by Lars Iyer
WITTGENSTEIN: You must go away from me. Or I must go away from you.
ME: No. Why?
WITTGENSTEIN: I am changing you. Corrupting you.
ME: You’re helping me!
WITTGENSTEIN: It only seems like that. (A pause.) What will you become, if you stay with me?
Silence. Snow falling in large flakes.
I place my hand on his. I stroke his hand with mine.
He will have to transform himself, if he is to be worthy of me, he says. God will have to change him.
But he fears he cannot transform himself. And he fears he cannot turn to God.
Repentance: that’s what is needed, if he is ever to be honest and decent in his philosophy …
• • •
Side by side on his sofa.
WITTGENSTEIN: My heart is empty.
ME: Then let me fill it.
WITTGENSTEIN: The door of my heart is shut.
ME: Then let me open it.
His arm around my shoulders. His hand on my thigh. His face turned to mine. The depths from which his eyes look out.
WITTGENSTEIN: Do you know how beautiful you are? Do you know what you mean to me? You are close to God, you know. For me, you are close to God. (A pause.) God is not for the innocent. The innocent are of God. The innocent are God. (Whispering:) God is very close to us. He is here, in this room.
We lie together (that’s what he calls it: lying together).
The early hours. He speaks of his confession.
Sincerity—that’s what he dreams of. Honesty. But honesty so great that we speak of more than we know. A sincerity so great that we no longer know what we will say.
One day, we will live and breathe in truth, he says. And there will be no end to truth.
And God will live in our hearts, he says. And our love will be God’s love.
And our love will be of God, with God.
16th December
His rooms.
I read him one of my poems. He makes a face.
WITTGENSTEIN: Yes, yes, it is very pretty. Very pastoral. You know the names of all the animals. But ours is not the time for poems of that kind.
I read him another poem, about love.
WITTGENSTEIN (shaking his head): Why do you think you have the right to write of such things?
Love is unutterable, he says.
Coldham’s Common.
He speaks of the indecency of light. Of the white sky that sees nothing, but that sees nonetheless.
Blindness watches, he says. And there are no secrets left, nothing hidden.
It’s as though light had permeated his body, he says. As though his innards were filled with light.
He speaks of white light, like a fog drifting through him. He speaks of the whiteness and opacity of the sky flowing through him.
He wants to hide, he says. He wants to cower.
He speaks of madness seething inside him. Rocking inside him. He speaks of madness coming to his edges.
WITTGENSTEIN: Do you know what an effort it is simply to keep my balance?
(A long pause.) Do you see what you’ve done to me, Peters? What you’re doing to me?
(A long pause. Quoting:) We have rolled on the floor of the squares of Babylon. Lust grows up like brambles above our heads.
ME: We’ve done nothing to be ashamed of.
WITTGENSTEIN: Oh, there’s nothing for you to be ashamed of. (Quoting:) For the good man, there is not evil possible, whether it be living or dead. (A long pause.) I do not deserve you.
ME: Of course you do!
WITTGENSTEIN: You mustn’t grow old like me … It is forbidden to grow old …
ME: You’re not so very old.
WITTGENSTEIN: But I am corrupt. I am ugly.
ME: You’re none of those things.
17th December
Morning. I lie on his sofa as he works at his desk. Open notebooks. An open ledger. Facedown: a copy of Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises.
A look of absolute concentration on his face. Absolute intensity. Is this what thinking looks like? Is this what a philosopher looks like?
Wittgenstein leans back in his chair. Sighs.
WITTGENSTEIN: I give in! I can’t work with you around!
I tell him that I’m being as quiet as I can. That I want nothing more than to watch him work.
He speaks of his hatred of self-consciousness. Of self-awareness. Absorption, that’s his ideal. The mind must be absorbed in its activities.
But when the mind’s problem is the mind?, he wonders. When the mind’s problem is the very impossibility of absorption?
He sends me home so he can get on with things.
I text Ede: Am W.’s boyfriend. Ede texts back: About time.
I update my Facebook status: In a relationship. Mulberry writes on my wall: No fucking way. I write back: Way.
Five o’clock. No text from Wittgenstein. Six. Still no text. Seven. I text: I’ll bring you dinner. Eight: still no reply.
18th December
No Wittgenstein. He’s not in his rooms. He doesn’t reply to texts.
I flick through the Confessions in the library.
19th December
Evening. Wittgenstein texts, very curt. Back from London tomorrow. Meet me 11 AM—station.
He was in London?
20th December
Cambridge Station. Wittgenstein, unsmiling. His flat cap. His rucksack. He looks worn.
I’ve been reading Augustine, I tell him.
Silence.
I’ve missed you, I tell him. Cambridge has been very dull.
Silence. The tension in his face increases.
I ask him what’s the matter.
The train was full of dons, he says.
