by Lars Iyer
To be touched by those hands … To be held by those hands …
He’s been reading Augustine’s Confessions, he says—the most serious book ever written.
It’s not as if Augustine has anything dreadful to confess, Wittgenstein says. It’s not as if Augustine was a murderer. He is really only typically sinful.
Augustine’s distinction lies in his awareness of his sin, Wittgenstein says. He is aware of it as others are not. He has the capacity for awareness, as others do not. This is what makes him more sinful—extra sinful.
His voice drops to a whisper. He dreams of confession, he says. Of simply showing his sins. Even the sin of self-consciousness, he says—barely audible.
After philosophy, everything will be shown, he says. There will be no shadows. After philosophy, there will be a name for everything, and not just for every kind of thing.
After philosophy, we will have learnt the art of reading faces, he says. There will be no secrets. Our inner lives will be open to all, like glassfish.
After philosophy, the dark side of the moon will turn to face us.
7th December
He texts after lunch. Need to wash off brain. A film? Something trashy?
Pretty Woman, showing at the Kino. He sits up close to the screen, wholly absorbed. He laughs and claps his hands at the final scene. The snow-white limo, necktie tied to the aerial like a knight’s colours. La Bohème blaring. Richard Gere standing through the sunroof, a bunch of roses in his hand, waving. Julia Roberts on the fire escape, letting down her hair. Richard Gere clambering up, sweeping her into his arms, kissing her …
RICHARD GERE: What did the princess do when her knight came to rescue her?
JULIA ROBERTS: She rescued him right back.
We walk back through the snow in silence, following the great walls of the colleges.
Do I know what he said to himself when he came here?, Wittgenstein asks.
I will do such things—
What they are, yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth.
And what did he do? He smiles. The walls did not come tumbling down. Everything remains exactly the same. Cambridge is Cambridge is Cambridge …
He speaks of the Cambridgean void. Of the Cambridgean nothingness. He speaks of the Cambridgean emptying-out. Of the Cambridgean hollowing.
He speaks of eroded hours and emptied-out days. He speaks of time void of time—of minutes, of seconds. Nothing is happening, not in Cambridge, he says. Nothing is happening—rubble is piling upon rubble, and that is all.
Cambridge is a shore, he says. A shore, waiting for a sea. When will the sea crash in and reclaim the Fens? When will the flood come that will drown Cambridge?
8th December
Carollers in the courtyard. The vast Christmas tree—a present from Norwegian alumni.
The Hasidim say that everything in the world to come will be almost as it is in this world, Wittgenstein says. Just as the Christmas tree is now, so will it be then. Where the carollers sing now, so they will sing then. The gloves and hat we wear in this world, those we will wear then. Everything will be as it is now, only a little different …
A package for him at the porters’ lodge. He picks up a package. It’s from his aunt, he says.
Stollen and sparkling wine in his rooms.
Wittgenstein, in buoyant mood. He speaks of his childhood. Of his parents. His brother. He speaks of the mountains. Of long horseback rides through the valleys.
He lost his faith early on, he says—or what is usually called faith. He remembers a school trip, when he was still very young. It was dark, and they were walking back home through a forest. Some of the other children were frightened, and began to cry. You must think about God very hard, the teacher said.
A few years later, he remembers wanting to fall on his knees, Wittgenstein says. There was a tiny church halfway up a mountain. Very simple, very beautiful. He wanted to pray, but he couldn’t pray. He wanted to weep, but he couldn’t do that, either. If he’d started to weep, he’d never have stopped, he says. He has the same feeling today.
There was a fairy story his mother used to tell them, he says. A wicked witch placed a splinter of ice in the heart of a boy. The boy forgot his parents and his name. He forgot the land of his birth. The witch carried him to her ice palace in the far north, and gave him a puzzle of ice shards to play with.
But the boy had a brother, who had not forgotten him. The brother found the ice palace, and the blue-lipped boy, lost in his puzzle. The brother embraced the boy, and the boy wept, without knowing why. And that is when the splinter of ice in his heart melted. That’s when he remembered who he was. That’s when he remembered his brother and his parents and the land of his birth …
God is a name for tears—fresh tears, Wittgenstein says. God is a name for the act of weeping …
Is it only by weeping, really weeping, that he will drive the splinter of philosophy from his heart?, he wonders.
9th December
We walk through the snow, to the American cemetery.
Be ye also ready, on one headstone. Seek me and ye shall live, on another. Bound together by His love, on a third.
Some cemeteries have no headstones, he says. Only a single churchyard cross, to mark the resting places of the dead. He finds that moving, he says—relinquishing your worldly name as monks do when they take the names of their saintly forebears.
He and his brother used to pass St Mary’s monastery, near their home. They used to watch the monks working together—digging in the garden and pruning fruit trees. Once, they saw them singing vespers in the fields. How he envied them!
Spiritual poverty!, he says. To renounce possession of your own soul, your own will. To be poor, but to have God as your fortune …
Perhaps the secret of life is not hidden, he says. Perhaps the secret of life is to work with others. Alongside others. To work in the fields, in the open air. The simple round of prayer and labour and reading … Day after day … Like a waterwheel in the river of eternity.
