In memory of Cormac McCarthy, who reportedly
died today, here is a phrase by John Jeremiah Sullivan
in a NY Times review of McCarthy's 2022 novel
The Passenger —
"a reminder (just in time) of the elegance and force
of good McCarthy."
Sullivan also writes well. For instance, see the "pretty horses"
of this post's title.
Scene:
Professor Wagstaff's office —
Wagstaff's Receptionist:
Oh, Professor, the Dean of Science wants to know
how soon you can see him. He says he's tired of
cooling his heels out here.
Professor Wagstaff:
Tell him I'm cooling a couple of heels in here….
Wagstaff's Receptionist:
The Dean is furious! He's waxing wroth!
Professor Wagstaff:
Is Roth out there, too? Tell Roth to wax the Dean
for a while.
— From the Marx Brothers ("Horse Feathers")
Coming from behind, illustrated —
Art from Marcelanowak.com
Personal Emblem
of psychiatrist
Harry Stack Sullivan
This image, from a post of Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2007,
was suggested by Taylor Swift's annotation for her new
album . . .
http://m759.net/wordpress/?p=114081 —
"And so I enter into evidence
My tarnished coat of arms . . . ."
and by the Frida Kahlo image in the 2007 post, as well as
Kahlo in art by the former Sullivanian whose work has
now been added to yesterday's "American Pie" post.
"It seems fitting that a handsome, professional and future-minded
space drama in fine color, like 'Marooned,' should open a new
jewel box of a theater, the Ziegfeld."
— Howard Thompson in The New York Times , Dec. 19, 1969
A related film tells of a real-life April 1970 sequel
to the 1969 film "Marooned."
Then there is my own "jewel box" picture with three horses . . .
(This post was suggested by the order of reading characters in
traditional Chinese calligraphy — top to bottom, right to left .)
From The Boston Globe yesterday evening —
" Ms. Adams 'had this quiet intelligence that made you feel like
she understood you and she loved you. She was a true friend —
a true generous, generous friend. This is the kind of person
you keep in your life,' Birdseye added.
'And she had such a great sense of humor,' Birdseye said.
“She would always have the last laugh. She wasn’t always
the loudest, but she was always the funniest, and in the
smartest way.' "
"Ms. Adams, who lived in Waltham, was 55 when she died April 9 . . . ."
See as well April 9 in the post Math Death and a post from April 8,
also now tagged "Berlekamp's Game" — Horses of a Dream.
"When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead
And the white knight is talking backwards . . . ."
— Grace Slick in a song from yesterday's post "When the Men"
Two readings by James Parker —
From next year’s first Atlantic issue
From last month’s Atlantic issue
“Let’s return to that hillside where Clayton exited his Mercedes.
In the gray light, he climbs the pasture. Halfway up the slope,
three horses are standing: sculpturally still, casually composed
in a perfect triptych of horsitude.”
— James Parker in The Atlantic , Nov. 2017 issue
Logos-related material
"And not all the king's men nor his horses
Will resurrect his corpus."
See as well Andy Weir's "The Egg" and Working Backward.
Quiz:
Spell the name of the race of intelligent horses in Gulliver’s Travels .
Scarlett Johansson and friend in “The Horse Whisperer” (1998)
Some context: “Bee Season” in this journal.
01:13:08.25,01:13:12.35
(STRING QUARTET PLAYING
SLOW, LUSH MELODY)
01:13:22.59,01:13:26.23
They’re fucking sixteenths,
Steve, stop milking them.
01:13:26.36,01:13:29.78
Folks, disagree,
but do it nicely, and please…
01:13:30.47,01:13:33.38
…try not to get caught up in mistakes.
01:13:35.17,01:13:38.21
When I was your age,
I met the great Pablo Casals.
01:13:38.34,01:13:40.85
I was so intimidated
I could barely speak.
01:13:40.98,01:13:43.19
He must have sensed this, because…
01:13:43.31,01:13:46.99
…instead of a chat,
he asked me to play.
01:13:47.12,01:13:49.93
He requested the prelude
to the Fourth Bach suite.
01:13:51.62,01:13:54.80
I focused, took a deep breath,
began, the notes started to flow,
01:13:54.93,01:13:58.67
the music’s in the air, and it was
the worst music I ever made.
01:13:58.80,01:14:00.28
(STUDENTS CHUCKLE)
01:14:01.13,01:14:05.44
I played so badly,
I got halfway through and had to stop.
