Authors: Lars Iyer
Guilt. Should someone go after him?
Doyle walks out into the corridor, and back again.
No sign of him.
We file out, leaving the room empty behind us.
A walk on the Backs, without Wittgenstein.
Doyle, head sunk in guilt. Chakrabarti, shoulders hunched in shame. Mulberry, jacket pulled tight round his T-shirt, eyes lowered in repentance …
With Wittgenstein we see ourselves as learners, as students, as eternal ephebes. We see ourselves as apprentices, as prodigies—as youths, eternal youths, on the brink of everything …
We must admit it: we like the
romance of learning
. We like the romance of having
our very own thinker
. And who else but us will heed what he says?
The thinker is alone but for his pupils. The thinker rides the clouds in thought, stands on Atlas’s shoulders, belongs to the starry heights—but only his pupils know it. The thinker is the open Delphi, looking upon visions beyond mortal sight—but only we, his students, can see it.
We have a duty to Wittgenstein. To witness. To record. To relay the Message. To watch over the gift of the Master …
The next day. Ede and I at the porters’ lodge. The usual bustle.
We’re Wittgenstein’s students. We want to ask him something
.
The porter makes a call.
Wittgenstein doesn’t want to see anyone.
Ede and I tailgate two students past the porters’ lodge, and climb the staircase to Wittgenstein’s rooms.
We knock at his door. Silence. We bang at his door. Still silence.
We sit on the cold steps, waiting.
ME: You don’t suppose anything’s happened to him, do you? You don’t think we’ve driven him to something? Remember what happened to his brother …!
An hour passes. We salve our conscience by applying ourselves to the real Wittgenstein. Ede brings out the
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
. Tries to read it. Puts it away again. I pull out the
Philosophical Investigations
. Try to read it. Put it away again. Ede orders
Wittgenstein in 90 Minutes
on his phone.
We look up the Wittgenstein entry on Wikipedia. Very long! We search for pictures instead. A glum Wittgenstein, standing by a blackboard. A dour Wittgenstein, walking with a friend. Wittgenstein, gloomy in tartan. Wittgenstein, in profile—clearly suicidal.
We google
cheery Wittgenstein
. No results.
• • •
We hear movement. From inside his rooms. The lock turns. The door opens. Wittgenstein, dishevelled but alive.
WITTGENSTEIN: What are you doing here?
EDE: We came to see if you were alright.
A pause.
WITTGENSTEIN (as from a great distance): I am not alright.
EDE: Look, we’re very sorry we laughed. We didn’t mean anything by it.
WITTGENSTEIN: You were right to laugh. (A pause.) How
dare
I teach a class! How dare I harm you by my teaching! (A longer pause.) All this talk of my
Logik
! Vainglory! Vanity!
Visible beyond the door: his table, a pile of notebooks, loose sheets, an open ledger—blank. Scraps of paper pinned to his walls, covered in handwritten proofs. In scrawled remarks. Just visible:
APERION
, in capital letters.
WITTGENSTEIN: There is no
Logik
! There’s nothing, nothing. I am nothing. (Another long pause.) I heard laughter outside my room. Your laughter. I came out to hear you. I thought to myself,
There’s a clue in their laughter. There’s something I must find
.
His stare is very intense.
Desperately
intense, we agree afterwards.
Town. A concrete piazza, scattered with steel bollards. Surveillance cameras on high masts. New buildings, grotesquely aping the old ones, with decorative brickwork and painted gables. Office complexes with scholarly names (Academy House; Scholars’ Grove, and so on).
WITTGENSTEIN: Cambridge has died, in its heart. It happened quickly. The rest of it will die much more slowly. (A pause.) A kind of rigor mortis has set in. A stiffness of the limbs. (A pause.) Cambridge is becoming
brittle
. Cracking, like ice in a puddle. Splintering. There are sharp edges in Cambridge. Careful! There are
spikes
and
shards
.
Near the station. Luxury apartments (‘price on application’) with stuck-on balconies. Investors’ megaflats, with staring windows and slanted roofs on stilts.
