March 02, 2005

Speaking of Borges ...

Posted by Henry

there’s something a little Borgesian about this mathematical anecdote from ‘Mind of Winter’ (found via Chad Orzel).

… Zygmund posed Calderón a question and the puzzled Calderón replied that the answer was contained in Zygmund’s own book Trigonometric Series. Zygmund disagreed: what transpired was that Calderón only ever read the statements of the results, preferring to give his own reasoning and proofs… . One of these proofs gave a highly original answer to Zygmund’s question. This originality was to be the hallmark of Calderón’s work in the years to follow.

January 05, 2005

Guy Davenport

Posted by Henry

Via Matt Cheney at the Mumpsimus, I learn that Guy Davenport has died. By coincidence, I’ve mentioned Davenport three times on this blog in the last week; he was one of the finest cultural and literary critics of our time. His essays cumulate into a long allusive conversation; digressive, enlightening, quietly humorous. You could warm your hands at them. He had a gift for finding the detail, the miniature axis on which the world turned for Kafka, for Gerard Manley Hopkins, for Picasso, for Louis Agassiz. From his essay, “On Reading” (collected in The Hunter Gracchus):

Students often tell me that an author was ruined for them by a high-school English class; we all know what they mean. Shakespeare was almost closed to me by the world’s dullest teacher, and there are many writers whom I would probably enjoy reading except that they were recommended to me by suspect enthusiasts. I wish I knew how to rectify these aversions. I tell bright students, in conference, how I had to find certain authors on my own who were ruined for me by bad teachers or inept critics. Scott, Kipling, Wells will do to illustrate that only an idiot will take a critic’s word without seeing for oneself. I think I learned quite early that the judgments of my teachers were probably a report of their ignorance. In truth, my education was a systematic misleading. Ruskin was dismissed as a dull, preacherly old fart who wrote purple prose. In a decent society the teacher who led me to believe this would be tried, found guilty, and hanged by the thumbs while being pelted with old eggs and cabbage stalks.

On this count, as on many others, Davenport was gloriously, radiantly, exuberantly innocent. He inspired you to read new books, and re-read old ones differently. He’ll be sorely missed.