A fascinating fictional biography of the man who "came to reveal to a world wallowing in a stew of ignorance the secret music of the universe": Niclas Koppernigk, known to the world as Copernicus.Copernicus was more than just an astronomer: as mathematician, physician, polyglot, classical scholar, translator, artist, Catholic cleric, jurist, governor, military leader, diplomat and economist he defined and shaped his most tumultuous age. And though astronomy was little more than an avocation, it was there he made his mark upon the world. With the publication of his De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) just before his death in 1543, Copernicus marked a milestone in the history of science that is often referred to as the "Copernican Revolution".Banville divides his novel into four sections, each with a slightly different style and point-of-view. (Though the third section has a remarkably different style, written in the first person as a memoir of Copernicus by his student/amanuensis/flunky, Georg von Lauchan Rheticus, here presented as a highly unreliable narrator.) Other titans of renaissance learning and politics filter through the pages: Tiedemann Giese, Bishop of Kulm; Girolamo Fracastoro, the poet/physician who first identified syphilis and wrote on contagious diseases; Andreas Osiander, Lutheran theologian; as well as various prince-bishops, Polish kings and Teutonic Knights. For the life of a quiet cleric, there are some swashbuckling moments in Doctor Copernicus—armies and diplomats, whores and sodomites, priests and paupers populate the pages.But beyond the details of the polymath's life, is Banville's love of the language, in all its deliciousness. This early novel (it won the James Tait Black Award in 1976) shows many of the traits which have made Banville one of my favourite novelists. It was followed in 1981 by Kepler (which I read last year) and The Newton Letter (1982), which together comprise what has come to be called his "Revolutions Trilogy".
A thing is pure and independent, the object and the idea of the object utterly united with no division and no corruption. Then comes language and the thing acquire a name and suddenly the idea of a tree and a tree itself are divided, and the idea becomes a separate thing to the thing it's supposed to describe. Thus Nicolas Copernicus, who has a bright vision of the motions of celestial bodies that will turn everything humanity has understood about the world on its head, that will eventually unmoor us from our conception of the world and from religion, soils this vision, destroys it and mars it with his efforts to express it in language. And yet it is the world itself that is diseased and corrupt and downright petty, and he himself fears and hates the world and its imperfections.John Banville's Copernicus, brilliant but cowed and cringing, dominated by his uncle, savagely haunted by the deteriorating spectre of his brother, seared by the knowledge that he has failed before he has even begun his great work, so that even if he completes it, he almost cannot bring himself to release it to the world because of what his flawed ideas of planetary motion will set in motion. A novel of ideas and angst, fear and base cunning, failure and futility - though his success as an administrator to his war-torn province seems oddly at odds with Banville's portrayal of his internal life, and so gets glossed over a bit.
What do You think about Doctor Copernicus (1993)?
DR. COPERNICUS. (1976). John Banville. ***.tThis is the first novel in what was to become a trilogy for Banville about the lives of three of the most significant scientists in the field of astronomy. I’m not sure that Banville had a trilogy in mind when he wrote this one, but that’s how it turned out. It’s one of his early novels, and it has its faults, but it does display his mastery of the English language. What immediately hits you while you read this fictionalized biography is the author’s ability to depict the sense of place. Life in 16th century Poland was certainly not easy, and the political forces in play at the time kept moving the commanding forces on the move constantly. Copernicus took on a role as a canon in the Catholic church, but never took orders. The position gave him the relative freedom to work on his heliocentric theory as opposed to the Copernican belief that the Earth was the center of the universe – the universally held belief at the time. Banville’s plot lines become a little confusing as he moves through Copernicus’ life in an attempt to add some variety to the tale. It finally reaches resolution at the end, but it is difficult reaching it the same time as the author.
—Tony
I enjoyed this better than Banville's book on Kepler because he (Banville) sticks a little closer to the real history to the extent it's known and because we actually know so little about the historical Copernicus, there is lots of room for interpretation that doesn't come off as a sloppy lack of research. Like in Kepler, Banville's heavy reliance on Arthur Koestler's The Sleepwalkers is the book's weakest link, not because The Sleepwalkers isn't great contrarian history (it is), but because much that seems original here was actually original with Koestler whose pretty devastating (if not entirely fair) portrayal of Copernicus and his systema mundi is mirrored quite faithfully. The main difference between the two authors' interpretations is in Banville's unsympathetic but bracing portrayal of Rheticus, who comes off not as a dedicated disciple, an enthusiast ahead of his time, but rather as a mincing, tricky, failed glory hog. Rheticus' imagined first person narrative in Part III was by far the most enjoyable part of the novel. Although Rheticus is unlikable, he's also capable of more joy, and certainly more buoyancy, than Copernicus who just sinks and sinks throughout the story, even if the work ultimately floats. I also hope for the sake of those who came before us that the grim portrayal in parts I and II of sixteenth century Europe is an exaggeration since things were only going to get worse in the seventeenth.
—Tlaura
Estupenda obra! Soberbia y con destellos que divierten. Realmente es una joya. Está escrito de una forma magistral. Banville combina lo profundo y árido, con una dinámica alegre, dando como resultado un libro que no esperaba disfrutar tanto, ya que la temática es el desvanecimiento de la idea que se tenía de Dios y de la tierra como centro del Universo... una tarea nada fácil pero no para Banville.Finalmente esta es una magistral novela histórica que es altamente recomendable para disfrutar y para aprender un poco mas del contexto histórico. AJB
—Alberto Jacobo Baruqui
