& even today I may not be able to produce anything better than a jumble of incoherent sentences

[sovay]

Oh, God, I may have used Wittgenstein to cure a moral fault in myself. I'm not sure which of us that's going to embarrass more.

While in Raven Used Books on Wednesday with rushthatspeaks, I bought Norman Malcolm's Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir (1958), the second edition with Wittgenstein's letters included.¹ I'd never heard of Malcolm as a philosopher, but the memoir is affectionately and seriously written and unless they were popular anecdotes, looks like the source for several scenes in Jarman's film. He is trying both to honor and to demystify Wittgenstein (who had a hero-cult in his lifetime already) without whitewashing him; I think he succeeds, since Wittgenstein by Malcolm comes off as brilliant, depressing, electrifying, exhausting, a restlessly unhappy man, and a weirdly lovable one, which about fits what I've gathered from other sources, including Wittgenstein.² I am afraid the letters are just incredibly endearing. There are fifty-seven of them, written over a period of eleven years (1940–1951, the last dated thirteen days before his death); they tend toward the rapid-fire jotting stream-of-consciousness and generally give the impression that if blogging had been available in Wittgenstein's lifetime, no one would ever have pried him off the computer. He loves the American detective magazines which he can't get during the war, so the Malcolms send him care packages of Street & Smith—he seems to have bounced hard off Sayers, but he spends several letters trying to track down further stories by Norbert Davis, author of Rendezvous with Fear. He has a thing about schmaltzy holiday cards. ("Tell Doney his Christmas card wasn't soupy enough.") He drinks a lot of instant coffee. He has to tell Malcolm he's sent him a surprise present—"I thought you mightn't have it & that it might interest you"—because he's afraid it got lost in the mail from London, which it didn't. He can never quite stop talking philosophy. And he cannot go three letters without starting to apologize for how useless and uninteresting he is:

—As a matter of fact I've been feeling pretty rotten most of this summer. Partly because of bad health, partly because my brain was no d . . . good at all and I couldn't work. I'm feeling a bit better now. That's to say, my health is entirely all right & my mind seems a little more active. But God knows how long that will last.

My work is going damn slowly. I wish I could get a volume ready for publishing by next autumn; but I probably shan't. I'm a bloody bad worker!

Talking of philosophy: my book is gradually nearing its final form, & if you're a good boy & come to Cambridge I'll let you read it. It'll probably disappoint you. And the truth is: it's pretty lousy. (Not that I could improve on it essentially if I tried for another 100 years.)

But now my brain feels burnt out, as though only the four walls were left standing, & some charred remains!

I felt exceedingly depressed for many weeks, then fell ill & now I'm weak & completely dull . . . I shan't write more today, I'm much too dull.

. . . & as I'm anxious to make hay during the very short period when the sun shines in my brain . . .

I hope all of you are well, & I hope you won't find me a terribly disagreeable companion & bore when I come.

I'm saying this because I don't want him to believe that I'll be a sociable person.

This letter is probably frightfully stupid, but I can't write a more helpful one.

My mind's completely dead.

That's a selection. By the fourth or fifth disclaimer, the reader wants to reach through time to Rosro, grab the philosopher by his shirtfront and start shouting, "For God's sake, you're bloody Wittgenstein, knock it off already!"

I do this all the time.

In posts. In conversation. In e-mail. I'm pretty sure I told people my name when I introduced myself at Arisia, but I'm also pretty sure I told them I'd slept about three hours and was completely brain-dead. It's my own reflexive οὐ δεινὸς λέγειν. And I don't even have the excuse of being bloody Wittgenstein! If it's that annoying in one of the acknowledged minds of the twentieth century, I can only imagine how much it ticks people off in me. It doesn't matter that I feel as though my brain decamped years ago: I need to figure out how to stop telling everyone about it. It's either that or revolutionize philosophy.

In other news, I have a fever and sore throat (and have just this sentence begun to cough, which I consider completely unnecessary), but yesterday's mail brought my contributor's copy of the latest annual not-Not One of Us publication, Under Review, which contains both my poem "Theseid"—the one that starts with the kouros of Poseidon—and a review of A Mayse-Bikhl by Erik Amundsen that I should probably write a poem to thank him for, because it's possessed. "The King of Cats, the Queen of Wolves" has been nominated for a Rhysling Award. fleurdelis28 has uncovered evidence that I should have a hereditary feud with the Daily Mail. I have survived this week. I just wish TCM were showing something I could stare at. I suspect I'm going to read Transcendentalist biography instead.

1. I had to give up Victor Serge's Conquered City (1932) and a volume of the letters of Robert Graves in order to afford it, but I am seriously thinking about trying to go back for the latter. The letters to Siegfried Sassoon are interesting especially after reading Pat Barker's Regeneration (1991), but it's the one in which Graves worries about what his researches for The White Goddess are doing to his mental health that really charmed me: "I find myself making the Bards into Moon-men and the minstrels into Sun-men. Help!"

2. I had one disagreement with Malcolm and it was linguistic: "A characteristic remark that Wittgenstein would make when referring to someone who was notably generous or kind or honest was 'He is a human being!'—thus implying that most people fail even to be human." Well, yes, that's one reading. Around here, though, we just mean someone like that is a mensch.

Comments

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

"I find myself making the Bards into Moon-men and the minstrels into Sun-men. Help!"

