Kafka
is now, of course, a legendary writer whose very name has become part of our
language, though this would not have been apparent at the time. Even now, however, Brod is less well
known. If he is remembered, it is mainly
for being a friend and biographer of Kafka for whom he was also literary
executor, saving many of Kafka’s writings from being destroyed. (Consider this from A Universal History of the Destruction of Books by Fernando Baez
(p. 231): “Franz Kafka asked Max Brod to burn his notebooks: ‘Dear Max: My last
request: Everything I’ve left behind…is to be burned without being read.’ Brod
did not do it. Kafka asked Dora Diamant
to do the same thing and, faithful to Kafka, she burned the final part of his
diary. Tongue in cheek, Borges suggests
that anyone who wants his books burned should not leave the task to someone
else.” What did Brod’s refusal save for
us? The Trial and The Castle, for starters.)
And
yet Brod himself was a writer too. Again,
from Isaacson (p. 166-167): “In his book The
Redemption of Tycho Brahe, Brod seemed to use (though he sometimes denied
it) Einstein as the model for the character of Johannes Kepler, the brilliant
astronomer who had been Brahe’s assistant in Prague in 1600. The character is devoted to his scientific
work and is always willing to throw away conventional thinking. But in the realm of the personal, he is
protected from ‘the aberrations of feeling’ by his aloof and abstracted air. ‘He had no heart and therefore nothing to
fear from the world,’ Brod wrote. ‘He
was not capable of emotion or love.’
When the novel came out, a fellow scientist, Walther Nernst, said to
Einstein, ‘You are this man Kepler.’” This
is a rather intriguing recommendation for a novel first published in German in
1915 as Tycho Brahes Weg Zu Gott, as
is its being dedicated to Franz Kafka.
(The first American Edition was published in 1928. The novel is also known in English as Tycho Brahe’s Path to God.)
Einstein
likely needs little introduction; however, the reader might appreciate a little
background on Kepler and, certainly, Brahe.
Johannes Kepler was a German mathematician who is famous for his laws of
planetary motion. It was Kepler who
determined that planets actually travel in elliptical paths around the sun
rather than the circular paths that had been a cornerstone of astronomy for millennia. Coupled with Copernicus’ heliocentric solar
system, this laid the foundation of our modern understanding of the universe.
Sadly,
what is little remembered is the important role that the Danish nobleman and astronomer
Tycho Brahe played in this leap forward, in its own way as much a breakthrough
as Einstein’s relativity theory. Night
after night, for more than 20 years, without the aid of a telescope, on a small
island off the coast of Denmark, Brahe and a cadre of assistants measured the
positions of the stars and planets to a degree of accuracy never before
achieved. Then, with the ascendency of a
new Danish king, Brahe was forced to move to the court of Prague. He hoped to set-up a new observatory and
start again, but Brahe did not long survive his move. And yet, it was in this last year at Prague that
Kepler became one of Brahe’s assistants.
It was in this year that Kepler first encountered the heft of Brahe’s
data. A number of years would pass and
Brahe would be long dead before Kepler worked out the details, but it all began
here.
 |
| The Redeption of Tycho Brahe by Max Brox (First American Edition, 1928) |
In
The Redemption of Tycho Brahe, Brod
gives us a fictional glimpse of that brief period when Kepler and Brahe were
together at Prague. Dominated by Brahe’s
giant personality, this novel shows us the spirit of a nobleman with brilliance
and temper (he lost his nose in a sword duel as a young man and had various prosthetics)
who was simultaneously trying to manage a huge household and understand the
secrets of the universe. What action there
is in the story centers on various problems within the Brahe family: a
knocked-up daughter engaged to one of Brahe’s assistants whose jealousy of
Kepler’s growing status drives him into a literal rebellion against Tycho,
whose two sons mismanage a situation their father refuses to address.
But
the real story here is Tycho’s various rages against the dying of the
light. He senses that, despite his years
of labor, he has not been granted the ability to penetrate the secrets of the
universe. He also senses that Kepler has
the power. He wants Kepler to work with
him, to justify his life’s work, but Kepler’s eye always seems to be turned
inward. Kepler skulks through this novel
as a near silent shadow against the wall, his entire attention apparently on
the scientific problems he’s bent on solving.
Ironically, both men glide through this novel basically unaware of the
family drama swirling about them and, ultimately, both men have their eyes
opened. Brahe steps up, settles his
family disputes, and sets Kepler up for success despite political intrigues and
obstacles. Kepler comes to understand
the importance of what Brahe has given him and where it will lead.
Brod’s
novel is not perfect. Modern scholarship
has changed our view of Brahe and Kepler somewhat from what Brod gives us. (See Tycho& Kepler by Kitty Ferguson for a good dual biography and Heavenly Intrigue by Joshua and Anne-Lee
Gilder if you like conspiracy theories.
Modern forensics appears to show that Brahe was poisoned and who is the
main suspect? You guessed it—Kepler!) Still, it’s aged fairly well, especially for
those of us who appreciate more formal prose than readers tend to get these
days. And this is a book of ideas rather
than plot, which can be trying at times.
Fortunately, Brod’s Brahe is a pleasure to behold: big, if a bit bipolar
and long-winded on occasion. And Kepler
is intriguing, even if you don’t try to see Einstein in him. If you do, you can start to imagine what the
genius must have been like to know in life.
And
therein lays great value. How many of us
have known scientific geniuses on the order of an Einstein, Kepler or
Brahe? It’s rare in literature to have
an opportunity to get a real sense of the struggles of high order science. In creating Brahe and Kepler in this novel,
Brod has given us a peek at their passions.
It’s worth hunting this one up and giving it a read.
Until
Next Book…
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