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| Detail from “The School of Athens” a fresco by Raphael (1483 – 1520) [Click image to call up all published instalments] |
At one time I was a math wiz. Numbers just made sense to my young mind and I loved being the first to complete calculations, slapping my pencil down on the desk—too early according to my teachers, who encouraged rechecking solutions. Even doing so, I still turned my sheet over quickly and, when graded, was found to have the right answers.
Ah, those were the days—before sine and cosine took me down, before a graphing calculator I defiantly rejected became a necessary tool and my love for numbers diminished.
I did not know any of the shortcut tricks of the math world.
In my last week on the road in a truck, as I was preparing to sleep, I put on a movie I had not watched—2017’s Gifted. Because it was just supposed to be noise to keep my brain from racing and allow me to drift off, I wasn’t really “watching” it, but I did hear the first few scenes.
The movie focuses on a young girl who is being raised by her uncle and is discovered to be a math wiz, bored with the lessons of first grade. Her uncle, in a discussion with the teacher, claims she has been taught the Trachtenberg system. Suddenly I became alert, my brain racing to figure out what the Trachtenberg system is.
Jakow Trachtenberg was a Russian engineer who developed a system of calculation while biding his time as a political prisoner in one of Nazi Germany’s concentration camps. His method enabled mental addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, even when dealing with large numbers.
Now, I am not saying the Trachtenberg system would have helped me through Trig or Calculus, but discovering this person, who had found a way to defy his tormentors by just working numbers through his mind, made me want to play again with the simple math I knew and loved.
Now I also need to find time to watch the rest of that movie!
Here is a poem inspired by Jakow’s life and his contribution to the field of mathematics.
Simple Math
By Trachtenberg’s calculation,
the Weimar was deficient,
the third would soon fail too,
counting the walls to pass time,
the guards,
the prisoners,
the bodies who
did not know their death
already considered,
already gathering as soot in the smoke stacks,
billowing black clouds freed
just to fall as ash
back upon the camp.
Addition by subtraction,
dividing by a multitude of sins—
this too shall end,
as the war in mother Russia,
as did the first reich,
the second,
the third measured
and soon to fall
along with these walls—
Jakow finally walking away free,
counting steps forward
into the days ahead,
days behind already calculated,
the mathematics of a prison camp
solved by a mind undefeated.
| Copyright © 2022 by Maik Strosahl Michael E. Strosahl has focused on poetry for over twenty years, during which time he served a term as President of the Poetry Society of Indiana. He relocated to Jefferson City, Missouri, in 2018 and currently co-hosts a writers group there. |
Maik, terrific, what protean fun you have to share with our readers (and with your listeners, some of whom I was told much enjoyed your recitation the other night)! I must look into Trachtenberg’s system and see whether I can master it.
ReplyDeleteI can attest to that. Definitely well read and very well received.
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