Everything under the Moon is in uproar, is undone. She distils us, sorts the soul from the bloody shreds, from the crotches' sediment, from the body's devilry. Eye against eye, pubic bone thrust against pubic bone. An eternal now, not frozen in being but in beginning and end. With its teeth sunk in and its member pounded into flesh, smashing and spluttering. Entangled and self-devouring, merely mirrored in the pale eye above. Never seen.

(Original title: Alt under Månen - Everything under the Moon)

As in the first part of his trilogy, Awake, Voetmann gives the reader an experience that is close to time travel. You are whipped away from the comfort of your armchair and transported to a visceral world of cold, of pain, of confusion, of drunkenness and disease and debauchery.
And why, indeed, should it be clear and cogent to us, this world of astronomical observations living alongside alchemy and speculation on how the world will end? Of course it's barely comprehensible. For we think in binary categories: you are either a magical thinker or a scientist. Read any information about Tycho Brahe and you are ly to light on the accuracy of his observations, how he realised that wind or the movement of buildings might influence readings, thus insisted on mounting the massive sextants and quadrants directly on the bedrock. An astronomer, before the telescope was invented, who later worked with Kepler in Prague. A scientist?
All well and good, yes, but he still had to interpret those observations. And his interpretations, well, they are a product of his 16th century mind.

I have perused the sky and seen a light presaging blood and flames. It shone brightly and unmistakably. It proves that now more than ever is the time to drink. Hasten to meet your end before you are forced to learn what the new light portends. Cannons are cast in the furnaces of heaven, and soon their thunder will split your ears. For every light in heaven, a disease germinates below, soon to emerge from the bottom of the cesspool named Hafnia Metropolis.
Thus speaks he who alone among you has perused the sky. It was you who ignited the treacherous flame now predicting your funeral. So wrap your lips around the mouth of a bottle and reach for the kitchen maid's lap.denmark12 s Paul FulcherAuthor 2 books1,470

Each has his own occupation. Mine is the heavens. Erik has his preposterous gold-making. Falk Goye, beyond preposterous, has his commentary on the Apocalypse.

Sublunar (2023) is Johanne Sorgenfri Ottosen's translation of Harald Voetmann's Alt under månen (2014)

This is the second of what the UK publisher, Lolli Editions, describes as an "erudite and grotesque trilogy about humankind's inhuman will to conquer nature", after Awake (2022) from the same translator from the original Vågen (2011) - my review.

Whereas Awake was focused on Pliny the Elder (AD 23/24 – 79) and his nephew Pliny the Younger, Sublunar is centred around the Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), the last major figure of the pre-telescope era of astronomy. Voetmann explained the reasons for this choice in an interview with his publisher, Denise Rose Hansen of Lolli Editions.

Tycho Brahe had the same urge to control nature. In one of his poems, he writes about capturing the Muse of Heaven (Urania) and imprisoning her in his castle that was called Uraniborg. Nature personified as a woman and then this figure of the male conqueror. But, un Pliny, Tycho made real changes and his work had enormous consequences, shattering the whole vision of the universe of his day, and challenging the notion of eternity. There was a doubleness to him as well. He was both the exact scientist and a mystic; an astrologer and an alchemist.

The final part of the trilogy, Syner og fristelser (2015) is based on the eleventh-century German mystic Othlo of St. Emmeram, and will appear in 2024 in English provisionally titled isions and Temptations.

A more recent interview with the publisher, focused on Sublunar, can be found here, where he describes the form of the novel:

When I found the Meteorological Diary, I knew I had to write about [Brahe]. It consists of meteorological notes taken by Brahe’s assistants over a span of 15 years on the island of Hven. It is mostly about the weather, but occasionally there are glimpses of life in Brahe’s castle Uraniborg. That book gave me the form [...] I wanted to follow the year, month by month, in the style of a Renaissance almanack. These almanacks often contained illustrations, poems, and stories in between the descriptions of the months of the agricultural year, so it gave room for different narrators and styles.

The main section of the text comes from monthly chapters titled 'The Year of the Assistants' which draw on the metrological journals from the island of Hven, given to Brahe by the Danish King so that he could establish an observatory for his research.

Southeasterlies, still and clear into night, then it started clouding over and was rather cold and overcast. Last night Tyge's sister Sophia arrived. On the same day an unusual fish was caught near Kronborg and exhibited. Southeast, sun and wind, dingy fog at night and vapors everywhere on the horizon. Dark and clear commixed, mist from time to time, coming off the beach it seems, southward still. Fog, rising from the soil it seems, from the beds and fields and meadows, from plow furrow and mud pool, blending smoothly with the mist rolling ashore. The two mists weave closely around us. Brine and loamy earth pervade our every breath, and though the joint effluvia of both elements can be contained in the air they have reached no clear agreement; the air is quarrelsome, caught in the strife of her sisters' brawl. This is called healthy sea air.

