ATDTDA (21): Status and acolytes, 604

[Paul Nightingale]

Hilbert silences Yashmeen and the writing assumes his pov: "Hilbert had seen
this sort of thing before ..." etc. That he recalls "his own much-noted talk
at the Sorbonne" indicates a self-awareness, a sense of his own status,
perhaps distinct from the mathematical point she is trying to make. Another
transition takes us to subsequent recollection, "as some reported later", as
though this has become a momentous occasion viewed in hindsight, a
reconstruction that depends on perspective. Yashmeen is now distanced as
"Fraulein Halfcourt" or even "an apparition he was trying to see more
clearly". Another jump-cut takes us to her own subsequent musings:
"Afterward she would remember she actually said ..." etc, as opposed to
anything she might have mistakenly thought she said. And then: "As years
passed ..." etc returns us to Hilbert's perspective, and indeed his status,
Yashmeen herself superseded by "the celebrated Hilbert-Polya Conjecture".