Authors: Lars Iyer
The bass notes are giving him an
erection
, Mulberry says.
We notice Wittgenstein below us, hands clasped over his knee. The nape of his neck, smooth and sallow next to the collar of his crisp white shirt.
MULBERRY: Calm yourself, Peters.
ME: Look how
moved
he is. His eyes are closed. What’s wrong with us, that we don’t feel that way?
EDE: We’re English. There’s no cure for that.
• • •
Walking back. Wittgenstein ahead of us.
He never feels anything you’re supposed to feel, Ede says.
All this art! Music! All these
experiences
!
I tell him I was moved. Very moved.
EDE: It’s because you want to be overawed, Peters. That’s what culture is for: overawing people like you.
Scroggins and the Kirwins catch up with us.
EDE (quietly): Oh God!
Discussion. Our plans for the Christmas break. A family safari in the heart of Zambia (the Kirwins). Swimming with sharks off the coast of Mauritius (Scroggins). Skiing in the Rockies (Ede—but he’s sick of skiing, he says) …
KIRWIN A: Where are
you
going, Peters? Yorkshire?
KIRWIN B: How’s the skiing in Yorkshire, Peters?
KIRWIN A: You’re really a bit of a
peasant
, aren’t you, Peters?
EDE: Just because Peters isn’t an aristo!
KIRWIN B: Well,
we’re
not aristos,
technically
speaking.
You have to be in Burke’s book of peerages to be an aristo.
KIRWIN A: Yes, but we’re hardly
scholarship boys
, are we?
We haven’t known poverty.
KIRWIN B: Alexander thinks that not going skiing constitutes
poverty
.
Ede asks the Kirwins about performance-enhancing drugs. Do they ever take them?
Vehement denials.
EDE: Oh, of course you do. All athletes do. They’re supposed to shrink your cocks, performance-enhancing drugs, aren’t they? Cock-shrinkage: has that happened to you? Come on, you can tell us.
The Kirwins storm off.
Laughter.
He was just
asking
, Ede says.
ME (looking ahead): What
is
Wittgenstein thinking about?
EDE: Death, I should imagine. Our shortcomings. His own shortcomings. His sense of sin.
We run to catch up with him.
Indian summer.
Ede and I, walking in the open fields by Grange Road.
If only we had something to talk about, like the scholars of yore! Something serious. Something weighty, on which to take sides! We would walk and talk, and talk and walk. We would outline our positions, and refine our ideas …
We would speak of topic
A
, as we walk, stroking our chins, and topic
B
, shaking our heads. We would ponder issue
C
with great sternness, and toss restless ideas back and forth about issue
D
. Patiently, carefully, we would consider the likely repercussions of thesis
E
, and ask whether the consequences of issue
F
have really been thought through. Is hypothesis
G
worthy of consideration?, we’d wonder. And what about conjecture
H
? We would shake our heads about nostrum
I
, and laugh about the preposterousness of fallacy
J
—how could anyone take
J
seriously!
K
is a
heresy
, we would agree, pursing our lips. As for
L
—there’s something to be said about L, we would agree, nodding our heads …
What is it we lack as intellectuals?, we wonder. Ideas? Real intelligence? Is it a question of temperament? Of
intensity
? Is it a matter of being
European—old
European—or at least
foreign
?
You can’t teach love—that’s what Wittgenstein said yesterday. That’s the
condition
of philosophy: fierce and fiery love. Philosophy is the love of wisdom, he said. A love for what you do not possess. A love for what, nevertheless, has left its trace in you.
Wittgenstein is a lover—that’s what we learnt yesterday. A lover’s heart beats beneath that dour exterior …
Do
we
have love—real love—for philosophy?, Ede and I wonder. Are we capable of that love?
We have the sense of living for something larger than us,
better
than us. The sense of something
worthwhile
, that we can serve. We have the sense of something
difficult
, to which we can dedicate ourselves. The sense of being
part
of something,
involved
in something …
The sky clouding over. The sun slanting in.
We walk, thinking of the many times Wittgenstein has been seen walking in Cambridge, and confiding our desire to
share
in Wittgenstein’s walks. To become, if not fellow thinkers, then at least fellow
walkers
, companions in thought.
