The French Lietenant's Woman

The only book I've read by the (pedantic?) John Fowles. I found that the novel was, surprisingly, a modern, ironic intake on Victorian fiction, where Fowles lightly sprinkles a critical vision upon typical Victorian characters and literature. Delving deeper into the story though (no spoilers), the theme of the novel is truly that of appearance and reality, like so many other authors have chosen to interpret through their writing. It is the way in which we view ourselves, and the way in which we deem others and therefore, the way in which we consider others to either fit into our hibitual realms, how they as 'foreign elements' would fit into our norms of life, how we can mold ourselves to fit into theirs and, most importantly, whether it is necessary or whether we should merely continue with what we know and are comfortable with. Such is the case of Charles, Ernestina and Sarah, This peculiar love triangle, amidst a dense boast on how Fowles is so extremely talented and culturally educated, is what leads the reader to understand the deep and meaningful theme. It's true, Fowles is an extremely talented author-as far as I've read (my Fowles literature, as mentioned before, does not go beyond this novel). He proves it to us by taking a mundane theme and twisting it till the very end, where he offers us three possible endings to the story. None of this was truly impacting, but the way in which Fowles chooses to criticize the Victorian mind set and simultaneously create a work of literary art is quite wonderful.

The Golden Ratio

I had to mention it somewhere. The Golden Ratio is what defines the scientific and artistic balance in nature and even more so, in ourselves. Here is a mediocre definition: the Greeks sought the way in which nature could be so 'perfect', and they discovered a rectilinear, perfectly in proportion triangle which repeated itself often in their surroundings. As a consequence, they used this geometric polygon with beautiful proportions in their architecture; the Parthenon, the Venus of Milo, and later on, used in French architecture from the 12th century in the Notre Dame Cathedral amidst its gothic intake. Da Vinci incorporated it into his Mona Lisa, the modern masters realised it was the spotless subject in common when painting and drawing human figures. It remained that this beautifully proportioned rectangle was nature's cheat sheet. Apparently, it all started with the pentagram, which held mathematical proportions equal to the eventual ratio when taking two consecutive numbers in the Fibonacci series (where each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two, beginning with 0 and 1). One comes to realise that the ratio between the numbers begins to settle, and arrive closer and closer to the number 1.61... or Phi, also known as The Golden Ratio. A piece of information, when a ratio is 'golden', this means that the ratio of a to b is the same as the ratio of of b to the sum of a and b, in other words:
a : b = b : a+b
Beautifully complicated, right? But something still used today-we are influenced by Egyptian architecture, the Pyramids. They date back to the 1st Century BC. This has to mean something. Anyway, when it all comes down to it, everything is a hybrid of science and art. The Greeks knew it, the Egyptians knew it, and now the greatest thinkers, architects, artists of our time know it. And it will stay known. And I hope to find a more sophisticated definition of it someplace!