by Rona Altrows
Yet your pursuit continues unabated. Yesterday, within half an hour your representatives called me twice. Frankly, I’ve had enough. What to do? If I took my story to the media, they would not likely pick it up. After all, what is my angle? I have none.
Still, something must be done.
So I have decided to appeal to your higher nature, and explain to you personally why my alma mater will never see any of my money. In return, please call off your alumni-siccing dogs.
Let us return to my university days. I was shy, and a keener. Between classes, I studied. The libraries were my favourite places to read, think and write.
The first time it happened I was at the main library, seated at a long table. I had tried and rejected the square four-desk units. When I sat there I felt hemmed in. (Also, the interlocking pattern of the wooden frame at each unit’s top bore an unsettling resemblance to a swastika.) At a long table, I could see other students and the occasional professor come and go. Other people often sat at the table too. And although we did not interact, I found their presence comforting.
The stacks were to my left. I saw a student wandering through them. He’d pick up a book, return it to the shelf, take a few steps, pick up another book. He looked aimless. With his wire rimmed glasses, t-shirt and scraggly hair, he resembled many other boys on campus. But then I noticed he was wearing cutoffs and, well, his penis protruded from the bottom. I was frightened. I gasped, gathered up my books and sprinted to the circulation desk to report what I’d seen. “All right,” the librarian said. Her tone and expression were flat. I may as well have told her I was returning an overdue book.
Later that day, ready for another study session, I chose the Physical Sciences library. Its design suited my preferences perfectly—long tables only. No cubicles. I enjoyed using the various science libraries, filled, as they were, with the geeks of my generation. (My fellow Arts students preferred the social over the academic.) I opened my American Literature Anthology and got to work.
As I sat reading “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” an early American writing by the hellfire-and-brimstone preacher Jonathan Edwards, who should walk through the turnstile but the exhibitionist in cutoffs. Clearly, the woman at the circulation desk in the main library had not called the police or even campus security after I spoke with her. When Mr. Cutoffs first arrived at Physical Sciences, no parts were exposed. He headed straight for the stacks. A few minutes later I saw him again, pulling the same trick as he had earlier in the day. Clearly, he had been emboldened by getting a reaction from me the first time and then facing no consequences from the authorities. This time I was clear-headed but angry. I walked to the circulation desk, gave my incident report and received the same blasé reaction as I had gotten at the main library. The two librarians could have been the same person, the only difference between them being hair colour.
A week later, on a chilly winter night, my classmate Alicia and I were leaving campus when we came across a different guy, about our age, standing in front of the student union building, exposing himself. Unlike me, Alicia was a quick thinker. “Put that thing away,” she said. “You’ll catch your death of cold.” She found the incident amusing but I was shaken.
I became depressed from those sightings on campus and my lingering memories of them. The pressure of exams and papers got to me. I was lonely and disoriented, being so far away from my family and home town. Finally, I dragged myself to the university’s health clinic where I filled out a questionnaire and was given an appointment with a psychiatrist.
“I think you’re just a little blue,” he said. “Go out and get drunk.”
“But I’m barely eighteen and I don’t drink,” I said.
“Learn,” he said.
Then a guy in my introductory anthropology section suffered from a break from reality in class, and trembled and screamed until he was taken away. He spent a year in treatment. The university kicked him out. Two years later they let him return but with strict conditions. He couldn’t do this, couldn’t do that. He was not allowed back on the university basketball team because… well, they never did say why.
Now I will share with you the question to which I never received an answer. What is the university doing to help students preserve their mental health, or restore it if they lose it?
Sincerely,
Ariadne Jensen
TO HER DAUGHTER GABRIELLE-PAULINE FROM EMILIE DU CHTELET
le 2 septembre 1749
Lunéville
Duché de Lorraine
France
Ma chère Gabrielle-Pauline,
I must speed my pen along as my accouchement fast approaches. From the start of this late pregnancy I have had premonitions of dying in labour. While I put no stock in superstition, my fears are far from irrational. At 43, I am much too old for birthing; all the usual perils multiply. I fear my time is short. Thus has arisen my resolve to raise with you now two matters we have not discussed directly before: my reputation and your education.
You know the life of the court—how rumours proliferate, how whispers fill the corridors. Place no credence in remarks you may have already heard and are likely to hear all the more after my death. Scandalmongers will hiss about your father and me, Voltaire and me, the Marquis Saint-Lambert and me. Know this, my beloved daughter: every man in my life whom I have loved, I have loved fully, body and soul. Indeed, when they are behaving at their best, those men show tolerance, even friendship, toward one another.
With your father being so much older than I, he brought maturity into our marriage. Always he has treated me with kindness. You know he has been away on military campaigns for years at a time; what you may not know is that, from the first, we have had a tacit understanding. As for Voltaire, he and I continue to be close friends and colleagues, although we have had no physical intimacy for five years now.
