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Johannes Kepler, master mathematician and astronomer, developed his theories in 16th century pre-Renaissance Germany. His work laid the foundation on which his successors, notably Isaac Newton, built the modern picture of the universe, that held until Einstein.
The author shows us a Rabelaisian world...chaotic, muddled, and dirty. Kepler's family mirrored this disorder, and he retreated into his own cerebrations for relief. Kepler took the theories of his time and stood them on their head. He extracted truth from superstition, and this story, in Banville's hands, is a triumph, heroic and exuberant.
The author shows us a Rabelaisian world...chaotic, muddled, and dirty. Kepler's family mirrored this disorder, and he retreated into his own cerebrations for relief. Kepler took the theories of his time and stood them on their head. He extracted truth from superstition, and this story, in Banville's hands, is a triumph, heroic and exuberant.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
62 people are currently reading
946 people want to read
About the author
John Banville
136 books2,422 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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November 11, 2025
This is a great fictionalized biography of the German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630). I read it as a buddy-read with my good friend Ebba Simone and I appreciate her many insights that have informed this review.
Banville is truly able to get into the mind of a great scientist – the obsessive nature of the workings of their minds and the way breakthrough insights casually come after years of thinking about a problem - rising from bed or taking a shower - whatever - and it comes in a flash. (Did people take showers in those days? Lol)
The author shows us what a lonely and thankless task Kepler was engaged in. How many astronomers could there have been working at that time? We read about perhaps a dozen or so scientists he meets with or corresponds with and a few knowledgeable local rulers who occasionally throw money his way as a sponsor. Kepler corresponded with Galileo, his contemporary in Italy, and made improvements to telescopes of the time.
The Danish astronomer Tycho Brae was the primary astronomer Kepler worked directly with. Kepler and his family lived with Brae at his chaotic home for a time. We could say they were ‘frenemies.’ (I hate that word but it’s appropriate.) Brae treated Kepler for a long time as an 'apprentice.' Brae wouldn’t share his observation data of Mars’ orbit with Kepler – although he did so eventually. These data were crucial to Kepler’s theories. Brae was afraid Kepler would disprove his theories about planetary orbits (which Kepler eventually did).
The mindset of the onward and upward pursuit of scientific knowledge as we think of it today was not in place then. Banville shows us that many people at the time, even some scientists, and at one point his former teacher, didn't really care. While Kepler is spending years (decades actually) making calculations to end up proving that the planets have elliptical, not circular orbits, he often met with an attitude of "Who cares? Why does it matter? What difference does it make?"
Kepler had a difficult personal life. At times his personal life was chaotic – a theme that the author stresses to contrast with Kepler’s intellectual pursuit of ‘order and harmony' in the universe. This was particularly true in the time that Kepler and his family lived with Tycho Brae whose household always seemed to be in chaos.
Kepler had difficult relationships with his wives. Infants and favorite children died. At times he was persecuted or driven out of town by the Catholic hierarchy because of his Lutheran religion. He even had to help defend his mother from charges of witchcraft!
In Kepler’s time, astronomy and astrology were intertwined. Kepler was fundamentally a skeptic about the latter but he was not above creating horoscopes for wealthy patrons when he needed cash to put food on the table.
The book is not a comprehensive survey of Kepler’s life and times. It focuses on a few key periods of his life. He traveled around Europe, mainly to Prague and to Graz and Linz in what is now Austria. One section is comprised of fictional letters written by Kepler.
Here is a passage I liked: “I do not speak like I write, I do not write like I think, I do not think like I ought to think, and so everything goes on in deepest darkness."
Banville is known for his rich prose, almost lush writing at times. I picked a couple of passages to illustrate his writing style that may interest you in reading the book:
“…Tycho gave a banquet, music and manic revels and the fatted calf hissing on a spit. The noise in the dining hall was a steady roar punctuated by the crimson crash of a dropped platter or the shriek of a tickled serving girl. The spring storm that had threatened all day blundered suddenly against the windows, shivering the reflected candlelight. Tycho was in capital form, shouting and swilling and banging his tankard, nose aglitter and the tips of his straw-colored mustaches dripping. To his left Tengnagel sat with a proprietary arm about the waste of the Dane’s daughter Elizabeth, a rabbity girl with close-cropped ashen hair and pink nostrils. Her mother, Mistress Christine, was a fat fussy woman whose twenty years of concubinage to the Dane no longer outraged anyone save her.”
“Kepler suddenly recalled a sunny Easter Sunday long ago, when his grandfather was still alive, one of those days that had lodged itself in his memory not because of any particular event, but because all the aimless parts of it, the brilliant light, the scratchy feel of a new coat, the sound of bells, lofty and mad, had made together an almost palpable shape, a great air sign, like a cloud or a wind or a shower of rain, that was beyond interpreting and yet rich with significance and promise. Was that... happiness?”
I consider the book a great read – a work of ‘faction.’ The book is the middle work of Banville’s “The Revolutions Trilogy.” The other two are Doctor Copernicus (which I am reading with Ebba) and The Newton Letter.
John Banville is a prolific author; by my count 36 novels and a couple of non-fiction books. Many are in series and some were written under pseudonyms. I still like his Booker Prize winner, The Sea, the best. Here are links to ones I have reviewed:
The Sea
The Untouchable
Mrs Osmond
The Blue Guitar
The Infinities
Snow (#2 in the St. John Strafford detective series)
April in Spain (#3 in the St. John Strafford detective series)
Shroud (# 2 in The Cleave Trilogy. Cleave is a pathologist in 1950s Dublin)
Top photo of Kepler on an Austrian stamp from stampio.org
Kepler’s house in Prague, now a museum, from Wikipedia
The author from irishtimes.com
September 10, 2019
Science As Pyschotherapy
Unlike his introduction of Nicolaus Copernicus in his first volume of his Revolutions trilogy, John Banville gives a very clear key to his interpretation of Johannes Kepler’s life in the second: “…disorder had been the condition of his life from the beginning.” Not only does he set off a much more distinctive character for Kepler than for Copernicus, but Banville also pursues the interaction of that character with the intellectual and social context of the time in a much more interesting way.
Kepler’s neurotic condition - a longing for assurance about the ultimate rationality of the world - is described by Banville in all its stages: the initial trauma created by a chaotic midden of an early family life; subsequently confirmed through a young Lutheran adulthood in an increasingly oppressive Catholic country; and routinised in the shambolic Benatky castle-circus of Tycho Brahe. It Is hardly surprising that the need for an underlying order in the universe would be a response upon which Banville could build a narrative. Science, or more generally thought itself, as psychotherapy.
And this psychotherapeutic narrative, never overdone but muted and hinted at continuously, does provide a convincing coherence to Kepler’s life. His ‘passion’ for astronomy is a sort of self-medication in Banville's story. Kepler’s work is a reflection and projection of his deepest fears of meaninglessness and purposelessness. His but-this-will-interrupt-my-work attitude to politics, religion, and family relations is a persistent part of his character until late in life. Even the death of his second child is primarily an inconvenience rather than a tragedy. A complete indifference to the suffering of his wife is a clear symptom of neurosis not diligence. It only gets to be called genius in history, not because of what it produced but because of where it leads. Neurotic doesn't imply destructive. However when the therapy, carried on as a slavish routine, becomes a solution, an end in itself, it doesn't lead anywhere but to the hell it is trying to avoid.
Is this purely a personal story therefore? Well not really. It is likely that we all get trapped by neurosis of some sort given that every child develops at best a partial, and at worst a distorted take on reality which is then imported into adult life. If the result is success by prevailing standards, this largely unconscious condition is called a life-passion or driving force. If the results are by conventional norms unsuccessful, these same conditions are obsessions, or addictions. Doesn’t a career as a scientist, and not only a scientist, begin with a presumption of an underlying order awaiting discovery? And what would provoke anyone to presume such order and then to embark on a hopeful life of such discovery, if not an absence of order of one sort or another in one’s formative years? And there always is an absence of one sort or another.