01:14:05.57,01:14:07.71
“Bravo,” he said, “Well done.”
01:14:08.94,01:14:13.85
Then, he asked me to play the allemande.
“A second chance,” I think to myself.
01:14:15.48,01:14:17.05
I never played worse.
01:14:18.48,01:14:22.06
“Wonderful. Splendid,” he praised me.
01:14:22.19,01:14:26.73
And when I left that night,
I felt terrible about my performance,
01:14:26.86,01:14:30.50
but what really bothered me
wasn’t my playing, it was Casals.
01:14:30.63,01:14:32.30
The insincerity.
01:14:33.90,01:14:36.50
Years later, I met him in Paris
01:14:36.63,01:14:40.41
and by then I was professional,
we played together.
01:14:40.54,01:14:45.08
We became acquaintances,
and one evening, over a glass of wine…
01:14:46.94,01:14:51.32
…I confessed to him what I thought
of his horseshit all those years ago.
01:14:51.45,01:14:53.22
(LAUGHTER)
01:14:55.12,01:14:59.09
And he got angry. His demeanor changed,
he grabbed his cello,
01:14:59.22,01:15:02.50
“Listen,” he said.
And he played this phrase.
01:15:03.63,01:15:07.58
(PLAYS DYNAMIC, DRAMATIC PHRASE)
01:15:19.08,01:15:22.06
“Didn’t you play that? Fingering.
01:15:22.18,01:15:25.96
You did.
It was novel to me. It was good.
01:15:26.08,01:15:31.09
And here, didn’t you attack
this passage with an up-bow like this?”
01:15:45.14,01:15:49.08
Casals emphasized the good stuff,
the things he enjoyed.
01:15:50.87,01:15:55.65
He encouraged. And for the rest,
leave that to the morons,
01:15:55.78,01:16:00.85
or whatever it is in Spanish,
who judge by counting faults.
01:16:00.98,01:16:03.62
“I can be grateful,
and so must you be,” he said,
01:16:03.75,01:16:09.03
“for even one singular phrase,
one transcendent moment.”
01:16:09.33,01:16:10.33
Hmm?
01:16:11.40,01:16:16.64
– Wow.
– Yeah, wow. Pablo Casals. Champion.
01:16:17.90,01:16:21.82
Once more, with feeling please. Feeling!
01:16:25.21,01:16:29.05
(SLOW, LUSH MELODY RESUMES)
See also a video of this scene and a post from this date ten years ago.
For the Princeton Class of 1905 —
Joyce Carol Oates Meets Emily Dickinson.
Oates —
"It is an afternoon in autumn, near dusk.
The western sky is a spider’s web of translucent gold.
I am being brought by carriage—two horses—
muted thunder of their hooves—
along narrow country roads between hilly fields
touched with the sun’s slanted rays,
to the village of Princeton, New Jersey.
The urgent pace of the horses has a dreamlike air,
like the rocking motion of the carriage;
and whoever is driving the horses
his face I cannot see, only his back—
stiff, straight, in a tight-fitting dark coat."
Dickinson —
"Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And Immortality."
Recent posts (Church Logic and Church Narrative) have discussed finite geometry as a type of non-Euclidean geometry.
For those who prefer non-finite geometry, here are some observations.
"A characteristic property of hyperbolic geometry
is that the angles of a triangle add to less
than a straight angle (half circle)." — Wikipedia
From To Ride Pegasus, by Anne McCaffrey, 1973:
“Mary-Molly luv, it’s going to be accomplished in steps, this establishment of the Talented in the scheme of things. Not society, mind you, for we’re the original nonconformists…. and Society will never permit us to integrate. That’s okay!” He consigned Society to insignificance with a flick of his fingers. “The Talented form their own society and that’s as it should be: birds of a feather. No, not birds. Winged horses! Ha! Yes, indeed. Pegasus… the poetic winged horse of flights of fancy. A bloody good symbol for us. You’d see a lot from the back of a winged horse…”
“Yes, an airplane has blind spots. Where would you put a saddle?” Molly had her practical side.
On the practical side:
The above chapel is from a Princeton Weekly Bulletin story of October 6th, 2008.
Related material: This journal on that date.
From today's NY Times—
Obituaries for mystery authors
Ralph McInerny and Dick Francis
From the date (Jan. 29) of McInerny's death–
"…although a work of art 'is formed around something missing,' this 'void is its vanishing point, not its essence.'"
