Starry Night: Astronomers and poets read the sky by David Levy,
Prometheus, $18, ISBN 1573928879
PUBLIC suspicion about science does not extend to astronomy. It is popular,
and astronomers are too. You have only to go out at night to see for yourself
the working material of astronomy. The spectacle of the sky on a clear night is
beautiful and mysterious, a combination of infinite seduction.
David Levy鈥檚 Starry Night is a personal account of his belief that
science and poetry both deal with humanity and its relation to the Universe.
Gazing at the stars鈥� numinous display almost inevitably arouses feelings of
wonder, questions of time and existence, the essence of poetry. Levy pursues
this association by considering the poetry and the poets who have been affected
by the development of astronomy from Copernicus up to our own times.
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It is a surprising and rewarding journey that is accompanied by some
well-known verse but also by much more that is unfamiliar and striking. He is
particularly fascinated by the now unfashionable Tennyson, who was well aware of
scientific progress in the 19th century.
This is an unusual and pleasurable book from the co-discoverer of several
comets, one of which, Shoemaker-Levy 9, crashed spectacularly into Jupiter in
1994. And you will find that Coleridge, Keats, Tennyson and Robert Frost have
apposite things to say.