In Kepler’s case the therapy was intellectual; in others’ it might be political; in my case it was, in the first instance monastic, and then military. Only late in life did I recognise my own drive to exist in, by creating it, an orderly world as a consistent theme of my life. I too, like Kepler, ultimately chose an intellectual therapy, corporate finance (a discipline just about as solidly based in reason as astrology). Not because I was particularly gifted in either business deal-making or mathematics but because, also like Kepler, I had found a way to survive economically while pursuing the itch for order in an apparently chaotic world. And I too mistook the therapy for a destination. Your garden variety ends-means confusion. Banville has Kepler recognise his error in a letter of 1611 to his step-daughter (I don't know if the letter is authentic). The recognition is traumatic. Recovery is excruciatingly slow. I'm still recovering.
So thank you John Banville for providing a bit of life-affirmation for me. And thank you as well for the typically Banvillian additions to my vocabulary like caparisoned, utraquist, widow's weeds, pavonian and scolopendrine. I love it when the spellchecker gets snookered. Now, old pal, how about an historical biography of Freud and how psychoanalysis went off the rails?
Unlike his introduction of Nicolaus Copernicus in his first volume of his Revolutions trilogy, John Banville gives a very clear key to his interpretation of Johannes Kepler’s life in the second: “…disorder had been the condition of his life from the beginning.” Not only does he set off a much more distinctive character for Kepler than for Copernicus, but Banville also pursues the interaction of that character with the intellectual and social context of the time in a much more interesting way.
Kepler’s neurotic condition - a longing for assurance about the ultimate rationality of the world - is described by Banville in all its stages: the initial trauma created by a chaotic midden of an early family life; subsequently confirmed through a young Lutheran adulthood in an increasingly oppressive Catholic country; and routinised in the shambolic Benatky castle-circus of Tycho Brahe. It Is hardly surprising that the need for an underlying order in the universe would be a response upon which Banville could build a narrative. Science, or more generally thought itself, as psychotherapy.
And this psychotherapeutic narrative, never overdone but muted and hinted at continuously, does provide a convincing coherence to Kepler’s life. His ‘passion’ for astronomy is a sort of self-medication in Banville's story. Kepler’s work is a reflection and projection of his deepest fears of meaninglessness and purposelessness. His but-this-will-interrupt-my-work attitude to politics, religion, and family relations is a persistent part of his character until late in life. Even the death of his second child is primarily an inconvenience rather than a tragedy. A complete indifference to the suffering of his wife is a clear symptom of neurosis not diligence. It only gets to be called genius in history, not because of what it produced but because of where it leads. Neurotic doesn't imply destructive. However when the therapy, carried on as a slavish routine, becomes a solution, an end in itself, it doesn't lead anywhere but to the hell it is trying to avoid.
Is this purely a personal story therefore? Well not really. It is likely that we all get trapped by neurosis of some sort given that every child develops at best a partial, and at worst a distorted take on reality which is then imported into adult life. If the result is success by prevailing standards, this largely unconscious condition is called a life-passion or driving force. If the results are by conventional norms unsuccessful, these same conditions are obsessions, or addictions. Doesn’t a career as a scientist, and not only a scientist, begin with a presumption of an underlying order awaiting discovery? And what would provoke anyone to presume such order and then to embark on a hopeful life of such discovery, if not an absence of order of one sort or another in one’s formative years? And there always is an absence of one sort or another.
In Kepler’s case the therapy was intellectual; in others’ it might be political; in my case it was, in the first instance monastic, and then military. Only late in life did I recognise my own drive to exist in, by creating it, an orderly world as a consistent theme of my life. I too, like Kepler, ultimately chose an intellectual therapy, corporate finance (a discipline just about as solidly based in reason as astrology). Not because I was particularly gifted in either business deal-making or mathematics but because, also like Kepler, I had found a way to survive economically while pursuing the itch for order in an apparently chaotic world. And I too mistook the therapy for a destination. Your garden variety ends-means confusion. Banville has Kepler recognise his error in a letter of 1611 to his step-daughter (I don't know if the letter is authentic). The recognition is traumatic. Recovery is excruciatingly slow. I'm still recovering.
So thank you John Banville for providing a bit of life-affirmation for me. And thank you as well for the typically Banvillian additions to my vocabulary like caparisoned, utraquist, widow's weeds, pavonian and scolopendrine. I love it when the spellchecker gets snookered. Now, old pal, how about an historical biography of Freud and how psychoanalysis went off the rails?
September 22, 2022
Џона Банвила сам упознао кроз његову вероватно најпознатију књигу „Море“ и тада ме је купило његово приповедање. „Кеплер“ је другачијег тона и интензитета, али се види исто мајсторство у писању.
Банвил је изузетно успешно креирао атмосферу и дух Кеплеровог времена. Сјајно је описао грозничави ум овог великог научника, суоченог са прозаичним проблемима свакодневног преживљавања, верским ратовима који раздиру Европу, неиспуњеношћу у брачном животу, као и смрћу своје деце. Значајан је и његов однос са другим великим научником тога доба – Тихом Брахеом, који му је практично био нешто попут учитеља и покровитеља (али веома незгодне нарави). Приповедање није линеарно, тако да ћемо парче по парче конструисати Кеплерово кретање и пут до постављања нових теорија и закона који су променили људски доживљај космоса и његових пространстава, но и даље ће остати доста неухватљивог и неизреченог.
Свакако је Банвил сјајан писац, а ово веома вредно читања. Надам се да ће бити преведена и остала дела из ове трилогије о научницима.
Банвил је изузетно успешно креирао атмосферу и дух Кеплеровог времена. Сјајно је описао грозничави ум овог великог научника, суоченог са прозаичним проблемима свакодневног преживљавања, верским ратовима који раздиру Европу, неиспуњеношћу у брачном животу, као и смрћу своје деце. Значајан је и његов однос са другим великим научником тога доба – Тихом Брахеом, који му је практично био нешто попут учитеља и покровитеља (али веома незгодне нарави). Приповедање није линеарно, тако да ћемо парче по парче конструисати Кеплерово кретање и пут до постављања нових теорија и закона који су променили људски доживљај космоса и његових пространстава, но и даље ће остати доста неухватљивог и неизреченог.
Свакако је Банвил сјајан писац, а ово веома вредно читања. Надам се да ће бити преведена и остала дела из ове трилогије о научницима.
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April 9, 2025Šta donosi istup iz ugla Keplerove svakidašnjice s kraja 17. i prve polovine 18. veka? Po mom sudu, jednu ne toliko dobrostojeću istoričnost ulegnutu u osećaj (koji bi se mogao primerovati tekstom) da se auktorijalni glas, ali i Keplerov, ispušta iz današnjeg doba (a to ne valja jer implicitni impuls to neće), da su oba jedan drugom preblizu i da Banvil, ako bi ga samo priupitali da upripoveda ili iskaže još nešto o epohi, ne bi mogao da pruži bog zna koliko više od ovoga što je pružio (što je i subjektivna orijentacija spomoću komparativnog kompasa baždarenog prema Margarit Jursenar, ali, recimo, i manjak jednosmerne prepiske).
Banvilovski koncept genija, reljefnije je klišetiziran - i dalje sam ambivalentan po ovom pitanju - pa tako kalkuliše i sa plebejičnim bekgraundom, stalnim novčanim nedaćama, odsečnim a nepopularnim konfesionalnim opredeljenjem (eh, "Crna meno"), osobenim porodičnim miljeom (na momente vuče i na vajb "Boljeg života"), društvenom šeprtljavošću (kako to obično ide uz tip naučenjaka), naučnom sujetnošću i rivalitetima iz dvouglova, neposrednog s Braheom i epistolarnog s Galilejem (bilo je trenutaka kada me se povlačilo ka Formanovom "Amadeusu"), zatajniji stepdaddy seksualni impuls itd, na fonu sveopšteg meteža, dok se mašta o tome da se apsolutnom geometrijskom pravilnošću - Bog je geometrija! - prepokrije mondijalna uneređenost.
Dokaz o harmoniji svemira (i sveta), do koga Kepler jedino, pošavši od haotičnosti istorije i svakodnevnog rusvaja, može stići kroz nauku - Banvil potcrtava ovaj kontrast - suštinski je iluzorni konstrukt, napor da se drugom naučnom dogmom razbiju viševekovne naučne dogme. Kalup se razbija, ali ne na onaj sveravnjajući probitačni način koji naučnik priželjkuje. Rešenje odudara od teorijskog predumišljaja o savršenom poretku.* Baš to saznajno trenje postaje stalnim Keplerovim egzistencijalnim problemom. Odustajanjem od zadrtosti nametnutog principa Kepler će izistinski zasijati. Kasnije će se samo, uz sporadične probljeske - tako nam je bar pripovedno dato - ulovljavati u pseudonaučni kalup koji je samom sebi nametnuo, i to već nalikuje na psihološko ograničenje.
