The trouble with Paul was that he was as profligate with his intellectual fortune as he was with his financial fortune, but his intellect, unlike his finances, was inexhaustible. He never ceased to throw it out of the window, yet it never ceased to grow; the more he threw it out of the window, the more it grew. It is characteristic of people like Paul, who are at first merely crazy and are finally pronounced insane, that their intellectual fortune increases as fast as they throw it out of the window (of the mind). As they throw more and more of it out of the window, it goes on building up in the mind and naturally becomes more and more dangerous. Eventually they cannot keep up the pace, with the result that the mind can no longer endure the buildup and finally explodes. Paul’s mind quite simply exploded because he could not discard his intellectual fortune fast enough. In the same way Nietzsche’s mind exploded, just as all the other mad philosophical minds exploded, because they could no longer sustain the pace. Their intellectual fortune builds up at a faster and fiercer rate than they can discard it, then one day the mind explodes and they are dead. In the same way Paul’s mind exploded one day and he was dead. We were alike and yet completely different. Paul, for instance, had a concern for the poor and was also touched by them: I too had a concern for the poor, but I was not touched by them; my mind works in such a way that I have never been able to be touched as Paul was. On one occasion Paul burst into tears at the sight of a child squatting by the Traunsee. I saw at once that it had actually been stationed there by a scheming mother in order to arouse sympathy and a bad conscience in passersby and induce them to open their wallets. Unlike Paul, I saw not only the wretched child, shamefully exploited by a greedy mother, but the mother herself, crouching in the bushes and counting a wad of bills in an appallingly businesslike manner. Paul saw only the child and its wretchedness, not the mother in the background, counting the takings. He actually cried and gave the child a hundred-schilling bill, feeling ashamed of his own existence, as it were. While I saw through the whole scene, Paul saw only the surface—the distress of the innocent child, not the monstrous mother in the background. This shameful exploitation of my friend’s good nature was bound to remain concealed from him, while I could not fail to see it. It was typical of him that he saw only the superficial picture of the suffering child and parted with the hundred-schilling bill, while I could not help seeing through the whole scene and naturally gave the child nothing. And it was typical of our relationship that I kept my observation to myself, wishing to spare my friend, and did not tell him about the unspeakable mother counting her money behind the bushes and forcing her child to act out this charade of suffering. I left him with his superficial view of the scene; I let him give the child the hundred-schilling bill and go on blubbering, and even later I forbore to enlighten him. He often referred to this incident and recounted how he had given a hundred-schilling bill to a poor lonely child (in my presence), but I never disclosed the truth of the matter. Where the wretchedness—or ostensible wretchedness—of human beings (and humanity) was concerned, Paul never saw beneath the surface; he never saw the whole picture as I did, and the likelihood is, I fancy, that throughout his life he quite simply refused to see the whole picture, contenting himself with surface appearances for reasons of self-protection. I was never content with surface appearances—also for reasons of self-protection. That was the difference between us. In the first half of his life Paul squandered millions in the belief that he was helping the helpless (and thereby himself!), but in reality he squandered those millions on the basest and unworthiest causes—though in doing so he was of course helping himself. He continued to squander his money on those who were supposedly destitute and deserving of charity until he had none left, until he was thrown upon the mercy of his family, but their mercy was short-lived and quickly withdrawn, since mercy was to them an alien concept. Paul, for his sins, was born into one of Austria’s three or four richest families, whose millions automatically multiplied year by year under the monarchy, until the proclamation of the republic led to the stagnation of the Wittgenstein fortune. Paul very soon threw away his share, more or less in the belief that by doing so he could combat poverty. The result was that for most of his life he had virtually nothing, being persuaded, like his uncle Ludwig, that it was his duty to distribute his dirty millions among his spotless fellowmen and so ensure their salvation and his own. Paul would walk through the streets with wads of hundred-schilling bills in order to distribute those dirty bills among his spotless fellow citizens. But the recipients were nearly always like the Traunsee child: wherever he found people to press his money on, in order to help them and to make himself feel good, they were always Traunsee children. When his money was gone, his relatives supported him for a very short time, acting out of a certain perverse sense of propriety, not out of generosity and not as a matter of course, because they too, it must be said, saw not just the superficial aspect of his situation but the whole dreadful picture. For a whole century the Wittgensteins had produced weapons and machines, until finally they produced Ludwig and Paul—the famous, epoch-making philosopher and the madman who, in Vienna at least, was equally famous and possibly more so. Paul the madman was just as philosophical as his uncle Ludwig, while Ludwig the philosopher was just as mad as his nephew Paul. Ludwig became famous through his philosophy, Paul through his madness. The one was possibly more philosophical, the other possibly more mad. But it may well be that the philosophical Wittgenstein is regarded as a philosopher merely because he set his philosophy down on paper and not his madness, and that Paul is regarded as a madman because he suppressed his philosophy instead of publishing it, and displayed only his madness. Both were quite extraordinary men with quite extraordinary brains; the one published his brain, and the other did not. I would go so far as to say that whereas the one published his brain, the other put his brain into practice. And where is the distinction between a brain that is published and constantly publishing itself and a brain that is constantly putting itself into practice? Yet if Paul had published anything, it would have been quite different from anything that Ludwig published, just as Ludwig would have practiced a form of madness quite different from Paul’s. In either case, the Wittgenstein name guaranteed a certain standard, indeed the highest standard. Paul the madman unquestionably achieved a standard equal to that of Ludwig the philosopher: the one represents a high point in philosophy and the history of ideas, the other a high point in the history of madness—that is, if we insist on adhering to the conventional designations of philosophy, history, ideas, and madness, which are nothing but perverse historical concepts. (Wittgenstein's Nephew)

