the book moves faster there.
Definitely worth reading, even if what the book says is often unpleasant.
December 23, 2021
End of year housecleaning. Had to circle back to this first book of "The Revolutions Trilogy" by John Banville that I had started and stopped over the years more than once. I loved and hated it. It deals with genius, extremes of beliefs and societal pressures, glorious descriptions of the natural world as inspiration for original thinking in fear of prejudice by the religious tenets of the late 1400's to mid 1500's. Instead of receiving reward, each new concept was cruelly mocked. It is the sympathetic part of me that found this book to be so difficult. Glad I circled back again and won't need to carry over an unfinished trilogy into 2022.
November 12, 2009
Another monumental dreamer who hunted down his vision regardless of the misery it caused him in his struggles with bigots and those in authority. It's funny how these people seem often to come in pairs: Kant and Schopenhauer, Copernicus and Kepler, Newton and Einstein, Freud and Jung, the first making the fundamental breakthrough and the second making important adjustments to the initial insight. Just a thought...
October 18, 2016
Nicolás el hombre y su tiempo
Maravillosa novela biográfica. Esperaba más datos de astronomía y me encontré con una excelente lectura que enfatiza mas la cultura de esos años y una personalidad filosófica, intensa y profusa de un médico, astrónomo, teólogo y filósofo que impactó profundamente la ciencia y la vida misma.
Maravillosa novela biográfica. Esperaba más datos de astronomía y me encontré con una excelente lectura que enfatiza mas la cultura de esos años y una personalidad filosófica, intensa y profusa de un médico, astrónomo, teólogo y filósofo que impactó profundamente la ciencia y la vida misma.
December 2, 2018
John Banville, a great Irish writer, writes beautifully. This is a difficult read but it really is worth it since it brings to life the personality and the struggles of the greatest scientist of the 16th century, the man who changed our entire understanding of the universe, Nicolas Copernicus. You'll need to concentrate while reading this book, but it's worth it.
February 2, 2023
In one sense, Nicolas Copernicus was a pure scientist. He studied and grew his scientific knowledge for its own sake, seemingly uninterested in achieving any kind of contemporary fame for himself while he was still alive. In John Banville’s wonderful historical novel, Doctor Copernicus, the protagonist also comes across as introverted, reserved, retiring, antisocial, and humble. None of this would have mattered much if Copernicus’s contribution towards pushing the boundaries of human knowledge were insignificant or modest at best. In fact, his work overturned mainstream thinking on a vital topic, which up to that point, had been inviolable.
Claudius Ptolemaeus, better known simply as Ptolemy, lived and died well over a thousand years before Copernicus. He was a mathematician, which meant in those days that you were perforce an astronomer. Ptolemy’s particular claim to fame was a geocentric theory of the planetary system, in which Earth was fixed and just about everything else orbited around it. His theory prevailed for over 1,400 years in a rare display of popular acceptance and belief by authorities that shaped conventional thinking, namely, the church and the scientific community.
Although Copernicus doesn’t exactly have a sudden epiphany of a heliocentric model of the planetary system (in which the Sun is central to all the orbiting planets), Banville leads readers to believe that, based on his own mathematics and observations, Copernicus could see that something just wasn’t right with the Ptolemaic model. He naturally documented all his work but his self-effacing nature generated sustained reluctance to publish.
The majority of Banville’s novel is a terrific feat of imagination, covering a condensed, cradle-to-grave biography of Copernicus from adolescence to age seventy. After being orphaned, Nicolas and his brother and two sisters were put in the care of an uncle. Given the times, only Nicolas and his brother Andreas were afforded an education at various academic institutions (one sister became a nun; the other fortunately married a businessman). While Nicolas showed a bent for serious learning, his brother was a wastrel with an appetite for fast living and loose women. Andreas also teased and tormented Nicolas throughout his life.
Ultimately, by his late thirties, Nicolas becomes secretary to his uncle, a duty which he performed with great diligence, but all the while star-gazing and working on his heliocentric hypothesis. Banville’s novel is rich in detail of what life was like in the late fifteenth-early sixteenth centuries. Readers are treated to authentic, atmospheric descriptions of food, drink, and hygiene habits, as well as of social systems and culture. The four-part story breaks its third-person narration in part three, when contemporary mathematician Georg Joachim Rheticus takes up the story in the first person. Through constant pleading and gentle badgering, he finally persuades Copernicus to publish De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres).
