The writer as not only a witness of catastrophes; someone who grapples with the puzzle of human condition, but as someone who tries to reconstruct an image of the past so that it would allow us to imagine a future.
The contemporary author in the words of Carlos Fonseca Suarez must also, to some extent, "make whole what has been wrecked," unlike Walter Benjamin's "angel of history" contemplating how the past has been reduced to a giant pile of debris by the catastrophic passage of time.
"The twenty-first century
author must reconstruct, out of the ruins of the twentieth century, an image of
the past that would allow us to imagine a future." Fonseca sees in the self-exile of Alexander Grothendieck a new way of bearing witness. The only adequate testimonial way of interacting with a century that had been marked by a
constant repetition of man-made catastrophes.”
Carlos Fonseca Suarez/ Alexander Grothendieck/Chuck Close/ Mexican painter Dr. Atl
Alexander Grothendieck
He burned many of his
papers and retreated to the French Pyrenees, where for more than 20 years he
lived the life of a recluse, rarely speaking to people, refusing to indulge
visitors or mathematical tourists, and reportedly subject to periods of religious
mania and apocalypticism.
In a letter to Welsh mathematician Ronnie Brown,
Mr. Grothendieck wrote about why mathematics was important: It allows people to
do difficult things — and it creates the tools by which difficult things can be
made simple.
No comments:
Post a Comment