But Sublunar begins with a translation from Latin (via Danish) of an elegy written by Brahe in 1572 to his twin brother who died in the womb, where Brahe imagines his twin pitying him for having to endure the suffering of mortal flesh, and other chapters titled 'Letters from Uraniborg' (the name of the observatory he built) have Brahe addressing his sibling.

Brother of my heart,

My sight is yet unclouded but my eyes ache with recurring pains.

Many visitors this summer: Erik Lange, Falk Goye, Sophi.

Work at night, then discourse in the summer rooms throughout the early morning as dawn breaks and damp covers Uraniborg's gardens below.

Each has his own occupation. Mine is the heavens. Erik has his preposterous gold-making. Falk Goye, beyond preposterous, has his commentary on the Apocalypse.

And Sophi — Sophi sleeps at night and spends the day strolling the garden or studying her nativity book. She prunes the roses and draws horoscopes for the servants. Womenfolk possess a certain coolness of manner, the methodical cool which at first glance may seem suited to scientific pursuits but seldom is. Their manner is not founded on the mastery of passion, does not stand in opposition to anything. It is the mere absence of passion, and so to women any occupation is as good as the next. Such is the case for most women at least. I do not doubt Sophi's abilities, but her urge to uncover nature's mysteries is weak and such a task would give her no more pleasure than the pleasure a kitchen maid gets from the careful cleaning of a rabbit, the chopping of its meat into cubes for a pie.

And as this quote suggests, there are three other key characters, Sophia Brahe, Tycho's sister, whose scientific researchers were more advanced (and given more public credit by her brother) than this note would suggest, and two fellow nobles trying to decode the world's mysteries, but whose research fell, un Brahe's, the wrong side of the arcane-mystical / academic-scientific divide, Falk Gøye, who in the novel dabbles with the apocryphal (his theory that the world will end its days as glass) and Erik Lange, who lost his fortune on alchemical speculation but ended up marrying Sophie. Another section has Falk Gøye's theories in his own words, and a further section commentary from a travelling companion on Erik Lange's journey around Europe, which suggests his depleted fortune also resulted from excessive drinking and whoring.

And the novel is illustrated by various engravings from the 17h century alchemical handbook Atalanta Fugiens.



It all adds up to a heady and impressive mix, and for me more successful that the rather sketchy Awake, albeit a book that isn't for readers in search of a linear plot.

Read 22-23 December, 4 stars2024 sub-lolli-2023-511 s2 comments Tony954 1,675 Read

This the second volume of a trilogy in progress. The first dealt with Pliny the Elder and his study of the natural world. This one follows Tycho Brahe and his search of the heavens. The style is the same, meaning there are various speakers, not always named, often epistolary. By my count, there were fewer grotesqueries in this one, but enough dwarfs and whores to keep things moving. I was often lost but would be awakened by some pearl of a sentence, : One can only conclude this structure must be an institute for botched and bungled learning where the manna of wisdom is boiled to a gruel slurped by edentulous bookworms.

Still, I am glad I persevered, because the last fifteen pages, Of Erik Lange's Travels, was a delight of rollicking depravity. A nice way to end the year.

_____ _____ _____ _____

There are, it's been noted, coincidences in our reading journey, how one book may dovetail or lead to another. Well . . .

Two days ago, I was reading a section that began: On Walpurgis Night . . . A few sentences later there was a Walpurgis bonfire. I had never heard of Walpurgis Night or its bonfires before, despite a long life, but it didn't seem important enough to open up the laptop and seek a definition. Yesterday, still reading this, a ubiquitous big blue van delivered a CD of Octets by Mendelssohn and Bruch. There was a painting on the front, so I turned the CD over to see what it was.



Walpurgis Night, by Gustav Adolph Spangenberg.

Spooky.danish11 s Matthew Ted846 829

135th book of 2023.

I don't see the Danish writer Voetmann around much but here he is with the second installment of his allusive trilogy. New Directions and Lolli are releasing his translation, both of which are great publishers. I read the first book, Awake, last year whilst in Denmark. That book dealt with Pliny the Elder and Younger and was a strange amalgamation of biographical fragments, strange sex, weird digressions and, generally, a completely uncoherent narrative. The same is true of the second book, now focusing on (as focussed as a Voetmann novel can be) astronomer Tycho Brahe. It is another kaleidoscopic narrative that swims with lyrical prose but utter confusion. An observatory, an island, a dwarf, lots of drunkenness, piss, weird sexual practices (akin to Pynchon-sex), beatings, descriptions of the stars and the sky, and numerous narrators, letters, and other forms thrown in. It's a pain to read because most of it makes no 'sense', but it's a pleasure to read with its wildness, originality and peculiarity. Rumour has it that the final book in the trilogy will focus on a German mystic of some description, so I await that with bumbling and befuddled breathing.21st-century lit-nordic read-2023 ...more11 s2 comments isabell ???228 5 Shelved as 'dnf'

too much piss for me babesdanish-lit fiction historical ...more5 s Brian205 18

Dark rain almost the entire day; evening sky red after ? had set, though dark at night, southeast. I walked down to the beach with Jakob at sunset. We skipped stones under the smouldering clouds and played bare-foot, gathered shells and pebbles to make patterns near the waterline, and screamed at the waves when they took away our designs. [51]20243 s Andy Weston2,653 205

I'm breaking the rules here, as this is the second in a trilogy, from which I have not yet read the first.