He attended services a few times, he says. So early, the stone vaulting was lost in shadows. Monks were scarcely visible in the gloom. And then dawn came, he says … the first rays shining into the apse. Hope! Living hope! Prefiguring the return of Christ.
He dreams of building his life again from rituals, he says. Of remaking his life, action by action. Of beginning again, simply. Of concentrating on small things. On ordinary things.
10th December
He texts me: come.—Coming.
His door is slightly ajar.
He sits on his chair, head back, eyes half closed. Is he working on something? A philosophical problem? A moral problem? Has he fallen asleep?
WITTGENSTEIN (imperatively, his eyes still closed): Peters—take dictation. (Without pausing:) The rule must be a thread in the weave of life. The rule must become the exception, and the exception, the rule. (A pause.) Are you getting all this?
He speaks, I write. He doesn’t open his eyes until lunchtime.
Afternoon. He serves coffee and cream, with biscuits. He’s in a good mood after the day’s work.
WITTGENSTEIN: You mustn’t think I’m taking you for granted, Peters. (A pause.) I may be a wicked person (ME: You’re not!), but I have always been a collector of good people.
ME: I’ve always thought you’d find me stupid.
WITTGENSTEIN: You, Peters, are anything but stupid.
How tired he is of Cambridge cleverness!, he says. He would prefer an honest stupidity—a bright stupidity, on which light shines from above.
• • •
The Maypole, almost empty.
A student at the next table tries to engage us in conversation. Something about Library Whispers. About the May Ball. At last, he leaves.
WITTGENSTEIN: Why did you talk to that fellow, Peters? He was a fool. (A pause.) You should tender yourself more dearly.
An influx of thesps, after some event at the ADC. Foppish cherubs with classica
l curls; shabby-posh Withnails in worn-shiny velvet; would-be Footlighters in comedy onesies.
Wittgenstein blanches. There is something despicable about theatre, he says.
Still more students. Comprehensive-school types, visibly unhealthy. Indie kids, with pipe-cleaner legs. Empiricist boys, with ruler-straight fringes. Big brainy girls, with glasses and headbands.
WITTGENSTEIN: Socrates’s greatness was that he could talk with ordinary people, and consider such talk worthwhile. My greatness should be that I can spend an evening in the Maypole and find that evening worthwhile.
He stands. Puts on his coat.
WITTGENSTEIN: I am not great, Peters.
11th December
Busy, he texts.
12th December
Towards the Backs.
Frozen grass. An ice-covered slide. The words fuck and piss, written into the snow.
He went to the college Christmas party last night, he says. It was worse than he feared.
The head of the college, circulating. Her husband, circulating. Their grown-up children, circulating. Guests, circulating, circulating, circulating.
It used to be all Cambridge stuffiness, he says. All Cambridge snobbery. But it’s all friendliness now, he says. All openness and affability. All first names. As though everyone were mates.
The buildings of Cambridge Riverside. A clutter of balconies. High, blank windows.
He wants an enemy, he says. A betrayer. One to bring the wrath of the university upon him. A Judas, to bring the anger of the dons upon his head.
He wants a reckoning, he says. Him versus Cambridge. He wants to draw Cambridge out. To be seen to sin against Cambridge. To have transgressed Cambridge. He wants a sense that there are limits. That there are things which are intolerable.
He wants to be handed over to the authorities. He wants to be a case to be dealt with.
The river.
Once, there were disputes at Cambridge, he says. Once, there were enmities between dons. This one wouldn’t speak to that one; this one would leave the room when that one entered; this one would denounce the theories of that one in his lectures, and have his theories denounced in his turn.
Once, there were schools of thought in continual dispute. Once, there were debates about methodology. About legitimacy. About the very notion of philosophy. Once, there were old rivalries between Cambridge colleges, and between Cambridge and Oxford, and between Cambridge and Oxford and the rest of the world.
But it’s all smiles now, he says.
They think they are kind. But they are not kind. They think they are right. But they are not right. They think that theirs is the only world. But theirs is not the only world. They think their world is the best of all possible worlds. But theirs is not the best of all possible worlds …
The enemy does not understand that it is the enemy, that is the problem, he says. The enemy does not understand that it could be the enemy. The enemy does not grasp its own invidiousness. Its own horror. It is the good conscience of the enemy that makes it the enemy, he says. Its smugness. Its Who me? innocence.
Riverside Place. Overblown, glitzy.
He has the sense that he’s on trial, he says. That he’s waiting for a sentence to be handed down. For a judgement. For things to be decided. Only nothing is decided. And no judgement is handed down. That is his punishment.
His torture is the very absence of torture, he says. His punishment, the very absence of punishment. Which means that no one recognises his pain. That no one can understand his pain.
They would not even call his pain pain, he says. They would not allow his suffering to be suffering. The pain of pain; the suffering of suffering: he is denied even them.
In Cambridge, his path would be the right path even if it were the wrong path, he says. He would be in the right even if he were wrong, and perhaps especially if he were wrong.
St Bartholomew’s Court. Toytown.
How he would have loved to have made a speech!, he says. A Christmas party lecture. A yuletide monologue.
