2007.10.09: ee 2 the pie eye, or: 40 years
I
“Erschaffen und Beleben”
Hans Adam war ein Erdenkloß,
Den Gott zum Menschen machte,
Doch bracht er aus der Mutter Schoß
Noch vieles Ungeschlachte.
Die Elohim zur Nas' hinein
Den besten Geist ihm bliesen,
Nun schien er schon was mehr zu sein,
Denn er fing an zu niesen.
Doch mit Gebein und Glied und Kopf
Blieb er ein halber Klumpen,
Bis endlich Noah für den Tropf
Das Wahre fand, den Humpen.
Der Klumpe fühlt sogleich den Schwung,
Sobald er sich benetzet,
So wie der Teig durch Säuerung
Sich in Bewegung setzet.
So, Hafis, mag dein holder Sang,
Dein heiliges Exempel,
Uns führen, bei der Gläser Klang,
Zu unsres Schöpfers Tempel.
—By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
II
A.
As in “Elemente” the poem/song in “Erschaffen und Beleben” is described metaphorically and its potential developed, leading to Hafiz as the ideal. At the level of rhetoric the two main differences are that whereas “Elemente” follows an almost essay form of argument, “Erschaffen und Beleben“ is narrative (see: allegory, parable, fable); structurally the difference is that the essay form tends to have an introduction, which this second poem lacks. By analogy to folk etymology I might almost call this story folk theology. German authors of the late 18th century and early 19th century (and to a lesser extent beyond) turned to the fairy tale not just as a an element of popular culture, of folklore, but as an artistic form and genre, and “Creation and Animation” follows a similar mold, since this is not some random folk song but rather an established author using a tone as affect, a tone that mixes the sacred and profane, borrows Old Testament tales, and eventually leads back to the joint theme of drink and song.
I mentioned yesterday that in a poem entitled “Elements” it's tempting, at least at first, to seek parallels or a mapping to the four elements of earth, fire, air, and water, even though it's a futile project. A similar mapping it tempting at first here, but whereas yesterday earth was the difficult element, here it's fire. The progression is from earth to air to water, but the model is not actually the four classical elements.
A threefold progression is actually something mildly dialectical and common in slightly varied form in many other poems by Goethe. Not just in other works by Goethe but in works by his contemporaries we find a similar model, one that in its binary form is even more common, of the female/feminine as earth(y) or material and male/masculine as spiritual. Such a division was seen in “Charms.” And as there the material and the spiritual, the feminine and the masculine alone were each found wanting, as is the case here. One common solution is a marriage or synthesis of sorts (see: the opening verse to Book II of the West-Eastern Divan, where it is explicit), another is a third way that is not identified with either of the traditional binary options. Thematically it's appropriate that it is liquid—drink—where the solution is found, for the topic of so many of Goethe's poems in this collection is song in a social setting. In that sense it was predetermined and no different than an evening of discussing love in the Symposium or of carousing in Carmina Burana. But it's also appropriate in a broader context tied to the early 19th century: a new fascination with chemistry.
I am briefly reminded of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (my copy is the Second Edition, Enlarged, U of Chicago P, 1970), one of those often-cited and more often misunderstood texts that remains really quite useful and insightful all these years after its first publication (1962). On page 53 of myedition is where Kuhn discusses the discovery of oxygen (ca. 1775) in connection with the now-abandoned Pflogiston theory and what some call the “chemical revolution.” German literature—I can't really speak to the rest of European letters—at this time was fascinated by chemistry, especially chemistry as novel/creative combination, and it permeates the early work of Friedrich Schlegel, for example. It plays a role in Goethe's Elective Affinities. To a certain extent it's a matter of scientific metaphors in literature, but not just the metaphors but what they bring to the discourse.
The poem's title presents two objects, creation and animation, while the poem itself deals with three, and the value judgments present within the poem itself justify lumping both the material (physical) and the spiritual in the realm of mere creation. While Whaley chooses the word “animation,” the German is “beleben,” a transitive verb (that can be and has been nominalized) composed of the transitive prefix be- and the verb leben, to live. Which is to say, mere animation (in the broad English sense of making something move rather than etymological connection to Beleben, which is rather direct) is not what interests Goethe here, but enlivening, bringing to life, vitalizing. And in the formulation of this poem, that sort of enlivening is not a matter of matter—of dust or dirt or clay—or of breathing spirit into something (inspiration), but of chemistry, combinations, and transformations.
My one tiny complaint with Whaley's translation is a slight anachronism that for me is not an allowable translation inaccuracy: the inclusion of yeast in the fourth stanza. Goethe includes the known (at the time) process acidification (Säuerung), whereas Whaley goes for the mechanism of fermentation by yeast. Not only was yeast not understood or really known at the time Goethe wrote this, it also shifts the discussion from something chemical in the German to something more biological in the English.
B
In channel the other day it was lamented that ni was not around at the time to provide reading recommendations regarding Riemann, and what came immediately to mind—to my mind at least, itself a curious contraption, the workings of which I barely understand—was my favorite calculus text, Calculus with Analytic Geometry by George F. Simmons (McGraw-Hill 1975), which I like for the clear presentation of the main mathematical material in the first 700 pages, but especially for the 200 pages of appendices that follow: A (“A Variety of Additional Topics,”), B (“Biographical Notes”), C (“The Theory of Calculus”), D (“A Few Review Topics”) and E (“Numerical Tables”).
lim(x->∞) π(x)/(x/lnx) = 1
Math is not HTML's strength and I'm too lazy to present it more pleasingly.
π(x) is taken to mean the number of prime numbers less than or equal to a positive number x. π(1) = 0, π(2) = 1, π(3) = 2, π(4) = 2 ...