The books concern the son of a Danish nobleman, Tycho Brahe gained royal funding to build an astronomical observatory on an island tin the sixteenth century, known as Hven. He also pursued alchemical projects and had a dwarf jester named Jeppe. The first in the trilogy was to do with Pliny the Elder, but the plot is very much secondary to the antics of Tycho and his entourage, so I doubt reading them in the wrong order matters at all.

Voetmann has a unique disjointed style, with a lyrical touch to his writing that occasionally produces stand-out sentences. These make day to day life on the island compelling in its grotesqueness; a man frozen dead with his trousers and underwear round his ankles mid-defecation has “excrement only halfway expelled from his bowels.” Children are beaten with birch branches on Good Friday to commemorate Christ’s suffering, while for most of the year the island is shrouded in mist, “no other place on Earth has such poor visibility.”

Its Python-esque at times, though not entirely written for laughs. I'm left with the feeling that sooner or later Voetmann will get it right, that blend of humour / character sketch / plot and produce something exceptional.
historical-fiction translated2 s Anna392 12

This was weird. I still don't know what I have read; I don't know what it is about; I don't know what it wants. And yet I could not put it down. It is confusing, it is brilliant, and at times I simply felt that Harald Voetmann had deliciously lost the plot. There is a lot of weather in the book, there is sex and death and - I don't want to write this, but I have to - dwarf semen. There are orgies and original poems written by Tycho Brahe to his dead twin, there are stars and kings and travel logs.

I'd to give you a clear and concise summary, but as I said - I don't really know what I read. But I enjoyed reading it, and I may even try to read more of Voetmann's prose. Who knows? Maybe next time I'll understand more.2 s Aeyun69 1 follower

Det forekommer mig at der er mange nutidige danske forfattere, der ikke helt kan få greb om stil, og hvordan man bruger den. Voetmann har stil som ingen anden. Voetmann forstår det danske sprog. Jeg er uendeligt imponeret.

Jeg havde dog en anelse besvær med at få greb om historien i sig selv. Det første lange stykke tid gik det ikke op for mig, at der var tre fortællere (det var der måske heller ikke). Jeg bliver nødt til at læse denne bog igen, men det er noget jeg vil gøre med glæde. 2 s K's Bognoter938 60

skind. Der skides, smaskes, savles og spyttes. Der fryses og sultes. Der bliver drukket, horet og begået alle slags utugt og trolddomskunster. Børn og dyr bliver pint og plaget, dværge og krøblinge ydmyget og latterliggjort, kvinder torteret, tyende tævet til døde.

Velkommen til Tyge Brahes Uranienborg på Hven anno sidst i 1600-tallet, hjemstedet for renæssancens danske lys, inkarnationen af den ypperste videnskab – som der ser ud i Harald Voetmanns vellykkede, sorte og groteske vision Alt under månen.

Læs min anmeldelse her: http://bognoter.dk/2014/12/25/harald-...on-my-bookshelf1 Cleo103

Incredibly interesting parts that never manage to add up to anything beyond a grotesque collage. Still, a hell of a collage 1 Bri35

3.5 stars

This was a very interesting story to read, I had never read anything quite it, and I did enjoy it for the most part. I love his writing style, its full of such creative metaphors and poetic language that just makes me feel my mind is constantly expanding through every sentence.

I do have to say that at times I was confused as to which character was going through the scenes and I sometimes failed to see where the story was going, but that's on me not him. I think its just a complex read, and along with his writing style, it may be harder to decipher the language.

I thought the descriptions of characters and settings were very strong, I could smell, see and hear everything that was going on and now I really want a Jester. Rick135 5

When I was a kid, I wrote a Pynchonian farce about Tycho Brahe that didn’t make much sense. This Voetmann, with his superior access to archival material and Danish, did it much better—and with considerably more shit, semen, and blood. Bg96234 1 follower

Dark comedy. Daniel65 1 follower

The scientific revolution wasn't all fun and games. Finn Wiedemann127 6

Sprogligt og kulturhistorisk interessant. Tilrettelagt som en række breve og beretninger fra personer i og omkring Tycho Brahe (hans assistenter). Kancellisprog med sjov syntaks og med mange gamle ord og udtryk. Der drikkes vin i stride strømme, blodet flyder fra gummerne og sæden dypper. Vejret, naturen, stjernerne og døden er tæt på. Sanseligt og kropsligt, til tider en smule kedeligt. Ikke ligefrem en humørbombe af en bog, en mørk grundtone løber gennem bogen og er med til indramme den historiske periode, som er 1500-tallet. Ebbe Schultze4

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