– Harvard University Press on Persons and Things (Walpurgisnacht, 2008), by Barbara Johnson
From the date (Feb. 14) of Francis's death–
The EIghtfold Cube
The "something missing" in the above figure is an eighth cube, hidden behind the others pictured.
This eighth cube is not, as Johnson would have it, a void and "vanishing point," but is instead the "still point" of T.S. Eliot. (See the epigraph to the chapter on automorphism groups in Parallelisms of Complete Designs, by Peter J. Cameron. See also related material in this journal.) The automorphism group here is of course the order-168 simple group of Felix Christian Klein.
For a connection to horses, see
a March 31, 2004, post
commemorating the birth of Descartes
and the death of Coxeter–
Putting Descartes Before Dehors
For a more Protestant meditation,
see The Cross of Descartes—
"I've been the front end of a horse
and the rear end. The front end is better."
— Old vaudeville joke
For further details, click on
the image below–
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
— Blake
“… the moment is not
properly an atom of time
but an atom of eternity.
It is the first reflection
of eternity in time, its first
attempt, as it were, at
stopping time….”
— Kierkegaard
|
Symmetry Axes
of the Square: 
From the cover of the
|
A Monolith
for Kierkegaard:  |
Todo lo sé por el lucero puro
que brilla en la diadema de la Muerte.
— Rubén Darío
Related material:
The deaths of
Ernest Hemingway
on the morning of
Sunday, July 2, 1961,
and of Alexis Arguello
on the morning of
Wednesday, July 1, 2009.
See also philosophy professor
Clancy Martin in the
London Review of Books
(issue dated July 9, 2009)
on AA members as losers—
“the ‘last men,’ the nihilists,
the hopeless ones.”
Part I: The Pagan View
From The Fire, Katherine Neville's sequel to her novel The Eight:
"'Cat…. realized that we all need some kind of a chariot driver to pull our forces together, like those horses of Socrates, one pulling toward heaven, one toward the earth….'
… I asked, 'Is that why you said my mother's and my birthdays are important? Because April 4 and October 4 are opposite in the calendar?'
Rodo beamed a smile…. He said, 'That's how the process takes place….'"
Part II: The Christian View
"The Calendar of saints is a traditional Christian method of organizing a liturgical year by associating each day with one or more saints and referring to the day as that saint's feast day. The system arose from the very early Christian custom of annual commemoration of martyrs on the dates of their deaths, or birth into heaven, and is thus referred to in Latin as dies natalis ('day of birth')." –Wikipedia
The October 4 date above, the birthday of Cat's daughter, Xie, in The Fire, is also the liturgical Feast of St. Francis of Assisi (said by some to be also the date of his death).
The April 4 date above is Neville's birthday and that of her alter ego Cat in The Eight and The Fire. Neville states that this is also the birth date of Charlemagne. It is, as well, the dies natalis (in the "birth into heaven" sense), of Dr. Martin Luther King.
For more about April 4, see Art Wars and 4/4/07.
For more about October 4, see "Revelation Game Continued: Short Story."
"et lux in tenebris lucet
et tenebrae eam
non comprehenderunt"
“Haider was pronounced dead
in a hospital shortly after his
Volkswagen Phaeton veered
off the road….”
“In the version of the myth told by Ovid in the Metamorphoses, Phaeton bragged to his friends that his father was the sun-god. One of his friends, who was rumored to be a son of Zeus, refused to believe him and said his mother was lying. So Phaeton went to his father Helios, who swore by the river Styx to give Phaeton anything he should ask for in order to prove his divine paternity. Phaeton wanted to drive his chariot (the sun) for a day. Though Helios tried to talk him out of it, Phaeton was adamant. When the day came, Phaeton panicked and lost control of the mean horses that drew the chariot. First it veered too high, so that the earth grew chill. Then it dipped too close, and the vegetation dried and burned. He accidentally turned most of Africa into desert, burning the skin of the Ethiopians black. Eventually, Zeus was forced to intervene by striking the runaway chariot with a lightning bolt to stop it, and Phaeton plunged into the river Eridanos. His sisters the Heliades grieved so much that they were turned into poplar trees that weep golden amber.
This story has given rise to two latter-day meanings of ‘phaeton’: one who drives a chariot or coach, especially at a reckless or dangerous speed, and one that would or may set the world on fire.” —Wikipedia
"Mazur introduced the topic of prime numbers with a story from Don Quixote in which Quixote asked a poet to write a poem with 17 lines. Because 17 is prime, the poet couldn't find a length for the poem's stanzas and was thus stymied."