I thought of how I had met this man, who really had been my friend, who had so often brought so much happiness into my existence, which, though not actually unhappy, was a burden most of the time, who had acquainted me with so much that was at first quite foreign to me, pointing me in ways I had not known before, opening doors that had previously been closed, and who brought me back to my true self at the crucial moment when I might easily have gone to pieces in the country. For before I met my friend there had been a period when I was prey to a morbid melancholy, if not depression, when I really believed I was lost, when for years I did no proper work but spent most of my days in a state of total apathy and often came close to putting an end to my life by my own hand. For years I had taken refuge in a terrible suicidal brooding, which deadened my mind and made everything unendurable, above all myself—brooding on the utter futility all around me, into which I had been plunged by my general weakness, but above all my weakness of character. For a long time I could not imagine being able to go on living, or even existing. I was no longer capable of seizing upon any purpose in life that would have given me control over myself. Every morning on waking I was inevitably caught up in this mechanism of suicidal brooding, and I remained in its grip throughout the day. And I was deserted by everyone because I had deserted everyone—that is the truth—because I no longer wanted anyone. I no longer wanted anything, but I was too much of a coward to make an end of it all. It was probably at the height of my despair—a word that I am not ashamed to use, as I no longer intend to deceive myself or gloss over anything, since nothing can be glossed over in a society and a world that perpetually seeks to gloss over everything in the most sickening manner—that Paul appeared on the scene at Irina’s apartment in the Blumenstockgasse. He was so different from anyone I had ever met, so new to my experience (and with a name, moreover, that for decades I had revered like no other), that I at once felt him to be my deliverer. Sitting on the park bench, I suddenly saw it all clearly again, and I was not ashamed of the pathos I succumbed to, of the fine words that I allowed to flow into me for the very first time; they suddenly made me feel tremendously good, and I made no attempt to tone them down. I let them all descend on me like a refreshing rain. And today it seems to me that we can count on the fingers of one hand all the people who have really meant anything to us in the course of our lives, and very often this one hand protests at our perversity in believing that we need a whole hand in order to count them, for to be honest we could probably make do without a single finger. There are times, however, when life is endurable, and at such times we occasionally manage to count three or four people to whom in the long run we owe something, and not just something but a great deal—people who have meant everything and been everything to us at certain critical moments or certain critical periods of our lives. Yet we know that as we get older we have to employ ever subtler means in order to produce such endurable conditions, resorting to every possible and impossible trick the mind can devise, though it may be stretched to the limits of its tolerance even without having to perform such unnatural feats. Yet at the same time we should not forget that the few people in question are all dead, that they died long ago, for bitter experience naturally inhibits us from including the living in our calculation—those who are still with us, perhaps even at our side—unless we want to risk being totally, embarrassingly, and ludicrously wrong, and hence making fools of ourselves, above all in our own eyes. (Wittgenstein's Nephew)

