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The events that drove Tycho Brahe out of Hven, and out of Denmark, in 1597, seem to be a rather sordid affair. Most sources blame Tycho himself for it -- he had developped primadonna attitudes, he had been mean to his subjects at Hven, and so on. However, there can be no doubt that king Christian IV was the person responsible. All the alleged wrongs that were laid at Tycho's door, had existed for quite some time. Yet Christian IV's father seems to never have cared about them. It was Christian IV who jumped at every pretext that allowed him to get rid of Tycho Well, after king Christian had cancelled, first Tycho's Norwegian fief, and then his pension, Tycho retired from Hven, first to Copenhagen, then to Rostock, and then to the castle of Wandsbeck, near Hambourg. At last, he accepted an offer from the German emperor, Rudolf II, and went to settle at Prague, where Rudolf resided (and, guess what? Rudolf, though a rather disturbed person himself, never felt offended by Tycho's alleged lack of submission, and primadonna ways, either). In the interim, at Wandsbeck, after leaving the service of a king who had plenty of money, but wouldn't give him any, and before entering the service of an emperor who would have given him plenty of money, but hadn't any, Tycho wrote his famous parting poem, AD DANIAM ELEGIA An autograph version of Tycho's Elegy, three and a half pages long, dated "1597 20 die Octobris", is on show among the digital exhibits of the Royal Library of Denmark (= Det Kongelige Bibliotek). This, now, is really Tycho's handwriting. More: if it's his handwriting, it is his calligraphy. It's a studied humanistic cursive, containing no traces of any local bastard style, the middlezone looking rather compressed, and angular, whereas many of Tycho's capitals are daring, swashy, and very roomtaking. When I was designing my font, based on Tycho's manuscript, his capitals were frequently off-limits -- e.g., there is no way to reproduce an I that cuts down through the next three lines, in a font! Luckily, Tycho is nowhere shy of capitals; for many of them, it is just pick and choose There is no number sign in this font. In its place, you'll find a long s. Other extras in this font are:
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Opening paragraph of the novel The Master And Margarita by Michail A. Bulgakov;
English translation © Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
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