While this blog is still online, I might as well correct, and add to, previous posts.
Later this week new Twenty One Pilots material is expected, so this might be a good time to add some remarks to a series of posts I ran last summer, trying to find a connection between Dema-lore and the actual history of the Bourbaki group. Here are links to these posts:
I still stand by the arguments given in that post, but my opinion on this is completely irrelevant. What matters is who the Bourbaki-gang themself deemed worthy to attach their names to their first publication ‘Theorie des Ensembles’ (1939).
But wait, wasn’t the whole point of choosing the name Nicolas Bourbaki for their collective that the actual authors of the books should remain anonymous?
Right, but then I found this strange document in the Bourbaki Archives : awms_001, a preliminary version of the first two chapters of ‘Theorie des Ensembles’ written by Andre Weil and annotated by Rene de Possel. Here’s the title page:
Next to N. Bourbaki we see nine capital letters: M.D.D.D.E.C.C.C.W corresponding to nine AW-approved founding members of Bourbaki: Mandelbrojt, Delsarte, De Possel, Dieudonne, Ehresmann, Chevalley, Coulomb, Cartan and Weil!
What may freak out the Clique is the similarity between the diagram to the left of the title, and the canonical depiction of the nine Bishops of Dema (at the center of the map of Dema) or the cover of the Blurryface album:
In the Photoshop mysteries post I explained why Mandelbrojt and Weil might have been drawn in opposition to each other, but I am unaware of a similar conflict between either of the three C’s (Cartan, Coulomb and Chevalley) and the three D’s (Delsarte, De Possel and Dieudonne).
So, I’ll have to leave the identification of the nine Bourbaki founding members with the nine Dema Bishops as a riddle for another post.
In that post I briefly suggested that DEMA might stand for DEutscher MAthematiker (German Mathematicians), and hinted at the group of people around David Hilbert, Emil Artin and Emmy Noether, but discarded this as “one can hardly argue that there was a self-destructive attitude (like Vialism) present among that group, quite the opposite”.
Deutsche Mathematik is also the name of a movement closely associated with the journal whose aim was to promote “German mathematics” and eliminate “Jewish influence” in mathematics. More about Deutsche Mathematik can be found on this page, where these eight mathematicians are mentioned in connection with it:
Whether DEutsche MAthematik stands for DEMA, and which of these German mathematicians were its nine bishops might be the topic of another post. First I’ll have to read through Sanford Segal’s Mathematicians under the Nazis.
Added February 29th:
The long awaited new song has now surfaced:
I’ve only watched it once, but couldn’t miss the line “I fly by the dangerous bend symbol“.
Didn’t we all fly by them in our first readings of Bourbaki…
No intention to freak out clikkies any further, but in the aforementioned Weil draft of ‘Theorie des Ensembles’ they still used this precursor to the dangerous bend symbol
The Clique (Twenty Øne Piløts fanatic fanbase) is convinced that the nine Bishops of Dema were modelled after the Bourbaki-group.
It is therefore of no surprise to see a Photoshopped version circulating of this classic picture of some youthful Bourbaki-members (note Jean-Pierre Serre poster-boying for Elon Musk’s site),
replacing some of them with much older photos of other members. Crucial seems to be that there are just nine of them.
I don’t know whether the Clique hijacked Bourbaki’s Wikipedia page, or whether they were inspired by its content to select those people, but if you look at that Wikipedia page you’ll see in the right hand column:
Founders
Henri Cartan
Claude Chevalley
Jean Coulomb
Jean Delsarte
Jean Dieudonné
Charles Ehresmann
René de Possel
André Weil
Really? Come on.
We know for a fact that Charles Ehresmann was brought in to replace Jean Leray, and Jean Coulomb to replace Paul Dubreil. Surely, replacements can’t be founders, can they?
Well, unfortunately it is not quite that simple. There’s this silly semantic discussion: from what moment on can you call someone a Bourbaki-member…
But, before the Besse-meeting there were ten ‘proto-Bourbaki’ meetings, the first one on December 10th, 1934 in Cafe Capoulade. These meetings have been described masterly by Liliane Beaulieu in A Parisian Cafe and Ten Proto-Bourbaki Meetings (1934-35) (btw. if you know a direct link to the pdf, please drop it in the comments).
During these early meetings, the group called itself ‘The Committee for the Treatise on Analysis’, and not yet Bourbaki, whence the confusion.
Do we take the Capoulade-1934 meeting as the origin of the Bourbaki group (in which case the founding-members would be Cartan, Chevalley, De Possel, Delsarte, Dieudonne, and Weil), or was the Bourbaki-group founded at the Besse-congress in 1935 (when Cartan, Chevalley, Coulomb, De Possel, Dieudonne, Mandelbrojt, and Weil were present)?
07-1935 is the Besse-congress, 09-1936 is the ‘Escorial’-congress (or Chancay 1) and 09-1937 is the second Chancay-congress. The ten dates prior to July 1935 are the proto-Bourbaki meetings.
Even though Delsarte was not present at the Besse-1935 congress, and De Possel moved to Algiers and left Bourbaki in 1941, I assume most people would agree that the six people present at the first Capoulade-meeting (Cartan, Chevalley, De Possel, Delsarte, Dieudonne, and Weil) should certainly be counted among the Bourbaki founding members.
What about the others?
We can safely eliminate Dubreil: he was present at just one proto-Bourbaki meeting and left the group in April 1935.