— Undated American Mathematical Society news item about a Nov. 1, 2007, event
Desconvencida,
Jueves, Enero 17, 2008
Horses of a Dream
(Log24, Sept. 12, 2003)
Knight Moves
(Log24 yesterday–
anniversary of the
Jan. 16 publication
of Don Quixote)
Windmill and Diamond
(St. Cecilia's Day 2006)
“Thomas P. Whitney, a former diplomat and writer on Russian affairs who was best known for translating the work of the dissident writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn into English, died on [Sunday] Dec. 2 in Manhattan. He was 90….
During World War II, he was an analyst in Washington with the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency….
In the late 1960s and afterward, he bred thoroughbred horses….
On one occasion, Mr. Whitney took Mr. Solzhenitsyn to Saratoga Racetrack….”
Related material:
“The best of the books are the ones…
where the allegory is at a minimum
and the images just flow.”
“‘Everything began with images,’
Lewis wrote….”
Yesterday’s entry on
Solzhenitsyn and The Golden Compass
and the following illustrations…
from Sunday in the Park with Death,
a Log24 entry commemorating
Trotsky’s birthday–
–and from Log24 on the date
of Whitney’s death,
Sunday, Dec. 2, 2007—
Personal Emblem
of psychiatrist
Harry Stack Sullivan
The horses may refer to
the Phaedrus of Plato.
See also Art Wars.
Zeph Stewart, 86, a classics professor and former Lowell House master at Harvard, died, according to today’s online Crimson, on Saturday.
Related material: Saturday’s Log24 entry “Plato’s Horses” and its link to a Harvard education.
Part I: Matisse
The Wisdom of the Ego,
by George E. Vaillant,
Harvard University Press (1993)
Cover illustration:
“Icarus,” from Jazz, by Henri Matisse
Publisher’s description of author:
George E. Vaillant is Professor of Psychiatry;
Director of the Study of Adult Development,
Harvard University Health Services;
and Director of Research in
the Division of Psychiatry,
Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
“This is a remarkable synthesis of the best current thinking on ego psychology as well as a many-faceted picture of what Robert White would call ‘lives in progress.’ It makes on its own not only a highly innovative contribution to ego psychology but an equally original and impressive contribution to longitudinal research. A remarkable and many-faceted work.”
— The late George W. Goethals
of Harvard University
Part II:
The Hospital
Cached from http://bostonist.com/2007/12/01/boston_blotter_164.php
December 1, 2007Boston Blotter: More on Harvard Student Found Dead
A Facebook group named “In Memory of John Edwards” has already been established. * Other reports say the body was found at about 11 PM on Thursday, Nov. 29– the presumed date of Edwards’s death. Edwards was said to have conducted stem cell research at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. |
Part III:
Down to Earth
The reviewer in Icarus, Part I, above,
Dr. Goethals, was my teacher in a
1960-61 freshman seminar at Harvard.
He admired the work of
Harry Stack Sullivan.
The cover of the Sullivan book below
may serve to illustrate yesterday’s
“Plato’s Horses” remarks.
The ego defenses of today’s
Harvard students seem to need some
strengthening. Perhaps Vaillant, Sullivan,
and the philosophies of Pirsig and of Plato
discussed in yesterday’s entry
may be of use in this regard.
Related material:
Wallace Stevens,
opening lines of
The Necessary Angel:
We recognize at once, in this figure, Plato’s pure poetry; and at the same time we recognize what Coleridge called Plato’s dear, gorgeous nonsense. The truth is that we have scarcely read the passage before we have identified ourselves with the charioteer, have, in fact, taken his place and, driving his winged horses, are traversing the whole heaven.”
Stevens, who was educated at Harvard, adds:
“Then suddenly we remember, it may be, that the soul no longer exists and we droop in our flight and at last settle on the solid ground. The figure becomes antiquated and rustic.”
Many who lack a Harvard education to make them droop will prefer to remember Robert Craig Knievel (Oct. 17, 1938 – Nov. 30, 2007) not as antiquated and rustic but as young and soaring.
See also the entries for
last February’s
Academy Awards night:
Hollywood Sermon and
Between Two Worlds.
