Gris como la Prusia del Baltico, una historia sombria sobre una mente brillante, supongo que asi era el inicio del renacimiento al norte de Italia. Mucho mas que una biografia de Copernico, es un vistazo a la historia de la epoca, las guerras entre Polonia y Alemania y la gran revolucion de Lutero contra el catolicismo. Muy interesante. Ve preparado a esta lectura, es cruda como la epoca.

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.

Beautiful prose. Deadly dull book. Utterly empty. This is the third book of Banville's I've read, the others being the second and third part of the trilogy. Prose and critical praise notwithstanding, it'll be the last. As far as I can tell, he has nothing to say.

A Rating of 4.6. Weaving what little is known about his life, John Banville tells the story of the life of the man who gave re-birth to
the heliocentric theory. Banville gives us a Copernicus who lived a
hard scrabble life right till his death. Looking forward to reading the
other two books in the trilogy.

not the easiest read but worth the effort!

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.

To me, this novel is less about the heliocentric theory, and more about the price paid by the two brothers for their Apollonian vs. Dionysian lifestyles. That said, Banville is an excellent writer, able to create a setting in which you can lose yourself and, in this case, be informed again about resistance to change.
It was interesting to me that I was reminded of Hesse in the early going, and this hearkening back to one of my favorite authors only grew stronger as the novel progressed. Not a matter, I think, of imitation, but a similar sensibility to the conflicted nature of man, and his attempts to find answers to an insoluble dilemma.
So, all in all a very good read, as I have come to expect from Banville, quite grim in its presentation of sixteenth-century Europe, but with a light at the end of the tunnel.

"'I believe in mathematics,' he muttered, 'nothing more."

What a beautiful statement! Nicolaus Copernicus, the sixteenth-century mathematician, astronomer, physician, and economist, one of the greatest revolutionaries in the history of science who formulated the heliocentric model of the then known Universe, utters the above phrase during a conversation that happened some time in the 1490s at the University of Bologna. At least according to John Banville, the author of Doctor Copernicus (1976), a book that is quite hard to categorize: is it a historical novel or perhaps a fictionalized biography? In some places it even reads like a history textbook.

While I like reading biographies I find it hard to review them: one would need to know almost as much as the author about the subject of the biography to provide a worthwhile critique; I know little about Copernicus even if he is a national hero in my native country, the most famous Pole in history. Here lies another problem. Throughout my education - and I even graduated from a high school in Warsaw named after Copernicus - I had been invariably assured about utter Polishness of Copernicus. From early childhood I had known him as Mikolaj Kopernik while in Banville's book the name is Nicolas Koppernigk. I am now risking an accusation of treason when I quote Banville who has Copernicus' uncle, bishop Lucas Waczelrodt (Watzenrode), tell young Copernicus the following:

"'You are not German, nephew, no, nor are you a Pole, nor even a Prussian. You are an Ermlander, simple. Remember it.'"

Ermland (in Polish 'Warmia') was an autonomous political entity during Copernicus time and only later became a part of the Polish crown. We will probably never know what language was spoken in the astronomer's childhood home. It is known that he was fluent in Polish, German, and Latin, which was also the language of most of his writings.

The first two parts of the book are written from the third-person omniscient point of view and events from Copernicus' life are recounted in basically chronological order on the historical, political, and social backdrop of his times. Two central themes that the biography revolves about are Copernicus' lifelong quest to understand the structure of the Universe and his reticence to publish his masterwork, De Revolutionibus de Orbium Celestium.

In Part III, entitled Cantus Mundi, the author switches to the first-person narration by Georg Joachim de Porris, called Rheticus, who was Copernicus' pupil and who is considered responsible for getting his master to agree to publish De Revolutionibus. To me, this is by far the best part of the book, one that speaks to me with the strong feeling of realism that I find possible only in very well-written fiction. Also - this is just my personal proclivity - the part reads most literary to me with great prose, which occasionally turns quite strong like in:

"Yes, Dantiscus was a brilliant, fearless and elegant man. And a swine. And a fraud. And a lying, vindictive cunt."

I think that the appeal of the third part is a result of the author's device of having us look at Copernicus not directly from Banville's point of view but filtered through Rheticus' view.

Readers who like plots in their books will likely enjoy the turbulent story of Koppernigk's relationship with his brother Andreas. I appreciate that Banville underemphasizes the story of Koppernigk's relations with Anna Schillings, his housekeeper: these things belong to popular literature. On a somewhat related note, I found the background motif of the Teutonic Knights Order fascinating. Banville imagines the Grand Master Albrecht's conversation with Koppernigk in a powerful monologue that begins with:

"'Ah. The common people. But they have suffered always, and always will. It is in a way what they are for. [...] The common people? -- pah. What are they to us?'"

An interesting read!

Three-and-a-half stars.

Gran novela y mejor escritor

Interesante. Me hubiera gustado que profundizara más en sus teorías científicas. Descripción muy precisa de el carácter introspectivo de este genio de la ciencia.

Loved the historical complexity, the depiction of how Copernicus struggled to complete and present his revolutionary astronomical discoveries amid the Reformation’s rampant politico-religious struggles. Yet something felt off in how Banville handled character development in this piece. Specifically, I never felt emotionally close to Doc C and so found the ending a bit of a whimper.

Still, Banville, good. His beautiful sentences. Recommended.

One of the strangest novels I’ve read, but at times, brilliant.