Also Leray’s case is straightforward: he was even excluded from the Besse-meeting as he didn’t contribute much to the group, and later he vehemently opposed Bourbaki, as we’ve seen.
Coulomb’s role seems to restrict to securing a venue for the Besse-meeting as he was ‘physicien-adjoint’ at the ‘Observatoire Physique du Globe du Puy-de-Dome’.
Because of this he could rarely attend the Julia-seminar or Bourbaki-meetings, and his interest in mathematical physics was a bit far from the themes pursued in the seminar or by Bourbaki. It seems he only contributed one small text, in the form of a letter. Due to his limited attendance, even after officially been asked to replace Dubreil, he can hardly be counted as a founding member.
This leaves Szolem Mandelbrojt and Charles Ehresmann.
We’ve already described Mandelbrojt as the odd-man-out among the early Bourbakis. According to the Bourbaki archive he only contributed one text. On the other hand, he also played a role in organising the Besse-meeting and in providing financial support for Bourbaki. Because he was present already early on (from the second proto-Bourbaki meeting) until the Chancay-1937 meeting, some people will count him among the founding members.
Personally I wouldn’t call Charles Ehresmann a Bourbaki founding member because he joined too late in the process (March 1936). Still, purists (those who argue that Bourbaki was founded at Besse) will say that at that meeting he was put forward to replace Jean Leray, and later contributed actively to Bourbaki’s meetings and work, and for that reason should be included among the founding members.
What do you think?
How many Bourbaki founding members are there? Six (the Capoulade-gang), seven (+Mandelbrojt), eight (+Mandelbrojt and Ehresmann), or do you still think there were nine of them?
In this series I’m trying to figure out why the Bourbaki-group was an inspiration for the storyline of Trench, the fifth studio album by American musical duo Twenty One Pilots (or TØP).
Trench-lore centers around the city of Dema, ruled by nine Bishops enforcing Vialism (a fake religion asking people to take their own lives to glorify Dema).
It is an unfortunate coincidence that the city of Dema in the movie-clip of Nico and the Niners was inspired, and shot in Kyiv and Charkiv, Ukraine (the clip is from 2018).
Here’s the corresponding ‘beyond the movie’-clip, from which we learn (or rather are told) that the movie’s ‘city of Dema’ was shot in ‘the former Ukranian high-school’ of Josh Dun (he even calls it his ‘Alma Mater’), all in quotes because I don’t buy any of it, but take it as a desperate hint to identify Dema.
In the Trench movie-clips, Josh Dun is always cast as a Bandito, and last time we saw that also the Bourbaki-gang is likely to be close to the Banditos. Dema is supposed to be the Alma Mater of (at least some of) the Banditos. Hold that thought.
As for the connection between the City of Dema and the Bourbaki-group, we only have one piece of solid information:
That the Bourbaki-group named themselves after Nico=Nicolas Bourbaki clearly resonates with Twenty Øne Pilots who got their name from the 1947 play ‘All My Sons’ by American playwright Arthur Miller.
But the crucial info is: “The story of Dema happened before them”, so the story of Dema with the Bishops and Vialism happened before the Bourbaki-group. An extra piece of evidence that there is no way the Bourbaki-group are the nine Bishops of Dema.
So, what happened before the Bourbaki-group?
Mathematically, their direct predecessors were David Hilbert, Emil Artin, Emmy Noether and her boys, in short German mathematicians from the 1920’s and early 1930’s.
Several of the Bourbaki founding members studied in Germany (Weil in Gottingen in 1927, Chevalley in Hamburg in 1931 and Marburg in 1932, and Ehresmann in Gottingen in 1930).
So, a first candidate (also given the Bauhaus-like architecture of Dema) might be ‘German Mathematicians’, or in German, DEutscher MAthematiker = DEMA.
But one can hardly argue that there was a self-destructive attitude (like Vialism) present among that group, quite the opposite.
Still, one can ask why German mathematics was that strong in the 1920’s, compared to the French. France and Germany took different approaches with their intelligentsia during WW1: while Germany protected its young students and scientists, France instead committed them to the front, owing to the French culture of egalitarianism.
Remember that the album is called Trench, and the dirtiest trench-war in all of human history was WW1. Hold that thought.
But, how does this help us in identifying Dema.
A few months before the release of Trench, a website was launched containing letters (from a character named Clancy) and some photos (including part of a photo of Andre Weil). That website’s URL still is dmaorg.info.
On the rear of the boat in the movie-clip Saturday, we see ‘030904 DMA ORG’ (the 030904 is simplistic code for CID, believed to mean ‘Clancy Is Dead’).
Remember the inspirational, photoshopped photo of the Bourbaki 1938 congress in Dieulefit/Deauvallon:
All seven people in the original picture are ‘normaliens’, that is, their ‘Alma Mater’ is the Ecole Normale Superieure’. All but Simone Weil graduated from the DEpartement de MAthematiques=DEMA, as DMA was called then.
Whence the hypothesis: Bourbaki’s Dema = ENS before and during WW1
It is a conglomerate of buildings and its central courtyard forms a kind of secular cloister around its basin. This space is called “la Cour aux Ernests” in reference to a former director, Ernest Bersot. He had placed red (!) fish (=the Ernests in ENS-slang) in the basin, which have become one of the symbols of the school.
More important to us is that the pond of the Ernests is reached by crossing the “aquarium”, where the ENS war memorial is located, commemorating the 239 (former) ENS-students killed in WW1 on a tatal of about 1400 of them drafted…
From the Wikipedia-page on Nicolas Bourbaki:
“The deaths of ENS students resulted in a lost generation in the French mathematical community; the estimated proportion of ENS mathematics students (and French students generally) who died in the war ranges from one-quarter to one-half, depending on the intervals of time (c. 1900–1918, especially 1910–1916) and populations considered.”