Scarlett Johansson and friend
in “The Horse Whisperer” (1998)
“‘The University of Sydney has ordered an independent review into allegations that the dean of the Conservatorium of Music hired a horse whisperer to conduct management workshops.’ [Are you, like UD, a bit vague on exactly what a horse whisperer is? And are you having trouble figuring out what a horse whisperer would have to offer a management workshop? But then, what exactly is a management workshop? Read on.]”
For some background on horse whispering and management workshops, see IABC Steal Sheet, March 2004.
Related material:
The recent Log24 entries
|
“Descartes déclare que For further details, |
"The tigers of wrath
are wiser than
the horses of instruction."
— William Blake,
Proverbs of Hell
From Shining Forth:
|
The Place of the Lion, by Charles Williams, 1931, Chapter Eight:
Under the Volcano, Chapter Two:
A Spanish-English dictionary:
Look at the way it
How art thou fallen from heaven,
For more on Spanish |
Symmetry axes
of the square:
(See Damnation Morning.)
From the cover of the
Martin Cruz Smith novel
Stallion Gate:
"That old Jew
gave me this here."
— Dialogue from the
Robert Stone novel
A Flag for Sunrise.
Related material:
— and this morning's online
New York Times obituaries:
The above image contains summary obituaries for Cardinal Lustiger, Archbishop of Paris, 1981-2005, and for Sal Mosca, jazz pianist and teacher. In memory of the former, see all of the remarks preceding the image above. In memory of the latter, the remarks of a character in Martin Cruz Smith's Stallion Gate on jazz piano may have some relevance:
"I hate arguments. I'm a coward. Arguments are full of words, and each person is sure he's the only one who knows what the words mean. Each word is a basket of eels, as far as I'm concerned. Everybody gets to grab just one eel and that's his interpretation and he'll fight to the death for it…. Which is why I love music. You hit a C and it's a C and that's all it is. Like speaking clearly for the first time. Like being intelligent. Like understanding. A Mozart or an Art Tatum sits at the piano and picks out the undeniable truth."
Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry, 1947, Chapter VI:
“What have I got out of my life? Contacts with famous men… The occasion Einstein asked me the time, for instance. That summer evening…. smiles when I say I don’t know. And yet asked me. Yes: the great Jew, who has upset the whole world’s notions of time and space, once leaned down… to ask me… ragged freshman… at the first approach of the evening star, the time. And smiled again when I pointed out the clock neither of us had noticed.”
To Ride Pegasus, by Anne McCaffrey, 1973:
“Mary-Molly luv, it’s going to be accomplished in steps, this establishment of the Talented in the scheme of things. Not society, mind you, for we’re the original nonconformists…. and Society will never permit us to integrate. That’s okay!” He consigned Society to insignificance with a flick of his fingers. “The Talented form their own society and that’s as it should be: birds of a feather. No, not birds. Winged horses! Ha! Yes, indeed. Pegasus… the poetic winged horse of flights of fancy. A bloody good symbol for us. You’d see a lot from the back of a winged horse…”
From Holt Spanish and English Dictionary, 1955:
lucero m Venus
(as morning or evening star);
bright star…
star (in forehead of animal)….
Scarlett Johansson and friend
in “The Horse Whisperer” (1998)
Adam Gopnik on Narnia in The New Yorker:
“Everything began with images,” Lewis wrote.
“We’re not here to stick a mirror on you. Anybody can do that, We’re here to give you a more cubist or skewed mirror, where you get to see yourself with fresh eyes. That’s what an artist does. When you paint the Crucifixion, you’re not painting an exact reproduction.”
Images for Julie Taymor:
Today’s New York Times on Debora Arango, an artist who died at 98 on Dec. 4 at her home near Medellin, Colombia:
“She made dramatic paintings of prostitutes, which shocked midcentury sensibilities….”
“Ms. Arango always pushed boundaries, even as a young girl. In a favorite story, she talked about how she wore pants to ride horses….”
Related material: Yesterday’s entry “Modestly Yours” and entries on Johnny Cash, horses, and Julie Taymor of September 12-14, 2003.
“Words are events.”
— Walter J. Ong, Society of Jesus
Concluding Unscientific Postscript
at noon on St. Lucy’s Day:
“They are the horses of a dream.
They are not what they seem.”
— The Hex Witch of Seldom, page 16
(See also Time and
All the King’s Horses.)
LEAR:
Now you better do some thinkin’
then you’ll find
You got the only daddy
that’ll walk the line.
