Moving Objects, Moved Observers: On the Treatment of the Problem of Relativity in Poetic Texts and Scientific Prose

Abstract

Argument

When Copernicus pointed out that the apparent movement of the sun was in fact the effect of the rotation of the earth, he explained his view by referring to a passage in Virgil's Aeneid. Thus he established the link between science and literature. This topic recurred frequently in both science and literature whenever the question of the relativity of motion arose. In this article, I will focus above all on two authors who took up this question: Ernst Mach and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Moreover I will try to show the different roles of scientific and literary prose in the works of Mach and in Hofmannsthal's Das Glück am Weg (1893).