“The École Normale Supérieure d’Ulm is always mentioned when historians summarize the ravages of World War I in France: the institution embodies the commitment of intellectuals at the front. The article offers an interpretation of mortality rates of the School which allows to understand why it is primarily students during schooling (Classes 1910-1913) that are heavily affected. Rather than basing the interpretation on the single assumption of sacrifice, it puts forward arguments pertaining to the history of the school in the immediate pre-war, including the institution of military training after the reform service in 1905, competition with the École Polytechnique to retain the best scientific students, and finally the forced commitment of the ENS students in the infantry.”
Crucial in this is the role of Ernest Lavisse who was the director of the ENS from 1903 till 1919.
Before, normaliens had to serve 12 months in the army, just like all other students. In 1905 the law changed, and under Lavisse’s influence ENS-students were given a heavy military training. From the paper:
“From now on, normalien students, like those of other major military schools, are subject to a two-year service: a first year before their actual entry into rue d’Ulm, which they had to perform in an infantry regiment; a second on leaving, which they can finish as a reserve second lieutenant, but always in the infantry, if they pass the tests. And there is more: because between these two years, the students also follow a fairly heavy military preparation, including theoretical and physical exercises, even on Sundays, organised by two officers seconded full-time for this mission within the walls of the School.”
He also instilled in the ENS-student a radical sense of patriotism, and was a fervent propagandist for l’Union sacrée. From the paper:
“Intellectual mobilisation crystallised in the figures of Lavisse and Durkheim via their famous Letters to all French people distributed in millions of copies across the country. In the fall of 1914, the two founded and took control, respectively as director and secretary of the Committee for Studies and Documents on the War, a propaganda organ for the country’s executives.
I would have liked that there were only nine members of the committee, but there were eleven of them…
Anyway, Lavisse and his eight professors created an extremely patriotic environment at the ENS during WW1, encouraging students to go to (the) Trench(es) and give their life for France and the glory of the Ecole. The ENS-monument is the equivalent of the Neon Gravestones in Dema-lore.
Did you spot it too? LAVIsse is almost a perfect anagram for VIALism.
Concluding, the best theory I can come up with in order to include the Bourbaki-group in Dema-lore is that their Dema is the ENS in WW1 and preceding years, and that Vialism is the regime installed by Lavisse and the other members from the committee.
In this series I’m trying to make sense of the inclusion of Nicolas Bourbaki in the storyline of Trench, the fifth studio album by American musical duo Twenty One Pilots (or TØP).
That story is about the walled city of Dema, ruled by nine bishops dressed in red cloaks. They enforce their religion, called Vialism, on the inhabitants of Dema. The end-goal in Vialism is that you take your own life, having maximal impact (think: suicide bombers).
Outside the walls of Dema is the land of Trench, where a group of fighters (the Banditos) set up camp. They are dressed in grey trenchcoats adorned with yellow ribbons, and their goal is to help people escape from Dema, via its east side.
What on earth has the Bourbaki group to do with any of this?
We know from a tweet by Tyler Joseph that one Bourbaki-photograph (or at least a PhotoShopped version of it) played an important role in the creative process, as he used it as the background image on his Mac while producing the album.
It can also be seen, blurred in the background, in the opening seconds of his interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music:
Here are the three versions: the original photo, overlayed with the tweet-image, and a screenshot from the interview:
In the overlayed image an additional eight person, a bearded man, is PhotoShopped in the doorway, and in the screenshot we see that apart from this mystery man the empty chair in the lower left corner is replaced by a ninth person.
Common belief among the ‘clique’ (TØP’s fanbase name) is that the nine people in the desktop image are the nine bishops of Dema, with the bearded man being Nico (the head-bishop), Andre Weil bishop Andre, and Simone Weil bishop Sacarver (the only known female bishop).
But who are these two additional persons?
In a remarkable tour de force, Reddit user ‘banditosleepers’ was able to find the man sitting in the lower left corner (though he identified him wrongly)
Claude Chevalley (sitting on the bank, Bourbaki founding member)
Jean Delsarte (partially hidded)
That is, the ninth person, sitting in the left lower corner of the screenshot is Szolem Mandelbrojt (and not Claude Chevalley, as claimed in the Reddit-post).
There’s another photo, taken at about the same moment, showing that also Jean Dieudonne (sitting on the bank in front next to Andre Weil) and Charles Ehresmann (sitting on the bank on the right, next to Jean Delsarte and Claude Chevalley) were present.
Several people (myself included) have wasted too many hours trying to identify the bearded man in the doorway, starting from the assumption that he too might have some connection with Bourbaki (either the group or the general), without success.
There’s one problem with the ‘bearded man = Nico’ hypothesis. Nico is supposed to be the tallest of the bishops, and bearded man’s head is level with Andre Weil’s head, who stand on the first step, so bearded man must at least be 15cm smaller than Andre, who was already rather short.
In that post (from 2010) I found the exact location where that photo was taken: the Ecole de Beauvallon, founded in 1929 by Marguerite Soubeyran and Catherine Krafft, which was the first ‘modern’ boarding school in France for both boys and girls having behavioural problems. From 1936 on the school’s director was Simone Monnier.
The lower picture is taken at the Ecole de Beauvallon in 1943, the woman in the middle is Marguerite Soubeyran.
