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Algebra is like poetry for the realistic mind rather than a literary soul. Except algebra leads to mathematical answers, while poems are “never finished – just abandoned” (Paul Valéry)

Le vent se lève! . . . il faut tenter de vivre!

L’air immense ouvre et referme mon livre,

La vague en poudre ose jaillir des rocs!

Envolez-vous, pages tout éblouies!

Rompez, vagues! Rompez d’eaux réjouies

Ce toit tranquille où picoraient des focs!

The wind is rising . . . We must try to live!

The vast air opens then shuts again my book,

The waves dare surge in spray above the rocks!

Scatter, pages dazzled by the light,

Break, waves! Exulting waters, break

This peaceful roof where sailboats dipped like doves!

Paul Valéry, Le Cimetière marin (‘Cemetery by the Sea’)

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There are those of us who worship the ingenious formulae of algebra and those of us who worship the marvellous intricacies of poetry. Who wins?

What is literature but the expression of moods by the vehicle of symbol and incident?

W. B. Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there…

William Butler Yeats, ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’

Let poetry not guide but illuminate your existence. Words themselves are too powerful to express, and while a body of literature constitutes an artful mass of attempts to harness their power -which we may never be able to- or make sense of it, even in the concentrated form of poetry they cannot be fully tamed. Poetry is much too supreme to be understood and used as guidance, and those of us who are content just to appreciate it are those who stand to gain the most.

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