Scienza e letteratura in Die Vermessung der Welt di Daniel Kehlmann

This short essay constitutes an attempt to investigate the connections between literature and science that are developed in Daniel Kehlmann’s novel Die Vermessung der Welt (2005, Measuring the World). First of all, our aim is to examine how, using the example of the biographies of two of the most distinguished German scientists, A-lexander von Humboldt and Carl Friedrich Gauß, the author tries to merge together science and literature, that is to say two very different fields of human knowledge, thus creating a complete depiction of the German world at the beginning of the nineteenth century. To meet this target, Kehlmann confers literary features on the two protagonists of the novel, which makes them stand out as representatives of two very important literary tendencies, that is to say, Weimarian classicism and German romanticism. Having analysed how the scientific methods of Humboldt and Gauß can be seen as metaphors for these two literary trends, our paper will move on to investigate the role of science and literature in this particular novel and the author’s attitude towards them. Furthermore we will point out how the choice of the scientist as the protagonist of a narrative work contains a meta-reflection on the role of the author as the real measurer of the surrounding reality