ART AND MATHS: UNPUBLISHED NOTES BY ANDREJ BELYJ

Abstract

The present article studies the early notes by Andrej Belyj (1899). The manuscript was partially published by A.V. Lavrov; however, fragments, which contained mathematical formulae and equations used by Andrey Belyj to prove his ideas, were omitted. Young Boris Bugaev was under a strong infl uence of his father, professor N.V. Bugaev, whose theory of ‘arhythmology’, that combined maths, logic and philosophy, resonated not only with the world of science, but also with the Russian culture of the early 20th century. Among Bugaev’s followers was P. Florenskij, who developed professor’s idea in his thesis On the Peculiarities of Flat Curves as Places of Interrupted Discontinuity (1904). Lena Szilard points out that there is a strong connection between Andrej Belyj’s literary articles and P. Florenskij’s works on maths. Relevance of the published material is supported by continued interest of researchers to both the ‘Andej Belyj and Pavel Florenskij’ issue and works by V. Khlebnikov, whose ‘zaum’ also has strong links to maths. The extract from Anrej Belyj’s notes is preceded by a brief introduction, which reviews papers on B. Bugaev’s diaries for the year 1899 and summarizes L. Szilard’s articles comparing Andrej Belyj’s literary works, P. Florenskij’s philosophy and V. Khlebnikov’s ‘zaum’. The published notes contain B. Bugaev’s argument on lyric and epic explanations of the essence of things in art and his idea that the two approaches are connected with subjective and objective methods respectively. Andrej Belyj proves that the predominance of emotions in a literary work cannot be used as a criterion for attributing it to ‘lyric’ and ‘subjective’ and shows how the value of an artistic work can be assessed using mathematical equations.