*Kompozicioni premeti koje prevejani čitalac prozre nakon prve deonice, ponovljeni u još tri segmenta, mogli bi biti vid elipsoidnih zakrivljenja žuđene pravilnosti poretka. I vidno drugačiji epistolarni segment povinovaće se unatraškosti pripovedanja. A pravilnost podrazumeva pet savršenih geometrijskih tela za pet planeta za pet deonica nazvanih po pet Keplerovih dela.
Život i stvarnost će se, međutim, i nakon Keplerovog otkrovenja nastaviti, kao da se ništa nije dogodilo, jer ko za ime sveta u tom vremenu (osim par izuzetaka) to otkriće može da pojmi. Potrebno je vreme da otkrovenje postane čeona paradigma. Upravo ovaj efekat zanemarivanja ili da(v)našnjeg uzimanja proboja zdravo za gotovo - eheee a gde je bio točak! - koga ne bi bilo da se nije stojalo na leđima divova i naslanjalo na drugoga (ovde, primerice, Keplera na Brahea), pored svesnog iskoračenja iz vlastitih okvira, nekolicina je pripovednih dogledanjâ koja bih najradije poneo iz presahnulog čitalačkog izbivanja u "Kepleru" po Banvilu.
Banvilovski koncept genija, reljefnije je klišetiziran - i dalje sam ambivalentan po ovom pitanju - pa tako kalkuliše i sa plebejičnim bekgraundom, stalnim novčanim nedaćama, odsečnim a nepopularnim konfesionalnim opredeljenjem (eh, "Crna meno"), osobenim porodičnim miljeom (na momente vuče i na vajb "Boljeg života"), društvenom šeprtljavošću (kako to obično ide uz tip naučenjaka), naučnom sujetnošću i rivalitetima iz dvouglova, neposrednog s Braheom i epistolarnog s Galilejem (bilo je trenutaka kada me se povlačilo ka Formanovom "Amadeusu"), zatajniji stepdaddy seksualni impuls itd, na fonu sveopšteg meteža, dok se mašta o tome da se apsolutnom geometrijskom pravilnošću - Bog je geometrija! - prepokrije mondijalna uneređenost.
Dokaz o harmoniji svemira (i sveta), do koga Kepler jedino, pošavši od haotičnosti istorije i svakodnevnog rusvaja, može stići kroz nauku - Banvil potcrtava ovaj kontrast - suštinski je iluzorni konstrukt, napor da se drugom naučnom dogmom razbiju viševekovne naučne dogme. Kalup se razbija, ali ne na onaj sveravnjajući probitačni način koji naučnik priželjkuje. Rešenje odudara od teorijskog predumišljaja o savršenom poretku.* Baš to saznajno trenje postaje stalnim Keplerovim egzistencijalnim problemom. Odustajanjem od zadrtosti nametnutog principa Kepler će izistinski zasijati. Kasnije će se samo, uz sporadične probljeske - tako nam je bar pripovedno dato - ulovljavati u pseudonaučni kalup koji je samom sebi nametnuo, i to već nalikuje na psihološko ograničenje.
*Kompozicioni premeti koje prevejani čitalac prozre nakon prve deonice, ponovljeni u još tri segmenta, mogli bi biti vid elipsoidnih zakrivljenja žuđene pravilnosti poretka. I vidno drugačiji epistolarni segment povinovaće se unatraškosti pripovedanja. A pravilnost podrazumeva pet savršenih geometrijskih tela za pet planeta za pet deonica nazvanih po pet Keplerovih dela.
Život i stvarnost će se, međutim, i nakon Keplerovog otkrovenja nastaviti, kao da se ništa nije dogodilo, jer ko za ime sveta u tom vremenu (osim par izuzetaka) to otkriće može da pojmi. Potrebno je vreme da otkrovenje postane čeona paradigma. Upravo ovaj efekat zanemarivanja ili da(v)našnjeg uzimanja proboja zdravo za gotovo - eheee a gde je bio točak! - koga ne bi bilo da se nije stojalo na leđima divova i naslanjalo na drugoga (ovde, primerice, Keplera na Brahea), pored svesnog iskoračenja iz vlastitih okvira, nekolicina je pripovednih dogledanjâ koja bih najradije poneo iz presahnulog čitalačkog izbivanja u "Kepleru" po Banvilu.
October 31, 2016
Banvil je izuzetno dobar pisac, a Đorđe Krivokapić majstor prevođenja.
Ova knjiga, kroz Keplerovu biografiju (delovi su stvarni, nedostatak podataka je nadomestio autor) priča o strasti na kojoj se, najverovatnije, sve temelji: žudnjom za razumevanjem poretka sveta. Traži Kepler dokaz za harmoniju u Kosmosu, dok ga sapliću razne srednjovekovne muke: bolesti, samovolja raznih careva koji se takmiče u zvekanstvu ali su revnosni u neplaćanju obaveza, raznorazni hirovi klera, ratovi, deca koja umiru, žene slabog zdravlja, smarači koji traže da im napravi horoskop, Galilejeva sujeta, samodovoljni bonvivan Tiho Brahe inkvizicija koja smatra da mu majka mora goreti na lomači i svašta još. A on računa odnose između Marsove i Saturnove putanje i svašta još. Meri, gleda u nebo, u svoje snove, čeka znak, prati intuiciju, štampa knjige, piše, piše, piše… i veruje da je rešenje evo, tu.
Da je ovo pisao Umberto Eko, bilo bi mnogo zanimljivije – verovatno bi nakitio radnju svakakvim misterijama i čudesima, a Banvilu je više stalo do književnog izraza, pa pored svega toga samo prolazi, uz pogled jednim okom. Zato, ako niste dobro skocentrisani, može biti malo nezgodno pohvatati ko je ko i šta se kad zbiva. Stil nije naporan, ali radnja nije linearna, a često sklizne iz trećeg u misli prvog lica, potom u epistolografiju (Keplerova korespodencija nije sačuvana, ali je Banvil to vrlo lepo rekonstruisao), a kad se tome dodaju matematika i astronomija, bude malko čupkasto. Ili je bar meni bivalo, jer sam u nedogled razvukla čitanje.
Na kraju možete da izaberete utisak: radovanje što, eto, ne živimo u baš najgorem istorijskom trenutku ako nam je do znanja ili očajavanje što se saznajne žrtve i dalje ne vrednuju, pa je, manje – više, situacija nepromenjena.
U prilog ovom prvom, Kepler kaže: „Pokaži im, svima im pokaži, nikada neću umreti“
Četvorka.
Ova knjiga, kroz Keplerovu biografiju (delovi su stvarni, nedostatak podataka je nadomestio autor) priča o strasti na kojoj se, najverovatnije, sve temelji: žudnjom za razumevanjem poretka sveta. Traži Kepler dokaz za harmoniju u Kosmosu, dok ga sapliću razne srednjovekovne muke: bolesti, samovolja raznih careva koji se takmiče u zvekanstvu ali su revnosni u neplaćanju obaveza, raznorazni hirovi klera, ratovi, deca koja umiru, žene slabog zdravlja, smarači koji traže da im napravi horoskop, Galilejeva sujeta, samodovoljni bonvivan Tiho Brahe inkvizicija koja smatra da mu majka mora goreti na lomači i svašta još. A on računa odnose između Marsove i Saturnove putanje i svašta još. Meri, gleda u nebo, u svoje snove, čeka znak, prati intuiciju, štampa knjige, piše, piše, piše… i veruje da je rešenje evo, tu.
Da je ovo pisao Umberto Eko, bilo bi mnogo zanimljivije – verovatno bi nakitio radnju svakakvim misterijama i čudesima, a Banvilu je više stalo do književnog izraza, pa pored svega toga samo prolazi, uz pogled jednim okom. Zato, ako niste dobro skocentrisani, može biti malo nezgodno pohvatati ko je ko i šta se kad zbiva. Stil nije naporan, ali radnja nije linearna, a često sklizne iz trećeg u misli prvog lica, potom u epistolografiju (Keplerova korespodencija nije sačuvana, ali je Banvil to vrlo lepo rekonstruisao), a kad se tome dodaju matematika i astronomija, bude malko čupkasto. Ili je bar meni bivalo, jer sam u nedogled razvukla čitanje.
