Poem fractal
0.102 apart. A smaller distance means the lines are built more alike.
This number is read from the build of the lines. The bright edge is that number, carried outward until the pattern repeats.
by Paul Éluard
0.8882 − 0.2941i
Drawing the boundary…
0.7966 − 0.3381i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
by Paul Éluard
La nuit qui précéda sa mort
Fut la plus courte de sa vie
L'idée qu'il existait encore
Lui brûlait le sang aux poignets
Le poids de son corps l'écœurait
Sa force le faisait gémir
C'est tout au fond de cette horreur
Qu'il a commencé à sourire
Il n'avait pas un camarade.
Mais des millions et des millions
Pour le venger il le savait
Et le jour se leva pour lui.
Everyone knows that a rose will fade,
(Sure I knew, too!)
So why would I be a whit dismayed
When you died, Róisín Dubh?
For a day and a night and a morrow
The bloom of you —
Then death: and what use of sorrow
For a rose, Róisín Dubh?
Yet, little black rose, so dear you were,
So sweet you grew,
And your stem is sad now you are not there,
And your leaves, Róisín Dubh!
O little black rose, my soul I'd give,
(My body, too!)
For a day, for an hour, that you might live
On your bush, Róisín Dubh!
Sweet, sweet, till the world was glad for you,
And kinder, too —
Now your bush and your world are sad for you,
Róisín Dubh!
A fractal is a shape that keeps its pattern when you look closer. Coastlines, trees, shells, and weather do this. The large form and the small form are the same kind of thing. A poem can be drawn that way. The shape of the whole comes from the shape of the lines.
Primunia is the name for the source of that order: the pattern under the pattern, already there in a tree, a shell, and a verse.
The number under the picture is the poem constant. It is read from the build of the lines: their length, how uneven they are, the size of the stanzas, the share of vowels, and the way the lines end. A new word moves the number when it changes that build. The same poem always gives the same number.
Drawn on its own, that number sits in a quiet part of the plane, and most poems would look like the same soft disk. So the number is carried outward along its own direction until it meets the edge of the Mandelbrot set, where the shape turns sharp. The picture is the Julia set of that meeting place.
Each point on the canvas is folded again and again by one small rule. Points that stay near the rule form the dark interior. Points that rush away become the coloured bands. The hue comes from the poem constant, and the brightest bands turn toward gold. Change the length of a line, the stanza, or the vowel share, and both the number and the picture move.
Branching draws the poem as a tree. Each turn follows a line, and every smaller branch repeats that pattern. A longer line reaches farther. The letters at the start of a line bend the next turn. A higher share of vowels opens the branches wider.
The trunk takes its colour from the poem constant and warms toward gold at the tips. When the poem has more than one stanza, gold forks leave the trunk. Each fork is a stanza beyond the first, up to three. The tree divides where the poem divides. One stanza remains a single trunk.
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