The Fascination of Numbers, between Music and Poetry

Michele Emmer
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Michele Emmer: Sapienza University of Rome, Department of Mathematics “Guido Castelnuovo”

A chapter in Imagine Math 2, 2013, pp 5-10 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas. A painter makes patterns with shapes and colours, a poet with words. A painting may embody an ‘idea’, but the idea is usually commonplace and unimportant. In poetry, ideas count for a good deal more; but, as Housman insisted, the importance of ideas in poetry is habitually exaggerated: ‘I cannot satisfy myself that there are any such things as poetical ideas…. Poetry is not the thing said but a way of saying it.’

Keywords: Musical Work; Symbolic Element; Musical Sound; Fibonacci Series; French Writer (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-88-470-2889-0_2

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DOI: 10.1007/978-88-470-2889-0_2

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