Dons in suits. Dons wired up, networked. Dons plugged in, keeping in touch. Dons tapping away on iPads, consulting spreadsheets and flow diagrams. Counting their citations on Google Scholar. Watching for ‘likes’ on their Facebook posts. Dons on the phone touching base … reaching out …
Dons looking out with approval at the low-rise homes being built at Clay Farm. At the new office complexes being built round Addenbrooke’s. At the new multistorey car parks. At the new biomedical campus.
Dons, with Silicon Fen on the brain. With the Cambridge Cluster on the brain. With the Northwest Development on the brain. With the knowledge economy on the brain.
How many days are left?, he says. How many days can there be? Surely this is the end. Surely things are coming to an end.
But that’s just it: nothing is ending, he says. That’s it: the eternity of the end. The endlessness of the end.
Hell—this is Hell. Because there are no flames. Because it does not burn him.
He cannot stay here, he says. Cambridge is destroying him.
He does not want it to end here—in Cambridge.
Anywhere but here, he whispers. Anywhere but here.
WITTGENSTEIN: God protect me. God help me.
Later, in his rooms.
He goes straight to work.
I fall asleep on the sofa. He lays a blanket over me.
21st December
Wittgenstein, vexed at what he called my superficial conversation with the porter in the lodge.
WITTGENSTEIN: You must be careful, Peters. You are corruptible. You have not fought for your innocence. That is clear.
ME: I was only joking with him!
WITTGENSTEIN: You are becoming thoughtless and stupid.
I tell him I’m sorry.
WITTGENSTEIN: But you have no understanding of what you should be sorry for.
Wittgenstein stops, and holds his left wrist in his right hand.
His heart beats too fast, he says.
I take his wrist in my hand.
He pulls it away.
He is becoming anxious—terribly anxious, he says.
WITTGENSTEIN: Perhaps it would be better if you and I didn’t see one another.
My tears.
I remind him of what he said: tha
t it was only by weeping that you can drive the splinter of philosophy from your heart.
WITTGENSTEIN: But the splinter of philosophy lies in my heart, not yours.
22nd December
Town. We walk among the shoppers in the pre-Christmas sales.
He points out the street corner the street-cleaning machines always miss.
Litter. Torn things. Dirtied things. Bits of plastic and metal and paper. Rubbish slowly turning into pulp.
The world is mired in filth, he says. It is drowning in filth.
Even Cambridge, he says. Especially Cambridge.
He’s becoming wicked, he says. He’s treated me cruelly, he knows it.
He’s reached a decision, he says. He plans to resign. To leave Cambridge.
I nod my head mutely.
WITTGENSTEIN: I’m sorry. I know you won’t understand.
I tell him I do understand. That I understand everything. The dons … The university … They don’t appreciate him.
WITTGENSTEIN: It is more than that.
I tell him that we students never took him seriously enough.
WITTGENSTEIN (quoting): Above all else, guard your heart.
ME: I thought you said I would save you. That I was close to God.
WITTGENSTEIN: The closer one comes to God, the more one sees oneself as a sinner. (A pause.) Do you know what sin is, Peters?
ME: I don’t believe in sin.
WITTGENSTEIN: Then you understand nothing.
23rd December
The Palm House, at the Botanic Gardens. Orchids and passionflowers in the canopy above us.
He recounts a dream. Of the Arctic expanse. Of the aurora borealis flashing in the sky. Of a palace of ice, and of his brother in the great hall among narwhal horns and white furs and amber—his blue-lipped brother, playing with shards of ice, rearranging them, moving them around …
In his dream, he has gone to rescue his brother. But his brother is lost in his ice puzzle, and does not know him. His brother does not even know his own past—the attic room; the house, with its piano and its basement study; the pathless woods outside …
And then, in his dream, he is heading south. Over the tundra, over the snowfields and the sheet-ice. Through the frozen air.
The first trees—stunted larches. Then pine trees, a few at first. Then forest, dark with conifers.
Then the first road. The first hamlets. The first patches of brown earth.
South, towards home. South, his brother’s step inside his own. His brother’s life inside his own. South, to where the mountains rise and the valleys deepen. South, to their attic room in their childhood home.
• • •
The Oceanic Islands display. Lavender and giant daisies.
WITTGENSTEIN: I’m leaving tomorrow. In the morning.
ME (stupidly): But you’ll have to pack.
WITTGENSTEIN: They will pack for me. They will send on my things.
ME: Where are you going?
He shakes his head.
ME: You’re not even going to tell me where you’re going?
He shakes his head again.
ME: Will you take me with you?
A final no.
I tell him I don’t want to be alone in Cambridge. I tell him I’m afraid.
He tells me I should think about God very, very hard. He smiles.
ME: Will you come back for me?
I tell him I want to see him driving up to my rooms in a white limo with a bunch of roses, waving at me through the open sunroof. I tell him I want him to clamber up my fire escape and gather me up and kiss me. What did the student do when his teacher came to rescue him?, he’ll say. He rescued him right back, I’ll say.
Night. His rooms.
His mother used to lead a quintet who performed a Christmas concert every year in the Stadtcasino in Basel, he says. He and his brother used to love watching them play. Their give-and-take. Their musical courtesy. Their musical friendship.
