I am the angel of redemption, Nicolas. Will you come with me now?
And so saying he smiled once more, a last time, and lifted up his delicate exquisite face and turned, to the window and the light, as if listening to something immensely far and faint, a music out of earth and air, water and fire, that was everywhere, and everything, and eternal, and Nicolas, straining to catch that melody, heard the voices of evening rising to meet him from without: the herdsman’s call, the cries of children at play, the rumbling of the carts returning from market; and there were other voices too, of churchbells gravely tolling the hour, of dogs that barked afar, of the sea, of the earth itself, turning in its course, and of the wind, out of huge blue air, sighing in the leaves of the linden. All called and called to him, and called, calling him away.
D.C.
Notes
Quotations from writings other than Copernicus’s:
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“It seemed as though a new world . . . possession of the whole community.” from Henri Pirenne’s A History of Europe, translated by Bernard Miall (New York, 1956)
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“If at the foundation . . . but despair?” from Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, translated by Walter Lowrie (Princeton, N. J., 1968).
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“I hold it true . . . the ancients dreamed.” from Albert Einstein’s Herbert Spencer Lecture, Oxford, 1933 (quoted by Jeremy Bernstein in Einstein, London, 1973)
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“Science aims at . . . of commonplace experience.” from Sir Arthur Eddington’s The Nature of the Physical World (Cambridge, 1923).
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“It is of the highest . . . we are confronted.” from Max Planck (quoted by Bernstein in Einstein, p. 156)
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“The death of one god is the death of all.” from Wallace Stevens’s “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction”, Collected Poems (London, 1955).
Doctor Copernicus
JOHN BANVILLE was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945.
He is the author of fourteen other novels including
The Sea, which won the 2005 Man Booker Prize.
He has received a literary award from the
Lannan Foundation. He lives in Dublin.
ALSO BY JOHN BANVILLE
Long Lankin
Nightspawn
Birchwood
Kepler
The Newton Letter
Mefisto
The Book of Evidence
Ghosts
Athena
The Untouchable
Eclipse
Shroud
The Sea
The Infinities
Acknowledgements
A fully comprehensive bibliography would be wholly inappropriate, and probably impossible to compile, in a work of this nature; nevertheless, there is a small number of books which, during the years of composition of Doctor Copernicus, have won my deep respect, and whose scholarship and vision have been of invaluable help to me, and these I must mention. I name them also as suggested further reading for anyone seeking a fuller and perhaps more scrupulously factual account of the astronomer’s life and work.
The standard biography is Ludwig Prowe’s Nicolaus Copernicus (2 vols., Berlin, 1883-4); it has not, however, been translated into English, so far as I can ascertain. Two brief and delightful accounts of the life and work are Angus Armitage’s Copernicus, Founder of Modern Astronomy (London, 1938), and Sun, Stand Thou Still (London, 1947). A more technical, but very elegant and readable explication of the heliocentric theory is contained in Professor Fred Hoyle’s Nicolaus Copernicus (London, 1973). However, the two works on which I have mainly drawn are Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Copernican Revolution (Harvard, 1957), and Arthur Koestler’s The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe (London, 1959). To these two beautiful, lucid and engaging books I owe more than a mere acknowledgment can repay.
For the light which they shed upon the history and thought of the period I am grateful to F. L. Carsten, whose The Origins of Prussia (Oxford, 1954) was extremely helpful; Frances A. Yates, who, in Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London, 1964), revealed the influences of Hermetic mysticism and Neoplatonism upon Copernicus and his contemporaries; W. P. D, Wightman’s Science in a Renaissance Society (London, 1972), and M. E. Mallett’s The Borgias (London, 1969).
I must emphasise, however, that any factual errors, willed or otherwise, and all questionable interpretations in this book are my own, and are in no way to be imputed to the sources listed above.
*
As well as the numerous extracts from Copernicus’s own writings which I have incorporated in my text, and which I do not feel I need to identify, I have quoted from six different sources, which are identified in the Note on page here
*
For their help and encouragement, I wish to thank the following: David Farrer, Dermot Keogh, Terence Killeen, Seamus McGonagle, Douglas Sealy, Maurice P. Sweeney, and the staff of Trinity College Library, Dublin. The final word of thanks must go to my wife, Janet, for her patience and fortitude, and for the benefit of her unerring judgment.
First published 1976 by Martin Secker & Warburg Limited
First published in paperback by Granada Publishing Limited 1983
First published by Picador 1999
This electronic edition published 2011 by Picador
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Copyright © John Banville 1976
The right of John Banville to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
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