These poetic words of Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) -- concerning translation of mathematical principles into practical forms -- I found here:
Those who view mathematical science,
not merely as a vast body
of abstract and immutable truths,
whose intrinsic beauty, symmetry and logical completeness,
when regarded in their connexion together as a whole,
entitle them to a prominent place
in the interest of all profound and logical minds,
Showing posts with label translation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label translation. Show all posts
Friday, September 18, 2015
Friday, April 3, 2015
Mathematics and poetry -- are the same ! ! !
Last week the Art Works Blog posted an interview with mathematician, poet, and translator, Enriqueta Carrington. You will want to follow the link and read the whole thing. Here is a paragraph:
quoting Enriqueta Carrington:
quoting Enriqueta Carrington:
Mathematics and poetry are the same thing,
or one is a translation of the other.
Well, perhaps that is an overstatement;
but both math and poetry are about beautiful patterns,
about creating, gazing at, and sharing them,
or one is a translation of the other.
Well, perhaps that is an overstatement;
but both math and poetry are about beautiful patterns,
about creating, gazing at, and sharing them,
and about appreciating those created by others.
It is not necessary to be a great mathematician or a great poet
to enjoy this beauty, as I can tell you from my own experience.
to enjoy this beauty, as I can tell you from my own experience.
Several years ago, at a time near the beginning of this poetry-math blog, in the posting for April 8, 2010, is a pantoum by Carrington. And here is another of hers, this time a Fibonacci poem -- whose lines increase in word-count that matches the first eight Fibonacci numbers: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21.
Labels:
beautiful,
beauty,
Enriqueta Carrington,
Fibonacci,
mathematics,
poetry,
translation
Friday, April 18, 2014
Poetry of Romania - Nora School, Apr 24
During several summers teaching conversational English to middle-school students in Deva, Romania, I became acquainted with the work of Romanian poets. These included: Mikhail Eminescu (1850-1889, a Romantic poet, much loved and esteemed, honored with a portrait on Romanian currency), George Bakovia (1881-1957, a Symbolist poet, and a favorite poet of Doru Radu, an English teacher in Deva with whom I worked on some translations of Bacovia into English), Nichita Stanescu (1933-1983, an important post-war poet, a Nobel Prize nominee -- and a poet who often used mathematical concepts and images in his verse).
On April 24, 2014 at the Nora School here in Silver Spring I will be reading (sharing the stage with Martin Dickinson and Michele Wolf) some poems of Romania -- reading both my own writing of my Romania experiences and some translations of work by Romanian poets. Here is a sample (translated by Gabriel Praitura and me) of a poem by Nichita Stanescu:
On April 24, 2014 at the Nora School here in Silver Spring I will be reading (sharing the stage with Martin Dickinson and Michele Wolf) some poems of Romania -- reading both my own writing of my Romania experiences and some translations of work by Romanian poets. Here is a sample (translated by Gabriel Praitura and me) of a poem by Nichita Stanescu:
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Iceland -- poetry, stones
British translator and editor David McDuff blogs at "Nordic Voices in Print" -- a site that he uses as "a way of making some of my translations of Nordic poetry and prose available online." Here is "stones" -- the third of a group of ten poems he has posted by Icelandic poet Sjón. This one involves a few numbers and I present it here as a math-poetry token of the fascinating land I am planning to visit: a five-day Iceland vacation adventure, traveling with my Eastern Village neighbors Priscilla and Glenn.
stones by Sjón (translated by David McDuff)
stones by Sjón (translated by David McDuff)
Labels:
David McDuff,
Iceland,
numbers,
poem,
Sjon,
stones,
translation
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
A poet (math-daughter) speaks of math's beauty
I met Minnesota poet Roseann Lloyd when we served together on an AWP (Associated Writing Programs) conference panel on translation several years ago. There I was considering, as I so often am, the translation of mathematics into representations that poets understand. Roseann 's father was a mathematics professor and she learned early that "mathematics is its own beauty." And she has permitted me to offer you this poem.
HOW MY DADDY CHANGED WHEN HE GAVE UP TEACHING COLLEGE FOR SELLING INSURANCE by Roseann Lloyd
Once Daddy enthralled his students at SMS --
handsome in his navy blue suit and dusty hands,
chalk clicking out equations lickety-split.
A third-grader, I waited for him every day
in the cool marble hall. Listened to the rhythm
of the chalk on the board. Even then I knew
that pure math is an art equal to music, second
only to poetry in the realm of beauty.
HOW MY DADDY CHANGED WHEN HE GAVE UP TEACHING COLLEGE FOR SELLING INSURANCE by Roseann Lloyd
Once Daddy enthralled his students at SMS --
handsome in his navy blue suit and dusty hands,
chalk clicking out equations lickety-split.
A third-grader, I waited for him every day
in the cool marble hall. Listened to the rhythm
of the chalk on the board. Even then I knew
that pure math is an art equal to music, second
only to poetry in the realm of beauty.
Labels:
beauty,
equation,
math,
mathematics,
poet,
poetry,
prime,
Roseann Lloyd,
translation
Monday, February 4, 2013
Problems of Translation
June Jordan's poem "Problems of Translation: Problems of Language" (found at PoetryFoundation.org) uses numbers and measurements from an atlas as her starting point for describing the difficulty of understanding between those of us separated by distance or language.
