Entretiens sur la pluralite des mondes, or, On the plurality of worlds. Bernard de Bovier de Fontenelle, 1853.

Entretiens sur la pluralite des mondes, or, On the plurality of worlds. Bernard de Bovier de Fontenelle, 1853.

The Midnight Sun revolves around St. Petersburg... Fontenelle's Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes, or, On the plurality of worlds, is not a seething exposé of 18th century mystical Blakeian religious fervor as we thought it must be from the frontispiece, but an elucidation of the Copernican system. Although Fontenelle wrote poems, operas and plays, his real talent was in the sciences. He was one of the auslanders who paved the way for the scientific and philosophical ideas of the Enlightenment to gain foothold in Russia. His Russian poet counterpart, Prince Antiokh Dmitrievich Kantemir, spent time in both England and France as an envoy and translated Fontenelle's works, including this one, into Russian.

C1853