----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2003 9:16 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: more Bernoulli links to Pale Fire
Keithsz has brought up Mircea Eliade and Carolyn
Kunin has given special notice to patterns of repetition and to the idea of
" though changed I return over and over again the same" in connection to Pale
Fire.
I would like to remind you that Mircea Eliade
has written extensively on the Myth of Eternal Recurrence and about ancestral
cyclical time versus historical time. Besides his researches he has also written
a novel where there is a passage to another dimension that is to be reached
through the water ( The novel is called "Rue Mantuleasa" or some
other similar title ).
In the Post-Script that VN added to "Lolita" he
speaks about enchanters and he uses the word "fractails". I wonder if he
could also be making a reference there to the modern
mathematical discoveries concerning "fractals" ?
Would those " smaller
and smaller golden rectangles" of Bernouilli´s logarithmic spiral -brought up by
C. Kunin - be in any way related to the findings
about fractals? Would VN be familiar with Math, Bernouilli and
Fractal theory?
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2003 10:44
PM
Subject: Fw: more Bernoulli links to Pale
Fire
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2003 10:55 AM
Subject: more Bernoulli links to Pale Fire
First my apologies
to Pynchoner David Morris who found the Bernoulli lemniscate before I
did.
Euclid discovered the number phi but Bernoulli discovered
its relation first to the to the golden rectangle and then to the beautiful
spiral that is formed by smaller and smaller golden rectangles built within
each other -- the logarithmic spiral which he called
miraculous.
Bernoulli ended his paper on this spiral with the words
"eadem mutata resurgo semperdem [Though changed, I return over and over again
the same]." These words (minus the un-Christian semperdem) are engraved on his
tombstone in the cathedral in Berne.
If IPH = phi and Bernoulli
discovered and named the lemniscate curve, then perhaps "eadem mutata resurgo"
also has something to do with Pale
Fire.
CK