I read and I am set free. I gain objectivity. I have ceased to be my usual disparate self. And what I read, rather than being a near-invisible suit that sometimes weighs on me, becomes instead the great clarity of the outside world, in which everything is worthy of note, the sun that everyone can see, the moon that weaves a web of shadows on the still earth, the vast spaces that open out into the sea, the dark solidity of the trees waving aloft their green branches, the solid peace of ponds in gardens, the paths thick with vines on the terraced slopes of the hills.

I read like someone abdicating from life. And since the crown and the royal mantle never look as grand as when the departing King deposits them on the ground, I set down on the mosaic floor of the antechambers all my past triumphs of tedium and dreams, and ascend the steps wearing only the nobility of seeing.

I read like someone who just happens to be passing. And it is in the classics, with those who are calm of mind and who, if they suffer, do not speak of it, that I feel myself to be a sacred passerby, an anointed pilgrim, a purposeless observer of a purposeless world, a Prince of the Great Exile, who, as he left, made of his desolation a final gift of alms to the last beggar. (The Book of Disquiet)

And in this dreadful state of mind I sat for hours, for days on end with my face to the wall, tormenting myself and gradually discovering the horror of finding that even the smallest task or duty, for instance arranging assorted objects in a drawer, can be beyond one’s power. It was as if an illness that had been latent in me for a long time were now threatening to erupt, as if some soul-destroying and inexorable force had fastened upon me and would gradually paralyze my entire system. I already felt in my head the dreadful torpor that heralds disintegration of the personality, I sensed that in truth I had neither memory nor the power of thought, nor even any existence, that all my life had been a constant process of obliteration, a turning away from myself and the world. If someone had come then to lead me away to a place of execution I would have gone meekly, without a word, without so much as opening my eyes, just as people who suffer from violent seasickness, if they are crossing the Caspian Sea on a steamer, for instance, will not offer the slightest resistance should someone tell them that they are about to be thrown overboard. (Austerlitz)

BARTHÉLÉMY PRUNIÈRES

Barthélémy Prunières is on the Causse Méjan. He is looking for dead men. This is his passion. The fact that he is a doctor in Marjevols is of little importance: he prefers bodies that have ceased to suffer to the suffering bodies of his daily round. If at this very moment God or the devil were to appear before him on the causse and command him to justify his life, he would say, I am an anthropologist, a member of the Anthropological Society of Lille, the Anthropological Society of Paris, and the Anthropological Society of Bordeaux; in August 1870 I telegraphed my resignation to the Anthropological Society of Berlin. There is not a Society in Europe that does not know of me. I have shifted enormous quantities of ancient remains. I have studied Baumes-Chaudes Man, a fine dolichocephalic troglodyte who ate hare in huge dishes of unglazed clay, and it was I who named him. I studied Causse Man, the brachycephalus with the highly orthognatic face who belongs to the race I called dolmenic—it was I who named it. I had the honor of discovering that in both racial groups, the dolmenic as well as the troglodyte, individuals destined for the role of shaman underwent substantial trepanation in their early years; that a circular piece of bone the size of a five-franc silver coin was removed from their cranium; that this piece of bone removed from their head was worn round the neck as an amulet and made them all-powerful. To people who were disturbed by the barbarity of these practices, I said that gods who asked of man nothing more than a piece of his skull might be considered lenient. What the gods ask of me, each day, is to piece together the infinite puzzle of dead humanity.

He is on the Causse Méjan, at the southwest edge, just before the causse tips passionately down to the bed of the River Jonte, toward Saint-Pierre-les-Tripiés; he is on the site of the Cave of the Dead Man, which of course was named by him. It is autumn in 1871. The site is an ossuary in a rock shelter, which Prunières discovered in the spring of 1870; he dug it only once; he left little protection for it, thinking he would be back in a month or two. But war came, and with it the uhlans and sabers that perform excellent trepanations, and the gods who, when all is said and done, are lenient and will trade two years of famine for a brand-new republic. There have been two years of rain, frost, rodents, and landslips on the causse; when Prunières returns, half the ossuary has fallen into the gully.