You great ones have your own peculiar quirks...

Congratulations on the Rhysling nomination!

Nine

[rose-lemberg.livejournal.com]

Congrats on the Rhysling nomination!

I will be in the minority, but the angsty, insecure Wittgenstein is oddly encouraging to me - and endearing.

[muchabstracted.livejournal.com]

Ha. Courtesy of a recent post you made, I was also seeing that the self deprecation was something you and Wittgenstein share... but I'm afraid my conclusion was "Look, they're both brilliant and don't recognize it!" :P

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on the Rhysling award! And please, tell us more about the hereditary feud. I love a good feud, especially with the Daily Mail.

[margavriel.livejournal.com]

It doesn't matter that I feel as though my brain decamped years ago: I need to figure out how to stop telling everyone about it. It's either that or revolutionize philosophy.

Or, best of all, both! :-)

I have a fever and sore throat

So sorry to hear. :-(

"The King of Cats, the Queen of Wolves" has been nominated for a Rhysling Award.

Ooh, exciting!!!

[heliopsis.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a very useful observation about yourself. Congratulations for being perceptive and self-aware enough to notice it!

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

I thought of you last night, because TCM played Whale's The Invisible Man, then his Frankenstein, then a demented film with Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill called Possession which is SO odd I almost wanted to stay up and watch it. Then I remembered I had a book to edit.

[zdenka]

Not being self-deprecating can be very difficult. "You've no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself -- and how little I deserve it!"

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

Anybody worth knowing should have a feud with the Daily Mail.

I think I'd have adored Wittgenstein. Shake him by the shirtftront too, but I'd be a bit hypocritical, being an over-apologetic worriwart myself. Thank you for transcribing some more of his letters in the comments. I must re-watch the Jarman! And keep an eye out for this memoir.

(Oh, unrelated, but we discussed Downey Jr's Holmes a little while ago; I now have the first film, and will let you know soon.)

Good luck on the Rhysling!

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

I need to figure out how to stop telling everyone about it. It's either that or revolutionize philosophy.

If this ever bothered me, I would be a filthy, filthy hypocrite. Also, even when you are flickering like the light over the layaway section in the dustiest Kmart in existence (it was in Dayville CT until 1996), you're still pretty damned brilliant.

Exhibit A:
"The King of Cats, the Queen of Wolves" has been nominated for a Rhysling Award.

And that's very, very good.
Excellent.

Wittgenstein sounds like an interesting fellow. I know very little about him. Scarcely more than what you have written and that he was allegedly a "beery swine" and "just as schloshed as Schlaegel," and this from a Very Unreliable Source.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to hear about the fever and sore throat and cough. I hope you're feeling better soonest, and I'm glad you've survived the week.

Congratulations on the Rhysling nomination!

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

It's either that or revolutionize philosophy.

As margaviel pointed out, both is an option.

But seriously, yes. Because here is the thing. Imagine that you were exceedingly dull (that day because of lack of sleep or otherwise). You telling people this before speaking on a panel for an hour would improve their experience not one jot. They would still be about to see an exceedingly dull person, and they would somehow just muddle through and deal with it. I cannot imagine that you have ever said this and a significant portion of the audience has said "Oh, no, not a zombie with no sleep! I'd better go see a different panel instead!" and left.

Now, what actually happens is that you get up on panels and say brilliant things and read the sorts of poetry and stories that make people nominate you for things like Rhyslings (yay, go you!). Which means that all you have done by warning them of your exceeding and mythical dullness is waste some of their limited time available listening to you say interesting things. Which is a shame, really.

Now, I would say that well, this is a very minor annoyance that everyone can just bloody deal with, which is true. But my own experience has also been that the less I say self-deprecating things, the better I feel. Lila broke me of the habit some time ago of saying "I'm an idiot," when I mean "I'm sorry," and "I'm sorry" when I mean "thank you." It was profoundly helpful with the stopping feeling like I was wasting everybody's time by existing near them.

So... yes. I am very glad you have noticed this habit, and I think that changing it will make you happier, and you should totally try to do so. Go you, and good luck!

Also, *hugs* @ Wittgenstein.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

For some reason Wittgenstein is popping up everywhere in my blog-reading lately (including posts from years ago on blogs I've just discovered -- I keep running across people saying things like, I kid you not, "At least I think of it as masturbation, in a Wittgensteinian sort of way"). I've no idea why. I am currently trying to read Young Ludwig to get an idea of what he was like, because the bits and pieces from hither and yon sound so fascinating. Also my high school philosophy teacher was a great fan of LW (though he never had us read any). I think my local university library may have the essay on The Golden Bough -- am hoping to get hold of that next week.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I guess Wittgenstein's self-recrimination goes to show (if we needed more evidence of this) that people's opinions of themselves don't necessarily bear any relation to what the world thinks of them.

Maybe it also indicates that whatever he *did* think and say, he felt he was capable of thinking and saying more, and better. That's rather intimidating.

I'm not worthy

[tiereu.livejournal.com]

Well, for what its worth... i caught half of the "fantasy and horror in shakespeare" panel and your poetry reading at Arisia, and found you impressive. It seemed to me as if you had your sh*t together. "Seems, madam? nay, it is, I know not "seems." - perhaps this quote is applicable ...perhaps not. take care.