From Poland to "Petersburg": The Banach-Tarski Paradox in Bely's Modernist Novel

Abstract

Andrei Bely's novel "Petersburg," first published in 1913, was declared by Vladimir Nabokov one of the four greatest masterpieces of 20th-century prose. The Banach-Tarski Paradox, published in 1924, is one of the most striking and well-known results in 20th-century mathematics. In this paper we explore a potential connection between these two landmark works, based on various interactions with the Moscow Mathematical School and passages in the novel itself.