‘Arithmetic! Algebra! Geometry!’

Arithmetic_Algebra_Geometry
Comte de Lautreamont

‘Arithmetic! Algebra! Geometry! Awe-inspiring trinity! Luminous triangle! He who has not known you is a fool! He would deserve the ordeal of the greatest of tortures; for there is blind disdain in his ignorant indifference; but he who knows you and appreciates you no longer wants the goods of the earth and is satisfied with your magical delights; and, borne on your sombre wings, wishes only to rise in effortless flight, constructing as he does a rising spiral, towards the spherical gate of the heavens. Earth only offers him illusions and moral phantasmagoria, but you, concise mathematics, by the rigorous sequence of your unshakable propositions and the consistency of your iron rules, give to the dazzled eye a powerful reflection of that supreme truth whose imprint can be seen in the order of the universe. But the order surrounding you, represented by the perfect regularity of the square, Pythagoras’ friend, is greater still; for the Almighty has revealed himself and his attributes completely in this memorable work, which consisted in bringing from the bowels of chaos the treasure of your theorems and your magnificent splendours. In ancient epochs and in modern times more than one man of great imagination has been awestruck by the contemplation of your symbolic figures traced on paper, like so many mysterious signs, living and breathing in hidden ways not understood by profane multitudes; these signs were only the glittering revelations of eternal axioms and hieroglyphs which existed before the universe and will remain after the universe has passed away…..’

From Maldoror by Lautréamont, an old favourite. Lautréamont was unknown during his short life and little is known of him. Maldoror is a revelatory stream of intense prose telling tales of eroticism, sadomasochism, blasphemy, obscenity, putrefication and mathematics all in a wonderfully poetic manner. The Surrealists later adopted him as a precursor of their movement. Lautréamont did not see his Maldoror available to the public during his lifetime and died November 24, 1870 in a Paris hotel room at the age of 24.

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