Small and large -- poetic views . . .

     A favorite on my bookshelves is The Book of Disquiet: the Complete Edition by Fernando Pessoa*.  Here is a math-poetic item from this "diary" by Pessoa:

     In a discussion about how a village may be larger than a city 
          because you can see more of the world there  -- Pessoa quotes (on p. 241) 
               these lines from Alberto Caeiro, one of his writing personas: 

                 Because I am the size of what I see
                 And not the size of my own stature.

     These lines are from Millimeters (the observation of infinitesimal things),
          on pp. 67-69: 

The Arithmetic of Identity

     There is never enough time to read all that I wish  -- so much poetry and mathematics awaits my attention.  The Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa is one whose work is in my queue.  Recently I have been exploring Pessoa's poetic prose in The Book of Disquiet   (Ed. Jeronimo Pizarro, Trans. Margaret Jull Costa, New Directions, 2017).  Below I offer the first two paragraphs of Section 152, The River of Possession -- I have delighted in their play with numbers and meaning: 

          It is axiomatic of our humanity that we are all different.  We only look alike from a distance and, therefore, when we are least ourselves.  Life, then, favors the undefined; only those who lack definition, and who are all equally nobodies, can coexist.
          Each one of us is two, and whenever two people meet, get close or join forces, it's rare for those four to agree,  If the dreamer in each man of action frequently falls out with his own personal man of action, he's sure to fall out with the other person's dreamer and man of action.

In a later paragraph, Pessoa adds:    Love requires us to be both identical and different, which isn't possible in logic, still less in life.

     Thank you to Portuguese mathematician-poet Francisco Jose Craiveiro de Carvalho -- who led me to Pessoa.  Allen Ginsburg's poem "Salutations to Fernando Pessoa" is available here.

More from BRIDGES poets . . .

     The 2016 BRIDGES Math-Arts Conference is currently taking place at the University of Jyväskylä in Jyväskylä, Finland.  Poets on this year's program include: Manfred Stern, Vera Schwarcz, Eveline Pye, Tom Petsinis, Mike Naylor, Alice Major, Emily Grosholz, Carol Dorf, Tatiana Bonch-Osmolovskaya, Madhur Anand and the organizer, Sarah Glaz.
      Although he is not a participant in this year's BRIDGES, the name of Portuguese mathematician, poet, and translator Francisco José Craveiro de Carvalho appears near the top of the conference's poetry page for his translation of these lines that have become a sort of motto for BRIDGES poetry:

             Newton's binomial is as beautiful as Venus de Milo.
             What happens is that few people notice it.

                        --Fernando Pessoa (as Álvaro de Campos)
                          translated from the Portuguese by Francisco Craveiro  

Bridges in Coimbra

     Newton's binomial is as beautiful as Venus de Milo.
     What happens is that few people notice it.

                -- Fernando Pessoa (as Álvaro de Campos) (1888-1935)
                    translated from the Portuguese by Francisco Craveiro