Na kraju možete da izaberete utisak: radovanje što, eto, ne živimo u baš najgorem istorijskom trenutku ako nam je do znanja ili očajavanje što se saznajne žrtve i dalje ne vrednuju, pa je, manje – više, situacija nepromenjena.
U prilog ovom prvom, Kepler kaže: „Pokaži im, svima im pokaži, nikada neću umreti“
Četvorka.
November 24, 2021
En su Trilogía de las Revoluciones, John Banville hace algo más que novelizar las vidas de tres astrónomos - Copérnico, Kepler y Newton - en realidad nos quiere explicar cómo estas tres personas pusieron los fundamentos de la visión actual del mundo y también nos muestra la lucha contracorriente que ello significó en su época. Una auténtica revolución.
En esta segunda entrega vemos cómo Kepler, en la Alemania del siglo XVI, persigue su idea del orden y la armonía del cosmos, mientras está rodeado por el caos absoluto, tanto a nivel social como familiar, un caos que incluye luchas por el poder, enfermedades, miseria e inseguridad. Como otros hombres de ciencia, Kepler depende enteramente de la generosidad aleatoria y cambiante de nobles patrones y reyes para poder desarrollar su trabajo. También ha de enfrentarse a la Iglesia Católica, empeñada en obstaculizar cualquier progreso por miedo a que el conocimiento socave los cimientos de la fe.
Todo esto lo narra Banville con pasión, con desmesura, nos sumerge en el caos, para explicarnos el milagro que ha supuesto salir de la oscuridad y llegar a donde nos encontramos. Definitivamente, tengo que leer las otras dos entregas!
En esta segunda entrega vemos cómo Kepler, en la Alemania del siglo XVI, persigue su idea del orden y la armonía del cosmos, mientras está rodeado por el caos absoluto, tanto a nivel social como familiar, un caos que incluye luchas por el poder, enfermedades, miseria e inseguridad. Como otros hombres de ciencia, Kepler depende enteramente de la generosidad aleatoria y cambiante de nobles patrones y reyes para poder desarrollar su trabajo. También ha de enfrentarse a la Iglesia Católica, empeñada en obstaculizar cualquier progreso por miedo a que el conocimiento socave los cimientos de la fe.
Todo esto lo narra Banville con pasión, con desmesura, nos sumerge en el caos, para explicarnos el milagro que ha supuesto salir de la oscuridad y llegar a donde nos encontramos. Definitivamente, tengo que leer las otras dos entregas!
September 3, 2021
Grand Orbit in Three Revolutions
This is the second in a series of novels called the “Revolutions Trilogy". I've read the first two and suspect that these two, if not all three, are based on a template which Banville has developed.
Most of my review of "Doctor Copernicus" could apply word for word to "Kepler" – in fact, I'm sorely tempted to cut and paste the whole of my previous review (including the comments about Banville's affection for alliteration and sibilance, of which some more examples are assembled below):
"Eschew This Passionate Excitement!"
The trilogy concerns the plight of three astronomers who advanced the science of heliocentrism in the face of opposition from the Catholic Church. The protagonists were seeking to promote truth, whether or not it conformed to religious faith.
I’ve seen this novel described as pseudo-biography. This might well be true. It's definitely an informed fictionalisation of the life of an historical figure. Banville acknowledges his debt to biographies of Kepler and Tycho Brahe, as well as Arthur Koestler's "The Spleepwalkers" and a study of "The Rosicrucian Enlightenment".
The novel captures the impact of ideas on the private and public lives of an astronomer dependent on the patronage, financial support and good grace of the Emperor and various state and municipal administrators.
Kepler suffers enormously for what today wouldn't pass for academic freedom. It is still remarkable to witness how the Church (which you would expect to be primarily concerned with the spiritual and pastoral welfare of its congregation) could pronounce so prescriptively (under penalty of excommunication and death) about issues that strike us as purely scientific.
The Church seems to have positioned itself in opposition to the truth of science, for fear that scientific method might undermine religious doctrine and dogma, as well as the authority of those who uphold the worldly power of the Church.
The Chancellor writes to him:
"Everything is Told Us, But Nothing Explained"
We learn little about Kepler's discoveries and ideas from the novel. ("Everything is told us, but nothing explained.") It pays to read his wiki entry, so that you have some scientific context for the narrative of the novel.
Kepler is described variously as a mathematician who has selfishly embarked on a "lunatic adventure", "a little man, wet and weary, dithering at a fork in the road", "a modest stay-at-home, an armchair dreamer", "a lover of truth", and "a sodden old dolt dozing in his boots, maundering over the lost years."
The Emperor describes his religion (Kepler seems to oscillate between Lutheranism and Calvinism – "the heresy of Protestantism") as "an embarrassment" (presumably not just to Kepler, but to the Emperor):
Kepler avoids the intolerance that characterises Catholicism. He is kind to and supportive of a nonconformist friend, about which a mutual friend comments:
The Perception of Harmonia Mundi
If there is one unifying thread in Kepler's life and endeavours, it's a desire to understand and promote harmony in the extended world. His book "Harmonia mundi" recognises how:
The Achievement of Perfection
Religion consolidated that which "had been wrong all those years". Kepler's obsession has been:
In the same way, you could argue that the novel represents the triumph of beauty over authority, whether civil or religious.
SOUNDTRACK:
This is the second in a series of novels called the “Revolutions Trilogy". I've read the first two and suspect that these two, if not all three, are based on a template which Banville has developed.
Most of my review of "Doctor Copernicus" could apply word for word to "Kepler" – in fact, I'm sorely tempted to cut and paste the whole of my previous review (including the comments about Banville's affection for alliteration and sibilance, of which some more examples are assembled below):
"the pilfering postmaster, whose lugubrious ghost still loitered in his lost domain...he was touched by her sad ungainly state...the breadth and balance of the buildings...a comic bugle blast...this rage to work, this rapture of second thoughts...sortilege and star magic...scissors and paste and strips of coloured paper...his head humming with fever, he felt something sweep softly down on him, a shadow vast and winged...countless small lakes and perennially flooded lowlands...a priestly pustular young person, haggard with ambition and self-abuse...an ashen awakening from a dream...the gateman, a fat fellow in furs...mild amaze...a clockwork simulacrum of tenderness...what impossible blue vision of flight...a kind of quietly splendid equilibrium...my little bag of bats’ wings..."
"Eschew This Passionate Excitement!"
The trilogy concerns the plight of three astronomers who advanced the science of heliocentrism in the face of opposition from the Catholic Church. The protagonists were seeking to promote truth, whether or not it conformed to religious faith.
I’ve seen this novel described as pseudo-biography. This might well be true. It's definitely an informed fictionalisation of the life of an historical figure. Banville acknowledges his debt to biographies of Kepler and Tycho Brahe, as well as Arthur Koestler's "The Spleepwalkers" and a study of "The Rosicrucian Enlightenment".
The novel captures the impact of ideas on the private and public lives of an astronomer dependent on the patronage, financial support and good grace of the Emperor and various state and municipal administrators.
Kepler suffers enormously for what today wouldn't pass for academic freedom. It is still remarkable to witness how the Church (which you would expect to be primarily concerned with the spiritual and pastoral welfare of its congregation) could pronounce so prescriptively (under penalty of excommunication and death) about issues that strike us as purely scientific.
The Church seems to have positioned itself in opposition to the truth of science, for fear that scientific method might undermine religious doctrine and dogma, as well as the authority of those who uphold the worldly power of the Church.
The Chancellor writes to him:
"If you love me, then eschew this passionate excitement."
"Everything is Told Us, But Nothing Explained"
We learn little about Kepler's discoveries and ideas from the novel. ("Everything is told us, but nothing explained.") It pays to read his wiki entry, so that you have some scientific context for the narrative of the novel.
Kepler is described variously as a mathematician who has selfishly embarked on a "lunatic adventure", "a little man, wet and weary, dithering at a fork in the road", "a modest stay-at-home, an armchair dreamer", "a lover of truth", and "a sodden old dolt dozing in his boots, maundering over the lost years."
