Figuring by Maria Popova

Figuring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries—beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalyzed the environmental movement.

Stretching between these figures is a cast of artists, writers, and scientists—mostly women, mostly queer—whose public contribution have risen out of their unclassifiable and often heartbreaking private relationships to change the way we understand, experience, and appreciate the universe. Among them are the astronomer Maria Mitchell, who paved the way for women in science; the sculptor Harriet Hosmer, who did the same in art; the journalist and literary critic Margaret Fuller, who sparked the feminist movement; and the poet Emily Dickinson.

Emanating from these lives are larger questions about the measure of a good life and what it means to leave a lasting mark of betterment on an imperfect world: Are achievement and acclaim enough for happiness? Is genius? Is love? Weaving through the narrative is a set of peripheral figures—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman—and a tapestry of themes spanning music, feminism, the history of science, the rise and decline of religion, and how the intersection of astronomy, poetry, and Transcendentalist philosophy fomented the environmental movement.

Why I Picked It Up

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I absolutely love Maria Popova. I reference her at least daily, and regularly tell anyone that I would like to model my career after hers. I idolize her brain, and often pick up many books after bite-sized articles on Brain Pickings (now The Marginalian) introduce me to the subject, author, or work itself. Figuring has been on my list for a long time, and I've been avoiding it out of nervousness.

Overall, I enjoyed it because of how effectively it ties together a lot of the themes inherent in Popova's curation; she, of course, builds
her own publication on meaning-making over time, traversing science, history, philosophy, poetry, the arts, and other curiosities (mimicking the kind of interdisciplinary deep dives I would love to embody on Words Like Silver.)

That being said, I found sections of it dragged some and overall found the scope—zooming in and out of portions—to make it hard to follow. So let's break it down.

What It's About

Figuring has a more historical—and more female—lens than The Marginalian, focusing on a few trailblazing figures and the lives of those with whom they intersect. I was expecting Figuring to read more in style like a social history (my preference) although it actually reads more like a biography instead. Drier, at times.

Figuring focuses mainly on women's discoveries, particularly when they're queer (which, coincidentally, is also how I found out Maria Popova is also.) Throughout it, Popova works to contextualize each women among other great thinkers.

For example, whole chapters on Margaret Fuller also end up capturing a lot of Ralph Waldo Emerson too, who circles back later when Popova tackles Emily Dickinson, Rachel Carson, etc. She contextualizes using Kepler and Copernicus, William James and Virginia Woolf.

There are enough references to a specific canon of work—self-reliance, Greek heroism, Herman Melville, etc.—that I recommended the book to someone whose lexicon revolves around the same, although the style is much more flowery than any of those works. Style rec? No. But in content? Yeah. I see how Figuring captures Popova's library, and that's why I think it would appeal to those who pursue a Great Books-type reading list.

The Biography-Like Pacing Was Hmm

Pacing-wise, I suffered slightly, and my usual lakeside pace of 1-3 books a day (yes, even with writers like Steinbeck and Nietzsche and Márquez) couldn't keep up with the density of Figuring. It took me a long while to get through.

I used to tutor history, and the building timeline reminded me of Figuring (and in fact, a timeline would have been very helpful) because she often used transitions to situate the reader in the global moment. Which is great for scale, of course! But I found often that Figuring jolted between two extremes: minute detail and individual portraiture then sweeping global positions, without much of an in-between.

For some reason, I found the transitions between dates and names and events—depicted in layers, asynchronously—much more difficult to keep straight than normal, although I suspect Popova's intention was the opposite.

“ Three nights before the Elizabeth sinks—as the deadly mycobacterium is weaving its way through Annie Darwin’s body in England, as France is mourning the sudden loss of Louis Daguerre to a heart attack, as Emily Dickinson is beginning to fall in love with Susan Gilbert in Amherst, as Harriet Hosmer is dreaming up her sculpture of Hesper, the Evening Star in Boston—John Adams Whipple uses Harvard’s Great Refractor telescope to make the first daguerreotype of a star: Vega, the second-brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere, object of one of Galileo’s most ingenious experiments supporting his proof of heliocentricity. 'Nothing should surprise us any more, who see the miracle of stars,' Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote in Aurora Leigh.”

I adore her work, so I hate to say it, but these scaffolding choices in terms of scale and packaging made information that would have fascinated me on The Marginalian feel slightly...boring...in a book-length work, which threw me for a loop. I wasn't sure whether I thought she was juggling too much or not widening the references enough.

Still, I can't express enough how much I admire her expertise, layers, and how recursively her brain works, pulling from a library of knowledge I long to mimic. I tend to love her focus and what she extracts from each writer i.e. why does their perspective matter or feel meaningful?

The Voice Is Ornate & Connective

Overall, I also found the language during summary moments to veer sentimental. Popova's reflective, poetic voice is extremely specific—perhaps ornate. For some, this may feel like "too much." She has no qualms about embellishing and making historical moments vivid. Accurate? Maybe not. But you get a feel for why she loves daydreaming within the bookmarks.