As Simmons points out, Gauss was never able to prove his conjectures, but around age 14 or 15 he suggested x/lnx and the integral from 2 to x of dt/lnt as good approximations (Simmons 729). In 1850 Riemann and Chebyshev showed that
7/8 < π(x)/(x/lnx) < 9/8
for sufficiently large x (also: Simmons 729). Furthermore Riemann (1826–1866) showed that if the limit exists, it is 1. The existence of the limit and thus the conclusion of the proof did not come until many years after Riemann's death, when it was established by Hadamard and de la Vallée Poussin (independently) in 1896.
This is, of course, all different than but related to Riemann's zeta function:
ζ(s) = 1 + 1/2s + 1/3s + ...., s = σ + it.
I can recommend the Simmons text as a clear explication of the material combined with context and biographical detail.
C.
I need to update my collection of emulators.
I was never a cool kid all those years ago; I never wanted to be, either. I was used to being on the losing end of things, but I enjoyed those noble losses, even the less noble ones. In the fifth grade I started playing organized sports for the first time: soccer and basketball. Our soccer team didn't win a game; I played keeper and let very few through but we could not score to save our lives. In basketball we performed a bit better, but that season of basketball, the personal ups and downs, the great partially-underground elementary school where we played our games, those things are a whole other story. I came to soccer in the fifth grade from playing it during the winter in the fourth at recess. It didn't matter how many kids were playing as long as the teams were roughly even in size. A whole class, a whole grade could be involved. There we kept track of wins and losses much less.
My best friend during my early years in school, SH, was my backup on that fifth grade soccer team, and not as successful a keeper. He and I alternated between who was taller until the fourth grade, after which I stayed ahead permanently. Even into the 8th grade, when we no longer had classes together, no longer socialized, and couldn't be called “friends” anymore, we still had a rivalry of sorts going on in the world of art; he was accepted as the artist for our grade, though our interests had been more-or-less equal in elementary school and full of both competition and cooperation, but a strong showing and win in an art show at least let me know that in terms of skill(s) if not dedication I was still his match. SH was the only friend I invited over for a sleep-over, and the only one at whose place I ever stayed. While both tall and blond we were otherwise different; I had an intact family and a younger brother, whereas he lived alone with his mother in a house that seemed too large for just the two of them. At that point in my life single mothers, divorced parents ... these were all novelties to me.
We were tied together by our toys, our love of both G.I. Joe and Transformers, though I think we both naively and incorrectly envied the other as more well-off. We had different toys, different objects and so could covet what the other had. Neither of us came from wealthy families, but mine was more stable, but whereas he and his mother were not well off, he'd get those occasional big gifts from his absent father. SH might have had a much older sibling.
And back to the topic that introduced this: SH had a ColecoVision, whereas in the early 80s we got a Sears “Super Video Arcade,” a re-badged Intellivision. Karcher Mall was for years the only mall of note in southern Idaho; it's where you could find J.C. Penney and the Bon Marché, and they had an Orange Julius. Later they added Waldenbooks and Barnes & Noble. And it was at Karcher Mall while my mother was looking at perfume or clothes and my father was tagging along that I could stare longingly at the Intellivision cartridges locked behind glass.
One of my favorite games remains Tron Deadly Discs. Alas most of the Intellivision emulators out there are pathetically substandard. In the late 90s I bought the Intellivision Lives collection. One of the games the Intellivision and ColecoVision had in common was Donkey Kong, and while I know there is something bigger and better about the arcade version—there's even a movie about it—I have a soft spot for the console version. I have a soft spot for 16-bit machines in general.
My family also went with another eventual loser: Betamax. We didn't get our first VCR right away, but when we did it was a Beta, and for years there were just as many Beta as VHS releases out there in the video rental stores—our personal favorite, where the owner knew everybody's name, was Videon—, and in fact I didn't even see a working VHS machine until the summer of '84, I suspect. My brother was in daycare, and during the summer I was sent along—there were a half-dozen of us who were midway through elementary school—and the family that ran the enterprise had a VHS machine as well as an Atari console in the basement. SH eventually had a VHS VCR.
We also went with the Apple IIe—2e, //e, ][e ... write as you will—or rather an Enhanced IIe with 128K of RAM, which also means we came rather late to the game. SH had a C64 (see also: C=65, C-64, CBM 64 ...); at one point we had a number of the same games, though. I was looking through a couple old archives the other day and was reminded of some old software, such as Scholastic's Microzine, which is incredibly difficult to find online (in any significant way). We had several of them—the result of book order purchases—, all of which featured Twistaplot segment.
By the late 80s and early 90s my peers—not the cool kids, because cool kids didn't do computers ...—had switched to PCs from their C64s and the like. The Mac users were isolated and always had been; where I lived a different social class had Macs, a class of professionals that could afford them when they first came out. Amigas were for artists; that's what one of my aunts had by way of a state or federal grant. Until college I still had that Apple IIe, and what I've lost and no emulator can replace are not the games and the applications but the documents typed on that machine, saved to 5.25" disks, and lost to bit rot, cat piss, the circular file, and the general wear of time.
III
“Creation and Animation”
Jack Adam was a clot of earth
God used to make a human,
But from his mother's womb at birth
He brought stuff crude and common.
Into his nose Elohim blew
The spirit's finest breezes,
Immediately his stature grew
For straight away he sneezes.
With members, bones and head, yet still
He was by dullness cankered,
Till Noah found, his needs to fill,
The proper thing, a tankard.
The dolt at once begins to rise
When wetted by the potion,
Just as the dough before our eyes
By yeast is set in motion.
Thus, Hafiz, shall your gracious song
And your divine example
With mirthful glass lead us along
To our Creator's temple.
—Translated by John Whaley
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