photographing each other. You did it by means of an extended puff-cord which explains the way your hand is stretched out, a minor invention in the march of the camera soon to be made redundant by the timed exposure, but one in which he would have delighted in then, bringing it to you like a child, though your delight would have been more muted, I suspect, since you were after all the professional. That smile will light again when he talks to me of mathematics and tells me that God in His essence is a mathematical symbol and that love is a figure like pi, the calculation of which never ends.
RAIN BEGINS TO fall on the promenade and Father Beausang quickens his step. You see him through your bay window, hurrying towards your door. The bay window is large, with a curved sill on which it is pleasant to sit. It affords two separate views, one through the left-hand curved panes of the Villas heading downwards towards
the sea and sloping towards the yellow chairs that crawl up the Head; and through the right-hand curved panes are the Villas again, rising towards Main Street. It is the window on which the Jewish model sat, naked on velvet cushions before the outraged eyes of the curateâs superior. There is a table there surfaced with green felt, standing in the half-circle of the window. The light is always changing from the window so those who sit there come to know intimately the moods of street and landscape under the rain, the squalls and sheets forever falling on the bay beyond. In summer the window catches the sun for a full six hours. So summer is marked by a yellow glare and the yellow boxes of the chair-lift creaking towards the summit and by the bleaching of the green felt table. The quality of that room, though hardly remarkable, must have been constant, for Lili hated it, the curate when reminded of it grew nostalgic and I, when I visited it, could see at a glance what the one hated and the other loved to remember.
The drops gleam on Father Beausangâs cheeks. His eyes are damp with pleasure and rain. He slips a book out from under his soutane. Luke comes down the stairs and stands on the last step while the priest ruffles his hair. You tell Luke to bring in tea and sandwiches. Father Beausang touches your elbow and holds up the book. You read the title and smile. Arithmetic and Mensuration by Eamon de Valera.
Once inside the unheated room, though, the book is forgotten. The curate has made a much rarer discoveryâa French mathematician whom he came across, quite by chance, in the Proceedings of the British Academy. He tells you his theories and the sheaves of his person seem to fall away, his eyes illuminated, straining through logic towards what he hopes is beyond. You feel quite sad, listening,
anticipating his inevitable return. He relates an analysis of the process of mathematical research and discovery which, he claims, could lead the secular sciences back to the point from which they departed in the late Renaissanceâto a recognition of simple illumination, Divine Wisdom. He has as yet read only accounts of these theories, has gulped them down whole in his excitement, but his sense of discovery is so real that it excites you, unwillingly, in turn. Poincare, the curate tells you, between hurried mouthfuls of cucumber sandwich, sees mathematical research not as merely the inevitable unravelling of applied logic but as a series of leaps into the unknown, for which the light thrown by logic alone could never suffice. The logic, he claims, by which the scientist seems to proceed could never suffice for his journey. The very choice of an area of investigation eliminates an infinite number of possible choices. And progress is made in a series of intuitive steps for which logic is the language but never the instrument. And there comes a point, beyond that language, beyond the resources of intuition even, at which the material amassed simply resists analysis. The curate turns towards you, lit by the grey
RAIN BEGINS TO fall on the promenade and Father Beausang quickens his step. You see him through your bay window, hurrying towards your door. The bay window is large, with a curved sill on which it is pleasant to sit. It affords two separate views, one through the left-hand curved panes of the Villas heading downwards towards
the sea and sloping towards the yellow chairs that crawl up the Head; and through the right-hand curved panes are the Villas again, rising towards Main Street. It is the window on which the Jewish model sat, naked on velvet cushions before the outraged eyes of the curateâs superior. There is a table there surfaced with green felt, standing in the half-circle of the window. The light is always changing from the window so those who sit there come to know intimately the moods of street and landscape under the rain, the squalls and sheets forever falling on the bay beyond. In summer the window catches the sun for a full six hours. So summer is marked by a yellow glare and the yellow boxes of the chair-lift creaking towards the summit and by the bleaching of the green felt table. The quality of that room, though hardly remarkable, must have been constant, for Lili hated it, the curate when reminded of it grew nostalgic and I, when I visited it, could see at a glance what the one hated and the other loved to remember.
The drops gleam on Father Beausangâs cheeks. His eyes are damp with pleasure and rain. He slips a book out from under his soutane. Luke comes down the stairs and stands on the last step while the priest ruffles his hair. You tell Luke to bring in tea and sandwiches. Father Beausang touches your elbow and holds up the book. You read the title and smile. Arithmetic and Mensuration by Eamon de Valera.
Once inside the unheated room, though, the book is forgotten. The curate has made a much rarer discoveryâa French mathematician whom he came across, quite by chance, in the Proceedings of the British Academy. He tells you his theories and the sheaves of his person seem to fall away, his eyes illuminated, straining through logic towards what he hopes is beyond. You feel quite sad, listening,
anticipating his inevitable return. He relates an analysis of the process of mathematical research and discovery which, he claims, could lead the secular sciences back to the point from which they departed in the late Renaissanceâto a recognition of simple illumination, Divine Wisdom. He has as yet read only accounts of these theories, has gulped them down whole in his excitement, but his sense of discovery is so real that it excites you, unwillingly, in turn. Poincare, the curate tells you, between hurried mouthfuls of cucumber sandwich, sees mathematical research not as merely the inevitable unravelling of applied logic but as a series of leaps into the unknown, for which the light thrown by logic alone could never suffice. The logic, he claims, by which the scientist seems to proceed could never suffice for his journey. The very choice of an area of investigation eliminates an infinite number of possible choices. And progress is made in a series of intuitive steps for which logic is the language but never the instrument. And there comes a point, beyond that language, beyond the resources of intuition even, at which the material amassed simply resists analysis. The curate turns towards you, lit by the grey
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