Tragically, it is only on his death bed in 1543 that Copernicus learns of his well-received accomplishment. In Doctor Copernicus, Banville gives readers a stunning, layered, and memorable portrait of a good and decent man, and a remarkably intelligent scientist and scholar, albeit one with a humble and compulsive urge to hide his light under a bushel.
[Note: Doctor Copernicus is volume one in John Banville’s Revolutions Trilogy, the remaining two volumes being Kepler and The Newton Letter.]
Claudius Ptolemaeus, better known simply as Ptolemy, lived and died well over a thousand years before Copernicus. He was a mathematician, which meant in those days that you were perforce an astronomer. Ptolemy’s particular claim to fame was a geocentric theory of the planetary system, in which Earth was fixed and just about everything else orbited around it. His theory prevailed for over 1,400 years in a rare display of popular acceptance and belief by authorities that shaped conventional thinking, namely, the church and the scientific community.
Although Copernicus doesn’t exactly have a sudden epiphany of a heliocentric model of the planetary system (in which the Sun is central to all the orbiting planets), Banville leads readers to believe that, based on his own mathematics and observations, Copernicus could see that something just wasn’t right with the Ptolemaic model. He naturally documented all his work but his self-effacing nature generated sustained reluctance to publish.
The majority of Banville’s novel is a terrific feat of imagination, covering a condensed, cradle-to-grave biography of Copernicus from adolescence to age seventy. After being orphaned, Nicolas and his brother and two sisters were put in the care of an uncle. Given the times, only Nicolas and his brother Andreas were afforded an education at various academic institutions (one sister became a nun; the other fortunately married a businessman). While Nicolas showed a bent for serious learning, his brother was a wastrel with an appetite for fast living and loose women. Andreas also teased and tormented Nicolas throughout his life.
Ultimately, by his late thirties, Nicolas becomes secretary to his uncle, a duty which he performed with great diligence, but all the while star-gazing and working on his heliocentric hypothesis. Banville’s novel is rich in detail of what life was like in the late fifteenth-early sixteenth centuries. Readers are treated to authentic, atmospheric descriptions of food, drink, and hygiene habits, as well as of social systems and culture. The four-part story breaks its third-person narration in part three, when contemporary mathematician Georg Joachim Rheticus takes up the story in the first person. Through constant pleading and gentle badgering, he finally persuades Copernicus to publish De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres).
Tragically, it is only on his death bed in 1543 that Copernicus learns of his well-received accomplishment. In Doctor Copernicus, Banville gives readers a stunning, layered, and memorable portrait of a good and decent man, and a remarkably intelligent scientist and scholar, albeit one with a humble and compulsive urge to hide his light under a bushel.
[Note: Doctor Copernicus is volume one in John Banville’s Revolutions Trilogy, the remaining two volumes being Kepler and The Newton Letter.]
November 17, 2019
Novelada vida del famoso astrónomo, que parece que fue de todo, y la astronomía era un pasatiempo. Este tipo de novela histórica, las busco con interés especial porque esa época no la tengo tan registrada (del 500 al 1700, digamos), sobre todo saber como era la subsistencia cotidiana, las costumbres, y las relaciones de poder, y era muy tentador verlo desde la vida de un hombre que revoluciono la manera de encarar lo científico.
Bueno, queda en esa promesa inicial porque después la novela se pincha un poco, porque si nos atenemos a la descripcio0n que hace Banville de Copérnico, era un ser bastante insípido y anodino. la vida le pasaba por el costado, y si llego a algún puesto importante fue por la ayuda de su tío, que con sus contactos le brindo una posición acomodada. Banville va contando sucesos históricos, intrigas de palacio, problemas familiares, y a todo esto Nicolás es indiferente, solo busca que no lo molesten.
Lo único que lo salva es su trabajo astronómico que va haciendo en secreto, que ni siquiera publico en vida por miedo a represalias de la iglesia y perder privilegios. Por lo demás, no parece un personaje que merezca una novela, Banville hace un esfuerzo encomiable.
Bueno, queda en esa promesa inicial porque después la novela se pincha un poco, porque si nos atenemos a la descripcio0n que hace Banville de Copérnico, era un ser bastante insípido y anodino. la vida le pasaba por el costado, y si llego a algún puesto importante fue por la ayuda de su tío, que con sus contactos le brindo una posición acomodada. Banville va contando sucesos históricos, intrigas de palacio, problemas familiares, y a todo esto Nicolás es indiferente, solo busca que no lo molesten.
