Echoes of the subject: poetic, mathematical, and imaginative interplay in the literary writings of Ada Lovelace and Sofia Kovalevskaya - Subjectivity
This paper explores the intricate interplay between mathematics, poetry, and imagination through a close reading of writings by two women mathematicians, Ada Lovelace and Sofia Kovalevskaya. Drawing on Romantic conceptions of the poetic, philosophical accounts of imagination and scientific reverie, and rhythmic and echoic conceptions of subjectivity, the paper argues for a poetics of mathematical thought that resists rigid disciplinary separations. It traces how these women’s literary work mobilizes imaginative registers–analogy, reverie, rhythm, echo, dream–not as metaphors for mathematics, but as vital forms of mathematical invention and expression. The result is a rethinking of what it means to ‘do’ mathematics poetically, not in spite of abstraction, but through and with it–through the reverberations, returns, and recursive patterns that echo through both mathematical and poetic forms.
