Mathematics is emotion; and several writers intuited this – 04/25/2023 – Marcelo Viana

I believe that, for most people, few things seem more dissonant than emotions and theorems. On the one hand, art, the expression of human subjectivity, on the other, mathematics, the realm of abstract objectivity. But those of us who live mathematics know that these two works of the human spirit have a lot in common, and several writers intuited this fact.

In “The Teacher’s Favorite Formula”, by the Japanese novelist Yoko Ogawa (1962), the relationships between the characters are catalyzed by mathematics. The Professor, an old university professor, whose recent memory was taken away by an accident; the Caretaker, who “hated mathematics since the school bench”, but is fond of the old teacher of the subject; her 10-year-old son, whom the Professor affectionately nicknames Root, “because of the flattened head that resembled the √ symbol for the square root”.

The taste for mathematical problems brings them together, building a touching triangle. When solving her first problem, the mother discovers an emotion that no mathematician can forget. “I felt then a magic that I had never experienced in my life. A gust of wind swept the devastated desert in which I found myself, and a virgin path opened before my eyes. I knew in that moment that I had received the blessing called inspiration.”

A reader drew my attention to “The Seven Messengers”, a collection of short stories by the Italian writer Dino Buzzati (1906–1972). In the title tale, the prince leaves the capital to explore the kingdom, believing that he would reach its confines in a few weeks. “Instead, I continued to always find new people and places; and everywhere, men who spoke my language, who claimed to be my subjects”, he is astonished.

To maintain communication with the capital, he chose his seven best horsemen: they ride 60 leagues a day, while the entourage travels only 40 leagues. He dispatches the first messenger, Alessandro, at the end of the second day, and from then on one is always sent at the first opportunity. But Alessandro does not return until the tenth day and, as the group moves away from the capital, the messengers travel longer and longer.

Nine years have passed and the fourth messenger, Domenico, has just returned, seven years after he left on his fourth journey. He brings letters yellowed by time, in which the prince finds forgotten names and feelings he can no longer understand. “The capital, my home, my father, have become strangely remote, I almost don’t believe in them”, he laments. Domenico will leave the next day, but it will be the last time: the fifth trip will last 36 years and the prince does not expect to live to see him again.

It’s the same nostalgia that the Portuguese group Madredeus sings: “Alas, nobody goes back to where they left off, nobody lets go of the Big Wheel, nobody knows where they’ve been”.

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