FOOL:
I’ve always been different
with one foot over the line….
I’ve always been crazy
but it’s kept me from going insane.
For related material, see
and last night’s winner of
the National Book Award
for nonfiction, i.e.,
“all hard facts, all reality, with
no illusions and no fantasy.”
|
A Story That Works
|
“My wife took, unnoticed, this picture, unposed, of me in the act of writing a novel…. The date (discernible in the captured calendar) is February 27, 1929. The novel, Zashchita Luzhina (The Defense), deals with the defense invented by an insane chess player….”
— Vladimir Nabokov, note to photograph following page 256 in Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited, Vintage International paperback, August 1989
— Quoted in The Matthias Defense
From a site titled Meaning of the Twentieth Century —
“Freeman Dyson has expressed some thoughts on craziness. In a Scientific American article called ‘Innovation in Physics,’ he began by quoting Niels Bohr. Bohr had been in attendance at a lecture in which Wolfgang Pauli proposed a new theory of elementary particles. Pauli came under heavy criticism, which Bohr summed up for him: ‘We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that is not crazy enough.’ To that Freeman added: ‘When a great innovation appears, it will almost certainly be in a muddled, incomplete and confusing form. To the discoverer, himself, it will be only half understood; to everyone else, it will be a mystery. For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy, there is no hope!’ “
— Kenneth Brower, The Starship and the Canoe, 1979, pp. 146, 147
It is my hope that the speculation, implied in The Matthias Defense, that the number 162 has astonishing mystical properties (as a page number, article number, etc.) is sufficiently crazy to satisfy Pauli and his friend Jung as well as the more conventional thinkers Bohr and Dyson.
— Log24.net, Feast of St. Mark, 2003
See also The Black Queen and The Eight.
In accordance with the theology of the previous entry, based on Zein’s list of the most common Chinese characters, here are some meanings of
–John Edwards, the Harvard sophomore whose body was [si4] {sì} /to watch/to wait/to examine/to spy/
[si4] {sì} /to seem/to appear/similar/like/to resemble/
[si4] {sì} /until/wait for/
[si4] {sì} /rhinoceros indicus/
[si4] {sì} /four/
[si4] {sì} /(surname)/wife of older brother/
[si4] {sì} /Buddhist temple/
[si4] {sì} /6th earthly branch/9-11 a.m./
[si4] {sì} /stream which returns after branching/
[si4] {sì} /place name/snivel/
[si4] {sì} /offer sacrifice to/
[si4] {sì} /hamper/trunk/
[si4] {sì} /plough/ploughshare/
[si4] {sì} /four (fraud-proof)/market/
[si4] {sì} /to feed/
[si4] {sì} /to raise/to rear/to feed/
[si4] {sì} /team of 4 horses/
[si4 bai3 wan4] {sì bǎi wàn} /four million/
[si4 bai3 yi4] {sì bǎi yì} /40 billion/
[si4 cao2] {sì cáo} /feeding trough/
[si4 cao3] {sì cǎo} /forage grass/
[si4 chu4] {sì chù} /all over the place/everywhere and all directions/
[si4 chuan1] {sì chuān} /Sichuan province, China/
[si4 chuan1 sheng3] {sì chuān shěng} /(N) Sichuan, a south west China province/
[si4 de5] {sì de} /seem as if/rather like/
[si4 fang1] {sì fāng} /four-way/four-sided/
[si4 fen1 zhi1 yi1] {sì fēn zhī yī} /one-quarter/
[si4 fu2] {sì fú} /servo/
[si4 fu2 qi4] {sì fú qì} /server (computer)/
[si4 ge4 xiao3 shi2] {sì gè xiǎo shí} /four hours/
[si4 hu5] {sì hu} /apparently/to seem/to appear/as if/seemingly/
[si4 hu5 hen3 an1 quan2] {sì hu hěn ān quán} /to appear (to be) very safe/
[si4 ji1] {sì jī} /to watch for one's chance/
[si4 ji4] {sì jì} /(n) the four seasons/
[si4 liao4] {sì liào} /feed/fodder/
[si4 lun2 ma3 che1] {sì lún mǎ chē} /chariot/
[si4 men2 jiao4 che1] {sì mén jiào chē} /sedan (motor car)/
[si4 mian4 ba1 fang1] {sì miàn bā fāng} /in all directions/all around/far and near/
[si4 mian4 ti3] {sì miàn tǐ} /tetrahedron/
[si4 miao4] {sì miào} /temple/monastery/shrine/
[si4 nian2] {sì nián} /four years/
[si4 nian2 qian2] {sì nián qián} /four years previously/
