ATDTDA (18) 498-9: Something mathematical

[John Bailey]

This section makes some wonderful use of subtle language to invoke the notion of burning – of heat and brightness that necessarily connotes a burning out… and it’s the sense of a heated relationship burning out that it takes as its most obvious focus.
 
Yashmeen informs Cyprian that’s she off to Gottingen to study under Hilbert whose “obsessiveness” regarding the Riemann problem is what she needs. Her own words echo that quasi-spiritual obsession: “For something to actually… light up, it’s… no one would believe me if I…”
 
“So Gottingen it is,” she says, though the university’s pretty progressive history of female education is completely left out of the equation (Gottingen gave its first PhD to a woman in 1787).
 
For Cyprian, all this talk amounts to “something…mathematical”. He doesn’t get it. All he can do is calculate cricket averages. And he’s jealous of her, to boot. 
 
But she returns to this chapter’s notions of light (albedo, blondeness, photography and the (perhaps false?) illumination provided by obsession) when she describes Cyps’ attentions until now in flattering terms: “Who would not wish to become, even for a moment, that brighter creature…even if her fate be ashes?” 
 
Yashmeen…the three blondes…hell, Paris Hilton or Britney Spears. Eventually conflagrated by the spotlight. Though this phrasing invokes the Phoenix, too – and the potential for rebirth.
 
Then again, given C’s previous words, it could be a cricket allusion, given that the grand prize for the world cricketing season is a cup of ashes.
 
Cyprian is finding all this a bit much, so he lights a cigarette.
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