To walk behind him, wondering about the effect on his thinking of the sun warming his head. Wondering about the effect of heavy rain or thick fog. Wondering about the effect of the crunch of snow underfoot. Wondering if it makes any difference to his thought whether he keeps the river on his left, or on his right. Musing upon the influence of
topography
on his thought. Of elevation, or depression. Pondering the difference between thinking on the valley bottom and on the hillcrest …
But better still would be to walk
with
him, we agree. To listen to his concerns as we walk together. To walk quietly and listen. To appear to take in his ideas, without understanding a word. To murmur noncommittally as he speaks. To nod our heads mutely, and at the right time. To agree, when we sense he wants agreement, and to disagree, when he seems to want
dis
agreement.
To pause when he takes mind to pause. To stand quietly as
he works out a problem. And to start walking with him as he starts walking again, as his thoughts become unstuck again …
To take
morning
walks with Wittgenstein! Full of vigour and energy! Full of hope! Full of the promise of the work he will do that day! To take
dawn
walks, the world dew-wet with promise.
Edenic
walks, as Adam took with Eve just after the Creation. Walks in which he would feel his philosophical powers gathering … Walks in which he would draw the air to the bottom of his lungs … Walks in which he would nod his head to other early-risers, other kings and queens of the morning …
To take
afternoon
walks with Wittgenstein! Long and languorous walks.
Wandering
walks, walks without plan, on which he would muse upon the most intractable issues. Walks with the indefinite as their horizon. Walks as wide as the world, as open …
To take
nighttime
walks with Wittgenstein! After hours, when anything can be said. Walks of confidences, when he might talk hush-voiced of his dreams and desires. When he might whisper to us of secret hopes and fervours. Of his thought-ambitions. Of his
Logik
.
To take walks
after midnight
with Wittgenstein! Walks of the early hours. To take the insomniac’s walk, the
too-awake
walk. To take the
over-conscious
walk that would tire him out. How would we help him to find his way to sleep, walking among the last of the revellers and the puddles of vomit?
Wittgenstein, turning to us in desperation. In
vulnerability
. Wittgenstein saying:
Help me! Help me to think!
Sounds of machine-gun fire. Booms. Shouting. The lecturer in the next room must be showing a film.
Wittgenstein winces.
His silence, our silence. His, a silence of inner struggle. Of armies of thought clashing inside him. Of Jacob wrestling the angel. Ours, a silence of expectancy, giving way to distraction.
A fly on the windowpane. Isn’t it too cold for flies …?
The playing fields, touched with frost. Football noises come through the fog.
A thought must arrive all at once, or not at all, he says.
Spontaneity: that is his aim. To think
spontaneously
, as by a kind of reflex.
We must retrain our
thought-instincts
, he says. We must rehone our most basic
thought-responses
.
Classroom décor. Faded posters. Old bound editions of learned journals in locked cabinets, roman numerals on the spines. Who reads them? What have they to do with anyone? How long have they been here? Did people
ever
read them? Did anyone
ever
care about such things?
The journals make us uneasy. They are not
of
us, not accessible to us. They’re not
for
us, yet they surround us. Isn’t Cambridge supposed to be
our
playground? Isn’t Cambridge supposed to centre on
us
?
Cambridge should be about us—here—in the present. Cambridge should come to
us
, who live in the present …
The fire alarm. We remain at our desks. Is it a drill? Will it stop? Will silence return? The alarm is persistent. A fire warden bangs on the door. We have to vacate the building.
Outside. Low, dark cloud. We stand about in the drizzle, among all the other students. Mulberry, with his
FUCK TOMORROW
T-shirt. Titmuss, with his new nose ring.
We look at our feet, Wittgenstein looks at the sky. Minutes pass. Everyone around us starts to file back inside.
He can’t go in again, Wittgenstein says. We’ll have to walk, all of us. We’ll have to revive the
peripatetic school
.
The Great Bridge. Magdalene College. The River Cam, muddy and narrow.
How sick he is of Cambridge!, he says. How tired he is!
This foul, damp city, he says. This rotten place. This marsh stagnancy, full of fogs and vapours. This place of
lowness
. This place of
contagion
. He’s suffocating, he says.