How many noblewomen on this continent have taken lovers and not lost any standing? One can easily lose count. But for me, it has been different. My involvement in physics, mathematics and philosophy is what really bothers my detractors, women and men alike. My insistence on using my mind—that is what they hate. What I do with my body is merely their excuse. For devoting myself to study and research, I have been labelled a courtesan and worse. When I am gone and you hear the cries of condemnation, remember the truth of your mother.
Now we come to the matter of your education. If you would like for it to continue, I am sure that is accomplishable. Even as a little girl, you showed high intelligence. In my own childhood I was fortunate: at my request, and over my mother’s objections, my father brought in tutors for me. Never before now have I shared with you how, when I was ten, the magnificent old astronomer Fontenelle graced our family’s dinner table and taught me the wonders of the night sky. Why did I not offer such stimulation to you? Was it because you did not ask? Perhaps I was too absorbed in my own lessons—after our marriage, your father paid for my tutors, Maupertuis and Clairaut. Perhaps I did not take proper notice of your intellectual needs. Perhaps I should have been a tutor to you, sharing with you my own learning.
Now, I fear it is too late for me to help you learn. It is good that you are happy in the marriage to Alphonse that your father and I secured for you, and I am pleased that you enjoy serving as a lady-in-waiting to the Neapolitan queen. But, dear girl, if you find the duties of your station insufficient to bring you full satisfaction, and you wish to study, by all means tell Alphonse, and if he is not receptive to paying for your tutors, ask your father, who will gladly attend to their remuneration. Do not be dissuaded by those who wish to restrict the scope of your interests.
I must apologize now for some of the strictures placed upon you as you were growing up. How you wept when I sent you, as a seven-year-old full of life, to the Couvent de la Pitié! I did not intend that you stay sequestered forever; on the contrary, I hoped the good sisters would enrich your education. I
listened to your pleas to come home the following year, but I cannot explain why I made you endure that convent life again when you turned eleven. It was a misjudgment on my part, one for which I hope you will forgive me. At least I did not keep you in for as long the second time. Now that you are a fully mature woman of twenty-three, your comprehension is more profound. Please realize I made all choices for your future, both the right ones and the misguided ones, with your well-being as my greatest consideration.
There is little left for me to do now but wait. I had such severe discomfort two days ago I thought I would be delivered of the child then, but the cramps stopped suddenly. Of course one never looks forward to the labour and birthing pains, the six weeks that feel like six months of lying-in, the milk fever, the binding of the breasts to arrest the flow. Still, how relieved I will be if I have the good fortune to survive. And despite the trial I must endure, I could not ask for a more beautiful place to undergo it. Stanislas, the Duke of Lorraine, has taken a liking to me. He read my book on Leibniz and enjoyed it. I could not with grace decline his offer of these bright quarters in Lunéville, where I can go through the entire process in relative privacy, yet with all the necessary medical and personal assistance.
The premonitions have been strong and I have taken heed. In addition to talking with you, I had another task to complete: my Newton. I spent some time in Paris recently and worked constantly, stopping only to eat and sleep. As a result I managed, two days ago, to finish the translation of Monsieur Newton’s Principia Mathematica from the original Latin into French. I have added my own commentary as well, something I could not have done without the calculus Clairaut taught me. I have sent the manuscript to the director of the King’s Library. Should I not survive, I know Voltaire will see to it that the work is published.
As I write, the pain in my back increases. Labour is close, or perhaps upon me already. I shall put this letter into the hands of Longchamp, Voltaire’s servant, whom I trust even more than I do our du Châtelet family intendant de la Croix. I will instruct Longchamp to hold the letter in confidence and send it to you in the event of my death.
I am, my dear, your most affectionate and devoted mother,
Emilie du Châtelet
TO ABATE JACOPO PANZANINI FROM VINCENZO VIVIANI
Florence
April 5, 1702
Dear Jacopo,
This morning, as I mark in quiet fashion my eightieth birthday, my mind naturally fluctuates between images of the past and thoughts for the future. With no illusions of achieving immortality, I write today to impress upon you once again the importance I place on an unfinished project of mine. I am determined to see that my teacher Galileo is moved to the resting place of his own choosing, where his memory will be honoured with a fitting headstone. The responsibility for this undertaking I took at the age of nineteen. I have made my best efforts over these many intervening years, and indeed I continue to try, to the extent my health permits; however, there have been constant political impediments to what should have been a simple venture. In consequence, it will most likely fall upon you, my nephew, my sole successor, to ensure that the undertaking is carried out. It is you who will oversee the project—to bring the greatest scientist of the seventeenth century—perhaps of all time—to the location he requested in his will—next to his own father’s remains in the Basilica of Santa Croce. As you shall see when the time comes, my will sets out in detail what you will need to do and how. I have left instructions on the construction of a dignified monument, the cost of which will easily be met by my estate. Because you are not only a man of the cloth but also a mathematician in your own right, with an appreciation of my teacher’s genius, you will, I am confident, take your solemn assignment to heart.
