Wittgenstein's Mistress (24 page)

Andrei Roublev was a pupil of Theophanes the Greek, by the way. In fact he was also a sort of Russian Giotto.

Well, perhaps he was not a Giotto. Being the first great Russian painter nonetheless, having perhaps been all one meant.

And Herodotus was almost always spoken about as having been the first person ever to write down any real history, incidentally.

Even if I am not especially overjoyed at being the last.

As a matter of fact I am quite sorry I said that.

Such thoughts again being exactly the sort one would have wished to believe one had gotten rid of with the rest of one's baggage, naturally.

Oh, well. One can be thankful that they have been coming up only rarely these days, at least.

Have I ever said that Turner once actually had himself lashed to the mast of a ship, to be able to later do a painting of a storm?

Which has never failed to remind me of the scene in which Odysseus does the identical thing, of course, so that he can listen to the Sirens singing but will stay put.

But now good heavens.

Here I sit, and it is only after all this time that I have remembered the most significant thing I had meant to say about the basement once I had started to say anything at all about the basement.

The person who wrote that book about baseball did not make any sort of ridiculous error in its title after all, as it turns out.

On my honor, there is a separate carton in the basement which contains absolutely nothing except grass that is not real.

Artificial grass being something I had never even heard of before, I would swear. So that doubtless I would have scarcely been able to imagine what it was down there at all, if the carton had not had a label.

Then again, if the carton had not had a label, unquestionably I still would have been struck by the manner in which what was inside of it certainly did look like grass.

The things one tardily becomes aware of.

Even if the whole notion actually saddens me now that I do know about it, to tell the truth.

Grass being simply supposed to be grass, is all.

Well, or quite possibly the book itself is a sad book, and for this identical reason, which would have been a point that I missed until now completely, of course.

In fact quite possibly even those people Campy or Stan Usual may have been sad too, if somebody once told them they would have to stop playing their game on real grass.

Although surely even people who played baseball must have had more important things than that to worry about, or one would certainly wish to imagine that they did.

Certainly the one they named the disease after must have had more important things to worry about.

The instrument that Ludwig Wittgenstein used to play was a
clarinet, by the way.

Which for some curious reason he carried in an old sock, rather than in a case.

So that anybody seeing him walk down the street with it might have thought, there goes that person carrying an old sock.

Having no idea whatsoever that Mozart could come out of it.

Doubtless A. E. Housman thought he was just somebody carrying an old sock, in fact, on the afternoon when Wittgenstein found himself with diarrhea and asked if he could use the toilet, and A. E. Housman said no.

On my honor, Wittgenstein once needed a toilet in a considerable hurry, near some rooms at Cambridge that were Housman's, and Housman would not let him in.

Actually the composer who most often came out of the sock would have probably been Franz Schubert, having been Wittgenstein's favorite.

Even if I have no idea why this reminds me that Brahms's friends were frequently embarrassed because prostitutes would call hello to him when they passed.

Or, for heaven's sake, that Gauguin was once arrested for urinating in public.

Or that Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman often used to nod to each other while walking the streets in Washington, D.C., during the Civil War.

Presumably this last will at least make it seem less improbable that people like El Greco and Spinoza did exactly the same thing, at any rate.

If hardly in Washington, D.C.

Clara Schumann actually visited the Wittgenstein home in Vienna with Brahms on occasion also, incidentally, if I have not made that clear.

And which was perhaps an additional reason for Brahms wishing that children would go away.

Whereas Schubert was one more person who had syphilis, unfortunately. This being an explanation for why he never
finished the
Unfinished Symphony,
as a matter of fact, having died at thirty-one.

And Handel can be put on the list of people who went blind, I think.

But who was somebody named Karen Silkwood, whom I suddenly also feel I would like to tell that you can now kneel and drink at the Danube, or the Potomac, or the Allegheny?

And why do I only at this instant realize that Leningrad was still called St. Petersburg when Shostakovich was born there?

I have just wrapped my head into a towel.

Having gone out for some greens, for a wet salad, this would be because of.

And in the meantime the more I have thought about it, the more sorry I have gotten about what I said.

I mean about Michelangelo, not about Herodotus.

Certainly I would have found it more than agreeable to shake Michelangelo's hand, no matter how the pope or Louis Pasteur might have felt about this.

In fact I would have been excited just to
see
the hand that had taken away superfluous material in the way that Michelangelo had taken it away.

Actually, I would have been pleased to tell Michelangelo how fond I am of his sentence that I once underlined, too.

Perhaps I have not mentioned having once underlined a sentence by Michelangelo.

I once underlined a sentence by Michelangelo.

This was a sentence that Michelangelo once wrote in a letter, when he had lived almost seventy-five years.

You will say that I am old and mad, was what Michelangelo wrote, but I answer that there is no better way of being sane and free from anxiety than by being mad.

On my honor, Michelangelo once wrote that.

As a matter of fact I am next to positive I would have liked Michelangelo.

I am still feeling the typewriter, naturally. And hearing the keys.

Hm. I would seem to have left something out, just then.

Oh. All I had meant to write was that I had just closed my eyes, obviously.

There is an explanation for my having decided to do that.

The explanation being that I would appear to be more upset about that carton of grass that is not real than I had realized.

By which I imagine what I mean is that if the grass that is not real is real, as it undoubtedly is, what would be the difference between the way grass that is not real is real and the way real grass is real, then?

For that matter what city was Dmitri Shostakovitch born in?

A certain amount of this sort of thing can actually sometimes almost begin to worry me, to tell the truth.