We must revive the notion of sin, he would have said. Of shame. Of guilt. We must revive the need for humiliation and mortification.
We must declare war on ourselves, he would have said. We must be fanatics. Fundamentalists.
Ruthlessness, that is what is demanded of us, he would have said. Cruelty. And we must be cruel to ourselves first of all. We must be ruthless with ourselves.
It is too late to temper our views, he would have said. Too late to compromise.
They are thought-investors, he would have told them. Thought-speculators. Hedge-fund-thinkers.
They belong to Cambridge, he would have told them. They deserve Cambridge.
They are bollards—human bollards, he would have told them. The intellectual equivalents of suburban cul-de-sacs and out-of-town retail parks.
But he knows they would only have smiled, he says. He knows they would only have applauded.
A bench, sheltered from the snow. He slumps down, like a wounded man.
Cambridge is throttling him, he says. Cambridge is murdering him.
I put my hand on his back, and then my arm round his shoulders. He leans into me.
13th December
His rooms.
Snow turns to rain outside.
His work is not going well, he says.
He used to have nightmares of waking up in a coffin, he says. Of being buried alive in a coffin, and futilely scratching at the roof of his coffin.
He has woken up in the coffin of philosophy. His thought—his entire philosophical life—has been a futile scratching at the roof of his coffin.
Philosophy is a deluge, he says. Philosophy is rain, constantly falling.
Philosophy, always more philosophy, pouring over the ground already waterlogged with philosophy.
To come after something, and before nothing: that’s our condition, he says. To have come too late, and not really to know it. Not really to understand what it is that we are too late for.
Silence.
WITTGENSTEIN: How can my company be interesting for you?
I laugh.
WITTGENSTEIN: Am I not a kind of monster?
I laugh again.
WITTGENSTEIN: We are like beauty and the beast. (Silence.) I am more corrupt than anyone I know.
ME: Why are you always so serious!?
WITTGENSTEIN: Life is serious.
A long pause.
WITTGENSTEIN (looking at me): Help me, Peters.
I tell him I don’t know how to help him.
He speaks of his loneliness. Of his isolation. He speaks of his animal desire for warmth. Of his human desire for a friendly face.
Once, he believed a bell would sound through his loneliness, he says. That the pitch of his loneliness would reach a kind of purity …
But that was when he believed in his work. In his Logik. That was when he thought he was on the brink of the great Solution. It’s when he dreamt of a sanctified logic. Of a logic of the temple. It’s when he dreamt that philosophy itself was calling out for help from him. And now … He shakes his head.
The meaning of life consists in living that life, he says. But how is that possible: to live life? How would it be possible for him?
Silence. He stares at me for a full minute.
Madness is coming, he says. His madness is coming.
Madness will stroke his hair, and whisper in his ear.
Madness will say, Do not be afraid.
But he is afraid, he says.
Silence.
WITTGENSTEIN: You are my friend, aren’t you?
ME: I am your friend.
WITTGENSTEIN: Help me, Peters.
14th December
We walk through the streets. I am to talk, he says. He is sick of the sound of his own voice.
I chatter about Ede drinking his way through his father’s wine cellar. About Scroggins, on the waiting list for the world’s first artificial bladder. I tell him of the Kirwins, who are on safar
i (Ede hopes they’ll get eaten, I say—Wittgenstein smiles). I tell him about boarding school. About my poetry. I tell him about lambing. About buzzards. About boxing hares. I tell him about not knowing what to do with my life.
King’s College Chapel.
The sound of choristers practising for a Christmas concert. He stands, rapt, no longer attending to my prattle. It’s unbelievable, he says. Such beauty!
He speaks of the daimonia in music. Of music’s eternal strangeness. He speaks of the melting of language into song. Of pure music, foreign to truth, to morality, to reason …
Plato feared music—the power of music, Wittgenstein says. And Plato was right. Music is foreign to us. Music is greater than we are. More innocent.
There is such a thing as a roaring innocence, Wittgenstein says. Such a thing as a terrible innocence.
He’s afraid of music, he says. And for the same reason, he’s afraid of me.
I don’t understand. What does he mean?
• • •
The Backs, Wittgenstein’s arm in mine.
He speaks of the Confessions.
Augustine writes as a sinner, he says. His story is not one of triumph. His story is of weakness and uncertainty.
Shadows press upon Augustine, he says. Chaos invades Augustine’s heart …
He too fears chaos, Wittgenstein says. He too fears the wilderness of the soul.
But perhaps the miracle of repentance is close, he says. Perhaps there really can be such a thing as a change of heart.
Later, at his door. A kiss goodbye. And another. And another.
The echo of his footsteps, going upward.
15th December
Wittgenstein’s rooms.
Dictation. At least ten pages. I don’t understand a word.
He seems aggressive in his thought. Almost violent. He speaks in lunges. In stabs. But he is quickly exhausted.
Long silences, with occasional remarks about sin. About illness. About philosophy.
Behind the mystique of philosophy: nothing, I write. Behind the mystique of the philosopher: likewise, nothing. In the end, we can say no more than that which everyone knows, I write.