The Emperor describes his religion (Kepler seems to oscillate between Lutheranism and Calvinism – "the heresy of Protestantism") as "an embarrassment" (presumably not just to Kepler, but to the Emperor):
"It was as in a dream, where it slowly dawns that you are the one who has committed the crime."
Kepler avoids the intolerance that characterises Catholicism. He is kind to and supportive of a nonconformist friend, about which a mutual friend comments:
"You had regard for him, sir, you saw his worth, as I did."
The Perception of Harmonia Mundi
If there is one unifying thread in Kepler's life and endeavours, it's a desire to understand and promote harmony in the extended world. His book "Harmonia mundi" recognises how:
"[...harmony is] that which the soul creates by perceiving how certain proportions in the world correspond to prototypes existing in the soul.
"The proportions everywhere abound, in music and the movements of the planets, in human and vegetable forms, in men's fortunes even, but they are all relation merely, and nonexistent without the perceiving soul.
"How is such perception possible? Peasants and children, barbarians, animals even, feel the harmony of the tone. Therefore the perceiving must be instinct in the soul, based in a profound and essential geometry, that geometry which is derived from the simple divisioning of circles...
"Now he took the short step to the fusion of symbol and object. The circle is the bearer of pure harmonies, pure harmonies are innate in the soul, and so the soul and the circle are one.
"Such simplicity, such beauty."
The Achievement of Perfection
Religion consolidated that which "had been wrong all those years". Kepler's obsession has been:
"...to destroy the past, the human and hopelessly defective past, and begin all over again the attempt to achieve perfection: that same heedless, euphoric sense of teetering on the brink while the gleeful voice at his ear whispered jump."
"Such a dream I had...Such a dream. Es war doch so schön."
In the same way, you could argue that the novel represents the triumph of beauty over authority, whether civil or religious.
SOUNDTRACK:
August 1, 2020
He was after the eternal laws that govern the harmony of the world. Through awful thickets, in darkest night, he stalked his fabulous prey. Only the stealthiest of hunters had been vouchsafed a shot at it, and he, grossly armed with the blunderbuss of his defective mathematics, what chance had he? crowded round by capering clowns hallooing and howling and banging their bells whose names were Paternity, and Responsibility, and Domestgoddamnedicity. Yet O, he had seen it once, briefly, that mythic bird, a speck, no more than a speck, soaring at an immense height. It was not to be forgotten, that glimpse.In renaissance Europe, divided on nationalistic and religious lines, a revolution is taking place - something that's going to totally upend humanity's worldview. Earth, from its position at the centre of the universe, is going to become a practical nonentity circling the Sun, a star in a solar system among countless solar systems, in a galaxy among many such galaxies. Then men on the vanguard of the revolution, the early astronomers, don't know they are going to do it, however. They are just men of science, lusting after the elusive thing called truth, glimpsed once in a while tantalizingly through all the random noise that surrounds the intellect in this journey we call life.
The German astronomer Johannes Kepler is hunted in his native Catholic Germany for his Lutheran faith. To add to his travails, he has a wife who does not understand him, a capricious father-in-law, tragic memories of the deaths of his infant children to haunt him, and a weak constitution. He escapes to Prague to work in collaboration with Tycho Brahe, the scientist who has made the most accurate astronomical observations. But he has to contend with Brahe's high-handed behaviour as well as the idiosyncrasies of the ruler of Bohemia, the eccentric Emperor Rudolph, his official patron: also, his own private insecurities and irrational beliefs. To compound the problem, Brahe favoureds the Ptolemian model of the universe and Kepler, the Copernican.
This book by Booker-winning author John Banville is not a biography of Kepler - the standard "lives of the scientists" kids study as part of their school curricula. It is a recreation of a turbulent period of history when humankind, emerging from centuries of ignorance, was taking huge strides in the field of science. The author tries to show the men of intellect in pursuit of eternal truths in all their humanity; and in the process, also the journey of science as it really was - one with a lot of stoppages, false starts and retrogressions: compounded by religious intolerance and the petty jealousies among the scientists themselves.
Kepler's original contributions were in the field of calculating the orbital pathways of the planets and establishing the laws of planetary motion. Being a believer, he tried to bring "harmony" into his concept of the universe as he believes God wouldn't have it otherwise. John Banville has succeeded in picturising the orderly mind of mathematician, who sees beauty and logic as the manifestations of the divine science of numbers.
This is a short book, but very rich in content.
Read
June 11, 2018This was my first contact with John Banville whose name I knew from the literary pages of the Irish Times. He was editor there for many years. I remember enjoying the book, but, being young and very unsophisticated, I'm sure I didn't understand a third of what he was doing in it - and I wasn't even aware that it was part of a trilogy. Innocent days.
November 18, 2018
This isn’t a novel about Johannes Kepler so much as an extended reflection on what it might have been like to have been a largely unacknowledged genius living through a time of war and religious persecution with limited cash and a wife who can’t stand the sight of you. Not much fun if Banville’s portrayal is anywhere near the truth, and it feels very much like it could be. His Kepler is neurotic, paranoid, vain, self-pitying, frustrated and passive aggressive to an almost camp degree. He is also believable and sad, with a sort of inner integrity mixed with defiance that ultimately has you rooting for him. In all of these respects he is a typical John Banville character.
This is not Banville’s most entertaining book - large parts of it are heavy going - but it is yet another example of something Banville does better than any other contemporary English language novelist that I know of, which is to take something seemingly huge (murder, treachery, bereavement, genius) and render it grubby and relatable.
This is not Banville’s most entertaining book - large parts of it are heavy going - but it is yet another example of something Banville does better than any other contemporary English language novelist that I know of, which is to take something seemingly huge (murder, treachery, bereavement, genius) and render it grubby and relatable.
March 28, 2016
As the title implies, this is historical fiction about the famous mathematician and astronomer Johannes Keppler. Banville brings his signature precision of language and gift for creating character and atmosphere to this novel. I can not evaluate the historical accuracy of the story since I knew nothing of Keppler’s personal life and only the most basic highlights of his professional achievements. But, I enjoyed this unique subject.
September 10, 2019
Two down now, as I attempt to get through "The Revolutions Trilogy" by Banville. Next up will be the Copernicus book I have been waiting for on hold. I have not read a book by Banville that I did not like. This book was difficult for me for a couple of reasons: the hardback from Vintage International was published in a very small font. That added to my frown lines as I had to look up various geographical locations and scientific terms to fully digest the material. It is not a book for leisure reading, but if one takes the extra time to understand the societal pressures as well as the development of scientific thought during his lifetime the reward is greater.
Fortunately Banville has that gift of conveying events in the very best and most efficient phrasing to allow understanding.
"Astronomy at first had been a pastime merely, an extension of the mathematical games he had liked to play as a student at Tubingen. As time went on, and his hopes for his new life in Graz turned sour, this exalted playing more and more obsessed him. It was a thing apart, a realm of order to set against the ramshackle real world in which he was imprisoned. For Graz was a kind of prison." Here he taught at the age of 23 and hated the vocation. After succeeding in drawing up an astrological calendar that accurately predicted weather he felt free to work on the mysteries of the solar system. Kepler's journey of discovery is beautifully told by Banville.
His life challenges, however, were portrayed vividly. It was not an easy road but makes for interesting historical fiction. A very good read.
Library Loan
Fortunately Banville has that gift of conveying events in the very best and most efficient phrasing to allow understanding.
"Astronomy at first had been a pastime merely, an extension of the mathematical games he had liked to play as a student at Tubingen. As time went on, and his hopes for his new life in Graz turned sour, this exalted playing more and more obsessed him. It was a thing apart, a realm of order to set against the ramshackle real world in which he was imprisoned. For Graz was a kind of prison." Here he taught at the age of 23 and hated the vocation. After succeeding in drawing up an astrological calendar that accurately predicted weather he felt free to work on the mysteries of the solar system. Kepler's journey of discovery is beautifully told by Banville.
His life challenges, however, were portrayed vividly. It was not an easy road but makes for interesting historical fiction. A very good read.