From 1936 on, about 20 refugees from the Spanish civil war found a home at the school, and in the ‘pension’, next to the school. When WW2 started, about 1500 people were hidden from the German occupation in Dieulefit (having a total population of 3500) : Jewish children, intellectuals, artists, trade union leaders, many in the Ecole and the Pension. None were betrayed to the Germans, and this is called Le miracle de silence à Dieulefit.
Given this historical context, there is only one possible way to include this Bourbaki-photo in the Trench-storyline: the Ecole de Beauvallon is the equivalent of the Bandito-camp, and the Bourbakis are Banditos (or at the very least, refugees having found a safe place in the camp).
In hindsight this was already given away by Tyler Joseph in that he gave the photo the color yellow, specifically Bandito-yellow 0xFCE300, which the bishops are unable to see (they see it as grey).
How does this help in identifying the bearded man in the doorway?
Standing in the doorway, he’s the one feeling at home there, gathering around him his guests or fellow fighters. My conjecture is that he is the leader of the bandito-camp, as seen at 2.12 in the movieclip of Levitate.
Granted, it is not a perfect match. I think ‘bearded man’ is how Tyler Joseph envisioned the camp-leader, and included his picture in the ‘Trench Bible’, the 60 page booklet given to the movie-director, who did the casting some months later.
Next time we will try to find City of Dema, or at least what it should be if you take the inclusion of Bourbaki in the Trench storyline seriously.
Somehow I missed all the excitement, five years ago. From Bourbaki’s Wikipedia page.
In 2018, the American musical duo Twenty One Pilots released a concept album named Trench. The album’s conceptual framework was the mythical city of “Dema” ruled by nine “bishops”; one of the bishops was named “Nico”, short for Nicolas Bourbaki. Another of the bishops was named Andre, which may refer to André Weil. Following the album’s release, there was a spike in internet searches for “Nicolas Bourbaki”.
Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun have weaved complicated storylines around the different albums of their band Twenty One Pilots (or TØP for short), each referring to a distinct era (the Blurryface-era, the Trench-era, the Scaled and Icy-ra, etc.), each having a different color scheme, characters and so on.
You can easily get lost forever in their sub-Reddit, or the numerous YouTube-clips and blogposts made by the ‘clique’ (as their fanbase calls itself). Perhaps the quickest intro in the TØP-world is this site.
The Bourbaki-group is important to the Trench-era, yet there are very few direct references in the songs. There’s the song “Morph” (lol!) containing:
He’ll always try to stop me, that Nicolas Bourbaki
He’s got no friends close, but those who know him most know
He goes by Nico
He told me I’m a copy
When I’d hear him mock me, that’s almost stopped me
East is up
I’m fearless when I hear this on the low
East is up
I’m careless when I wear my rebel clothes
East is up
When Bishops come together they will know that
Dema don’t control us, Dema don’t control
East is up
and that’s about it.
We’ll cover Dema and the Bishops in later posts, but for now remember the mantra “East is up”, which supposedly indicates the direction of escape from the Bishops and the city of Dema.
A few months before the release of Trench, a mysterious website appeared, containing letters from someone called ‘Clancy’ and some pictures and gifs. One of these pictures was soon found out to be part of an iconic photo of Andre Weil.
This caught the attention of the ‘clique’ because another picture indicated that the name of one of the Bishops was Andre.
Poor Andre was credited for just two things he managed to do : he founded a secret group of mathematicians, called Nicolas Bourbaki (important because another Bishop’s name was ‘Nico’) and he invented the symbol $\emptyset$ for the empty set (important because TØP used it since the Blurryface-era). I guess most mathematicians will remember Andre Weil for other things.
The clique-consensus seems to be that the girl next to Andre (some even thought it was a boy) is his daughter Sylvie Weil.
If you ever read her novel Chez les Weil you’ll remember that Sylvie did have from a very young age the same exuberant hairstyle as her aunt Simone Weil. So no, she’s definitely not Sylvie.
I’ll save my theory as to where and when this photo was taken, who the girl next to Andre is, and how this picture was used later on in TØP-iconography, for another post.
For now, I just want to point out one tiny detail: the girl is shielding her eyes from the blistering summer-sun, and shadows are falling from right to left.
Got it? Yes: East is up!
The Bourbaki-hype intensified when Tyler Joseph tweeded on August 19th, indicating that a new Album called ‘Trench’ was coming up:
Again, there’s a lot more to say about this tweet, but for now look at the desktop-image. It’s part of one of the most known Bourbaki images of all time (also featuring on their Wikipedia page): the Dieulefit 1938-congress (which we discovered to be taken at Beauvallon).
(Left to right: Simone Weil, C. Pisot, Andre Weil, Jean Dieudonne (seated), Claude Chabauty, Charles Ehresmann and Jean Delsarte)
Ah, you spotted it too? We’ll come back to this, and the clique made even more surprising discoveries wrt this picture.
You see, we’ll have a lot of ground to cover, so let’s stick to the “East is up” motto,for now.
Via Google maps you can check that the exit-door in the picture is located to the East side of the main building of the Ecole de Beauvallon.
All Bourbakie-congress followers are outside, so does this mean they’ve escaped Dema? Are they now Banditos (whence the Yellow-background-color)?
If you’ve never heard about Banditos or te relevance of the color Yellow, we’ll cover that too.
There’s another ‘East is up’-side to the Beauvallon-story. For this we have to recall some of the history of the spiritual father of the B-gang, General Charles-Denis Bourbaki.