He walks. We walk.
Thought is howling: can we hear it?, he says.
Logic
is howling. The wind is tearing the world to shreds. Now it begins: the great desolation. Now it will come: the storm of the cosmos.
The sky is cracking: can we hear it? The sky is about to shatter. The stars are stigmata drilling into the night. The earth is groaning. It sings, it groans.
• • •
Thought is exploding inside him, he says. Logic is exploding inside him.
Philosophy is loose inside him, he says. Philosophy is devouring him from within.
And when it has finished with him? When it has done devouring? But it will never finish with him, he says. There will always be more of him to destroy.
Belvedere Tower, domineering. The Leisure Park opposite—faceless, looming.
His brain is going out, he says. His brain is exploding.
He is being kept alive, he says. But for what purpose?
What does God want with him, by letting him live?
He has the sense of being
martyred
, but for no cause in particular.
He has the sense of being
bereft
, but without having lost anything in particular.
Homertown Street. Clone-town shops. Concrete and metal. Absolute blandness.
Thought, and the derangement of thought, he says. How to distinguish between them?
A break
down
, a break
through
: how to distinguish between them?
There is a
cost
to thought, he says. He’ll pay with
himself
. He’ll sacrifice
himself
.
• • •
Death, he says. He is drunk with death.
He can hear it: death is sharpening its knife. He can hear it: death is running its blade along the whetstone.
Death is coming, he says. Death will whistle around him like an Arctic storm.
Tea, among the tourists in the
Copper Kettle
.
Last night, he thought he saw the dons, looking up at his window and pointing, Wittgenstein says. He thought he heard the dons, shuffling up and down the stairs outside his room. He thought he sensed them, pacing back and forth on his landing. But when he looked out through his spyhole, there was no one there.
The dons are really pacing in his
head
, Wittgenstein says. The dons have set up court inside him. The dons are pronouncing judgement on him from the inside. A crowd of dons, jeering at him inside.
Sneering and jeering
: that’s all he can hear inside his head, he says. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of dons, jostling inside him. A whole crowd of dons sneering inside him.
What do the dons want from him? What do they expect? What did they think he could bring to the university? What did they think he could contribute? Couldn’t they see the kind of person he was? Wasn’t it
clear
? He’s never tried to hide what he is, Wittgenstein says. He’s never pretended to be what he’s not. His face—couldn’t they read his face? Wasn’t everything written there, on his face?
What did the dons think they’d found in him?, Wittgenstein asks. Who did they think they had brought to Cambridge? He was a curio, at first. A real find. Did they think he’d entertain them during the long winter nights? Because the
dons need amusement, he says. The dons need diversion as the nights draw in.
But he has become too much for the dons, Wittgenstein says. He’s become a
problem
, which the dons don’t know how to solve. He is the equivalent of a blocked drain, he says. A blocked
lavatory
. What an unsavoury job to fix it! How will he be disposed of! It’s not
my
job, each don says to himself. But then whose job is it?
It’s
his
job, Wittgenstein says.
He
should dispose of
himself
. He should strangle himself, and get rid of the body. He should throw himself into the Cam, he says. He should throw himself off the
Mathematical Bridge
, or
Magdalene Bridge
, or
Cutter Ferry Bridge
, and let his body wash down to the sea.
It should be as though he had never been here, he says. As though he had never been invited to Cambridge, never brought here. The dons shouldn’t be troubled by even the
memory
of his existence, he says. The dons shouldn’t remember a thing—not a thing! The wound in their memory should be closed up …
The dons should be left undisturbed, Wittgenstein says. The dons should be left to stride about on their English lawn. To walk with their hands behind their backs on the English lawn. To go in for English tea. To tuck into scones and jam in the English tea-room. The dons should be allowed to forget all about him. To never have heard his name. To have known nothing about him, about his very existence.