It is autumn. Prunières has brought along Dr. Broca, president of the Anthropological Society of Paris (a man who knows us in his own particular way, though we do not know him: inside our skulls we each carry a cerebral convolution known as Broca’s area). All day long they have assembled and named bones, like the gravedigger in Hamlet. They have placed them in two large crates that the curé of Saint-Pierre had carpentered for them. It’s the end of the day. Broca is tired and stands smoking a cigar outside the cave; he looks at the autumn, the troglodyte bones in the curé’s crate; he thinks about things and about the naming of things. Prunières is carrying out a final inspection of the gully before leaving. And there, three hundred meters farther down, he finds a very fine, very white humerus. At the same time as the bone, he finds the simple, beautiful sentence he will utter at the Bordeaux Anthropological Congress on September 12, 1872: “All the bones had been bleached white by the rain, the dew, and the snow.”

In December 1893, Dr. Prunières is returning in the depths of night after attending a birth on the Aubrac plateau. He is caught in a snowstorm. He struggles on for several hours—he has a strong constitution, hardened by handling suffering bodies and bodies that have ceased to suffer. Then he gives up the struggle and settles himself between three rocks like an old troglodyte. He says to himself, “I am going to die.” He repeats to himself, “Baumes-Chaudes Man, the troglodyte race, the dolmenic race, circular pieces of skull.” He says to himself that his body will not be found. Aloud, he says, “All the bones had been bleached white by the rain, the dew, and the snow.” The snow lays a maternal blanket over him.

He was still alive when he was found in the morning. He died during the day, from acute pulmonary edema.(Winter Mythologies and Abbots)

K. always wants to reach the goal before having reached it. This demand for a premature dénouement is the principle of figuration: it engenders the image, or, if you will, the idol, and the curse which attaches to it is that which attaches to idolatry. Man wants unity right away; he wants it in separation itself. He represents it to himself, and this representation, the image of unity, immediately reconstitutes the element of dispersion where he loses himself more and more. For the image as such can never be attained, and moreover it hides from him the unity of which it is the image. It separates him from unity by making itself inaccessible and by making unity inaccessible.

[...]

We could summarize this situation as follows: it is impatience which makes the goal inaccessible by substituting for it the proximity of an intermediary figure. It is impatience that destroys the way toward the goal by preventing us from recognizing in the intermediary the figure of the immediate. (The Space of Literature)

Extract the meaning out of all literature, and what you will get is a denial, however incomplete, but nonetheless an endless series of individual examples all based on experience, which refute all the accepted rules, principles, and prescriptions underpinning the very society that loves these works of art! In the end, a poem, with its mystery, cuts through to the point where the meaning of the world is tied to thousands of words in constant use, severs all of these strings, and turns into a balloon floating off into space. If this is what we call beauty, as we usually do, then beauty is an indescribably more ruthless and cruel upheaval than any political revolution ever was. (The Man Without Qualities)

Metaphor . . . is like the image that fuses several meanings in a dream; it is the gliding logic of the soul, corresponding to the way things relate to each other in the intuitions of art and religion. But even what there is in life of common likes and dislikes, accord and rejection, admiration, subordination, leadership, imitation, and their opposites, the many ways man relates to himself and to nature, which are not yet and perhaps never will be purely objec- tive, cannot be understood other than in metaphorical or figura- tive terms. No doubt what is called the higher humanism is only the effort to fuse together these two great halves of life, metaphor and truth, once they have been carefully distinguished from each other. But once one has distinguished everything in a metaphor that might be true from what is mere froth, one usually has gained a little truth, but at the cost of destroying the whole value of the metaphor. (The Man Without Qualities)

They are acting in the past. They don’t know it. It takes a long time to realize that there is a past… It takes a long time to understand anything at all about what we call the past — and begin to be liberated from it. Those kids are romantic, not even revolutionaries. At least not yet. They don’t know what revolution entails. They think everything is happening in the present. They think they are the present. They think that nothing ever happened before in the whole history of the world.