I am writing this on the day after the Super Bowl, particularly conscious of the fact that I do not know the language of football. And that many others do not know the language of mathematics. Let us try hard to understand those things that are beyond language.
Here is the first section (of eight) from Jordan's poem:
Problems of Translation: Problems of Language by June Jordan
I am writing this on the day after the Super Bowl, particularly conscious of the fact that I do not know the language of football. And that many others do not know the language of mathematics. Let us try hard to understand those things that are beyond language.
Here is the first section (of eight) from Jordan's poem:
Problems of Translation: Problems of Language by June Jordan
Labels:
atlas,
Black History Month,
June Jordan,
mathematics,
measure,
poetry,
Poetry Foundation,
translation
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Symmetry in poetry
In Euclidean Geometry, objects retain their size and shape during rigid motions (also called symmetries); one of these is translation -- movement of an object from one place to another along a straight line path. Here are a few lines by Alberta poet Alice Major that explore the paths of rhyme as a sound moves to and fro within a poem :
Rhyme's tiles slide
from line
to line, a not-so-rigid motion --
a knitted, shifting symmetry
that matches 'tree'
Rhyme's tiles slide
from line
to line, a not-so-rigid motion --
a knitted, shifting symmetry
that matches 'tree'
Labels:
Alice Major,
Bridges Conference,
geometry,
line,
poetry,
rhyme,
symmetry,
translation
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Taking Stock
Developing an inventory -- of what we have or have experienced, of what we see or imagine -- inevitably involves numbers and counting. As in "Inventory" by Canadian poet Colin Morton, an adaptation or "free translation" of "Inventaire" by Jacques Prevert. Morton has a strong connection to mathematics -- his son is a mathematician at the Technical University of Lisbon.
Inventory by Colin Morton
one lump of rock
two houses
three ruined foundations
four gravediggers
one garden
some flowers
Inventory by Colin Morton
one lump of rock
two houses
three ruined foundations
four gravediggers
one garden
some flowers
Labels:
Colin Morton,
counting,
inventory,
Jacques Prevert,
mathematics,
poetry,
translation
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Illness and Time -- Counting on
One of life's special opportunities came to me ten years ago in Bucharest when I had the opportunity to meet poet Ileana Mălăncioiu and, along with my co-translator Doru Radu, enjoy a afternoon beer with her in a sunny cafe and talk of the opportunity of translating her collection Sora mea de dincolo / My Sister Beyond. These fifty-four poems were written in response to the illness and eventual death of Mălăncioiu's sister; the bilingual collection with our translations came out in 2003 (Paralela 45). During the past year I have faced the critical illness of a family member and have, during this time, found Mălăncioiu's poems especially relevant.
With university studies in philosophy (PhD) and experiences as journalist and editor, Mălăncioiu is a thoughtful observer who offers new best ways of seeing what is at hand. Here is her "Forty Days."
Labels:
Doru Radu,
forty,
Ileana Malancioiu,
philosophy,
poem,
Romania,
translation
Monday, January 31, 2011
Romanian poets -- Cassian and Barbu
Born in 1924, in Galati, Romania, Nina Cassian has published over fifty books -- besides poetry, she has works of fiction and books for children. Since 1985 she has lived in exile in the United States. Among those Cassian credits with strong influences on her poetry is mathematician / poet Dan Barbilian / Ion Barbu (1895-1961). This poem by Cassian illustrates those mathematical influences:
Labels:
axis,
Dan Barbilian,
Emmy Noether,
Gauss,
horizontal,
incline,
inclined plane,
infinite,
Ion Barbu,
mathematics,
Nina Cassian,
oblique,
plane,
poetry,
Romania,
slope,
translation,
vertical
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Creation from "nothing"
Christian Otto Josef Wolfgang Morgenstern (1871-1914) was a German writer whose poetry often involved paradox or nonsense and whose witticisms are oft-quoted by his German admirers; for example, the following line from "The Impossible Fact" ("Die unmögliche Tatsache", 1910): "Weil, so schließt er messerscharf / Nicht sein kann, was nicht sein darf." which may be translated as "For, he reasons pointedly / That which must not, can not be."
Labels:
Christian Morgenstern,
mathematics,
nothing,
paradox,
poetry,
spaces,
translation
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Poets who Count
For some poets, counting is part of the language of the poem. For others, counting determines the structure. Here are two poems of the former sort -- "Counting" by British poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985) and "Adding It Up" by New England poet Philip Booth (1925-2007) -- followed by opening stanzas of a poem for which counting is part of both content and structure: "Millennium" by mathematician Peter Cameron .
Labels:
account,
add,
blog,
count,
counting,
measure,
numbers,
one,
Peter Cameron,
Philip Booth,
Philip Larkin,
poetry,
spiral,
ten,
translation,
two
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Mathematics in poetry by Nichita Stanescu
Though formerly a math professor, my recent teaching has involved poetry--and I have been fortunate to spend several summer months at Scoala Andrei Muresanu in Deva, Romania, teaching poetry and conversational English.
Labels:
circle,
cube,
Deva,
Doru Radu,
Gabriel Prajitura,
mathematics,
Nichita Stanescu,
Romania,
Romanian,
sum,
translation
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