At first it had no name. It was the thing itself, the vivid thing. It was his friend. On windy days it danced, demented, waving wild arms, or in the silence of evening drowsed and dreamed, swaying in the blue, the goldeny air. Even at night it did not go away. Wrapped in his truckle bed, he could hear it stirring darkly outside in the dark, all the long night long. There were others, nearer to him, more vivid still than this, they came and went, talking, but they were wholly familiar, almost a part of himself, while it, steadfast and aloof, belonged to the mysterious outside, to the wind and the weather and the goldeny blue air. It was part of the world, and yet it was his friend.
Look, Nicolas, look! See the big tree!
Tree. That was its name. And also: the linden. They were nice words. He had known them a long time before he knew what they meant. They did not mean themselves, they were nothing in themselves, they meant the dancing singing thing outside. In wind, in silence, at night, in the changing air, it changed and yet was changelessly the tree, the linden tree. That was strange.
Everything had a name, but although every name was nothing without the thing named, the thing cared nothing for its name, had no need of a name, and was itself only. And then there were the names that signified no substantial thing, as linden and tree signified that dark dancer. His mother asked him who did he love the best. Love did not dance, nor tap the window with frantic fingers, love had no leafy arms to shake, yet when she spoke that name that named nothing, some impalpable but real thing within him responded as if to a summons, as if it had heard its name spoken. That was very strange.
He soon forgot about these enigmatic matters, and learned to talk as others talked, full of conviction, unquestioningly.
The sky is blue, the sun is gold, the linden tree is green. Day is light, it ends, night falls, and then it is dark. You sleep, and in the morning wake again. But a day will come when you will not wake. That is death. Death is sad. Sadness is what happiness is not. And so on. How simple it all was, after all! There was no need even to think about it. He had only to be, and life would do the rest, would send day to follow day until there were no days left, for him, and then he would go to Heaven and be an angel. Hell was under the ground.
Matthew Mark Luke and John
Bless the bed that I lie on
If I die before I wake
Ask holy God my soul to take
He peered from behind clasped hands at his mother kneeling beside him in the candlelight. Under a burnished coif of coiled hair her face was pale and still, like the face of the Madonna in the picture. Her eyes were closed, and her lips moved, mouthing mutely the pious lines as he recited them aloud. When he stumbled on the hard words she bore him up gently, in a wonderfully gentle voice. He loved her the best, he said. She rocked him in her arms and sang a song.
See saw Margery Daw
This little chicken
Got lost in the straw
Zuerst hatte es keinen Namen. Es war eben das Ding, das lebendige Ding. Es war sein Freund. An windigen Tagen tanzte es, wirr, schwang wild die Arme, oder döste und träumte in der abendlichen Stille, schaukelte in der blauen, der goldgleichen Luft. Selbst Nachts war es nicht verschwunden. Eingepackt in seinem Rollbett konnte er hören, wie es sich dunkel in der Dunkelheit draußen regte, die ganze lange Nacht lang. Es gab Andere, näher bei ihm, noch lebendiger als es, sie kamen und gingen, sprachen, waren ihm doch ganz vertraut, fast ein Teil seiner selbst, während es, unverwandt und unnahbar, zu dem geheimnisvollen Draußen gehörte, zum Wind und dem Wetter und zu der goldgleichen, blauen Luft. Es war Teil der Welt, und doch war es sein Freund.
Schau, Nikolaus, schau! Siehst du den großen Baum?
Baum. Das war sein Name. Und auch: die Linde. Das waren schöne Wörter. Er hatte sie schon lange gekannt, ehe er wusste, was sie bedeuteten. Sie bedeuteten nicht sie selbst, sie waren nichts an sich, sie bedeuteten das tanzende Singen draußen. Im Wind, in der Stille, Nachts, in der sich wandelnden Luft, wandelte es sich auch und war doch unwandelbar der Baum, der Lindenbaum. Seltsam war das.
Alles hatte einen Namen, aber obwohl jeder Name nichts war ohne das benannte Ding, das Ding scherte sich nicht um seinen Namen, brauchte keinen Namen, und war nur es selbst. Und dann gab es Namen, die keine greifbaren Dinge bezeichneten, wie etwa Linde und Baum jenen dunklen Tänzer bezeichneten. Seine Mutter fragte ihn, wen er am liebsten hatte. Liebe tanzte nicht, noch klopfte sie mit irrwitzigen Fingern ans Fenster; die Liebe hatte keine beblätterten Arme, die sie hätte schütteln können, und dennoch, als sie diesen Namen, der nichts benannte, aussprach, erwiderte ein unmerkliches, aber reales Ding in ihm wie auf eine Anrufung, als ob es seinen Namen ausgesprochen gehört hätte. Sehr seltsam war das.
