"Com'era innocente, com'era inutilmente amabile la superficie del mondo! Il mistero delle cose semplici lo assali'. Una festiva rondine sfreccio' attraverso una scompigliante folata di fumo di lavanda. Avrebbe piovuto di nuovo. gli giunse il suono di una corda pizzicata. Sorrise, in ascolto: era forse la musica delle sfere?" (p. 71)

"Cosa aveva guidato suo padre? Quali voglie impossibili si erano agitate e avevan dato calci dentro di lui? E che cosa? Il pestare di piedi durante le marce? il puzzo penetrante della paura e dell'attesa sul campo di battaglia, all'alba? il calore bruto e il delirio di qualche locanda lungo la strada? Era possibile amare la mera azione, il brivido di un fare incessante? Dinanzi ai suoi occhi tristemente meditativi ricomparve la finestra. Questo era il mondo: quel giardino, i suoi figli, quei papaveri. Sono una piccola creatura, il mio orizzonte e' ristretto. Allora, come una improvvisa inondazione di gelida acqua, venne il pensiero della morte, essa stringeva in pugno un mondo di spada arrugginita." (p. 108)

"Il cerchio e' il portatore delle armonie pure, le pure armonie sono innate nell'anima, e cosi' anima e cerchio sono una cosa sola.
Che semplicita', che bellezza." (p. 192)

"La ragione per cui certi rapporti producono un accordo ed altri una dissonanza non e' comunque da ricercarsi nella aritmetica, bensi' nella geometria ..." (p. 193) ( )

Banville continues his exploration of brilliant scientists whose fleeting moments of rational lucidity allow them to pierce the cages made of religious identities and superstitions that they inhabit. This novel is not as successful as its predecessor, Doctor Copernicus, as the cultural impact of Kepler's discoveries are still rather opaque to me. Clearly the Copernican revolution had tremendous implications for humans who thought they were at the center of the universe, but I am not sure why Kepler's insights (e.g. planetary orbits are elliptical) would matter a whole lot to spiritual and political authorities. Judging from this novel, elites just saw astronomers as playthings, kind of like how Jeffrey Epstein saw the superstar academics he collected. Kepler the character is not terribly interesting--he is rather passive as his life is buffeted by the political and religious strife of Renaissance-era Germany. ( )

What I can say? It was my first Banville book and it won't be the last. We experience Kepler's Angst... ( )

Johannes Kepler wants to unite the heavens in a glorious mathematical and astronomical harmony, and he has the genius to do that very thing. Everything else about his life is out of tune, from his own abrasive personality to his marriage and his religion as well as his reliance on wealth patrons to fund his scientific endeavours and with whom he is always at odds or out of step.

I think Bannville's books are less about either the explicated sciences or the accurate biographies of these men, but about the hidden inner lives as the grapple with the huge questions of the universe and discover that they can gain knowledge but not meaning or understanding, and they are forced to question the worth of this undertaking when set against the banal vicissitudes of life and the looming certainty of death. ( )

When I think about the great scientific minds of the distant past, I always imagine them constantly occupied with their lofty pursuits and all their needs somehow provided. Banville puts the reader right inside Kepler's mind which is so often caught up in the petty details of life, his unhappy marriage, deaths of his children, the constant search for a patron and money. But then occasionally you get a glimpse of his genius which leads him to look again at what was known about geometry and astronomy at the time. His Kepler sees the physical world and the people around him as alien and usually hostile. When he stops to take a look around, he is always an observer, never a participant. He lacks the most basic social skills. Yet there are those who see his genius and give him the time to do his work. Banville is an amazing writer and gives a good sense of life at the turn of the seventeenth century. ( )