Euclid Alone has Looked on Beauty Bare

I think Edna St. Vincent Millay is really showing her appreciation of Euclid's work from her poem. From what I am understanding, Edna tried to explain Euclid and his work as something that is new and incomparable to other "Beauty". Edna's definition of "Beauty" in this poem might be the foundation of things that others did not attempt or were not interested to dissect, and how Euclid was able to explain and prove geometrical shapes in his ways. 

I think that Euclidean geometry has been popular to these days because it is well structured with statements of theorems followed by proofs. My personal experience with Euclidean geometry is nothing fascinating, unfortunately. I heard Euclid's name frequently while doing my undergrad studies, but I only memorized the important theorems instead of studying the "Beauty" of his work.

Comments

  1. Amanda Fritzlan19 December 2022 at 17:05

    Many others have experienced Euclid's work as mainly a lot of information to memorize! Funny how a poem can shift that. And dance!

    ReplyDelete

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