Wittgenstein — looking baffled. Wittgenstein — looking frustrated. What’s wrong with us? What are we laughing at? Has someone told a joke? Has someone done something funny? He has heard no joke, he says. He has heard nothing funny.
Has he said something funny? he asks. Has he said something ridiculous? A faux pas? A double entendre? He knows how we English love our double entendres.
Our laughter dies away. Silence.
Wittgenstein — looking exhausted.
What can one man do alone? he mutters.
Why do we come to his classes? Wittgenstein asks us. Why, when philosophy is not of the least consequence to us? When we do not need philosophy? When we do not suffer from our need for philosophy?
What is it like not to have an idea in our heads? What is it like to believe in nothing, to be engaged by nothing, to strive for nothing, to suffer for nothing, to have nothing in particular for which to live or die? What’s it like to feel content? To feel pleased with ourselves? What is it like to smile at ourselves in the mirror? What is it like to laugh without fear?
• • •
A Punch and Judy show — that’s what he is, Wittgenstein says. Playing the fool for us. Jingling his cap and bells.
He’s the clown brought in to amuse us. To keep us entertained. To keep us occupied before we begin the real business of life.
We smile — just like the dons. We indulge him, we enjoy him — just like the dons. But we tire of him, too — just like the dons. We are impatient with him, too — just like the dons. Perhaps laughing at him (a little). Perhaps with scorn (a little scorn). Smiling at him, but tiring of him, too. Smiling, smiling, but with a certain impatience.
Next!, we want to say—we’re tired of this one! Next!, we demand—bring us a fresh one!
There’s a fire backstage, he says. The clown comes out to warn the audience. Laughter and applause. They think it’s a joke! The clown repeats his warning. The fire grows hotter; the applause grows louder. That’s how the world will end, Wittgenstein says: to general applause, from halfwits who think it’s a joke.
We should hate him, he says. We should hate thought, and the labour of thought. Because thought is opposed to everything we are. Logic is opposed to our very existence.
But we do not hate him, he says. We do not hate thought. Because there is a whole system to do the hating for us. A whole university—Cambridge University — that hates him and hates thought on our behalf.
We’ve outsourced our hatred, he says. We’ve sold it on, like a debt. We’ve subcontracted it, so that we can forget about it. The university hates him in our place, he says. The dons hate thought, especially his thought, in our place.
WITTGENSTEIN: Cambridge hates me. Cambridge wants to destroy me. Well, Cambridge might have succeeded. You might have succeeded.
He slumps into a chair.
Silence.
Wie traurig!, he cries. What unhappiness!
Silence.
Mulberry in his FUCK THE FUCK T-shirt. Doyle, hand on Mulberry’s arm. Titmuss, looking out of the window. The Kirwins, looking down at their trainers. Chakrabarti, looking up at the ceiling …
The glass-fronted bookshelves, with their bound journals. A fly circling. The parquet floor. The humming computer. The cream-coloured radiators.
Silence.
Wittgenstein rises and leaves the room.
We wait, not knowing what to do.
Didn’t he understand that our laughter didn’t mean anything? That it was nothing personal? That it was least of all a judgement on him …
Guilt. Should someone go after him?
Doyle walks out into the corridor, and back again.
No sign of him.
We file out, leaving the room empty behind us.
3
A walk on the Backs, without Wittgenstein.
Doyle, head sunk in guilt. Chakrabarti, shoulders hunched in shame. Mulberry, jacket pulled tight round his T-shirt, eyes lowered in repentance …
With Wittgenstein we see ourselves as learners, as students, as eternal ephebes. We see ourselves as apprentices, as prodigies — as youths, eternal youths, on the brink of everything …
We must admit it: we like the romance of learning. We like the romance of having our very own thinker. And who else but us will heed what he says?
The thinker is alone but for his pupils. The thinker rides the clouds in thought, stands on Atlas’s shoulders, belongs to the starry heights — but only his pupils know it. The thinker is the open Delphi, looking upon visions beyond mortal sight — but only we, his students, can see it.
We have a duty to Wittgenstein. To witness. To record. To relay the Message. To watch over the gift of the Master …
The next day. Ede and I at the porters’ lodge. The usual bustle. We’re Wittgenstein’s students. We want to ask him something.
The porter makes a call.
Wittgenstein doesn’t want to see anyone.
Ede and I tailgate two students past the porters’ lodge, and climb the staircase to Wittgenstein’s rooms.
We knock at his door. Silence. We bang at his door. Still silence.
We sit on the cold steps, waiting.
ME: You don’t suppose anything’s happened to him, do you? You don’t think we’ve driven him to something? Remember what happened to his brother …!
An hour passes. We salve our conscience by applying ourselves to the real Wittgenstein. Ede brings out the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Tries to read it. Puts it away again. I pull out the Philosophical Investigations. Try to read it. Put it away again. Ede orders Wittgenstein in 90 Minutes on his phone.
We look up the Wittgenstein entry on Wikipedia. Very long! We search for pictures instead. A glum Wittgenstein, standing by a blackboard. A dour Wittgenstein, walking with a friend. Wittgenstein, gloomy in tartan. Wittgenstein, in profile — clearly suicidal.
We google cheery Wittgenstein. No results.
• • •
We hear movement. From inside his rooms. The lock turns. The door opens. Wittgenstein, dishevelled but alive.
WITTGENSTEIN: What are you doing here?
EDE: We came to see if you were alright.
A pause.
WITTGENSTEIN (as from a great distance): I am not alright.
EDE: Look, we’re very sorry we laughed. We didn’t mean anything by it.
WITTGENSTEIN: You were right to laugh. (A pause.) How dare I teach a class! How dare I harm you by my teaching! (A longer pause.) All this talk of my Logik! Vainglory! Vanity!
Visible beyond the door: his table, a pile of notebooks, loose sheets, an open ledger — blank. Scraps of paper pinned to his walls, covered in handwritten proofs. In scrawled remarks. Just visible: APERION, in capital letters.