Bald vergaß er diese rätselhaften Dinge, und lernte zu sprechen, wie andere sprachen, voller Überzeugung, fraglos.
Der Himmel ist blau, die Sonne ist golden, der Lindenbaum ist grün. Der Tag ist hell, er endet, die Nacht bricht herein, und dann ist es dunkel. Man schläft, und am Morgen wacht man wieder auf. Aber ein Tag wird kommen, da wacht man nicht mehr auf. Das ist der Tod. Der Tod ist traurig. Trauer ist das, was nicht Glück ist. Und so fort. Wie einfach letzten Endes doch alles war! Man musste nicht einmal darüber nachdenken. Er musste nur da sein, und das Leben würde das Übrige tun, es würde einen Tag dem anderen folgen lassen, bis keine Tage mehr übrig waren, für ihn, und dann würde er in den Himmel kommen und ein Engel sein. Die Hölle war unter der Erde.
Ihr Evangelisten alle vier
Segnet mein Bett für und für
Wenn eh ich erwache tot ich bin
Lass Gott meine Seele zu ihm fliehn
Er spähte durch seine gefalteten Hände nach seiner Mutter, die im Kerzenschein neben ihm kniete. Unter der geglätteten Tracht ihres lockigen Haares war ihr Gesicht blass und ruhig, wie das Gesicht der Madonna auf dem Bild. Ihre Augen waren geschlossen, ihre Lippen bewegten sich, indem sie stumm die frommen Zeilen murmelte, während er sie laut sprach. Wenn er über die schwierigen Wörter stolperte, half sie ihm sanft darauf, mit einer wunderbar sanften Stimme. Sie wiegte ihn in ihren Armen und sang ein Lied.
Wiege dich kleines Lieschen
Wie das Blättchen im Wind
Wiege dich noch ein bisschen
Comment on the opening of Doctor Copernicus,
novel by John Banville
Peter Täumer
A tree is a tree is a tree is a tree. So we may feel as we are stumbling through our lives, taking it and its appearances more or less for granted. They have been classified for us, thus why bother about what seems quite obvious? Alas, being so sure without stopping to reflect leads us into dependencies we may later deeply regret – blind alleys in personal or social or scientific or political life.
It has above all been the great philosophers and scholars who have not just been “at one” with the world: people who have looked closer at the alleged certainties and remained doubtful until “truths” really proved to be truths or had to be refuted and replaced by new concepts.
Nicolaus Copernicus was certainly one of those people, not just satisfied with what they “saw” or were told they were seeing. Else he would not have developed his groundbreaking theories about the universe.
But how does such a critical attitude come about in a person?
In the opening part of his biographical novel, Doctor Copernicus, John Banville traces a development of this type in the early days of his protagonist’s life. What Banville does here is not an external description of what is going on in the senses and mind of the child, he presents the unfolding of awareness from inside, as it were. We are taken right into the child’s perception of phenomena in the world around. His eyes and ears are caught by things, and, as it becomes the senses of a child, particularly things moving. We can easily relate to the soothing and snug impression a tree outside makes on him. And still, at the beginning, the tree is just something, an it: “At first it had no name”.
Little Nicolas gradually realises the distinction between things outside, like the tree, and inside – his family. The tree moves, people move too but they are close, they talk (surely also to him), he can feel their warm touch, warm and alive as he is himself.
It is remarkable how beautifully and understandingly the author treats the introduction of words for certain things to the child. At that point the child cannot ask yet, “What is this?” “What is this called?” He just hears a combination of sounds, /triː/, and does not, cannot react in the way we usually imagine, as - Aha, this thing is called a tree. No, there is just the sound and some vague association with what catches his attention outside the house. Thus Banville by means of literature captures what could otherwise, sensibly but by far less graphically, be explained in a scientific, say, psychological text.
And there are also the first impulses of the child’s critical mind: “That was strange”. “That was very strange.” Nicolas observes that the “tree” is not just “the” tree but a changing something. Even a premonition comes up that, against the Platonic concept, things exist independent of their names, that it is people who attribute names, tags, to objects in the world.
But then his searching, critical mind, as probably that of any child, is – at least temporarily - overwhelmed by what has been accumulated in the brackets of common sense: “The sky is blue…“ etc. etc. The prayers and nursery rhymes little Nicolas learns are stanchions to help integrate the child into the conventional life of the time.
The reader who has followed the protagonist’s development so far may wonder what will become of him later. At this point prospects do not look too promising. Banville has paved the way for the story of a peculiar adventure of the human mind.
John Banville