[si4 nian2 zhi4 de5 da4 xue2] {sì nián zhì de dà xué} /four-year university/
[si4 qian1] {sì qiān} /four thousand/4 000/
[si4 shi2] {sì shí} /forty/40/
[si4 shi2 duo1] {sì shí duō} /more than 40/
[si4 shi2 liu4] {sì shí liù} /forty six/46/
[si4 shi2 san1] {sì shí sān} /43/forty three/
[si4 shi4 er2 fei1] {sì shì ér fēi} /(saying) appeared right but actually was wrong/
[si4 tian1] {sì tiān} /four days/
[si4 xiao4 fei1 xiao4] {sì xiào fēi xiào} /(saying) resemble a smile yet not smile/
[si4 xue3] {sì xuě} /snowy/
[si4 yang3] {sì yǎng} /to raise/to rear/
[si4 yang3 zhe3] {sì yǎng zhě} /feeder/
[si4 yuan4] {sì yuàn} /cloister/
[si4 yue4] {sì yuè} /April/fourth month/
[si4 yue4 shi2 qi1 hao4] {sì yuè shí qī hào} /April 17/
[si4 zhi1] {sì zhī} /(n) the four limbs of the body/
[si4 zhou1] {sì zhōu} /all around/
All the King's Horses
Johnny Cash's funeral was today.
Today is also the feast day of the Protestant saint Robert Penn Warren.
Here is how Stanley Kubrick might
make a memorial stone for Cash.
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"He is |
The title of this entry, "All the King's Horses," is of course a slightly altered version of the title of Robert Penn Warren's famous novel. For the connection with horses, see my entries of
September 12, 2003, and of
See also
as well as the beginning of Mark Helprin's novel
"There was a white horse, on a quiet winter morning when snow covered the streets gently…."
Into the Sunset
I just learned of Johnny’s Cash’s death. On Google News, the headline was Johnny Cash rides into sunset. The source was the Bangkok Post.
“Don’t you know that
when you play at this level
there’s no ordinary venue.”
— One Night in Bangkok (midi)
No Ordinary Venue
“They are the horses of a dream.
They are not what they seem.”
— The Hex Witch of Seldom, page 16
A Singer
7-Cycle
The Magnificent Seven:
CLICK HERE for
“the adventures of filming this epic
on location in Cuernavaca, Mexico.”
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“He is the outlaw the people love, — The Hex Witch of Seldom, |
“Words are events.”
— Walter J. Ong, Society of Jesus
“…search for thirty-three and three…”
— The Black Queen in The Eight
Horse Sense
Mathematicians are familiar with the emblem of Springer Verlag, the principal publisher of higher mathematics.
Ferdinand Springer, son of Julius Springer, founder of Springer Verlag, “was a passionate chess player and published a number of books on the subject. In 1881 this personal hobby and the name Springer led the company to adopt the knight in chess (in German, Springer) as its colophon.”
Hermann Hesse on a certain sort of serenity:
“I would like to say something more to you about cheerful serenity, the serenity of the stars and of the mind…. neither frivolity nor complacency; it is supreme insight and love, affirmation of all reality, alertness on the brink of all depths and abysses; it is a virtue of saints and of knights; it is indestructible and only increases with age and nearness to death. It is the secret of beauty and the real substance of all art.”
A saint and a knight, Jeanne d’Arc, was memorably portrayed by Milla Jovovich in The Messenger.
(Jovovich seems fated to play more-than-human characters in religious epics; see The Fifth Element.)
Another Springer, related to horses and to the accusation of witchcraft faced by Jeanne d’Arc, is Nancy Springer, the author of
Springer has written a number of books about horses, as well as other topics.
All of the above…. especially the parts having to do with mathematics and horses… was prompted by my redrawing today of a horse-shape within mathematics. See my entry The Eight of April 4, 2003, and the horse-figure redrawn at right below.
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Believers in the story theory of truth may wish to relate the gifts of Jeanne d’Arc and of the girl in The Hex Witch of Seldom to the legend of Pegasus. See, for instance,
Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star.
For another connection between mathematics and horses, see Sangaku.