Library Loan
September 14, 2025
3,5
En esta historia novelada, Johannes Kepler es presentado como un hombre astuto y ambicioso, que se acerca para ser discípulo de Tycho Brahe, el hombre que mejor había estudiado las estrellas y constelaciones, y una vez que ha logrado aprender todo lo que su maestro tiene para enseñarle, lo abandona y sobre el conocimiento adquirido agrega sus opiniones y teorías, que ocultó a Brahe.
Una buena obra, con un protagonista que no es muy simpático. Un escalón por debajo de Copérnico.
Estos dos libros son presentados como parte de lo que han dado en llamar, junto con La Carta de Newton "La trilogía de la ciencia" (y posteriormente, una tetralogía). Creo que sería oportuno aclarar que La Carta de Newton se inicia con de alguna anécdota de Newton, y una supuesta carta que da pie a una novela contemporánea, muy alejada del estilo de las anteriores.
En esta historia novelada, Johannes Kepler es presentado como un hombre astuto y ambicioso, que se acerca para ser discípulo de Tycho Brahe, el hombre que mejor había estudiado las estrellas y constelaciones, y una vez que ha logrado aprender todo lo que su maestro tiene para enseñarle, lo abandona y sobre el conocimiento adquirido agrega sus opiniones y teorías, que ocultó a Brahe.
Una buena obra, con un protagonista que no es muy simpático. Un escalón por debajo de Copérnico.
Estos dos libros son presentados como parte de lo que han dado en llamar, junto con La Carta de Newton "La trilogía de la ciencia" (y posteriormente, una tetralogía). Creo que sería oportuno aclarar que La Carta de Newton se inicia con de alguna anécdota de Newton, y una supuesta carta que da pie a una novela contemporánea, muy alejada del estilo de las anteriores.
November 14, 2015
Ovo je knjiga koja prikazuje Keplerov život i borbu za objavu njegovih otkrića i radova. Prica je tim zanimljivija što je u pitanju fikcija pa je čitka i pruža više informacija o životu toga doba.
March 4, 2019
The scientific and historical details in this book were above my head but I enjoyed it nevertheless because of Banville’s style.
November 1, 2023
Kepler is the second book in The Revolutions Trilogy by John Banville, occupying the middle slot between Doctor Copernicus and The Newton Letter. It tells the story of Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), who, at various times, wore career hats of teacher, astronomer, mathematician, and even astrologer. The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were tough times: living conditions and sanitary standards were fairly primitive, and city infrastructure was practically nonexistent. The result of this was poor health and short life expectancies, courtesy of rampant diseases and illnesses that lacked scientific treatments. Kepler himself died at age 58 having suffered a variety of health challenges.
As with Doctor Copernicus, Banville expertly recreates the atmosphere of the times in Bohemia, and in particular, the fragile living that was often the fate of men and women of science. Unless one was lucky enough to get a plum teaching position at a prestigious university, the only other option was to secure a wealthy patron. After Kepler loses his teaching position, he finds a patron in Tycho Brahe, a somewhat unprofessional, vain, self-interested, scientist. Brahe’s fixation—a useful one, as it turns out—was tabulating accurate astronomical readings. In Banville’s book, at any rate, he was single-dimensioned in his area of interest.
Banville portrays Kepler in a way that invites sympathy for the man. The vicissitudes of Kepler’s life, in domestic and professional domains, kept him on a rollercoaster of ups and downs. In his professional capacity, Kepler couldn’t seem to hang on to obliging patrons. In Banville’s book, it seems that Tycho Brahe wasn’t diligent in paying Kepler, or indeed, caring about anything to do with how Kepler was supposed to live. After Brahe died, Kepler was lucky enough to find a new patron in the form of Emperor Rudolf II, who exemplified the typical twofold problem with patrons: they knew little about the science, but thought they knew a lot. Kepler was Imperial Mathematician, and he desperately hung on to that position even with Rudolf’s two successor Kings of Bohemia, Matthias and Ferdinand.
Domestically, Kepler also had a rough, troublesome time. His first wife, Barbara, surprisingly for the times, brought her own money into the marriage. That didn’t stop her from constantly bickering with Kepler about getting paid by his patrons in a timely fashion. They lost two children in infancy, then managed to successfully bring three more into the world, of which only one succumbed to a fatal illness. After his first wife died, Kepler married again, this time to a woman almost half his age. Their first three children died in infancy, then three more managed to reach adulthood. Though this was a happier marriage, one can’t help but believe that losing five children in infancy was a huge emotional trauma for parents.
Despite much preoccupation with domestic tribulations. Kepler managed to contribute meaningfully to branches of science that included, astrology, optics, mathematics, and physics. Unlike Copernicus, the reluctant publisher of his work while he lived, Kepler vigorously pursued publishing his discoveries. The one he will probably be remembered for is overturning the then-believed theory of circular orbits of the planets around the sun, when in fact, they orbit elliptically.
Banville’s writing in rich and textured in a way very much suited to this kind of historical fiction. His vocabulary is vast and occasionally esoteric enough to send readers to a dictionary—a happy digression for some. I did get a little confused with an entire epistolary segment in the book, a structural aberration, which featured letters that went from forward to backward in time. Fortunately, this doesn’t deter me in the slightest from reading The Newton Letter, the final book in The Revolutions Trilogy.
As with Doctor Copernicus, Banville expertly recreates the atmosphere of the times in Bohemia, and in particular, the fragile living that was often the fate of men and women of science. Unless one was lucky enough to get a plum teaching position at a prestigious university, the only other option was to secure a wealthy patron. After Kepler loses his teaching position, he finds a patron in Tycho Brahe, a somewhat unprofessional, vain, self-interested, scientist. Brahe’s fixation—a useful one, as it turns out—was tabulating accurate astronomical readings. In Banville’s book, at any rate, he was single-dimensioned in his area of interest.
Banville portrays Kepler in a way that invites sympathy for the man. The vicissitudes of Kepler’s life, in domestic and professional domains, kept him on a rollercoaster of ups and downs. In his professional capacity, Kepler couldn’t seem to hang on to obliging patrons. In Banville’s book, it seems that Tycho Brahe wasn’t diligent in paying Kepler, or indeed, caring about anything to do with how Kepler was supposed to live. After Brahe died, Kepler was lucky enough to find a new patron in the form of Emperor Rudolf II, who exemplified the typical twofold problem with patrons: they knew little about the science, but thought they knew a lot. Kepler was Imperial Mathematician, and he desperately hung on to that position even with Rudolf’s two successor Kings of Bohemia, Matthias and Ferdinand.
Domestically, Kepler also had a rough, troublesome time. His first wife, Barbara, surprisingly for the times, brought her own money into the marriage. That didn’t stop her from constantly bickering with Kepler about getting paid by his patrons in a timely fashion. They lost two children in infancy, then managed to successfully bring three more into the world, of which only one succumbed to a fatal illness. After his first wife died, Kepler married again, this time to a woman almost half his age. Their first three children died in infancy, then three more managed to reach adulthood. Though this was a happier marriage, one can’t help but believe that losing five children in infancy was a huge emotional trauma for parents.
Despite much preoccupation with domestic tribulations. Kepler managed to contribute meaningfully to branches of science that included, astrology, optics, mathematics, and physics. Unlike Copernicus, the reluctant publisher of his work while he lived, Kepler vigorously pursued publishing his discoveries. The one he will probably be remembered for is overturning the then-believed theory of circular orbits of the planets around the sun, when in fact, they orbit elliptically.
Banville’s writing in rich and textured in a way very much suited to this kind of historical fiction. His vocabulary is vast and occasionally esoteric enough to send readers to a dictionary—a happy digression for some. I did get a little confused with an entire epistolary segment in the book, a structural aberration, which featured letters that went from forward to backward in time. Fortunately, this doesn’t deter me in the slightest from reading The Newton Letter, the final book in The Revolutions Trilogy.
October 19, 2019
From BBC radio 4 Extra:
An exploration of the clash between two of the 17th century's leading astronomers - the assured, prickly and self-mocking Johannes Kepler, and the aristocratic, overbearing and secretly insecure Danish Nobleman, Tycho Brahe
Benedict Cumberbatch stars in John Banville's dramatisation set during the last year of Brahe's life.
