Blog Response #10: Euclid Alone has Looked on Beauty Bare

 As I read through Millay’s poem, I realize that she claims that only Euclid has seen Beauty in her fullness and has represented Beauty through his work. This is shown in the following lines of the poem: “Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare” (line 1) and “... intricately drawn nowhere in shapes of shifting lineage...” (lines 6-7). From this description I believe that Millay is saying that Euclid’s work is immensely valuable by proclaiming that his work is the embodiment of beauty itself. I also noticed that Millay refers to sight by listing out things that are pleasing to the eye to describe what is beautiful. Examples are “looked on Beauty” (line 1), “stare... shapes of shifting lineage” (lines 4-6), “luminous air” (line 8), and “the shaft into his vision shone of light anatomized” (lines 10-11). Millay’s constant reference to the use of the sense of sight in her poem makes the reader purposefully mindful that Euclid’s work is being described as a beautiful sight.    

When I think about why Euclid’s work is so popular and why people still study it to this day, I think one of the reasons, which was described in the biography I read, is that Euclid covers many mathematics topics including geometry, number theory and irrational numbers. Specifically, for Euclidean Geometry, it is described in the biography that the “Elements is remarkable for the clarity with which the theorems are stated and proved” and so mathematicians that followed aimed to achieve the same standards in their own research (O’Connor & Robertson, 1999, paragraph 33). Personally, when I was doing my own learning of Euclid’s Elements, I loved how structured it was and I loved how the explanations were all supported with diagrams. The only challenge I had was understanding the wording and sentence structure that was used to describe the theorems. I found it difficult to translate the sentences to a more mathematical or algebraic format.  

 

References 

Millay, E.S.V. Euclid Alone has Looked on Beauty Bare. 2022 Math History for Teachers Class Blog. https://edcp44222.blogspot.com/?zx=1692760d798d4320 

O’Connor, J.J. & Robertson, E.F. (1999, January). Euclid of Alexandria. MacTutor. https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Euclid/ 

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