Graph Coverings for Investigating Non Local Structures in Proteins, Music and Poems

It is shown how the secondary structure of proteins, musical forms and verses of poems are approximately ruled by universal laws relying on graph coverings. In this direction, one explores the group structure of a variant of the SARS-Cov-2 spike protein and the group structure of apolipoprotein-H, passing from the primary code with amino acids to the secondary structures organizing the foldings. Then one look at the musical forms employed in the classical and contemporary periods. Finally, one investigates in much detail the group structure of a small poem in prose by Charles Baudelaire and that of the Bateau Ivre by Arthur Rimbaud.

Graph Coverings for Investigating Non Local Structures in Proteins, Music and Poems

It is shown how the secondary structure of proteins, musical forms and verses of poems are approximately ruled by universal laws relying on graph coverings. In this direction, one explores the group structure of a variant of the SARS-Cov-2 spike protein and the group structure of apolipoprotein-H, passing from the primary code with amino acids to the secondary structures organizing the foldings. Then one look at the musical forms employed in the classical and contemporary periods. Finally, one investigates in much detail the group structure of a small poem in prose by Charles Baudelaire and that of the Bateau Ivre by Arthur Rimbaud.

Guía de viajes alrededor de la alcoba de Vicente Quirarte

Vicente Quirarte (Ciudad de México, 1954) reunió algunos de sus ensayos sobre viajes, viajeros y caminos literarios en Viajes alrededor de la alcoba (1993). Este libro toma por título la máxima de otro poeta mexicano, Xavier Villaurrutia. Desarrolla la idea clásica de quien se mueve desde su habitación con la lectura de crónicas que le llevan a imaginar un mundo más saludable. A partir de ciertos motivos itinerantes que recorre Vicente Quirarte —como el flâneur de Charles Baudelaire o Walter Benjamin, el doppelgänger de Arthur Rimbaud, el homeless de Leopold Bloom o Die Verwandlung de Franz Kafka— estableceremos una poética de la ecocrítica urbana que se viene defendiendo en la lírica mexicana. La reescritura genera un diálogo constante entre diversos tiempos y espacios. Atendemos a distintas perspectivas del viaje: como proceso de escritura, desde la historia o la arquitectura, el viaje físico o conjetural, hasta llegar a la infancia como separación, iniciación y retorno. Si nos fijamos en la tradición que hereda y renueva el poeta, advertimos un elogio del espacio urbano (Ciudad de México, Praga o Nueva York) y de los animales (el perro, la ballena o las hormigas) en contra de ese final voluntario que es el suicidio. Se trata de elementos también presentes en Alejandro Tarrab o Esther M. García. La literatura permite establecer un viaje interior que beneficie a la vida en comunidad, con una conciencia del medio, solo entre la multitud.

Cavafy among the Modernists

Placing C. P. Cavafy among the modernists raises interesting questions. Which century can claim Cavafy? What does it mean to claim Cavafy for modernism? What space do we need to make for Cavafy in an approach to modernism that shapes and is shaped by his work? What re- and disorientations might that positioning require? Which nineteenth-century filiations does Cavafy carry over into his modernism? Is courage rather than contemporaneity a better guide in these orienteering exercises? This essay fleshes out these questions, asks a few more in the process, and attempts a set of triangulations and mediations between Cavafian and early twentieth-century words and worlds. This is not to trace influences or deep affinities but to deploy Cavafy as the “century's interlocutor,” in Paul's immodest but resonant phrase. Among the mediating or triangulated figures are F. T. Marinetti, E. M. Forster, T. S. Eliot, George Seferis, Ezra Pound, W. B. Yeats, Vernon Lee, and Pierre Louÿs, with cameo appearances by Bertolt Brecht, Arthur Rimbaud, and Eugène Marsan.

Arthur Rimbaud

The chapter presents a reading of probably the most celebrated ship-poem in existence, written exactly one hundred and fifty years ago by a teenaged boy in provincial France who had never seen the sea. The poem, in which the boat ‘speaks’, is read as unusually brilliant homework, as autobiography, as showing-off, as prophecy, as an account of empire. The Pyrrhic continuance or persistence of the drowning boat is read as an image of literature itself.

Yuri Sopov’s Poem “Arthur Rimbaud” (1919): Text and Contexts

The article introduces publication of the full text of the narrative poem “Arthur Rimbaud” by the Omsk poet Yuri (Pyotr Ivanovich) Sopov (1897–1919), written shortly before his tragic death in the explosion at A.V. Kolchak’s residence on August 25 (or 26), 1919. The text previously had been known by fragments only, by virtue of quotations included in the newspaper obituary by the poet Georgy Maslov, who briefly survived Sopov. A number of details allow us to conclude that Sopov is fairly accurate when rendering facts of Rimbaud’s life and must have been familiar with the French poet’s biography, not just with echoes of the legend. Therefore, the numerous occasions in the poem, where he prefers fiction over fact, should be considered as the result of a deliberate choice. In the perception of contemporaries, the image of the author of the poem partially merged with the mythologized image of its hero. First of all, this concerns poets of the circle of the Omsk literary and artistic association “Chervonnaya Troika” and writers close to the group “Pamir” (“Siberian brigade”). The poet Leonid Martynov (1905–1980) repeatedly turned to the image of Rimbaud, translated his poems, compared his image, biography and character to his own, in poetry and in prose. The article shows that the perception of the French poet in Martynov’s creative laboratory during his long career was mediated by the memory of Yuri Sopov’s poem.