Conic Literature

=======================================================================

They say there are three conic sections: Hyperbola, Parabola and Ellipse.

Let us talk of instances where these occur in literature.

[Aside: One fine morning SDM was trying vainly to correct the Introduction Chapter to his thesis written by one of his Scholars; and was fuming and fulminating...and told me that he scolded the concerned RS asking him to study in depth the Editorials of The Statesman, not Amrit Bazar Patrika, for a month to get to know how to write English prose. And, when he came to the sentence: "This particular expansion does not occur in literature," he threw the typescript down and said: "What does he mean 'in literature'? Does he mean Shakespeare? There ought to be a 'the' before literature if he means relevant past studies"]

I skipped the 'the' in the line above, because I mean both.

************************************************************************************************************

Ellipse

It is said that Upanishadic poetry is highly elliptic. As we all know, the Vedas are a voluminous bulk of uncodified poetry. For convenience they are divided into two parts:

1. Karma Kanda: These prescribe how to perform various rituals. There is a gloss on this written by Jamini which is said to be fairly lucid.

2. Jnana Kanda: This consists of the principal Upanishads, also called Uttara Meemamsa.

Since Upanishads are supposed to be rather controversial whether they variously refer to Jeevatman or Paramatman (both termed, unfortunately, Atman), Badarayana Vyasa wrote a standard gloss called the Vedanta Sutras consisitng of 555 aphorisms starting with: "adhatho brahma jijnasa" translated as: "then therefore the inquiry into brahman".

The sutras are even more terse and elliptic than the Upanishads which they try to elucidate, verse by important verse. So, there arose what are known as Sutra Bhashyas which in turn are glosses of the Badarayana Gloss. There are three in the main: Shankara Bhashya (Advaitic interpretation), Ramanuja Bhashya (Visishatdvaitic) and Madhvacharya Bhashya (Dvaitic).

Needless to say, each of these glosses have even larger number of glosses...SDM would have called them, "worlds within worlds"; and I liken them to Kondapalli figurines, which, when you open one, reveals another, and another...

My interest in Vedic hymns was aroused by the Emerson verse quoted by Maugham in Razor's Edge:

They reckon ill who leave me out
When me they fly, I am the wings
I am the doubter and the doubt
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings

Needless to say, I parodied it in my post: Out of Thin Air, March 28, 2009; subtitled: Air Deccan founder takes electoral plunge (and nosedives):

They reckon ill who leave me out
When me they fly, I am the wings
I am the voter who voted me out
And I the flier who singed his wings

****************************************************************************************

Parabola

Whenever SDM talked of a parabola, he used to stretch his arms upward as if to infinity. As I said earlier, his mind was full of pictures. Whenever he did this, I recalled the line of Tagore:

"where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection"

The other parabola in literature that I liked best is the line in PGW's Leave it to Psmith:

"Psmith sat down and resumed his reading.

'Across the pale parabola of Joy'

Psmith knitted his brow. It was just the sort of line which was likely to have puzzled his patroness, Lady Constance, and he anticipated that she would come to him directly he arrived and ask for an explanation. It would obviously be a poor start for his visit to confess that he had no theory as to its meaning himself. He tried it again.

'Across the pale parabola of Joy...'

A sound like two or three pigs feeding rather noisily in the middle of a thunderstorm interrupted his meditation...."

Just look at that simile (for the sound of a snore): 'two or three pigs feeding....'

No wonder PGW is the Emperor of Pictures Perfect.

*************************************************************************************************************

Hyperbola

Hyperbole is a favorite figure of speech in the (Physics) literature, invoking God for some accomplishment or the other. Alexander Pope (who perhaps couldn't solve a linear first order differential equation) sang:

Nature and nature's laws lay hid in the night;
God said "Let Newton be" and all was light."

Of course, when we praise our Physicists, we praise their physics; not their persona. Everyone knows Newton, Pope's Apostle of God, fought bitterly over 'priorities' and secretly indulged in alchemy, but he himself was ultramodest once in a while, like when he said things like he being a child discovering a particle of sand on the beach while the whole ocean lies unrevealed...this is an example of Inverse Hyperbole called Euphemism.

And Ludwig Boltzmann, one of the greatest physicists, unfortunately subject to bipolar disorder, sang about Maxwell:

Was it a God who wrote these lines?

But I suppose everyone agrees that the Dirac Equation was closer to a Revelation; certainly Feynman. James Gleick writes:

"More than anyone else, Dirac had made the mere discovery of an equation into a thing to be admired. To aficionados the Dirac equation never did lose its rabbit-out-of-a-hat quality..."

As to what was considered the ultimate hyperbolic reco, here is the one from Wigner to Feynman (ibid):

"He is a second Dirac," Wigner said, "only this time human."

Coming down to earth about hyperboles in Literature ;-), the other day Vinit told his son:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2012/03/don-feynman.html

"(gps) is even better than Feynman"

Much before that, Supratim wrote, in his Foreword to the last Ishani booklet:

"Several years ago, I read an article by the physicist Daniel Kleppner celebrating the intense intellectual atmosphere of College de France. Apparently, every professor in College de France had to give just eighteen lectures a year; but Kleppener took pains to emphasize that giving eighteen lectures a year was no mean feat because every one of those lectures had to present an original piece of work. However, notwithstanding Kleppner's assertions, the difficulty of that task pales in comparison to the challenge of coming up with an original blog piece every day and yet GPS does so with great gusto to the delight of us all..."

The six angels dancing on the tip of that needle I talked about the other day sing:

AMEN!

=======================================================================