Johannes Kepler .... Benedict Cumberbatch
Tycho Brahe .... Alun Armstrong
Barbara .... Arabella Weir
Sophie ..... Gillian Kearney
Longberg .... Scott Handy
Rudolph II .... Geoffrey Beevers
Jeppe .... Kenny Baker
Christine .... Marcella Riordan
Regina .... Hannah R. Gordon
Messenger .... Simon Imrie
Court Official .... Kevin Jackson
Director: Gemma McMullan
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in August 2004.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000...
An exploration of the clash between two of the 17th century's leading astronomers - the assured, prickly and self-mocking Johannes Kepler, and the aristocratic, overbearing and secretly insecure Danish Nobleman, Tycho Brahe
Benedict Cumberbatch stars in John Banville's dramatisation set during the last year of Brahe's life.
Johannes Kepler .... Benedict Cumberbatch
Tycho Brahe .... Alun Armstrong
Barbara .... Arabella Weir
Sophie ..... Gillian Kearney
Longberg .... Scott Handy
Rudolph II .... Geoffrey Beevers
Jeppe .... Kenny Baker
Christine .... Marcella Riordan
Regina .... Hannah R. Gordon
Messenger .... Simon Imrie
Court Official .... Kevin Jackson
Director: Gemma McMullan
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in August 2004.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000...
December 24, 2012
John Banville is one of my favorite writers, a leaning reinforced by his historical novel Kepler, about the 17th century mathematician & astronomer Johannes Kepler. Math and astronomy are not among my usual haunts, but Banville writes so well and so precisely, he can infuse anything with interest. Part of the strength of his writing is his talent for choosing the right word. It doesn’t have to be a big $10 word, it might just be two somewhat usual words put together unexpectedly.
“Looking now afresh at the form of this little book, I am struck by the thought that perhaps, without realising it, I had some intimation of the troubles to come, for certainly it is a strange work, uncommonly severe and muted, wintry in tone...”
His writing sometimes reminds me of the poetry of Lucie Brock-Broido, who embroiders amazing sentences and syntaxes, as in the poem “Death as a German Expert,” from which I include here an excerpt just for interest:
**
. . . Always the dead will be lined as sad
And crookedly as fingerling potatoes in root-cellars dank enough
For overwintering. In Luckenwalde a young girl slides a needle
In the turnip-purple soft fold of her inner arm and this, too,
Transfigures a kind of joy.
**
Kepler the novel is above all a book about intellectual striving. Kepler believed man was made in God’s image, and thus should be able to understand the universe God created, and he tries so hard it puts all of us to shame.
It is amazing that anyone could figure out the laws of planetary motion just by observing the sky through a telescope, especially someone like Kepler who spends adulthood hounded by religious persecution and besides that seems to be feeling ill most of the time. Poor guy. I liked him, but not too much.
There are other interesting if somewhat flat characters, like Kepler’s potion-mixing mother, his dimwit brother, a dwarf, a Jewish lens maker, astronomers, emperors, and of course the female interests - Barbara, Regina and Susanna.
“Looking now afresh at the form of this little book, I am struck by the thought that perhaps, without realising it, I had some intimation of the troubles to come, for certainly it is a strange work, uncommonly severe and muted, wintry in tone...”
His writing sometimes reminds me of the poetry of Lucie Brock-Broido, who embroiders amazing sentences and syntaxes, as in the poem “Death as a German Expert,” from which I include here an excerpt just for interest:
**
. . . Always the dead will be lined as sad
And crookedly as fingerling potatoes in root-cellars dank enough
For overwintering. In Luckenwalde a young girl slides a needle
In the turnip-purple soft fold of her inner arm and this, too,
Transfigures a kind of joy.
**
Kepler the novel is above all a book about intellectual striving. Kepler believed man was made in God’s image, and thus should be able to understand the universe God created, and he tries so hard it puts all of us to shame.
It is amazing that anyone could figure out the laws of planetary motion just by observing the sky through a telescope, especially someone like Kepler who spends adulthood hounded by religious persecution and besides that seems to be feeling ill most of the time. Poor guy. I liked him, but not too much.
There are other interesting if somewhat flat characters, like Kepler’s potion-mixing mother, his dimwit brother, a dwarf, a Jewish lens maker, astronomers, emperors, and of course the female interests - Barbara, Regina and Susanna.
April 19, 2015
Die physikalischen Entdeckungen Keplers interessieren mich kaum und ich würde sie sicher nicht ansatzweise begreifen. Aber Kepler wird hier auch in erster Linie als Mensch gezeigt: Einerseits sich seiner Theorien allzu gewiss, dann auch arrogant und selbstgerecht; außerdem wenig kompromissbereit und die Etikette höherer Kreise mißachtend; andererseits ist er auch ein Waschlappen: Seine Frau wird ihm fast gegen seinen Willen angeheiratet und er wehrt sich kaum, leidet aber ständig unter ihr. Da er arm ist, muss er dann doch immer wieder sich den Mächtigen anbiedern: Landesherrn, Baronen, Rudolf II in Prag; andererseits büßt er im Laufe seines Lebens mehr als eine Stellung ein, weil er nicht bereit ist, seine Religionszugehörigkeit zu wechseln nur weil es ihm von Vorteil sein könnte. Im Ganzen wirkt er doch oft eher hilflos und lächerlich.
Dann ist der Roman auch eine interessante Beschreibung gesellschaftlich-politischer Umstände, unter denen Wissenschaft betrieben wird: Man muss sich dem anpassen, was den Mächtigen (sei es der Herzog oder der erste Mathematiker des Hofes in Prag) an wissenschaftlichen Ergebnissen erwarten. Vielleicht auch eine Analogie zu heute?
Anstrengend ist allerdings der Abschnitt, der aus Briefen zusammengesetzt ist, deren Reihenfolge nicht chronologisch angeordnet ist (evtl. aufsteigend und dann wieder absteigend, also vielleicht zentrisch oder elliptisch wie die von Kepler beobachteten Planetenbahnen?). Das macht es schwer, der Handlung zu folgen.
Dann ist der Roman auch eine interessante Beschreibung gesellschaftlich-politischer Umstände, unter denen Wissenschaft betrieben wird: Man muss sich dem anpassen, was den Mächtigen (sei es der Herzog oder der erste Mathematiker des Hofes in Prag) an wissenschaftlichen Ergebnissen erwarten. Vielleicht auch eine Analogie zu heute?
Anstrengend ist allerdings der Abschnitt, der aus Briefen zusammengesetzt ist, deren Reihenfolge nicht chronologisch angeordnet ist (evtl. aufsteigend und dann wieder absteigend, also vielleicht zentrisch oder elliptisch wie die von Kepler beobachteten Planetenbahnen?). Das macht es schwer, der Handlung zu folgen.
June 18, 2013
This is pretty awful. Banville pulled his interpretation of Kepler more or less completely from Arthur Koestler's Sleepwalkers (including the heaping pile of misogyny; there is zero historical evidence that Kepler didn't want to marry his first wife), chucks out all the science, and throws in a soothsaying dwarf, some unrequited intrafamily love, and a whole bunch of imaginary bellyaching about Galileo. Kepler as presented here isn't particular religious but he's new-agey as can be, navel gazing about the desire to "live", reflecting on the nature of happiness and childhood, and just adding a few requisite asides about chaos-of-the-world, harmony-of-the-spheres so you remember who you're reading about. The middle section of the book, written as fictionalized letters that actually reflect to some degree Kepler's actual letters, is by far the best part and is even occasionally moving. Things get much worse when Banville ignores the source material and gets creative.
November 12, 2009
Banville is a fantastic writer, and this I think is his best historical fiction. I really felt I was struggling through the dirt and misery of those times with Kepler, chasing his dream of perfect order in the cosmos, in the footsteps of Copernicus who established that the galaxy is heliocentric. When you are taught the dry facts at school you get nothing of the passion that went into them, and schoolkids should be given more of that.
August 5, 2012
I may have to read this a second time.
June 15, 2011
I was interested in the dialogues between Kepler and Tycho Brahe. The letters were also a joy. Were any of these original letters or purely fiction?