In the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, he was given the command of ‘armee de l’Est (yes, the ‘East’-army!), a ramshackle of ill-trained men.
After some initial successes they suffered defeat in the battle of Lizaine and were forced to escape to Switzerland (Yes: East!) where they were disarmed, and treated for their injuries (this was one of the first cases of the International Red Cross, and is remembered in the Bourbaki Panorama in Luzern).
For clique-people: Red cross & Red architecture of the Boubaki-panorama = color of the Bishops.
Anyway, the important fact is that General Bourbaki had to escape to the East.
During the Bourbaki-congress in Beauvallon in 1938 a similar situation occurred. From Andre Weil’s The Apprenticeship of a Mathematician (page 123-124):
In 1938, Bourbaki held a congress in Dieulefit, where Chabauty, who had joined the ranks of the Master’s collaborators, had familie ties. Elie Cartan graciously joined us and took part in some of our discussions.
This was precisely the time of the Munich conference. There were sinister forebodings in the air. We devoured the newspapers and huddled over the radio: this was one Bourbaki congress where hardly any real work was accomplished.
By the time I had resolved that, if war broke out, I would refuse to serve. In the middle of the congress, after confiding in Delsarte, I thought up some pretext or other and left for Switzerland.
But the immediate threat of war soon seemed to have dissipated, so I returned after two days.
So, there’s a remarkable analogy between General Bourbaki’s escape to the East in 1871, and Andre and Simone Weil’s flight to the East at the time of the Munich agreement.
Clearly, the ‘East is up’ mantra is not the only reason why Tyler Joseph used these two Bourbaki-related photos in his narrative, but it illustrates that none of these choices is arbitrary.
I think Tyler knows a lot about Bourbaki. His knowledge about them goes certainly deeper than that of the average clique-member (who state that Bourbaki was a group of mathematicians trying to prove God’s existence, or that there where exactly nine Bourbaki founders, corresponding to the nine Bishops of Dema).
But then, TØP never corrects erroneous clique-statements, every fan-theory is correct to them. In fact, they see the interactions with their fanbase as a collective work in storytelling: they pose a riddle, the clique proposes various possible solutions, and afterwards they may use one of these proposals in their further work.
Here’s an interview making clear that Tyler knows a lot more about Bourbaki than most people (1.50 till 4.40)
Interviewer: “How far are you into a Wikipedia wormhole when you come across this? (the Bourbaki group)”
Tyler: “No, no THEY named their group after Nicolas Bourbaki”
Interviewer: “but there is no Nicolas Bourbaki, right?”
Tyler: They named their group after Blurryface.”
Interviewer: “Even though it was the 1930″s?”
Tyler: “Yeah.”
Interviewer: “So how does it relate?”
Tyler: “its EVERYTHING and at the same time, has nothing to do with it”
Interviewer: “See I’m no good at math, this is difficult for me.”
Tyler: “Math?! *laughs* Math has nothing to do with it… and yet it has everything to do with it.”
Okay, in the next couple of posts I’ll use the little I know about the Bourbaki group trying to make sense of the Trench-era narrative.
More than ten years ago, when I ran a series of posts on pre-WW2 Bourbaki congresses, I knew most of the existing B-literature. I’m afraid I forgot most of it, thereby missing opportunities to spice up a dull post (such as yesterday’s).
Right now, I need facts about the infamous ACNB and its former connection to Nancy, so I reread Liliane Beaulieu’s Bourbaki a Nancy:
(page 38) : “Like a theatrical canvas, “La Tribu” often carries as its header a subtitle, the product of its editor’s imagination, which brings out the theme of the congress, if necessary. There is thus a “De Nicolaıdes” congress in Nancy, “Du banc public” (reference to Brassens) that of the “Universites cogerees” (in October 68, at the time of co-management).”
The first La Ciotat congress (February 27 to March 6, 1955) was called ‘the congress of the public bench’ (‘banc public’ in French) where Serre and Cartan tried to press Bourbaki to opt for the by now standard approach to varieties (see yesterday), and the following Chicago-congress retaliated by saying that there were also public benches nearby, but of little use.
What I missed was the reference to French singer-songwriter George Brassens. In 1953, he wrote, composed and performed Bancs Public (later called ‘Les Amoureux des bancs publics’).
If you need further evidence (me, I’ll take Liliane’s word on anything B-related), here’s the refrain of the song:
“Les amoureux qui s’bécotent sur les bancs publics,
Bancs publics, bancs publics,
En s’foutant pas mal du regard oblique
Des passants honnêtes,
Les amoureux qui s’bécotent sur les bancs publics,
Bancs publics, bancs publics,
En s’disant des “Je t’aime'” pathétiques, Ont des p’tits gueules bien sympathiques!”
(G-translated as:
‘Lovers who smooch on public benches,
Public benches, public benches,
By not giving a damn about the sideways gaze
Honest passers-by,
The lovers who smooch on the public benches,
Public benches, public benches,
Saying pathetic “I love you” to each other, Have very nice little faces!‘)
Compare this to page 3 of the corresponding “La Tribu”:
“Geometrie Algebrique : elle a une guele bien sympathique.”
(Algebraic Geometry : she has a very nice face)
More Bourbaki congresses got their names rather timely.
In the summer of 1959 (from June 25th – July 8th) there was a congress in Pelvout-le-Poet called ‘Congres du cerceau’.
‘Cerceau’ is French for Hula Hoop, whose new plastic version was popularized in 1958 by the Wham-O toy company and became a fad.