Lo único que lo salva es su trabajo astronómico que va haciendo en secreto, que ni siquiera publico en vida por miedo a represalias de la iglesia y perder privilegios. Por lo demás, no parece un personaje que merezca una novela, Banville hace un esfuerzo encomiable.
February 11, 2018
Periodi lunghi e complicati da rileggere spesso più volte. Largo uso di figure retoriche assurde. Pagine e pagine di descrizioni inutili di personaggi e ambienti che poco arricchivano la trama.
E poi atmosfere cupe, da medioevo più che da rinascimento. Utilizzo di personaggi tutti negativi, abietti, violenti e dissoluti. Forse un filosofo troverà più spunti di me nelle lunghe e contorte elucubrazioni; è già tanto che io sia arrivata alla fine!
E poi atmosfere cupe, da medioevo più che da rinascimento. Utilizzo di personaggi tutti negativi, abietti, violenti e dissoluti. Forse un filosofo troverà più spunti di me nelle lunghe e contorte elucubrazioni; è già tanto che io sia arrivata alla fine!
December 14, 2023
The middle part is slightly boring but otherwise pretty engaging. It is a historiographic metafiction
November 30, 2014
This was one of the lousiest books that I've read in a long long time.Absolute drek.The writing was completely indecipherable. I swear I felt like I needed a machete to get thru all the tangled up phrases and overgrown terminology to find out just what the hell this guy was trying to say.I learned nothing- less that nothing - about Copernicus. Except this- I learned that he was a really dull and boring guy-I learned that that he knew enough to hang onto his day job while daydreaming about the universe. I learned that his brother died from syphilis- (which if I have it right everyone and his mother died from Syphilis in the 1500's) and I learned that it rained a lot around the Baltic Sea.You think I'm being snippy? I swear I'm not. This book after you take away the ridiculous pomposity of the writing- left absolutely nothing.Nothing to learn. Nothing to feel. BUPKIS. NOTHING. A whole pile of frilly words and frillier tangled up phrases that got you nowhere- except into a really lousy mood for having wasted your time on such an overblown,over inflated piece of drek. This guy Banville - how do people like that become writers?He doesn't say anything. He stands in front of the mirror and oogles and awws at himself.He is just completely taken with himself.- which would be alright - if he could write a book while doing all that. As it is this is just one big lovey dovey note to himself-about how smart .. how REALLY really smart he is. Got nothing to do with Copernicus. Don't read it. It' s a waste of time. JM
July 29, 2015
This is an incredible book. It is superb. Banville shows himself to be a great master here -- a worthy disciple of Joyce. I'm not even kidding -- I seldom write praise like that. But he isn't Joycean, at least, not style wise so much. Which is good. It's not derivative. But it does remind me very strongly of Portrait, a bildungsroman written with inspiration, love and blood.
The prose is lovely, but that's not the end of it. Excellent narrative techniques too. More than that, the research done for the book is extremely impressive. Like all great books, it addresses big questions in philosophy and science.
But the most important thing about it is that it doesn't feel forced. The greatness does not smack of a writer who's had one too many creative writing classes or English lessons, and is trying to put them into effect. Or even a writer (there are a few) who started off with some philosophical essay and attempted to get across the points in book form because of some assumptions regarding aesthetics and affect. It is written with ineluctable love, irony and pity.
"an infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing"
The prose is lovely, but that's not the end of it. Excellent narrative techniques too. More than that, the research done for the book is extremely impressive. Like all great books, it addresses big questions in philosophy and science.
But the most important thing about it is that it doesn't feel forced. The greatness does not smack of a writer who's had one too many creative writing classes or English lessons, and is trying to put them into effect. Or even a writer (there are a few) who started off with some philosophical essay and attempted to get across the points in book form because of some assumptions regarding aesthetics and affect. It is written with ineluctable love, irony and pity.
"an infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing"
July 20, 2019
Written in the 70s, I'm sure this was a tough book to write, research was a much tougher and drawn out affair and to try to make Copernicus the protagonist of a work of fiction is daring as well. For me this book felt a bit flat, Copernicus had an interesting career, but it was mostly of a political nature, it makes for fairly dry reading. There's also large chunks of introspection and exposition, a little of this goes a long way with me. Because fictional encounters are mixed in history, it's hard for me to get a feel for the historical Copernicus.