It does not seem so long ago that I arrived at Galileo’s villa in Arcetri, where he had unjustly been placed under house arrest and was living out what remained of his time on earth. How fortunate I was, a sixteen-year-old, to have already studied geometry under the Galilean Clemente Settimi, who mentioned me to his own teacher Michelini, who in turn arranged for me to have an audience with the Grand Duke Ferdinando. It was the Grand Duke himself who recommended me to Galileo as his assistant. Why did that honour fall to me, not another? Perhaps because I was fortunate enough to have a great love of mathematics (in which, however, I felt I had little strength) and also the vigour of youth.
If only you could have been with us during those last three years of my teacher’s life. Elderly, sick and blind, Galileo of course relied on me and others for practical help. However, he showed enormous vitality of intellect as he talked of science almost continuously, trusting me to write down all he said and inviting me to participate. Together we conducted many experiments to test theories.
If only Galileo and I had had the means, through experimentation, to unravel time and change his past. How I wish we could have eradicated the years my teacher was persecuted by regressive elements; if only we could have replaced them with years of free movement, acceptance by the church, and universal admiration. But we humans do not inhabit a land of dreams.
To ensure Galileo’s body is moved and the monument erected, you must combine determination, close observation and diplomacy. Do not let my campaign of the past sixty-one years go to waste. Look for every opportunity to influence Grand Duke Cosimo. He seems always to be at prayer or in travel; I cannot make him understand the importance of Galileo, as his father Ferdinando did. Perhaps you can achieve what I could not. Moreover, should a Florentine occupy the papacy, petition him as soon as you can, for he would not want the body of my teacher to languish in obscurity. What you must do is get both religious and secular authority on your side, or at the very least convince the pope, who will then exert pressure on the duke.
I know we have spoken of this matter before. However, as the end of my own life draws ever nearer, I find the need to state the case once again as emphatically as I am able. I put my trust in you to comply with your duty to see Galileo to his proper resting place and I hope you will take pleasure in doing so.
Your devoted uncle,
Vincenzo Viviani
TO ASPASIA FROM XANTHIPPE
Athens
Hekatombion 18
Ol. 93, 4
Xanthippe to Aspasia, greetings.
I write you on a matter of some urgency, although nothing dire has yet come to pass. Nevertheless, I see Athens going downhill, our treasured democracy collapsing, and I fear for what may lie ahead.
Especially I worry for my husband, and what will become of his work when he is gone. Even if he lives out a full natural life, how much longer can it last? As you know, he is in his mid-sixties.
For as long as we have been together, I have been trying to convince Socrates to write his ideas down. He simply will not listen. I should not be surprised. This is a man who will not charge a fee for his work and refuses to buy a pair of shoes. If I cannot convince him in such basic matters, how can I talk him into something as important as recording his thoughts?
Socrates believes it is only through speaking with others that he can do his work. No writing, he says, can accurately represent the questions that lead to responses that lead to more questions. He would lose the threads of argument, he says, the nuances of tone, all the features of conversation that enhance meaning as he engages with people.
I think much too often about the twisted and ridiculous caricature of my husband in The Clouds. Aristophanes had not even met Socrates when he wrote that wretched play. Now they are good friends and Aristophanes has changed his mind. But the play stands. It has been produced and will be produced again, perhaps well beyond our lifetimes. And because the play has been written down, it will be read. Will its future audiences and readers think the real Socrates is the manipulative, greedy Socrates of The Clouds? How will they know the truth of my husband?
I worry, too, that some of the younger men who follow Socrates will wa
it until he dies, and then write down what they think he said, when he is not present to correct them. Xenophon and Plato are the two I suspect the most. They always have tablets and styluses with them when they walk with Socrates. What do they write down? Why does Socrates not ask to read their writings? Those two may have ideas of their own that they want to promote. What if, after Socrates dies, they attribute their own ideas to him, or they say he endorsed those ideas, in order to give themselves more credibility? Worse, what if Xenophon or Plato puts forward a theory as his own—but it is really Socrates’s?
I worry about what they will write but also about what they will not write. Socrates opposes slavery. It is natural for him to feel that way, coming, as he does, from a modest background as the son of a stonecutter and a stonecutter himself until he took up the calling of philosophy full-time. Xenophon and Plato are aristocrats. Will they write down that Socrates believed slavery to be wrong? Or will they omit to mention that, because it is not convenient for them?
Socrates also believes women should receive the same education as men; that our lowly place in society should be elevated. I have always suspected Plato of having the heart of an oligarch. Will he write down that Socrates believed women should have equal rights?
The sycophant Alcibiades is another one I do not trust. He follows my husband around like a puppy, gazes at him with such admiration it is sickening to watch. I am certain by now he has offered his alluring young body in exchange for the opportunity to explore the depths of my husband’s mind. Whether Socrates has accepted I do not know. I do not inquire into such matters. But if Alcibiades decides to record something about Socrates, what will it be? What will he write down?
I know my husband thinks highly of you, not only because you wrote speeches for your dear Pericles, but also because of your grace on the many occasions that philosophers have assembled at your home to exchange ideas.