“ With his long gait now wound by a restless urgency, he scissored through the fragrant lawn of the Homestead, abloom with violets, buttercups, and wild geraniums, and entered the darkened house.”

On The Marginalian, the content pushes back against her voice nicely. It swells up in small doses when reading her articles, and felt kicked up a notch within the book. For that reason, Figuring almost felt more extreme in either sense (the dryness being even more starchy, with the poetry being even more dialed-up) meaning I'm not entirely sure who I think would connect most with the voice. I would say I'm her exact target reader in terms of proportions normally (with the literature/history/poetry/science each layering on the same page) but even I wasn't sure how I felt about the editorial choices.

Every time I drifted, she'd mention something I love: like Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan. (I said yes to a date in the spring precisely because the guy mentioned he was reading a Carl Sagan book.) Or synchronicity or what-have-you. For example, when describing Emily Dickinson's famous exile into her bedroom, she mentioned embodied cognition studies about how high ceilings enhance creativity and then references Kierkegaard in the next line.

Still, I'm so grateful to experience a book of Popova's, so I respect so much of what it does, even if there was plenty I thought wasn't to my taste.

Every so often when my attention drifted, Popova would then deliver an absolutely stunning line about something like impermanence or legacy that framed the book nicely too. (Also, if you're a student who ever gets to pick an academic work that's both rich and readable, Figuring would be a great pick from which you could derive plenty of information.)

“We suffer by wanting different things often at odds with one another, but we suffer even more by wanting to want different things.”

Lines I Appreciated

“ Her life was lived—as every life is lived—not by Emily Dickinson, but by many Emily Dickinsons. Lavinia’s sister was different from Austin’s sister, different from Susan’s almost-lover, different from Higginson’s cracked correspondent, different from the woman who silently tended to the orchids in the glass chamber of her winter conservatory, different from the ghost who sent Mabel wine and verses from the bedroom above Beethoven. These are not costumes donned with artifice for different occasions—they are facets of a self, each illuminated when a particular beam hits at a particular angle. We are different people in different situations, each of our dormant multitudes awakened by a particular circumstance, particular chemistry, particular stroke of chance; each true, each real—a composite Master of our being.”

“The paradox of terror is that it contracts our scope into a smallness of attention that frantically filters in only confirmation of our grounds for fear and filters out our grounds for hope.”

“ Whatever else I may have learned there, this was the unforgettable lesson: we do not really know anything. What we think we know today is replaced by something else tomorrow.”

“ There was the emotion over what had occurred, and there was also the emotion of knowing that thousands of people, millions of people, maybe all the people in the world, were feeling great emotion over what was occurring.”

Art from Artist?

It seems, near the end, like the common thread or argument of hers is the impossibility of separating out an artist or scientist or otherwise creator (influential figure) from what all has happened to them, which is partly why The Marginalian's ethos as a publication is largely about tracing these sorts of thumbprints.

“One might wonder what the point is of all such speculations bleeding into historical tabloidism—art, after all, should speak for itself. But this is where the snake bites its own tail: There is no “itself” any more than there is a solid self that holds up to the scrutiny of disambiguation.”

Shortly after, I stumbled across Popova's friendship with Neil Gaiman as she thanked him and his wife Amanda in the acknowledgements. Which—considering the last time I really had this conversation about the morality of artists and creators was in discussing my love for Neil Gaiman's "Make Good Art" speech contrasted against the recent, horrific exposé of his sexual assault allegations—fascinates me. Figuring was released beforehand, but that gave me a pang knowing how much Popova values it.

Unrelated to Neil Gaiman, the rest of her acknowledgments make total sense too in seeing who she thanks for impacting her work. Like Janna Levin, author of Black Hole Blues, and Alan Lightman, author of Einstein's Dreams. Both apply a dreamy, poetic view to scientific discoveries, and their voices are similar to Popova's.

Overall Thoughts

I, again, would like to have a career that mimics Popova's cadence (probably slightly dialed down from her absurd, prolific creativity): the freedom to read and write every day, and to write about whatever she wants to read.

I thought her author bio captured this perfectly—"Maria Popova is a reader and a writer, and writes about what she reads on Brain Pickings..."

Figuring wasn't quite the magic I love and relish from her site, and I think scope was the reasoning. Still, I did appreciate it. I cherished the points she was trying to make, I loved the affection she displayed for each writer and figure who's made an impact on our cultural ecosystem, and I even liked the small moments in which bits of her personality or beliefs bubbled up. She's somewhat mysterious (again—something I'd like to embody) so I did get more of a feel for what she curates when she has the room to explore.

Again, I would have preferred either a broader brush or for the transitions or context to be a little less overwhelming—and found her writing to be a lot at times—but I like her. I'll read her generously. You get the vibe, even if I thought the execution could have been clearer.

Plus, I loved the plethora of fun facts I can draw from now. Like Waldo's guilty pleasure being apples. (He and I have that in common, but I, unlike him, do not view it as a moral failing.)

For fans of:

Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck by William Soulder; Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman; Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space by Janna Levin; Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan.