by Bruce Duffy
Gretl often acted as his intermediary in those days, and it was she who arranged the first meeting with Schlick. Having led the members of the group through two years of intensive analysis of the Tractatus, Schlick came as a votary, and the meeting was a success. Wittgenstein especially appreciated Schlick’s highly cultivated personality. Schlick also came at the right time, when Wittgenstein was feeling the first surge of new ideas. Sensing this, Schlick subsequently introduced Wittgenstein to his young associate Waismann, largely in the hope that Waismann might get Wittgenstein’s chaotic thoughts into a systematic and publishable form.
The Vienna Circle dreamed of making philosophy a handmaiden to science, and Waismann was no less willing to make himself a handmaiden to Wittgenstein’s evolving thinking. For the past four years, Waismann had virtually dropped his own work while fruitlessly trying to systematize Wittgenstein’s ideas. That it was proving an impossible task was certainly not because of Waismann’s skills as an organizer and creative midwife. Rather, the problem was the speed with which Wittgenstein’s ideas were changing — that and Wittgenstein’s inherent dissatisfaction with his own productions. Wittgenstein was like a molting bird, all swatched and patched and unclear, wondering at his own wild growth, with no idea, or concern, about what kind of bird he would become. Poor Waismann, meanwhile, was trying to turn him into a definite kind of bird with a definite shape. Twice now Waismann had ordered Wittgenstein’s new ideas into the scope of a book, but each time Wittgenstein had rejected it, saying that the ideas in it were far too flawed, that his thinking had changed and was changing still.
It would have been an act of kindness, even humility, for Wittgenstein to have told Waismann to abandon this doomed undertaking, but he would not do this. Wittgenstein was nothing if not pragmatic in this regard. He thought Waismann was brilliant and capable, certainly, but otherwise unoriginal. But then this was not altogether surprising, since Waismann was a Jew. As Wittgenstein saw it, it was part of the Jewish nature to understand another man’s work better than he himself understood it. Nor was Wittgenstein attributing to Waismann anything that he did not clearly see in himself. In perceiving this deficiency in Waismann, Wittgenstein was no less aware of the essentially derivative nature of his own talent, which stemmed largely from Russell and Frege, among others.
Jewish reproductiveness — this was how Wittgenstein termed this characteristic one day in conversation with Max. It was an ill-considered and irresponsible remark, and Wittgenstein immediately regretted having said it in Max’s presence. Certainly, Wittgenstein did not mean for Max to view it as being in any way in sympathy with the various racial theories that were then surfacing with renewed vigor. But it was too late. Max immediately latched on to this as another important insight to be added to his Jew lore, that rag-bag of jokes, pseudohistory and scurrilous “scientific facts” culled from various strident newspapers and pamphlets.
In any case, it seemed to Wittgenstein that if Waismann could not get on with his own work, he could at least help him get on with his. After all, he reasoned, it didn’t matter, in the end, who did the work, just so long as someone did it.
This at least was what Wittgenstein told himself. The truth was, Wittgenstein was anything but adverse to what Waismann could do for him. Wittgenstein had once told Waismann, and emphatically, that he was not yet willing to speak about his ideas in public. Nonetheless, he was secretly intrigued several days after this pronouncement when Waismann took the hint and nervously asked, after a floundering and abasing preface, if he, Waismann, might give a paper on Wittgenstein’s mathematical ideas. Wittgenstein gave a laboring sigh, a look of distaste. But despite these feints, Wittgenstein, much like Pontius Pilate, was finally willing — if not compelled by the world’s barbaric curiosity — to accept “Waismann’s idea” and send his work forth like the condemned to a fate of almost certain incomprehension. There was nothing else to be done. Why, Wittgenstein even went so far as to provide Waismann with an outline of what he was to say at the mathematical conference held in Königsberg in 1930. Nor had Wittgenstein objected — or failed to subtly jerk the wires —that past year when Waismann had presented several other papers on his views in Vienna.
Unfortunately, things had not gone so well when Waismann attempted to write a paper of his own. In his preface, Waismann said that conversations with Wittgenstein had provided “valuable stimuli” in the development of his ideas. The master was not at all happy when Waismann sent him a complimentary copy along with a humble letter of thanks. Instead of an appreciative letter, Waismann received an icy rebuke pointing out that Waismann’s alleged original ideas had not risen like marsh gas from the mere stimulation of their discussions. Rather, Wittgenstein said, Waismann’s ideas had come directly from his own, and not just from conversations, but from dictations and unpublished typescripts.
Waismann was of course devastated, all the more so because the mistake had been so unconscious. Even now Waismann was struggling to draft a formal acknowledgment of his error. But how was he to explain it? Overinfluence? Inundation? A mirage?
In the meantime, though, this Sisyphean undertaking would proceed apace, with Waismann rushing to complete another version of the master’s ideas for his almost certain repudiation.
Pain and Its Language
RUSSELL DID CATCH a glimpse of the lovers before they disappeared.
He had run up the stairs to his study roost, to comb the hills with his binoculars. And there, in a sweep of the horizon, he had caught them. Max had a blanket under his arm. He saw her willful back, her windblown hair. Then they were gone. Over the hill.
Why did he feel so sick at this? he wondered. Did he begrudge her her youth and vigor? So leave her be! he told himself, but he only continued to feel more hurt and furious — furious in a way that even he could see was absurd, as if he were a virtuous father concerned for his daughter’s welfare.
Never mind that Max had unstopped the leaky drain, repaired the stove, torn down the shed and fixed the gutter. Walking through the empty school, Russell saw only ruin, incompetence, disrepair. Out then in the garden, he heard whizzz-ick … whizzz-ick. It was old Tillham, the caretaker, poisoning the afternoon with noxious white puffs from his beetle sprayer.
Russell veered away. It was all hitting him again, a bad attack. Russell missed his children — even when they were there with him now, he missed them, missed them in advance, as it were. And with this loss, he felt the sour heart and the heaviness, remembering, as if he had ever forgotten, that he had a ladybug with a lover, and that their house was burning, burning, with the children all gone …
He was just weary, and mad. He wanted to take John and Kate and chuck the rest — Beacon Hill and Dora, this ungrateful girl, his guests. And then, full to his gullet with anger, he walked into the kitchen and caught sight of Dora, red-faced and unhappy, almost sloshing in her awful fullness. She made him sick. The cook was out. Dora punctually put down her cup, her mouth hard, just daring him to say one word. And then, before either of them knew what had happened, they were at each other’s throats, he in his morning suit and she in her sloppy peasant smock.
With Higgins upstairs and the children away, there was nothing to stop them. This was close, vicious fighting — the fighting of experts. Violent gestures and inflections were needed to expel their words into utterance. Russell’s throat was so constricted that he had the distinct sensation of choking, but it was punctilious choking, with the faintest film of composure and a heavy coating of malice. Russell struck first, and struck deep, when he chastized her, pregnant or not, for neglecting the children and the school. Look at you, he said. You spend half the day in bed — implying, by his tone, that it was an idle slut’s bed.
But Dora wasn’t shamed. She lashed back. I’ve seen you staring at her, she said, and he quailed when he saw that her lower lip was trembling with rage at his arrogance and insensitivity. For a moment he thought — or thought that she thought — that he might strike her. But at this his hand reco
iled as from a fire, and his will was shattered. Standing powerless before her, he knew almost exactly what she would say, but at the same time he was morbidly curious to hear it. Dora had him by his self-esteem. Their sexual life was over, but even so he was listening to her like a man at a sentencing, apprehensive to know if his wife still considered him a functioning sexual being.
He was not disappointed. Dora went for the jugular, sneering. Bloody old fool. Everybody’s seen you staring at her. And she’s gone with him, you know. Off for a holiday, I’m sure.
Russell was watching her mouth. He was watching the words form on her lips. It seemed he could actually watch the words well up, whorling and wobbling, then softly exploding like smoke rings over his face. It was the oddest, most disembodied sensation he had at that moment. But the most remarkable thing was that, even at a time when he deserved nothing from his wife, he still craved something, even if that something was only pain.
He had to steady himself after he left Dora, his hands were shaking so. It took him another ten minutes to collect himself in the study before he was ready to face Moore and Wittgenstein, but by then he was shot for any kind of serious discussion.
They turned to Wittgenstein’s new work, but Russell found it hard to conceal his hostility to what he saw as a profoundly misguided enterprise. Still bristling about Wittgenstein’s bourgeois remark, Russell stopped just short of calling the work irresponsible.
Where does it lead — or end? he asked Wittgenstein. To plow, as you say, over the entire field of language — one might just as well try to name every star in the sky.
Russell felt almost betrayed. How could Wittgenstein do this to his talent? he wanted to ask. Suddenly, Wittgenstein made no sense to him whatsoever. Seeing him now, Russell could hardly imagine the shy, tortured young man who used to collapse in his rooms before the war, looking as if he could not endure another hour of this life. But that wounded young man was gone forever. Today, it was a hard man that Russell saw before him. How did he endure it? wondered Russell. How did he make his way through the world, seemingly attached to nothing and accountable to no one, following only his own brute instincts? To Russell then, Wittgenstein seemed like one of those ancient cairns that one sometimes sees in England — a pile of rocks sitting in the middle of nowhere, as if dropped from the sky, saying, Take me or leave me, and never insisting, as had the breathtaking peaks of his youth, just to be beheld.
They argued for an hour before they hit upon a subject they could sink their teeth into: Wittgenstein’s examination of the language we use to describe pain.
Of all his new work, Russell and Moore found this pain business the most difficult and confusing, and by far the most odd. As Wittgenstein explained, though, it wasn’t pain, per se, that had led him into these inquiries. Rather, it was the way our expressions of pain revealed the misleading nature of the word “I” as a representative for the self with its pain. Wittgenstein was saying:
We all have had pains, aches, sadness. We know how these things feel. But how do we express them? How, linguistically, am I to suppose that you, Russell, have the same pain that I have — that we are, so to speak, related in our pain? For when I say that “Russell has a pain,” I am referring to a physical body — to Russell’s body. But when I say, “I have a pain,” I am not referring to my own physical body — “I” does not denote a possessor. Here, I would commend Lichtenberg’s suggestion that instead of saying, “I think,” we ought to say, “It thinks.” After all, you must agree that it is philosophically curious, this spectacle of the self soliloquizing to itself about its woes like Hamlet to Yorick’s skull.
Moore let out a guffaw. Russell, though, was looking increasingly uncomfortable as Wittgenstein continued, But let us consider another example. Compare the statement “Russell has a gold tooth” with the statement “Russell has toothache.” At first glance, these two statements may not seem to differ, but in fact they are quite substantially different in their grammar. One immediate difference is how each might be verified. For while Russell can readily open his mouth and show me his gold tooth, he can’t very well show me his pain. Or take another instance. Suppose Russell tells me that he has an ache in his side —
Hold it! protested Russell. First, you put pains in my teeth and now you put aches in my side. Next you’ll be putting words in my mouth. What is your point?
My point, said Wittgenstein, is that you don’t seem to see it as a problem.
No, countered Russell. My problem is that I don’t see it as much of a problem.
Now Wittgenstein was pacing. And I would say that you’re merely trying to sweep the problem under the rug with the usual appeals to common sense — the appeals that commonsense philosophers always use.
Oh! exclaimed Russell, rolling his eyes at Moore. So now we’re commonsense philosophers, are we?
But I thought we were merely bourgeois philosophers, quipped Moore.
Wittgenstein tried to explain, but the subject of pain was then too charged and messy to be discussed in a strict philosophical sense. And for Russell, it was particularly unpleasant, discussing pain in the abstract when he was feeling pain in the particular. This pain was a séance, of sorts. Pain was a medium of human exchange, like body heat or love; it was a sort of litmus that could be used to detect the human presence, tracing how it learned and grew, and the way it remembered. Pain, Wittgenstein strove to explain, was an as yet uncharted territory, a wide and various language with a kind of anthropology. Consider its wide variety, with grief, sorrow, anger and anxiety, and distinct languages for each. Indeed, pain seemed a kind of vault for the psyche, much as in polar regions one may find whole frozen mastodons, perfectly preserved. The men were speaking. Electrically, if imperceptibly, the pain was flowing. It was well past four, getting late. Dorothy was overdue now, as was the bus. And what of Max and Lily?
Russell could hardly stand it, this squirmy, queasy talk of slow, dull aches and stabbing pains. He looked at Moore for succor, but Moore seemed to be following the discussion with his usual cheerful interest. Wittgenstein was examining a whole alphabet of ailments. Having begun with a discussion of the problems with the inexactitude of the word “where” — as in “Where is the pain?” — Wittgenstein was back discussing problems with the use of the word “same” — as in “We share the same pain.”
But as Wittgenstein continued his colloquy on pain language, other events were taking place outside. Russell saw Dora walking down the road with Higgins — no doubt looking for the bus, which was now forty minutes late. Then, a few moments later, Lily flew in the back door, her face streaked with grief.
I wonder what is taking that bus? Russell said. But going to the window then, he saw no bus. All he saw was Max, emotionless, as he pulled down the ladder and carried it around the side of the house.
Standing beside Russell, wondering if Dorothy was back, Moore said, It rather looks like rain, doesn’t it?
And then, as if at Moore’s suggestion, the storm appeared: Russell saw dark clouds piling up on the horizon and the leaves showing their dusty white undersides. And then he saw Dora and Higgins standing farther down the road, watching the coiling storm. Such reports the eye carried back. One’s wife, one’s love, one’s children on a bus — their lives were as clothes stretched on a line. It seemed unjust, so unbelievable to stand there in awe and fear, powerless before this fiction called life.
And then, as he heard the thunder approaching in the distance, Russell felt real pain, afraid the children might be caught out in a lightning storm or in an accident. Wittgenstein, meanwhile, was summing up. He regretted the unclarity of his remarks about pain language. He recognized that his discussion had been hard to follow, but he had not yet had a chance to explore this question of pain with the thoroughness it deserved. Words were like buckets, he was saying. Each word carries only so much, but the odd thing was how a word might carry more than its measure of meaning, so that it spilled over in flood.
Then Moore, who had been patient
ly listening for over an hour with scarcely a word, stopped him and said, But I have one question, Wittgenstein. Why all this talk of pain? You may think this a foolish idea, but couldn’t one as well approach these questions from the standpoint of pleasure? For instance, I just thought of the curious fact that, while we can say, “He has a pain,” we do not have a comparable expression such as, “He has a pleasure.”
This was odd, and Wittgenstein blinked, looking away for several seconds before he turned back to Moore and said, That is curious. I don’t know. I will have to think about it.
But the buckets, as it were, were spilling over. Because for all this talk of pain and knowledge of pain, Wittgenstein ended the discussion when he saw Russell’s stricken look as the wind started blowing. And the miracle was that, for all the poking and analysis, the language worked. It was in perfect, sentient repair then as Wittgenstein touched Russell’s arm and said in a firm voice, Now, you are not to worry. I’m sure the children are fine. Let’s go outside and wait for the bus.
Dust was blowing off the road. The temperature was plunging. The tangled trees were lifting and crashing, and the grass was beating down, light, then dark, in furrows. And in spite of their anxiety, it was cool and exciting there in the windy darkness. Staring into the outer elements, feeling, in the most animal sense, the world battening down and scurrying for cover, they each gathered into themselves like pockets, hoarding their own limited warmth. First they saw Dorothy, waving as she crossed the cloud-shadowed hills. Then Max came over, his nostrils flaring as he looked up into the gloaming sky. Doors and shutters were banging, and then the remaining staff and teachers came out. Skirting the crowd, avoiding Max, even Lily emerged, solitary, bruised, rubbing her arms. And how odd it was for Russell, standing like a spurned groom in his morning suit, as Dora walked up to him. Arms folded, squinting, she gave his hand a replenishing squeeze that nearly brought tears to his eyes in the strong wind.