There was a sense of imminence in their playing, he says. Of urgency, quite detached from concerto-thrills. It was about the present. About the moment, thick with promise. You felt that the world was about to change completely …
It frightened him back then, he says: the thought that the world could change completely. But now?
After philosophy, the revelation will be continuous, he says. Theophany will be continuous. Every moment will be full to bursting.
After philosophy, every moment will be a Sabbath, and time will be a movement only from Sabbath to Sabbath.
After philosophy, we will know things as they are, he says. We will be as we are.
After philosophy, everything we say will be true.
Night. We lie together.
We lie together.
We lie together.
Late. Snow-light outside.
Noise from the courtyard. Voices shouting.
Is it Guthrie?, he says.
Guthrie’s gone home, I tell him.
WITTGENSTEIN: You must go home. Tomorrow, when I leave, go home, Peters. Get the train north.
We must all go home, he says. Everyone must go home …
Philosophy is really homesickness, he quotes. The desire to be at home everywhere.
• • •
The early hours. He wakes up shaking.
WITTGENSTEIN: Oh God, it’s here. Madness is here.
His fear that his mind will burst. His hope that his mind will burst.
To undo his mind. To release it.
What will he become, when he welcomes madness? When he affirms madness?
What will he become, when he falls into his madness? When madness falls through him?
He knows he is going mad, he says. He knows that these are the last days of his sanity.
He does not want to be alone at the end. He knows he will be alone at the end.
He’s afraid of madness, he says. That madness it will leave something of him left.
He’s afraid that madness will not obliterate him.
Dawn.
Still shaking.
His confession. He speaks of his life. Of what he has been. Of what he has done.
He speaks of his sins. Of the past. He speaks of all those who have been lost.
He says that he, too, will soon be lost.
WITTGENSTEIN: Remember me, Peters.
• • •
After philosophy, every moment of the past will be remembered, he says. Nothing will be lost.
After philosophy, the past will be reparable, he says. Reversible.
After philosophy, death will be transformed into life, he says. Sorrow will be transformed into joy.
After philosophy, the dead will awaken. The dead will be reborn. His brother, his mother, his father: they will be reborn.
After philosophy, we will weep without cease. We will laugh without cease.
After philosophy, the world will open as his homeland. As our homeland.
After philosophy, we will know what it means to live.
Christmas Eve
Morning.
He is pale. Worn.
So he is still sane, he says. Still alive.
We should pray together, he says. We should thank God on our knees. A pause. And then: no, it is not for me to pray.
My youth is already a prayer, for him. My beauty: prayer in the flesh.
Am I his friend?, he asks me. I nod. And he says: yes, I am his friend. God has given him a friend.
Tears spring to his eyes.
WITTGENSTEIN: Do you see? I nearly wept …
I tell him he must stay. That he can’t think of going anywhere, in his condition.
He says he won’t stay. That this can’t be where it all ends. Not here. Not in Cambridge.
The last moments, as we wait for his taxi.
Last night, he dreamt he came back to Cambridge, he says. That he came back to rescue me, and to be rescued in turn.
I didn’t recognise him when he returned, he says. He’d come back in a new
guise. He was himself—but he wasn’t himself.
And he didn’t know me, not immediately.
In his dream, it took time for us to find our way back to one another. To court one another all over again, and in a new way.
In his dream, everything that has happened happened again, as if for the first time. Everything—his class, our walks on the Backs, our romance, even last night, even the night of sadness before his departure …
In his dream, I found him again, he says. I saw him in someone else’s face. He came towards me with every face but his own. He came laughing, he says. He came weeping. He came in innocence, as pure as a spring breeze.
The taxi draws up. The driver packs Wittgenstein’s cases into the boot.
He will come back to Cambridge as a judge, he says. A sword will go out of his mouth to smite his enemies. And I will sit at his right-hand side, and Ede at his left.
The dons will bow their heads in repentance. The porters in their lodges will look up expectantly. The cleaners will pause with their vacuum cleaners and wait for a sign.
He will come back to Cambridge as a lover, he says. He will hold me in his arms. My hair will be thick against his mouth. My legs will be entwined with his. My fingers, wrapped round his fingers.
And he will sleep beside me, he says. I will sleep beside him. We will be gathered up in the hand of night. Held together.
He will come back to Cambridge as the sanest man in the world, he says. As a man who has passed through madness and survived. As a man remade in the crucible.
He will come as the last thinker, he says. As the last philosopher. He will wield germinal forces. Cosmic forces. He will burn with the great fire of God.
And the first morning of the world will dawn again, he says. The eternal New Year. And he will step with us all into the new world. The coming world.
And there will only be forces and densities, not forms and matters, he says. And there will be but currents and countercurrents, peaks and troughs, and nothing enduring.
And there will be nothing but God, he says. Nothing but divinity, angels torn apart. Nothing but the end, perpetually ending. Nothing but the beginning, eternally recurring.
After philosophy, we will have no names, he says.