July 14, 2022
A fictional biography of Johannes Kepler written in Banville's lyrical prose. Kepler was depicted as a very neurotic, paranoid and self-absorbed individual who was a brilliant mathematician in service to some very eccentric patrons. He was in a disastrous marriage to a woman who hated him but still managed to have several children, most of whom died in infancy. The story takes place in the early 1600's during a time of war, disease and religious turmoil. Banville made Kepler appear almost as a cartoon character, at times, in his behavior but, at the same time, showed his brilliance as a mathematician. The story was entertaining but Banville's prose was the true star of the book, as much of the book read almost like poetry.
July 4, 2022
A work of historical fiction, and more fictional than it is historical. Many scenes begin in medias res, and we are not always given details of the events leading up to those beginnings. In comparison even to other novels, there seems to be a lot less of the expository material one typically finds in the story of a life. In addition, there is not as much about Kepler's scientific work as one might expect from a historical fiction about a noted astronomer. Rather, much of what the novel depicts is Kepler as a son, as a husband, and as a father. We see him dealing with practical matters such as chasing down money promised him by patrons and adapting to changes in the political climate.
Although I suppose readers already familiar with Kepler's biography might get more out of it than I did, I found I was able to enjoy the book as a novel without going to Wikipedia or other resources to fill in factual details that Banville does not include. Stylistically, it reminded me somewhat of James Joyce's Dubliners. Also Joycean was the way that certain patterns in the narrative techniques Banville employed resonated with particular themes in the novel.
I liked Banville's fictionalized representation of Kepler's inner life. Here is a passage in which he imagines Kepler's subjective experiences during a particularly trying moment:
Another passage I like depicts an image that is not only aesthetically interesting in itself, but that would plausibly interest a geometer like Kepler: "The summer evening hesitated in the doorway, and in a big mirror a parallelogram of sunlit wall leaned at a breathless tilt, with a paler patch in it where a picture had been removed" (66).
Acquired Dec 15, 2006
P.T. Campbell Bookseller, London, Ontario
Although I suppose readers already familiar with Kepler's biography might get more out of it than I did, I found I was able to enjoy the book as a novel without going to Wikipedia or other resources to fill in factual details that Banville does not include. Stylistically, it reminded me somewhat of James Joyce's Dubliners. Also Joycean was the way that certain patterns in the narrative techniques Banville employed resonated with particular themes in the novel.
I liked Banville's fictionalized representation of Kepler's inner life. Here is a passage in which he imagines Kepler's subjective experiences during a particularly trying moment:
Kepler supported her, trying in vain to think of some comforting word. The strangest thoughts came into his head. On the journey from Linz he had read the Dialogue on ancient and modern music by Galileo's father, and now snatches of that work came back to him, like melodies grand and severe, and he thought of the wind-tossed sad singing of martyrs on their way to the stake. (167)
Another passage I like depicts an image that is not only aesthetically interesting in itself, but that would plausibly interest a geometer like Kepler: "The summer evening hesitated in the doorway, and in a big mirror a parallelogram of sunlit wall leaned at a breathless tilt, with a paler patch in it where a picture had been removed" (66).
Acquired Dec 15, 2006
P.T. Campbell Bookseller, London, Ontario
August 15, 2013
Wish I could give it 3.5 stars; Kepler is well worth reading but I'm not mad about it. First, as others have pointed out, Banville is first of all a very skilled wordsmith. There are moments of imagery and description that simply knock one's socks off. Second, the woven structure is quite engaging. throughout the reader is inside Kepler's brain which is quite an interesting place marrying quite unexpectedly the banal with the marvelous. Kepler talks to himself, dreams, worries, aches for his heart's desire--finding a mathematical expression for the harmony of the universe (talk about having big goals!), all while grappling with the endless difficulty of day to day life in the seventeenth century: family (his mother tried for a witch), children and wives dying, plague and a myriad of other untreatable illnesses, lice, cold, straw mattresses, his stomach and bowels, money, the endless damp and cold, not to mention the miseries of years and years of religious war and being a court dependent--(an you believe? The emperor of Bohemia kept of a royal mathematician)--not that he was regularly paid. Through it all Kepler travels--walking, riding donkeys, you name it, but it was slow and uncomfortable (no wonder most people stayed at home)--around and around central Europe looking for sponsors, for colleagues, for "observations," his traveling mirroring the restless of his brain as he hunts for elegant solutions to the complex problems he set himself. Moments of happiness occur and are noted. It's all rather nicely woven together--actually rather a feat to stuff this all into under 200 pages--though I'm still thinking about that set of letters. Here is a view of the underside of what it feels like to be world famous, to be doomed to live the life of driven intellectual.
Read
August 29, 2013Una scrittura intensa e precisa che mi ha fatto percepire come reali voci, odori e colori di un'epoca e di una vita intera: il personaggio di Keplero mi ha impressionato per la sua vividezza e mi ha fatto riflettere su quanto la scienza e l'arte del passato siano state in balìa dei capricci del destino e dei potenti, su quanto la vita fosse fragile e minacciata in ogni momento, su come un tempo fosse difficile avere il controllo sulle proprie volontà ed aspirazioni, su come fosse complicato comunicare e conoscere.
Quanta pioggia, quanta fatica, quanta rassegnazione e quanta assoluta, indomita volontà...
Quanta pioggia, quanta fatica, quanta rassegnazione e quanta assoluta, indomita volontà...
April 23, 2012
What to say about a book like this? Clearly very well written. Clearly a fascinating time. But so hard to read about a bunch of people who are all so obnoxious.
July 5, 2016
Close, but still not quite there yet.
June 16, 2025
I read this fictionalized biography of Johannes Kepler, the most important astronomer and mathematician of the early 17th century, with considerable interest. Kepler's laws of planetary motion are a standard topic of the Calculus III course, which I frequently teach. John Banville, the author, is one of my favorite writers (I rated two of his novels, The Untouchable and The Sea, with five stars). However, my feelings about Kepler are quite mixed.
I adore the way Banville explains the astronomer's mathematical work. Kepler embarks on a quest to find a mathematical model that would best fit the experimental data, which could be used as a definition of the main goal of data science. The following fragment neatly characterizes the method of mathematical modeling: "The real mystery & miracle is not that numbers have effect upon things (which they do not!), but that they can express the nature of things; that the world, vast & various & seemingly ruled by chance, is amenable in its basic laws to the rigorous precision & order of mathematics."
The astronomer's quest to find these laws succeeded. Banville writes about Kepler's discovery: "The conclusion was, simply, that the planet's path curves inward on both sides, and outwards again at opposite ends. This oval figure, I readily admit, terrified me. It went against that dogma of circular motion, to which astronomers have held since the first beginnings of our science." That the shape of planets' trajectories is elliptical became Kepler's first law of planetary motion.
However, although Banville's prose is, as usual, wonderful, I have reservations about a literary device used by the author. A long period of Kepler's middle-age years is presented via his letters to fellow astronomers, friends, family, and others. To me, not only does it diminish the consistency of the narrative, but also the fact that the letters are fictitious while actual letters are available (for instance, in the Oxford University catalogue) reduces the credibility and impact of the story. Maybe I am overreacting; maybe when I completely digest my reading of this biography, I will change my mind and assign it a higher rating.
I adore the way Banville explains the astronomer's mathematical work. Kepler embarks on a quest to find a mathematical model that would best fit the experimental data, which could be used as a definition of the main goal of data science. The following fragment neatly characterizes the method of mathematical modeling: "The real mystery & miracle is not that numbers have effect upon things (which they do not!), but that they can express the nature of things; that the world, vast & various & seemingly ruled by chance, is amenable in its basic laws to the rigorous precision & order of mathematics."
The astronomer's quest to find these laws succeeded. Banville writes about Kepler's discovery: "The conclusion was, simply, that the planet's path curves inward on both sides, and outwards again at opposite ends. This oval figure, I readily admit, terrified me. It went against that dogma of circular motion, to which astronomers have held since the first beginnings of our science." That the shape of planets' trajectories is elliptical became Kepler's first law of planetary motion.
However, although Banville's prose is, as usual, wonderful, I have reservations about a literary device used by the author. A long period of Kepler's middle-age years is presented via his letters to fellow astronomers, friends, family, and others. To me, not only does it diminish the consistency of the narrative, but also the fact that the letters are fictitious while actual letters are available (for instance, in the Oxford University catalogue) reduces the credibility and impact of the story. Maybe I am overreacting; maybe when I completely digest my reading of this biography, I will change my mind and assign it a higher rating.
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