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arXiv · 1710.05659

From Poland to "Petersburg": The Banach-Tarski Paradox in Bely's Modernist Novel

Noah Giansiracusa·Anastasia Vasilyeva
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Abstract

Andrei Bely's novel "Petersburg," first published in 1913, was declared by Vladimir Nabokov one of the four greatest masterpieces of 20th-century prose. The Banach-Tarski Paradox, published in 1924, is one of the most striking and well-known results in 20th-century mathematics. In this paper we explore a potential connection between these two landmark works, based on various interactions with the Moscow Mathematical School and passages in the novel itself.

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Noah Giansiracusa, Anastasia Vasilyeva. 2017-10-16. From Poland to "Petersburg": The Banach-Tarski Paradox in Bely's Modernist Novel. https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.05659

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