John Banville - Doctor Copernicus

To the Most Illustrious Dr Johannes Schöner, a First Account of the Book of Revolutions by the Most Learned & Excellent Mathematician, the Reverend Father, Doctor Nicolas of Torun, Canon of Ermland, from a Young Student of Mathematics.

What a start it must have given old Schöner (he taught me in mathematics and astronomy at Nuremberg) to find himself the unwitting target, so to speak, of this controversial work. The dedication was a piece of cunning, for Schöner’s name could not but lend respectability to an account which, I knew, would stir up the sleeping hive of academic bees and set them buzzing. Also, for good measure, and in the hope of placating Dantiscus somewhat, I appended the Encomium Borussiae , that crawling piece in praise of Prussia, its intellectual giants, its wealth in amber and other precious materials, its glorious vistas of bog and slate-grey sea, which had me wracking my brain for pretty metaphors and classical allusions. And since I had decided to print at Danzig, that city being but a day’s ride away, instead of at Nuremberg, and since the Mayor there, one John of Werden, had invited me to visit him, I did not let the opportunity pass to devote a few warm words to the city and the lusty Achilles that it had for Mayor.

The Narratio prima was completed on the 23rd of September, in 1539. By then I had returned with Copernicus to Frauenburg. Although I cannot say that I was overjoyed to find myself once more in that dreary town, I was relieved nevertheless to be away from that fool Giese, not to mention that magicked castle of Löbau. (Leaving Raphaël was another matter, of course. .) Alone with Copernicus in his cold tower, at least the issues were clear, I mean I could see clearly the chasm that lay between his horror of change and my firm faith in progress. But I shall deal with that subject later. Did I say we were alone in the tower — how could I forget that other presence planted in our midst like some dreadful basilisk, whose sullen glare followed my every movement, whose outraged silence hung about us like a shroud? I mean Anna Schillings, frightful woman. She did not fulfil her threat to be gone when we returned, and was there waiting for us grimly, with her arms folded under that enormous chest. O no, Anna, I have not forgotten you. She cannot have been very much younger than Copernicus, but she possessed a vigour, fuelled by bitterness and spite, which belied her years. Me she loathed, with extraordinary passion; she was jealous. I would not have put it past her to try to do me in, and I confess that, faced with those bowls of greenish gruel on which she fed us, the thought of poison oftimes crossed my mind. And speaking of poisoning, I suspect Copernicus may have considered ridding himself thus of this troublesome woman: I remember watching him concocting some noisome medicine which he had prescribed for one of her innumerable obscure complaints, grinding the pestle, and grinding it, with a wistful, horrid little smile, as though he were putting out eyes. Of course, he would not have dreamed of daring so bold a solution. Anyway, most like he feared even more than the harridan herself the prospect of her ghost coming back to haunt him.

He insisted that I lodge with him in the tower. I was flattered, until I realised that he wanted me near him not for love of my company, but so that he would have an ally against the Schillings. In truth, however, I must admit I was not of much use to him in that respect. O I could handle her, no question of that, she soon learned to beware the edge of my tongue, but when she could get no good of me she redoubled her efforts on the unfortunate Copernicus, and fairly trounced him; so that my presence in fact exacerbated his problems. Whenever she drew near he winced, and sank into the carapace of his robe, as though fearing that his ears were about to be boxed. Well, I had little sympathy for him. He had only to take his courage in his hands (what a curious phrase that is) and kick her out, or poison her, or denounce her as a witch, and all would have been well. What, anyway, was the hold she had on him? Apparently he had rescued her from a knocking shop, or so they said; she was a cousin of some sort. I confess it made me feel quite nauseous to ponder the matter, but I surmised that some cuntish ritual, performed years before when they were still capable of that kind of thing, had subjected him to her will. I have seen it before, that phenomenon, men turned into slaves by the tyranny of the twat. Women. I have nothing against them, in their place, but I know that they have only to master a few circus tricks in bed and they become veritable Circes. Ach, leave it, Rheticus, leave it.

When I say I had little sympathy for him in his plight, I do not mean that I was indifferent. The Narratio prima was completed, and I was ready to set off for Danzig, and after Danzig it was imperative that I return to Wittenberg, for I had already overstretched my term of leave; all this would mean that I could not be back in Frauenburg before the beginning of the following summer. By then, God knows what disasters would have occurred. Copernicus was an old man, far from robust, and his will was crumbling. Dantiscus had renewed his campaign, and almost by the week now he sent letters regarding Anna Schillings, bristling with threats under a veneer of sweetness and hypocritical concern for the astronomer’s reputation; each letter, I could see it in Copernicus’s stricken grey countenance, further jeopardised the survival of the manuscript. I knew, remembering what Giese had said that day in the pine wood below the walls of Löbau, that when Dantiscus spoke of his duty to extirpate vice from his diocese et cetera, he was in fact speaking of something else entirely: viz. his burning jealousy of Copernicus. Would the Meister’s nerve hold until I returned, or, alone against the Schillings’s bullying and in the face of Dantiscus’s threats, would he burn his book, and bolt for the safety and silence of his burrow? It was a risk I could not take. If the Schillings could not be got rid of — and I despaired early of shifting that grim mass of flesh and fury — then the one for whom she was a weapon must be persuaded that the war he was waging was already lost. (Another riddle — solution follows.) I made a last, token effort to wrest the manuscript from the old man’s clutches, but he only looked at me, mournfully, accusingly, and spoke not a word; I packed my bags and bade farewell to Frauenburg.

* * *

I shall not dwell upon my stay at Danzig. The Mayor, mine host, Fat Jack of Werden, was a puffed-up boorish burgher, whose greatest love, next to foodstuffs, that is, was the making of sententious speeches in praise of himself. He was pleased as punch to have as his guest that most exotic of beasts, a Lutheran scholar from Germany, and he missed no opportunity of showing me off to his friends, and, more especially, to his enemies. O, I had a rollicking time in Danzig. Still, the printer to whom I brought the manuscript of the Narratio was a civil enough fellow, and surprisingly capable too, for a jobber, I mean, out there in the wilds. The first edition came off his presses in February of 1540. Copies were sent to Frauenburg, and also to Löbau Castle, whence Giese dispatched one to the Lutheran Duke Albrecht of East Prussia at Königsberg — a shrewd move, as I was later to discover, which nevertheless annoyed Copernicus intensely, there being an old grudge there. A piece of shrewdness of my own was well rewarded, when my good friend Perminius Gassarus, on receipt of the copy I sent him, immediately brought out a second edition at Basle, which he financed out of his own pocket, thereby sparing me no little expense. For it was a costly business, this publishing, and, despite what they may say, I got no help, not a penny, from that old skinflint at Frauenburg, for whose benefit it was all done. Remember, these volumes to the Duke et cetera were delivered gratis (although Perminius, to my secret amusement, not only repaid my gift in the manner already recorded, but also sent me a gold piece, the fool), and as well as to Giese and of course Copernicus himself, copies went also to Schöner, and Melanchton, and to many other scholars and churchmen — including Dantiscus, in whose presence, at Heilsberg Castle, I first saw my own book in print. .