Even if there would appear to be no record as to what name Wittgenstein ever did pick out for that seagull, on the other hand.

Well, my reason for bringing this up again being because it was a seagull that brought me to this very beach, as it happens.

High, high, against the clouds, little more than a speck, but then swooping in the direction of the sea.

Except that the seagull was in no way a real seagull either, of course, being only ash.

Have I mentioned looking in Savona, New York, ever? Or in Cambridge, Massachusetts?

And that in Florence I did not let myself into the Uffizi immediately, but lived for a period in a hotel they had named after Fra Filippo Lippi, instead?

What I write with my stick are not necessarily always messages, by the way.

Once I wrote Helen of Troy, in Greek.

Well, or in what looked like Greek, although I was actually only inventing that.

Even if Helen of Troy would have been only an invented name in real Greek too, come to think about it, since it is assuredly doubtful that anybody would have been calling her that at the time.

I have decided to hide among some women so that I do not have to go and fight over Helen of Troy. That hardly being the manner in which one imagines that Achilles would have thought about such things, for instance.

Or, I have decided to make believe I am mad and sow salt into my fields so that I do not have to go and fight over Helen of Troy. That hardly being the manner in which one imagines that Odysseus would have thought about them, either.

Moreover everybody would have doubtless been too accustomed to calling her of Sparta to have troubled with changing in any event.

Even after they had sailed to Troy in the one thousand, one hundred and eighty-six ships.

Which is how many ships it says in Homer that the Greeks sailed to Troy in, incidentally.

Even if one is personally next to positive that there would have been no way in the world that the Greeks could have sailed in one thousand, one hundred and eighty-six ships.

Doubtless the Greeks had twenty or thirty ships.

Well, as I believe I have mentioned, the whole of Troy being like little more than your ordinary city block and a few stories in height, practically.

No matter how extraordinary one may find it that young men died there in a war that long ago and then died in the same place three thousand years after that.

Although what one doubts even more sincerely is that Helen would have been the cause of that war to begin with, of course.

After all, a single Spartan girl, as Walt Whitman once called her.

Even if in
The Trojan Women
Euripides does let everybody be furious at Helen.

In the
Odyssey,
where she has a splendid radiant dignity, nothing of that sort is hinted at at all.

And even in the
Iliad,
when the war is still going on, she is generally treated with respect.

So unquestionably it was only later that people decided it had been Helen's fault.

Well, Euripides of course coming much later than Homer on his own part, for instance.

I do not remember how much later, but much later.

As a matter of fact it was as much later as twice the time between now and when Bertrand Russell's grandfather met George Washington, approximately.

And certainly any number of things can be lost track of, in that many years.

So that once he had gotten the idea to write a play about the war, certainly it would have been necessary for Euripides to think up an interesting reason for the war.

Not knowing that the real reason must surely have been to see who would pay tariff to whom, so as to be able to make use of a channel of water, as I have indicated.

Although on the other hand it is also quite possible that Euripides just lied.

Quite possibly Euripides knew perfectly well about the real reason for the war, but decided that in a play Helen would be a more interesting reason.

Certainly writers must have now and again done this sort of thing, one would imagine.

So that when one comes right down to it, it is equally possible that Homer just lied, too.

Quite possibly Homer knew perfectly well himself about the real number of ships, but decided that in a poem one thousand, one hundred and eighty-six would be a more interesting number, as well.

Well, as it undeniably is, as is verified by the very fact that I remember it.

Doubtless if I had underlined only twenty or thirty ships when I was tearing pages out of the
Iliad
and dropping them into a fire I would not have remembered that at all.

In fact if Homer had said there were only twenty or thirty
ships doubtless I would not have underlined any numbers to begin with.

Which is to say that perhaps certain writers are sometimes smarter than one thinks.

Then again, Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote a novel called
The Recognitions,
about a man who wears an alarm clock around his neck, which seems less like a lie than just a foolish subject for a book altogether.

Except that in this instance I remember it without even having ever read
The Recognitions.

And which furthermore now makes me realize that if Euripides had not blamed Helen for the war very possibly I would not remember Helen, either.

So that doubtless it was quite hasty of me, to criticize Rainer Maria Rilke or Euripides.

Even if on third thought what one is only now forced to suspect is that there could have been still a different reason entirely, for the wrong number of ships in the
Iliad.

Which is to say that since Homer did not know how to write, very possibly he did not know how to add, either.

Especially since Pascal had not even been born, yet.

But be all that as it may, what it also occurs to me to mention here is that I am frequently just as annoyed at how Clytemnestra is blamed for certain things as I am about Helen, to tell the truth.

This would be in regard to when Clytemnestra stabs Agamemnon in his bath once he comes home from the same war, of course.

Needing some assistance. But nonetheless.

Although what I am really saying is why in heaven's name wouldn't she have?

Well, after the way Agamemnon had sacrificed their own daughter to raise wind for those identical ships, I naturally mean.

God, the things men used to do.

Kings and generals especially, even if that is hardly any excuse.

But what also just so happens is that I have sailed from Greece to Troy myself, actually.

Well, or vice versa. But the point being that even with a page torn out of an atlas, instead of maritime charts, the entire trip took me only two unhurried days.

In spite of having been frightened half to death by that ketch, near Lesbos, with its spinnaker taking noisy wind, even.

But which in either case still scarcely comes close to making it a distance that calls for the sacrifice of anybody over, obviously.

Let alone one's own child.

And which is additionally not even to bring up the question as to what possible difference a day or two's extra sailing might make in any event, if your silly war is about to last for ten full years.