For St. Lucia's Day —
A book that links the title of today's previous post,
Narrative Metaphysics, with Nabokov's "combinational delight."
Saturday, December 13, 2014
Combinational Delight
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Sunday, December 14, 2014
Sermon
"In digital circuit theory, combinational logic
(sometimes also referred to as time-independent logic)
is a type of digital logic which is implemented by
Boolean circuits, where the output is a pure function of
the present input only."
— Wikipedia, quoted in this morning's previous post as
commentary on Nabokov's phrase "combinational delight"
"Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered."
— T. S. Eliot in Four Quartets
"I confess I do not believe in time."
— Vladimir Nabokov in Speak, Memory
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Speak, Memory
Continued from Halloween 2012.
Suggested by yesterday afternoon's Combinational Delight.
"…the output is a pure function of the present input only.
This is in contrast to sequential logic, in which the output
depends not only on the present input but also on the
history of the input. In other words, sequential logic has
memory while combinational logic does not."
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Sunday, April 17, 2011
Sunday School
Apollo and the Tricksters
From The Story of N (Oct. 15, 2010)—
Roberta Smith on what she calls "endgame art"—
"Fear of form above all means fear of compression— of an artistic focus that condenses experiences, ideas and feelings into something whole, committed and visually comprehensible."
Margaret Atwood on tricksters and art—
"If it’s a seamless whole you want, pray to Apollo."
Here is some related material In memory of CIA officer Clare Edward Petty, who died at 90 on March 18—
A review of a sort of storyteller's MacGuffin — the 3×3 grid. This is, in Smith's terms, an "artistic focus" that appears to be visually comprehensible but is not as simple as it seems.
- The Pope in Plato's Cave (Sept. 16, 2006)
- A search for "einsatz" in this journal
- True Grid (Jan. 8, 2011)
- The Hesse configuration revisited (a post initially from the date of Petty's death, but later much reworked)
The Hesse configuration can serve as more than a sort of Dan Brown MacGuffin. As a post of January 14th notes, it can (rather fancifullly) illustrate the soul—
" … I feel I understand
Existence, or at least a minute part
Of my existence, only through my art,
In terms of combinational delight…."
— Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
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Thursday, March 24, 2011
Signs and Symbols
" … I feel I understand
Existence, or at least a minute part
Of my existence, only through my art,
In terms of combinational delight;
And if my private universe scans right,
So does the verse of galaxies divine
Which I suspect is an iambic line.
I'm reasonably sure that we survive
And that my darling somewhere is alive…."
— Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
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