That his shadow has fallen on Cambridge: too much! That the shadow of Cambridge has fallen on him: too much! That his silhouette has been spied in the Cambridge evening: too much! That his feet have impressed the Cambridge turf … That his breath has clouded the Cambridge morning … That his eyes have rested upon Cambridge sights … That his ears
have been thronged with Cambridge noises … Too much! too much! too much! too much!
Ah, but the dons know how it will end, he says. The dons can see the future. He will blow out his brains on the English lawn, they know that. And the lawnkeepers will rake out pieces of his skull from the English lawn.
We drive out to the country.
A clearing, ready for building. Stumps of trees. Diggers. Crates. Long metal pipes in piles. All for a new housing estate, beyond the suburbs of Cambridge.
A line of just-built houses without feature, blank-faced, simple. No shadows. No lines. A sheer wall of bricks and glass and plastic doors.
Red and blue
For Sale
signs. A show home on the corner. A flag by the show home, the developer’s name flapping in the wind.
It may seem that Cambridge is expanding outwards, Wittgenstein says. That these are the new suburbs of Cambridge. But really it is the other way round. The suburbs are expanding
into
Cambridge. Cambridge is being engulfed by the suburbs.
Drowned
by them …
What if he and his brother had lived ordinary lives?, Wittgenstein says. What if they had never embarked upon their
life of the mind
?
Why can he not accept the world as it is?, he says. Why is he unsatisfied with ordinary life? Why can he not let things be things, and the world be the world?
Plastic polytunnels. A wartime bunker with galvanised tin walls.
Sometimes, he wants only to
let it all go
, he says. To rest. To sleep. To let the world go its way. He dreams of a world that is liberated from him. Of a time when he is unremembered.
He dreams of his
disappearance
. Of the world without him. Of the world after his thought. After
all
thought. He dreams of having no need to think. He dreams of the light and grace of the world
after philosophy
…
He tells us a story.
Once upon a time, the devil made a mirror that mocked the things it reflected—that laughed at all beauty and goodness and grandeur. In his daring, the devil carried the mirror heavenward, so that he might use it to ridicule the angels, even to scorn the Saviour Himself. But, dazzled by heaven’s light, the devil lost his grip as he flew upward. The mirror fell and shattered, and splinters of its mocking surface fell into the eyes and hearts of all human beings. And thereafter, all human eyes laughed at the Creation, and all human hearts laughed at love. And thereafter, there was no such thing as human innocence, nor human silence. And thereafter, there was no such thing as an innocent thought.
WITTGENSTEIN: That’s how
philosophy
was born. Philosophy is a way of laughing at beauty and goodness and grandeur. A way of laughing at life!
EDE (gently): Then why do we bother with philosophy at all?
WITTGENSTEIN: Because philosophy stands between us and salvation.
Brightly coloured horse-jumps. A rider, circling the field, bobbing in the saddle.
Sometimes he wonders if we students aren’t already on the other side of philosophy, he says. That philosophy, that all thought, is a matter for
him
, but not for
us
.
Are we the clue?, he asks. Are we the gateway out of philosophy? Perhaps the clue is in our faces. Perhaps it is there, right there. Perhaps the clue is in our laughter. If he could only
get to
our laughter …
A solitary horse in its field, standing by the fence. Wittgenstein leans forwards and breathes softly into its nostrils.
When he sees a horse, he feels that life itself is before him, he says. In truth, horses were never expelled from paradise. The horse, in particular, is close to the divine.
There was no better horseman than his father, Wittgenstein says. No better
man
!
He has no bad memories of his father—not one, he says.
WITTGENSTEIN: My father was a man of absolutes. Of
certainties
. (A pause.) A man of certainties can
act
. (A pause). My trouble is that I have no certainties, and therefore cannot act.
His mother was from a thinking family, Wittgenstein says. From a line of thinkers, from old Vienna. He had a thinking
grandfather, he says. And a thinking grandmother. It goes back for generations.
They were Viennese Jews, his mother’s family, he says. Then they were Viennese Catholics. Then, with the Anschluss, they were Viennese Jews again.
They haunt our steps, that we cannot go in our streets
. His great-grandfather paid off the Nazis, and the family fled the country, he says.