杏吧原创

鈥淭he aim of science is to make difficult things understandable in a simpler way; the aim of poetry is to state simple things in an incomprehensible way,鈥� Paul Dirac famously grumbled to fellow physicist, and amateur poet, J. Robert Oppenheimer. Thus, he added, 鈥淭he two are incompatible.鈥�

Dirac, perhaps, did not approve of his scientific forebears. Poetry has been a long-standing tradition in the natural sciences, and Victorian scientists, in particular, had a wide-ranging education that fostered a powerful affinity with the Muse. 鈥�Nature, under its first editor Norman Lockyer, regularly published verse,鈥� notes Daniel Brown, a professor of English at the University of Western Australia in Perth. Many of the central scientific figures of the day would converge on various social clubs, he adds, where they would 鈥渞ecite and indeed sing poems they had written鈥�.

Brown has been investigating this unique strand of English verse for his new book, The Poetry of Victorian 杏吧原创s: Style, science and nonsense, to be published next year by Cambridge University Press. It should provide a welcome contrast to the bulk of previous studies on 19th-century poetry, which had found an ambivalence to science in the work of the era鈥檚 better-known voices, while ignoring the more informed verse of those practising the disciplines. Although never as skilfully executed as the work of Tennyson and his ilk, these poems are witty, playful, and reveal much about the interests and personalities of their writers.

James Clerk Maxwell, famous for his unifying theory of electromagnetism, was one of the most prominent Victorian poet scientists. Besides more serious attempts to express the trials of academic study, his work contained humorous ways to explain mathematical problems, such as A Problem in Dynamics, composed in 1854, which begins:

鈥淛ames Clerk Maxwell used his poetic talents to skewer his colleagues鈥�

An inextensible heavy chain,
Lies on a smooth horizontal plane,
An impulsive force is applied at A,
Required the initial motion of K鈥�

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This knack of knocking out a witty rhyme can be seen in his parodies satirising the work of contemporary poets. Generations of physics students learned his amusing Robert Burns spoof, Rigid Body Sings, and his take on Valentine鈥檚 Day card poetry 鈥� Valentine by a Telegraph Clerk (male) to a Telegraph Clerk (female) 鈥� still delights:

The tendrils of my soul are twined
With thine, though many a mile apart.
And thine in close coiled circuits wind
Around the needle of my heart.

Constant as Daniell, strong as Grove.
Ebullient throughout its depths like Smee,
My heart puts forth its tide of love,
And all its circuits close in thee鈥�

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The poem, Brown notes, makes clever use of the electrical apparatus of the time: the Daniell battery cell provides a more constant current, a Grove cell gives greater electromotive force, and a Smee battery immerses an electrode in sulphuric acid.

It鈥檚 hardly the usual stuff of love poetry, but Maxwell was famed for transforming formulae and poetic fancies alike into startling visualisations. Occasionally, he would use this talent to skewer his colleagues. Slyly imitating the dramatic lecture style of his fellow physicist John Tyndall, his Tyndallic Ode, written for Nature in 1871, begins:

I come from empyrean fires,
From microscopic spaces,
Where molecules with fierce desires,
Shiver in hot embraces.

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Maxwell also found himself bemused by his more prosaic peers. 鈥淚 know several men who see all nature in symbols,鈥� he confided in an 1863 letter, 鈥渁nd express themselves conformably whether in Quintics or Quantics, Invariants or Congruents.鈥� Two years later, thermodynamics theorist William J.M. Rankine aimed squarely at such colleagues when he wrote The Mathematician in Love:

A mathematician fell madly in love
With a lady, young, handsome, and charming:
By angles and ratios harmonic he strove
Her curves and proportions all faultless to prove.
As he scrawled hieroglyphics alarming鈥�

鈥淟et x denote beauty, y, manners well-bred,-
鈥渮, Fortune,- (this last is essential),-
鈥淟et L stand for love鈥�- our philosopher said,-
鈥淭hen L is a function of x, y, and z,
鈥淥f the kind which is known as potential.鈥�

鈥淣ow integrate L with respect to d t,
鈥�(t Standing for time and persuasion);
鈥淭hen, between proper limits, 鈥檛is easy to see,
鈥淭he definite integral Marriage must be:-
鈥�(A very concise demonstration).鈥�

Said he-鈥淚f the wandering course of the moon
鈥淏y Algebra can be predicted,
鈥淭he female affections must yield to it soon鈥�-
-But the lady ran off with a dashing dragoon,
And left him amazed and afflicted.

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Not all the poet scientists took their art so lightly. Mathematician and graph theory pioneer James Joseph Sylvester was passionate about verse; his biographer Karen Parshall writes that for stretches of his career, 鈥淪ylvester was just as serious about poetry as he had been about mathematics鈥�. With encouragement from his friend, the poet Matthew Arnold, he published a book on the subject: The Laws of Verse. Sylvester was immensely proud of the achievement, and even after being made Savilian professor of geometry at the University of Oxford, would sign letters as 鈥淛.J. Sylvester, author of The Laws of Verse鈥�.

His two passions would occasionally overlap at baffling moments. During his inaugural Oxford lecture, Sylvester suddenly broke into verse with To a Missing Member of a Family Group of Terms in an Algebraical Formula:

Lone and discarded one! divorced by fate
Far from thy wished-for fellows 鈥� whither art flown
Where lingerest thou in thy bereaved estate,
Like some lost star, or buried meteor stone?
Thou mindst me much of that presumptuous one
Who loth, aught less than greatest, to be great,
From Heaven鈥檚 immensity fell headlong down
To live forlorn, self-centred, desolate鈥�

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Upon finishing, he simply continued lecturing his bewildered audience. The poem has its fans, though: the rock icon Patti Smith has been known to quote the first quatrain.

Despite his best efforts, Sylvester never quite succeeded in uniting poetry and mathematics. The Laws of Verse had an elaborate taxonomy that broke poetry down into 鈥減neumatic鈥�, 鈥渓inguistic鈥� and 鈥渞hythmic鈥� aspects 鈥� essentially, ideas, words and sounds. Out of the rhythmic aspect alone, he created qualities he called 鈥渕etric鈥�, 鈥渃hromatic鈥� and 鈥渟ynectic鈥� and split the latter into 鈥減honetic syzygy鈥�, 鈥渟ymptosis鈥�, and 鈥渁nastomosis鈥�. The resulting system, his biographer noted, was 鈥渧irtually unintelligible鈥�, though this failed to curb Sylvester鈥檚 enthusiasm. He also obsessed over his concept of syzygy, which used punishing consonant repetition in endless end rhymes, as seen in To Rosalind:

In Cecilia鈥檚 name I find-
(Deem not thou the guess unkind)-
Celia, with a sigh combined,
Whose five letters, loose aligned.
Magic set, and recombined,
Fairest O! of lily kind,
Shall disclose to every mind,
From Far West to Orient Ind,
With each mortal thing unkinned,
Thy sweet name, dear Rosalind!

During a tenure as a professor at Johns Hopkins University, Sylvester would bore unsuspecting passers-by, reciting lengthy versions of To Rosalind that 鈥渞eached four or five hundred verses鈥�, university president David Gilman later recalled. 鈥淗e read his verses to many unwilling hearers, and I know that he kept the type standing for months at the printer鈥檚 for additions and emendations,鈥�

Today, some of these pieces have found new life on the internet, though many languish in university archives. The monster version of Sylvester鈥檚 relentless To Rosalind, though, appears to have been lost entirely. In this case, one might be forgiven for agreeing with Thomas Gray that 鈥淲here ignorance is bliss, 鈥楾is folly to be wise.鈥