November 26, 2002
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Notes toward a Supreme Fact
In “Notes toward a Supreme Fiction,” Wallace Stevens lists criteria for a work of the imagination:
- It Must Be Abstract
- It Must Change
- It Must Give Pleasure.
For a work that seems to satisfy these criteria, see the movable images at my diamond theory website. Central to these images is the interplay of rational sides and irrational diagonals in square subimages.
“Logos and logic, crystal hypothesis,
Incipit and a form to speak the word
And every latent double in the word….”
– “Notes toward a Supreme Fiction,” Section 1, Canto VIII
Recall that “logos” in Greek means “ratio,” as well as (human or divine) “word.” Thus when I read the following words of Simone Weil today, I thought of Stevens.
“The beautiful in mathematics resides in contradiction. Incommensurability, logoi alogoi, was the first splendor in mathematics.”
– Simone Weil, Oeuvres Choisies, éd. Quarto, Gallimard, 1999, p. 100
In the conclusion of Section 3, Canto X, of “Notes,” Stevens says
“They will get it straight one day at the Sorbonne.
We shall return at twilight from the lecture
Pleased that the irrational is rational….”
This is the logoi alogoi of Simone Weil.
- It Must Be Abstract
