‘For your tomb, I place the wonderful star’: Science in Johannes Kepler’s funerary poems

Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) wrote Neo-Latin verse throughout his life. The complete edition of his poetry contains several poems on the death of his patrons, colleagues, friends, and family members. In some of them, Kepler intertwines the themes of grief and solace with his own astronomical observations and theories. The seminar will focus on three such examples: the funerary poems for Emperor Rudolf II, for nine-year-old Helene Wacker and for Kepler’s six-year-old son Friedrich. I will ask how Kepler uses astronomy as a lens for fond memories and (felt or performative) emotions of loss, as he mines his Copernicanism, the ‘egg-shaped’ orbit of Mars, the new star of 1604, and a supposed transit of Mercury for poetic conceits. Furthermore, I will explore how these poems are connected to Kepler’s astronomical publications, arguing that funerary poetry offers Kepler a space to make powerful statements about the ‘immortality’ of his science.

Irina Tautschnig is Postdoctoral Research Associate on the AHRC/DFG-funded project "Scientific Poetry and Poetics in Britain and Germany, from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment” (SPPRE; https://scientificpoetry.org/). Before joining the University of York, she held posts as Doctoral Researcher on the ERC-funded project “Nova Scientia: Early Modern Scientific Literature and Latin” (NOSCEMUS) at the University of Innsbruck (2017–2023) and as Research and Teaching Assistant in Medieval and Neo Latin Literature at the University of Bonn (2023–2024). Irina works on Neo-Latin and New Ancient Greek Literature, with a particular focus on Neo-Latin scientific poetry between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. She is currently editing and translating a substantial number of Neo-Latin scientific poems for the trilingual anthology that is being produced in the SPPRE project.

Register to attend via Zoom