(Girl twirling Hula Hoop in 1958 – Wikipedia)
The next summer it was the thing to carry along for children on vacation. From the corresponding “La Tribu” (page 2):
“Le congres fut marque par la presence de nombreux enfants. Les distractions s’en ressentirent : baby-foot, biberon de l’adjudant (tres concurrence par le pastis), jeu de binette et du cerceau (ou faut-il dire ‘binette se jouant du cerceau’?) ; un bal mythique a Vallouise faillit faire passer la mesure.”
(try to G-translate it yourself…)
Here’s another example.
The spring 1949 congress (from April 13th-25th) was held at the Abbey of Royaumont and was called ‘le congres du cocotier’ (the coconut-tree congress).
From the corresponding “La Tribu 18”:
“Having absorbed a tough guinea pig, Bourbaki climbed to the top of the Royaumont coconut tree, and declared, to unanimous applause, that he would only rectify rectifiable curves, that he would treat rational mechanics over the field $\mathbb{Q}$, and, that with a little bit of vaseline and a lot of patience he would end up writing the book on algebraic topology.”
The guinea pig that congress was none other than Jean-Pierre Serre.
A year later (from April 5th-17th 1950) there was another Royaumont-congress called ‘le congres de la revanche du cocotier’ (the congress of the revenge of the coconut-tree).
From the corresponding La Tribu 22:
“The founding members had decided to take a dazzling revenge on the indiscipline young people; mobilising all the magical secrets unveiled to them by the master, they struck down the young people with various ailments; rare were those strong enough to jump over the streams of Royaumont.”
Here’s what Maurice Mashaal says about this in ‘Bourbaki – a secret society of mathematicians’ (page 113):
“Another prank among the members was called ‘le cocotier’ (the coconut tree). According to Liliane Beaulieu, this was inspired by a Polynesian custom where an old man climbs a palm tree and holds on tightly while someone shakes the trunk. If he manages to hold on, he remains accepted in the social group. Bourbaki translated this custom as the following: some members would set a mathematical trap for the others. If someone fell for it, they would yell out ‘cocotier’.”
May I be so bold as to suggest that perhaps this sudden interest in Polynesian habits was inspired by the recent release of L’ile aux cocotiers (1949), the French translation of Robert Gibbing’s book Coconut Island?
Rereading the Grothendieck-Serre correspondence I found a letter from Serre to Grothendieck, dated October 22nd 1958, which forces me to retract some claims from the previous La Ciotat post.
Serre writes this ten days after the second La Ciotat-congress (La Tribu 46), held from October 5th-12th 1958:
“The Bourbaki meeting was very pleasant; we all stayed in the home of a man called Guérin (a friend of Schwartz’s – a political one, I think); Guérin himself was in Paris and we had the whole house to ourselves. We worked outside most of the time, the weather was beautiful, we went swimming almost every day; in short, it was one of the best meetings I have ever been to.”
So far so good, we did indeed find Guérin’s property ‘Maison Rustique Olivette’ as the location of Bourbaki’s La Ciotat-congresses. But, Serre was present at both meetings (the earlier one, La Tribu 35, was held from February 27th – March 6th, 1955), so wouldn’t he have mentioned that they returned to that home when both meetings took place there?
From La Tribu 35:
“The Congress was held “chez Patrice”, in La Ciotat, from February 27 to March 6, 1955. Present: Cartan, Dixmier, Koszul, Samuel, Serre, le Tableau (property, fortunately divisible, of Bourbaki).”
In the previous post I mentioned that there was indeed a Hotel-Restaurant “Chez Patrice” in La Ciotat, but mistakingly assumed both meetings took place at Guérin’s property.
Can we locate this place?
On the backside of this old photograph
we read:
“Chez Patrice”
seul au bord de la mer
Hotel Restaurant tout confort
Spécialités Provençales
Plage privée Parc auto
Ouvert toute l’année
Sur la route de La Ciota-Bandol
Tel 465
La Ciota (B.-d.-R.)
So it must be on the scenic coastal road from La Ciotat to Bandol. My best guess is that “Chez Patrice” is today the one Michelin-star Restaurant “La Table de Nans”, located at 126 Cor du Liouquet, in La Ciotat.
Their website has just this to say about the history of the place:
“Located in an exceptional setting between La Ciotat and Saint Cyr, the building of “l’auberge du Revestel” was restored in 2016.”
And a comment on a website dedicated to the nearby Restaurant Roche Belle confirms that “Chez Patrice”, “l’auberge du Revestel” and “table de Nans” were all at the same place:
“Nous sommes locaux et avons découverts ce restaurant seulement le mois dernier (suite infos copains) alors que j’ai passé une partie de mon enfance et adolescence “chez Patrice” (Revestel puis chez Nans)!!!”
I hope to have it right this time: the first Bourbaki La Ciotat-meeting in 1955 took place “Chez Patrice” whereas the second 1958-congress was held at ‘Maison Rustique Olivette’, the property of Schwartz’s friend Daniel Guérin.
Still, if you compare Serre’s letter to this paragraph from Schwartz’s autobiography, there’s something odd:
“I knew Daniel Guérin very well until his death. Anarchist, close to Trotskyism, he later joined Marceau Prevert’s PSOP. He had the kindness, after the war, to welcome in his property near La Ciotat one of the congresses of the Bourbaki group. He shared, in complete camaraderie, our life and our meals for two weeks. I even went on a moth hunt at his house and caught a death’s-head hawk-moth (Acherontia atropos).”