Recommended Reading
for Cullinane College:
“The Talented form their own society and that’s as it should be: birds of a feather. No, not birds. Winged horses! Ha! Yes, indeed. Pegasus… the poetic winged horse of flights of fancy. A bloody good symbol for us. You’d see a lot from the back of a winged horse…”
— To Ride Pegasus, by Anne McCaffrey.
“Born in Cambridge, MA, on April Fool’s Day 1926 (‘I’ve tried very hard to live up to being an April-firster,’ she quips), McCaffrey graduated from Radcliffe College in 1947.”
Born on March 9, 1947, in Christchurch, Keri Hulme won the Pegasus Prize for her Maori novel, The Bone People.
ART WARS:
Toward Eternity
April is Poetry Month, according to the Academy of American Poets. It is also Mathematics Awareness Month, funded by the National Security Agency; this year's theme is "Mathematics and Art."
Some previous journal entries for this month seem to be summarized by Emily Dickinson's remarks:
"Because I could not stop for Death–
He kindly stopped for me–
The Carriage held but just Ourselves–
And Immortality.
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Math Awareness Month April is Math Awareness Month.
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An Offer He Couldn't Refuse Today's birthday: Francis Ford Coppola is 64.
From a note on geometry of April 28, 1985:
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The Eight Today, the fourth day of the fourth month, plays an important part in Katherine Neville's The Eight. Let us honor this work, perhaps the greatest bad novel of the twentieth century, by reflecting on some properties of the number eight. Consider eight rectangular cells arranged in an array of four rows and two columns. Let us label these cells with coordinates, then apply a permutation.
The resulting set of arrows that indicate the movement of cells in a permutation (known as a Singer 7-cycle) outlines rather neatly, in view of the chess theme of The Eight, a knight. This makes as much sense as anything in Neville's fiction, and has the merit of being based on fact. It also, albeit rather crudely, illustrates the "Mathematics and Art" theme of this year's Mathematics Awareness Month. The visual appearance of the "knight" permutation is less important than the fact that it leads to a construction (due to R. T. Curtis) of the Mathieu group M24 (via the Curtis Miracle Octad Generator), which in turn leads logically to the Monster group and to related "moonshine" investigations in the theory of modular functions. See also "Pieces of Eight," by Robert L. Griess. |
Trifecta
Born today: Arthur Koestler,
former Communist and writer on parapsychology
From To Ride Pegasus, by Anne McCaffrey, 1973:
“Mary-Molly luv, it’s going to be accomplished in steps, this establishment of the Talented in the scheme of things. Not society, mind you, for we’re the original nonconformists…. and Society will never permit us to integrate. That’s okay!” He consigned Society to insignificance with a flick of his fingers. “The Talented form their own society and that’s as it should be: birds of a feather. No, not birds. Winged horses! Ha! Yes, indeed. Pegasus… the poetic winged horse of flights of fancy. A bloody good symbol for us. You’d see a lot from the back of a winged horse…”
“Yes, an airplane has blind spots. Where would you put a saddle?” Molly had her practical side.
He laughed and hugged her. Henry’s frequent demonstrations of affection were a source of great delight to Molly, whose own strength was in tactile contacts.
“Don’t know. Lord, how would you bridle a winged horse?”
“With the heart?”
“Indubitably!” The notion pleased him. “Yes, with the heart and the head because Pegasus is too strong a steed to control or subdue by any ordinary method.”
Born today: Darryl F. Zanuck,
producer of “Viva Zapata!”
Director Eliza Kazan consults with scriptwriter John Steinbeck about the production of “Viva Zapata!” in Cuernavaca, Mexico:
When John woke, I asked him, “Isn’t the Syndicate of Film Technicians and Workers here Communist-dominated?”
Elia Kazan on Darryl Zanuck’s insistence that Zapata’s white horse be emphasized:
Darryl made only one suggestion that he was insistent on. He’d stolen it, no doubt, from an old Warner western, but he offered it as if it were pristine stuff. “Zapata must have a white horse,” he said, “and after they shoot him, we should show the horse running free in the mountains — get the idea? A great fade-out.” We got the idea, all right. Darryl was innocent about the symbol in his suggestion, but so enthusiastic about the emotion of it that he practically foamed at the mouth. John’s face was without expression. Actually, while I thought it was corny, the idea worked out well in the end.
Born today: comedian Bob Newhart
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If Kazan hadn’t directed “Viva Zapata!”…
Zanuck would have ended up shouting, “I said a WHITE horse!” |
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