Imagine it!, he says: a whole town built below sea level (more or less). Waiting for the sea to close over it. Waiting to drown, with just the spires of King’s College Chapel poking up above the water.
We walk quietly beside him, wary of his mood.
A don, walking his dog, greets Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein nods back.
The dog is a disgusting creature, Wittgenstein says when the don is out of earshot. Bred for dependency. Bred for slobbering. We think our dogs love us because we have a debased
idea of love, he says. We think our dogs are loyal to us because we have a corrupted sense of loyalty.
People object to pit bulls and Rottweilers, but pit bulls and Rottweilers are his
favourite
dogs, Wittgenstein says. They don’t hide what they are.
People love Labradors, of course. But the Labrador is the most disgusting of dogs, he says,
because
of its apparent gentleness.
The
kindness
of the Labrador: disgusting. The
pleasantness
of the Labrador: disgusting. The
even-temperedness
of the Labrador: disgusting. The
tractability
of the Labrador: disgusting. The
easygoingness
of the Labrador: likewise disgusting. The
affability
of the Labrador:
altogether
disgusting. The
good-naturedness
of the Labrador: filth! Pure filth! The
outgoingness
of the Labrador: horrific. The
sociability
of the Labrador: despicable. The
kindly eyes
of the Labrador: wholly disgusting …
The Cambridge dons’ thoughts are like their dogs, he says. Their thoughts are like thoughts on a leash … Thoughts trained to play catch … Thoughts sniffing the rear ends of other thoughts … Thoughts with a collar round their necks. Thoughts whose mess you have to clean up.
The Cambridge mistake is to believe that thought simply comes when you whistle, he says. But thought must whistle to us! Thought should not be
tame
! Thought should
tear out our throats
!
Wittgenstein speaks of
dangerous
thoughts, of thoughts which bite. He speaks of
wild
thoughts which snarl and sting. Of thoughts which have to be tamed and broken.
There are thoughts you have to
avoid
if they appear, he says.
Shy
thoughts,
wary
thoughts, thoughts that only cross
your mind when all is calm and still, like deer passing through a woodland glade at dawn.
And there are thoughts that have to be
flushed out
, he says. Driven in herds. Thoughts that need
baiting
—thoughts that can be caught only by means of decoys, of lures, of hidden traps. Thoughts for which you have to lie in wait.
And there are thoughts you have to
run down
, he says—thoughts you have to chase through days and nights. Thoughts which run
you
down. Thoughts which turn
you
into the quarry, thoughts which charge
you
, thoughts which beat
you
from
your
hiding place.
And there are thoughts which are cleverer than you are, he says. Wiser than you are. Thoughts which are
better
than you are, loftier and more noble.
High
thoughts, thoughts that stream above you …
And there are thoughts of the
stratosphere
, he says. Of the
ionosphere
! Thoughts that skim along the edge of space, and that you have to bring down to earth. Thoughts of the
depths—subterranean
thoughts, which sing through fundaments and profundities.
Reverberant
thoughts, like buried earthquakes. Thoughts no longer of the hard crust, but of the blazing mantle. Thoughts of the earth’s core, deep down where lava turns in lava.
Those are the kinds of thoughts he came to Cambridge to think, Wittgenstein says. Those are the thoughts only the
atrocious conditions of Cambridge
might impel him to think.
He didn’t come to Cambridge to sit at the feet of Collison-Bell, the modal logician, he says. Nor of Hawley, the modal realist. It wasn’t the epistemological work of Pritchett that drew him here, nor the meta-epistemology of McPherson. He
didn’t come to study with Oliphant, the famous metaphysician, nor to pursue the meta-philosophy of ‘Mutt’ McDonald. It was not to attend the lectures of Price-Young on
Infallibalism
, nor of Safranski on
Indefeasibility
, nor of Subramanian on
Externalism
, nor of Han on
Internalism
. It wasn’t to ally himself with the research group on
Quantum Cognition
, nor to become part of the
Computational Neuroscience Network
. He had no intention whatsoever of advancing Cambridgean thought in the areas of
malleable intelligence
, nor of
dynacism
.