Schwartz was not present at the second La Ciotat-meeting, and he claims Guérin shared meals with the Bourbakis whereas Serre says he was in Paris and they had the whole house to themselves.
Moral of the story: accounts right after the event (Serre’s letter) are more trustworthy than later recollections (Schwartz’s autobiography).
Dear Collaborators of Nicolas Bourbaki, please make all Bourbaki material (Diktat, La Tribu, versions) publicly available, certainly those documents older than 50 years.
Perhaps you can start by adding the missing numbers 36 and 49 to your La Tribu: 1940-1960 list.
Bourbaki held His Spring-Congresses between 1952 and 1954 in Celles-sur-Plaine in the Vosges department.
La Tribu 27, ‘Congres croupion des Vosges’ (March 8th-16th, 1952)
La Tribu 30, ‘Congres nilpotent’ (March 1st-8th, 1953)
La Tribu 33, ‘Congres de la tangente’ (March 28th-April 3rd, 1954)
As we can consult the Bourbaki Diktat of the first two meetings, there is no mystery as to their place of venue. From Diktat 27:
“The Congress of March 1952 will be held as planned in Celles-sur-Plaine (Vosges) at the Hotel de la Gare, from Sunday March 9 at 2 p.m. to Sunday March 16 in the evening. A train leaves Nancy on Sunday morning at 8:17 a.m., direction Raon-l’Etappe, where we arrive at 9:53 a.m.; from there a bus leaves for Celles-sur-Plaine (11 km away) at 10 am. Please bring big shoes for the walks (there will probably be a lot of snow on the heights).”
Even though few French villages have a train station, most have a ‘Place de la Gare’, indicating the spot where the busses arrive and leave. Celles-sur-Plaine is no exception, and one shouldn’t look any further to find the ‘Hotel de la Gare’.
This Hotel still exists today, but is now called ‘Hotel des Lacs’.
At the 1952 meeting, Grothendieck is listed as a ‘visitor’ (he was a guinea-pig earlier and would only become a Bourbaki-member in 1955). He was invited to settle disputes over the texts on EVTs (Topological Vector Spaces). In the quote below from La Tribu 27 ‘barrel’ refers of course to barreled space:
“But above all a drama was born from the laborious delivery of the EVTs. Eager to overcome the reluctance of the opposition, the High Commissioner attempted a blackmail tactic: he summoned Grothendieck! He hoped to frighten the Congress members to such an extent that they would be ready to swallow barrel after barrel for fear of undergoing a Grothendieckian redaction. But the logicians were watching: they told Grothendieck that, if all the empty sets are equal, some at least are more equal than others; the poor man went berserk, and returned to Nancy by the first train.”
Frank Smithies seated in the middle, in between Ralph Boas (left) and Andre Weil (right) at the Red Lion, Grantchester in 1939.
At the 1954 meeting we see a trace of Bourbaki’s efforts to get a position for Chevalley at the Sorbonne.
“Made sullen by the incessant rain, and exhausted by the electoral campaigns of La Sorbonne and the Consultative Committee, the faithful poured out their indecisive bile on the few drafts presented to them, and hardly took any serious decisions.”
Two Bourbaki-congresses were organised at the Côte d’Azur, in La Ciotat, claiming to have one of the most beautiful bays in the world.
La Tribu 35, ‘Congres du banc public’ (February 27th – March 6th, 1955)
La Tribu 46, ‘Congres du banquet auxiliaire’ (October 5th-12th, 1958)
As is the case for all Bourbaki-congresses after 1953, we do not have access to the corresponding Diktat, making it hard to find the exact location.
The hints given in La Tribu are also minimal. In La Tribu 34 there is no mention of a next conferences in La Ciotat, in La Tribu 45 we read on page 11:
“October Congress: It will take place in La Ciotat, and will be a rump congress (‘congres-croupion’). On the program: Flat modules, Fiber carpets, Schwartz’ course in Bogota, Chapter II and I of Algebra, Reeditions of Top. Gen. III and I, Primary decomposition, theorem of Cohen and consorts, Local categories, Theorems of Ad(o), and (ritually!) abelian varieties.”
La Tribu 35 itself reads:
“The Congress was held “chez Patrice”, in La Ciotat, from February 27 to March 6, 1955.
Presents: Cartan, Dixmier, Koszul, Samuel, Serre, le Tableau (property, fortunately divisible, of Bourbaki).
The absence, for twenty-four hours, of any founding member, created a euphoric climate, consolidated by the aioli, non-cats, and sunbathing by the sea. We will ask Picasso for a painting on the theme ‘Bourbaki soothing the elements’. However, some explorations were disturbed by barbed wire, wardens, various fences, and Samuel, blind with anger, declared that he could not find ‘la patrice de massage’.”
The last sentence seems to indicate that the clue “chez Patrice” is a red herring. There was, however, a Hotel-Restaurant Chez Patrice in La Ciotat.
But, we will find out that the congress-location was elsewhere. (Edit August 4th : wrong see the post La Ciotat (2).
As to that location, La Tribu 46 has this to say:
“The Congress was held in a comfortable villa, equipped with a pick-up, rare editions, tasty cuisine, and a view of the Mediterranean. In the deliberation room, Chevalley claimed to see 47 fish (not counting an object, in the general shape of a sea serpent which served as an ashtray); this prompted him to bathe; but, indisposed by a night of contemplation in front of Brandt’s groupoid, he pretended to slip all his limbs into the same hole in Bruhat’s bathing suit.”
