Arithmetic in Literature

Being locked in a modest room for 60 minutes doing sums, problems, calculations... Sounds boring and difficult? What would you say to be locked for 60 years as Krišjanis Barons, the father of Latvian Folk songs ?

How can all the Arts be counted and put into consequential order? Alphabetic, timeline, meaning, significance, random order? Philology doesn’t belong to STEM, but what if it is counted, ordered? Latvian culture cannot be imagined without Latvian Dainas-short quatrains, whose melodic range is limited to three or four tones and their length to four or eight measures where each beat corresponds to a syllable. The treasure of this Art had to be saved for future generations, that meant to be counted and put into a special cabinet in a special order, performed by a Latvian, Krisjanis Barons, who took the responsibility to do this lifelong work.

The collection consists of over 350,000 hand-written paper slips sized 3 x 11 cm in many handwritings, and 218,000 song texts were assembled, classified and published in 8 thick tomes

They are all stored in a specially built cabinet with 70 drawers for these texts. This “treasure chest” was made in 1880, has served as a working tool, but now has become a cultural symbol. Numbers. There should be the amount of km Krisjanis Barons had gone… He spent 60 years to fulfil the lifelong task, locked into his cabinet for long 60 years. You will have 60 minutes to unlock yourselves from this hard burden. Numbers are the key!