Rites of love and math

Edward Frenkel was the first research chair laureate of Fondation sciences mathématiques de Paris in 2008. He has written a film co-directed with Reine Graves about the beauty of mathematics, entitled Rites of Love and Math in homage to Yukio Mishima‘s Rites of Love and Death. (The film première will take place at Max Linder Panorama theater, 24 bd Poissoniere, Paris 9e, on Wednesday, April 14 at 6 p.m. The entrance is free. Warning: I do not have the slightest idea what the film is about!) I like very much some of Mishima’s novels, like The Temple of the Golden Pavillion, but the reference to the movie (whose Japanese title is Patriotism) is a bit unsettling… It is indeed prefiguring Mishima’s own suicide in 1970 during an amateurish right-wing coup.