Present in 1958 were : Bruhat, Cartan, Chevalley, Dixmier, Godement, Malgrange
and Serre.
“I knew Daniel Guérin very well until his death. Anarchist, close to Trotskyism, he later joined Marceau Prevert’s PSOP. He had the kindness, after the war, to welcome in his property near La Ciotat one of the congresses of the Bourbaki group. He shared, in complete camaraderie, our life and our meals for two weeks. I even went on a moth hunt at his house and caught a death’s-head hawk-moth (Acherontia atropos).”
Daniel Guérin is known for his opposition to Nazism, fascism, capitalism, imperialism and colonialism. His revolutionary defense of free love and homosexuality influenced the development of queer anarchism.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
But there are some odd things in Schwartz’ sentences. He speaks of ‘two weeks’ whereas both La Ciotat-meetings only lasted one week. Presumably, he takes the two together, so both meetings were held at Guérin’s property.
Stranger seems to be that Schwartz was not present at either congress (see above list of participants). Or was he? Yes, he was present at the first 1955 meeting, masquerading as ‘le Tableau’. On Bourbaki photos, Schwartz is often seen in front of their portable blackboard, as we’ve seen in the Pelvoux-post. Here’s another picture from that 1951-conference with Weil and Schwartz discussing before ‘le tableau’. (Edit August 12th : wrong, La Tribu 37 lists both Schwartz and ‘Le Tableau’ among those present).
Presumably, Bourbaki got invited to La Ciotat via Schwartz’ connection with Guérin in 1955, and there was a repeat-visit three years later.
“Gilbert Deroze’s commitment to La Ciotat (he will be deputy mayor in 1947) is accompanied by a remarkable cultural openness. The house therefore becomes a place of hospitality and artistic and intellectual convergence. For example, it is the privileged place of reception for Daniel Guérin, French revolutionary writer, anti-colonialist, activist for homosexual emancipation, theoretician of libertarian communism, historian and art critic. But it also receives guests from the place that the latter had created nearby, the Maison Rustique Olivette, a real center of artistic residence which has benefited in particular from the presence of Chester Himes, Paul Célan, the “beat” poet Brion Gysin, or again of the young André Schwarz-Bart.”
Even though the Villa Deroze sometimes received guests of Guérin, this was not the case for Bourbaki as Schwartz emphasises that the congress took place in Guérin’s property near La Ciotat, which we now have identified as ‘Maison (or Villa) Rustique Olivette’.
“In 1953 the writer Daniel Guérin created on the heights of La Ciotat, Traverses de la Haute Bertrandière, an artists’ residence in his property Rustique Olivette. In the 1950s, he notably received Chester Himes, André Schwartz-Bart, in 1957, who worked there on his book The Last of the Righteous, Paul Celan, Brion Gysin. Chester Himes returned there in 1966 and began writing his autobiography there.”
Okay, now we’re down from a village (La Ciotat) to a street (Traverses de la Haute Bertrandière), but which of these fabulous villas is ‘Maison Rustique Olivette’?
I found one link to a firm claiming to be located at the Villa Rustique Olivette, and giving as its address: 130, Traverses de la Haute Bertrandière.
If this information is correct, we have now identified the location of the two last Bourbaki congress in La Ciotat as ‘Maison Rustique Olivette’,
At least six Bourbaki-congresses were held in ‘Royaumont’:
La Tribu 18 : ‘Congres oecumenique du cocotier’, April 13th-25th 1949
La Tribu 22 : ‘Congres de la revanche du cocotier’, April 5th-17th 1950
La Tribu without number : ‘Congres de l’horizon’, October 8th-15th 1950
La Tribu 26 : ‘Congres croupion’, October 1st-9th 1951
La Tribu 31 : ‘Congres de la revelation du reglement’, JUne 6th-19th 1953
La Tribu 32 : ‘Congres du coryza’, October 2nd-9th 1953
All meetings were pre-1954, so the ACNB generously grants us all access to the corresponding Bourbaki Diktats. From Diktat 31:
“The next congress will be held at the Abbey of Royaumont, from Saturday June 6th (not from June 5th as planned) to Saturday June 20th.
We meet at 10 a.m., June 6 at the Gare du Nord before the ticket-check. Train to Viarmes (change at Monsoult at 10.35 a.m.). Do not bring a ticket: one couch can transport 4 delegates.
Bring the Bible according to the following distribution:
Cartan: livre IV. Dixmier: Alg. 3, livre VI. Godement: Alg.4-5, Top. 1-2. Koszul: Top. 5-6-7-8-9. Schwartz: Top. 10, Alg. 1-2. Serre: Top. 3-4, livre V. Weil: Alg. 6-7, Ens. R.”
Royaumont Abbey is a former Cistercian abbey, located near Asnières-sur-Oise in Val-d’Oise, approximately 30 km north of Paris, France.
In 1947, under the direction of Gilbert Gadoffre, Royaumont Abbey became the “International Cultural Center of Royaumont”, an alternative place to traditional French university institutions. During the 1950s and 1960s, the former abbey became a meeting place for intellectual and artistic circles on an international scale, with numerous seminars, symposiums and conferences under the name “Cercle culturel de Royaumont”. Among its illustrious visitors came Nathalie Sarraute, Eugène Ionesco, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Vladimir Jankélévitch, Mircea Eliade, Witold Gombrowicz, Francis Poulenc and Roger Caillois.
And… less illustrious, at least according to the French edition of Wikipedia, the Bourbaki-gang.
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