Hopeful Monsters

'I don't think you know Mullen, do you?'

'No, how do you do.'

'How do you do.'

'Would you like some tea?'

'No, thank you.'

'A glass of sherry?'

'No, thank you.'

Melvyn and Mullen sat side by side. I thought — Well, they have cottoned on to the idea about the stylishness of silence.

Then — I wonder who, between the two of them, it is who buggers whom?

I said to Mullen 'Can I ask you about aesthetics?'

Mullen said 'Please do.'

Mullen had cold pale eyes like the water in a goldfish bowl. I thought — somewhere far inside there might be something golden swimming around.

I said 'In the Fitzwilliam Museum there are two small paintings by Domenico Veneziano: one is of the Annunciation and is very beautiful; the other is of a saint's miracle and is not. In the Annunciation, down a garden path, there is a closed door in a wall. This seems to guard some secret. What is this secret? I mean, can it ever be said?'

Melvyn and Mullen stared at me. I thought — This scene is like what I have gathered from my mother about psychoanalysis: the analyst sits in silence until the patient, out of embarrassment, makes

a fool of himself. Then — But, after all, it is the patient who is being kind to the analyst.

I said 4 In the other painting, of the so-called "miracle", everyone seemed to be posing dramatically for the painter. But there is nothing between them or at the back of them. There is no secret.'

After a time Melvyn said 'Ducky, Mullen's subject is fourteenth-century Russian icons.'

I said 'Do you think there are two sorts of portraits? One in which people seem to be posing for the painter, and another in which they are saying "All right I see why you have to do this."'

Melvyn and Mullen said nothing.

I said 'In religious paintings I do not think people should pose for God.'

Then after a time I said 'I see this is not the way people usually talk about fourteenth-century Russian icons.'

Melvyn said 'In that you are correct.'

Mullen said 'Melvyn tells me you are a physicist.'

I said'Yes.'

Mullen said 'In physics, do you think there should be secrets?'

I thought — Oh good heavens, no wonder I have had to make a fool of myself!

I said 'I don't know.'

Melvyn said 'Ducky, we came to ask you if you'd like to join the local football fan club.'

I said 'What does the local football fan club do?'

Melvyn said 'It watches football.'

Mullen said 'But it should not be a political decision, whether physics has secrets?'

I said 'I suppose not.'

Melvyn said 'Time, gentlemen, please.'

Mullen said 'Perhaps we will see you at the football club.'

I said 'I hope so.'

After they had gone, I felt that I would rush out and obliterate their absurd footprints in the snow. I thought — I need your help, my beautiful German girl.

I remained in my sexual limbo at this time. There was a boy with whom I had once been in love at schooclass="underline" there was the fantasy that I had in some way been in love with my mother. I dreamed, but was still frightened, of girls. Sex took the form with me of what one did with one's dreams: dreams were of what one might meet again round some corner. I felt — My beautiful German girl will one day

rise again sword-in-hand from a lake; she will help me to slay the dragons that entrap me in dreams; that make me feel that reality is untouchable.

Sometime after my meeting with Mullen, Melvyn caught me on the stairs and said 'Ducky, I can't quite tell into what, or not, you've put your pretty foot with Mullen!'

From this I gathered that I had been some sort of success.

I thought — But in relation to what: aesthetics? Or the local football fan club?

Then — Oh but I am bored with Melvyn's riddles! They are the posing of someone who is afraid there is no painter.

Then — We lay like a seed, you and I, beneath that tree; that might stay alive all winter.

I had one or two letters from you, my beautiful German girl. But they were like hard flashes from a sword that came up from that dark lake. Well, why do you think it was so long before we saw each other again? There is a proper fear.

Dearest Max,

Here we have some excitement because Bruno (you remember Bruno?) has been working with his professor on some of the unpublished manuscripts of Karl Marx, and they have been finding results that are, to say the least, surprising. It appears that in these manuscripts (written in Paris in 1844) Marx is by no means the materialist and anti-spiritualist that has been supposed (is 'anti-spiritualist' the word? I was taught English by my German governess, Miss Henne). Marx says it is the capitalist world that is materialist and anti-spiritualist in that its only criterion is money: it is he, Karl Marx, who works for man's spiritual liberation. This can be achieved by the recognition that a man is what he does: in his work he can be an artist.

Of course, Marx himself in later writings was somewhat responsible for the idea that he was anti-spiritualist: perhaps it was necessary for this earlier part of his work to have remained hidden?

So much of what is guarded by a prophet's followers is perverted! This has been the experience of the Christian churches, no?

Can you give me the source of your quotation about Jesus saying he teaches in parables so that people may not understand and be saved.

I have met Bertolt Brecht. He is a small man who smells. Women say they find his smell attractive. He too seems to be saying something quite different from what people think he is saying. He says he is a Marxist. Do you think it might be to protect himself (by making himself attractive?) that he smells?

Here we have been in some ferment because the Nazis obtained six and a half million votes at the last election and now are the second largest party in the Reichstag. There are still people who, like you, say that the Nazis may turn out to be something different from what they say. But if this is so, it will not be because they are clever. At the moment people don't believe them (because they themselves are stupid) when they say they want to kill Jews.

I am interested in what you say about Wittgenstein: what do people at Cambridge say of the connections between Wittgenstein and Heidegger?

There is a chance that I may come to England later this year. I am one of a group here planning to make a pilgrimage to English locations of Engels and Karl Marx. Do not laugh: if I do not come to England, tell me how I can see you. I suppose our route will hardly pass through Cambridge. Could you come to London for a day?

Max, I do not know how to write this. I found your last letter very formal.

Yes, I know there are things that defeat themselves if they are said.

But you have much love from your

Elena

I walked around with this letter in a pocket next to my heart. I felt — Oh my beautiful German girl! But you know I am yours! No matter what is the business of touch, taste, smell.

Sometime in the spring (this was 1931: unemployment in England had risen to nearly three million; there was talk of the payments to the unemployed being cut) I learned that there was to be a lunch party at the house of some friends of my father's at which Wittgenstein was going to be present. I had continued to have this image of Wittgenstein as someone whom it was necessary for me to meet: it was as if he were a figure that I had to learn something from at a corner of the maze. I thought I might ask him (though I