2872 - The forgotten album

N. Lygeros
Translated from the Greek by Athena Kehagias

When he was studying the complete works of Euler, he listened to his favorite album. In that way he felt that the lieder of the unhappy composer helped him to understand the conceptions of the teacher. The female voice which accompanied so tenderly the piano of need, filled him with a strange feeling of joy. A strange joy that lived since he knew he would die only after the publication of the book by the Swiss mathematician. He spent nights upon nights so that he could reach the substance of his works. He knew how much he owed him for the development of his theories of the calculus of variations.
Nobody could see his hidden comments. He did not want the memory of the teacher to die without giving one last battle. He had to save it from oblivion just as the album had saved the immortal voice which cried without tears. Each stolen note from oblivion was a battle won by the composer. He examined the teacher’s texts and felt his responsibility. If he died prior the end of his work, who would learn about all the theorems of beauty? So he listened, at every immortal moment in order to give himself courage. Everyone said that he had grown old and could no longer contribute to mathematics, even his friends.
But he was experiencing the truth. And he had to leave a piece of work for the ones who would be next, which he had not yet written. Those people who were not born yet, those archaeologists of the future, should receive his memory and the works of the teacher. Only in such a way they could rescue it and disseminate it.
He hoped that in the future there would be a museum, a foundation or an institution, he could not determine it at that time, which would take measures that the memory of yet another non-existent nation would not be erased. For now though, he struggled with printers to ensure the authenticity of the works.
Was aware of every point as if it was a note of an invisible music score which should not be lost. Otherwise, his life’s works would not have the same meaning anymore. He listened to the humanity of the female voice and saw the whole of humanity within it.Only at that time, for all of the teacher’s works , humanity was not but a single human. And that man was he himself. A mathematician who started his career of late. He had not realized the gravity of his life, but only when he confronted the pyramids. There, he was touched by the beauty of concision . And from then on, he decided that he would not stop the fight for mathematics. And while others asumed it was already late, he proved that it was in fact quite early. The piano didn’t stop for a moment accompanying the voice. Likewise he would not leave the works of the teacher but only untill after its publication even if he was to die later , in order to live within the non-existent nation.