Song Way

“Trust no girl even if she appears as clear as a ray of light, her hear like a crystal spring with a lovely pure crystal bottom, gentle as she soft, cooling evening air in sultry summer. Trust not. The white snow passes away and leaves after it a black muddy filth”

I came across this line when reading the book “Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science”. And this portrait was made by Bolyai, Gauss’s “closest distant friend”, who was married and had a son by then. Gauss, then deep in love, replied:”Heaven and Hell! I freeze before the picture which you paint of women. what sombre demon guided your pen when it wrote:(the words above)…Those features are not my Johanna’s” And the man in love potraited Johanna in greater detail: “A wondrously fair madonna countenance, a mirror of spiritual peace and health, kind, somewhat romantic eyes, a perfect figure and size(that is something), a clear understanding and an intelligent conversation(that is also something), but a quiet, happy, modest, and chaste angelic soul which can harm no one, that is the best. Ostentatious display of flirting and inordinate passion are foreign to her. ..” So this is the image of a girl in the eyes of the god of math! Undoubtly Gauss was the lucky one. This girl became his wife and remained an angelic presence to him until her death. And Gauss was the smarter one also. In a lot of cases(but not all!) a girl will behave to one man just in the way the man sees her. In this sense, it’s safe to say that a girl is both demon and god to men, in love.

BTW: this was the description of the author, who could stand for the outsiders: “(Johanna) was not a dazzling beauty and her letters now and then show a lack of proper shooling.” But: “An education in complete contrast to that which Gauss had know had developed in her all the gifts of a happily endowed nature.”