An interesting attempt at historical fiction based on the life of a real person. It's tedious in spots but otherwise an OK read.
Perhaps it's better to cast historical figures as background characters, a good example of this would be Mistress of the Art of Death, after reading it, I went on a bit of an English history binge.
An interesting attempt at historical fiction based on the life of a real person. It's tedious in spots but otherwise an OK read.
Perhaps it's better to cast historical figures as background characters, a good example of this would be Mistress of the Art of Death, after reading it, I went on a bit of an English history binge.
March 15, 2023
I liked it a lot. It’s dark, and it owes a lot of its mood to Yourcenar’s Abyss, which I loved. That being said, there’s very little in here that helps you understand why the historical Copernicus was Copernicus. There’s almost nothing in it about science or an interest in the sky or intellectual curiosity. You’d have no notion from reading it that on a clear night, Copernicus would have seen from almost anywhere countless stars. You’d think he lived in one of our modern light-filled, black-skied cities, only without the light and with more rats.
March 4, 2016
Poesía, metáfora y elegancia...Un texto muy fino y rico en detalles. Una personalidad enigmática y una revolución científica que desafió a la época....¡Majestuoso!
No me perderé a Newton y a Kepler...Banville tiene un estilo hermoso para abordar temas científicos de una forma sutil, armoniosa y encantadora....'Poesía científica para el corazón'....
Y concluyo las últimas páginas con un nudo en la garganta.....
No me perderé a Newton y a Kepler...Banville tiene un estilo hermoso para abordar temas científicos de una forma sutil, armoniosa y encantadora....'Poesía científica para el corazón'....
Y concluyo las últimas páginas con un nudo en la garganta.....
June 2, 2023
Banville regularly comes first to mind when I think about writers whose sentences and paragraphs crackle and zing and soar with the utmost lively vivaciousness of craft and language. He makes you catch your breath with the sheer music of his syntax. This book embodies its setting with such thoroughness and dimension: historical fiction could hardly be more vivid. Does the novel's structure work as well as the sentences that comprise it, though? Perhaps not, perhaps the sum of parts is more than the whole. I'm undecided on this point. But whatever's (maybe) lost on the way is redeemed by the book's final section, though: a towering conclusion, like the majestic final bars of a symphony. I find it impossible to quibble too much with a piece of writing this beautiful.
June 13, 2017
It's hard to say exactly what I found wrong with this book, but I think it's mostly that it starts when the main character is too young, a common problem I have with these kinds of books. I don't care what happened in Copernicus' childhood that made him who he is. I care about the interesting stuff that happened when he was an adult. Sadly, there wasn't enough of that in the first half for me. And then, the book changes main characters and narrators and I just lost interest. I think if I had known how old this book is when I started it that I wouldn't have expected quite as much as I do from modern HF, but I'm not sure that would have been enough to keep me reading.
May 13, 2021
2.5
There is more of John Banville in this book than there ever will be of Copernicus. What little there is, describes the life of a wholly unremarkable, unadmirable man. His only thing of note was his intellect which the author conveniently sweeps away in his own poetic reveries about the sky, stars and so on. Banville's writing is exceedingly pretty but not pretty enough to redeem banality.
"You must try to understand that men have need of answers, articles of faith, myths-lies, if you will. The world is terrible and yet we are terrified to leave it: that is the paradox that hurts us so."
There is more of John Banville in this book than there ever will be of Copernicus. What little there is, describes the life of a wholly unremarkable, unadmirable man. His only thing of note was his intellect which the author conveniently sweeps away in his own poetic reveries about the sky, stars and so on. Banville's writing is exceedingly pretty but not pretty enough to redeem banality.
"You must try to understand that men have need of answers, articles of faith, myths-lies, if you will. The world is terrible and yet we are terrified to leave it: that is the paradox that hurts us so."
March 31, 2023
Written with undeniable flair, it has some great sections and a feeling for the predicament facing any thinker out of step with their own time, but it doesn’t fully manage to break the surface to get to the heart of what made Copernicus tick.
February 8, 2023
4.25 - A gripping and fascinating tale of the great astronomer told with lyrical, detailed beauty.
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