Lars Iyer - Wittgenstein Jr

MULBERRY: No prizes for guessing your fantasy, Peters.

EDE: Yeah. Germanic genius all dressed up in leder .

The Kirwins are quizzed about their brief encounters at the derangement of the senses party. Mulberry is quizzed about the ethics of riding bareback . About the sex/death relationship. We explore the topics of fisting, of auto-erotic asphyxiation. We discuss the effects of various drugs on sexual performance. On methods of relaxing the anal sphincter (Mulberry). Of engorging the reluctant cock (Doyle).

We rank the company in terms of sexual promiscuity (Mulberry wins). In terms of sexual prowess (Titmuss claims to be an expert in the Indian erotic arts. No one believes him). In terms of sexual attractiveness , Ede comes top (centuries of breeding). In terms of sexual repression .

MULBERRY: You win that one, Peters. Hands down.

Saturday night. Ede texts. You up? I split with Fee .

Ede, in the communal kitchen, emptying a tub of mushrooms onto the counter.

EDE: The best I could get. Guaranteed head-fuck.

Fee! Fee! Why must it all be so complicated? Ede says. We’re cursed. We’re doomed .

Beauty seems like a great clue, Ede says. Plato was right. It points somewhere. But to what? There is this world, that is all. Beauty makes a sign — but of what? A sign of nothing. Of the absence of signs. Beauty mocks us, Ede says. Beauty says: The way is barred. There is no path . Beauty is the door that’s shut.

Fee! Fee! It’s unbearable, Ede says. He can’t stand it! Fee is beautiful, but Fee is witless. Fee and her friends: beautiful but witless, chattering away in their flat. So inane. So depthless.

EDE: Have you noticed how the rahs are all saying literally now? I was like literally exhausted. I was like literally wasted . But nothing they say actually means anything! Literally or figuratively! Most of the time, they don’t even finish their sentences. I was literally so … They just trail off. They barely speak , most of the time. Mmms and ahhs . Little moans, nothing else. Oh reeealllly. Lurrrrrvely. Coooool .

And they use the word uni , which is unforgiveable, Ede says. My uni … As if Cambridge were some cuddly toy. As if they were all cuddly toys.

He’s known these people all his life, Ede says. He’s supposed to marry one of them! To perpetuate the breed. To join one great house with another, consolidating landed wealth, and so on. Fee would do perfectly, he says. He was led to her, it is quite clear, by some innate aristocratic homing device . Something Darwinian . Something quite disgusting …

EDE: We’re puppets, Peters!

Better to ruin himself, Ede says. Better to ruin the whole Ede legacy. To squander its fortune. To wreck its great estates. Better to end the family line. Better to become a cautionary tale to scare young aristocrats, he says.

Ede steeps the mushrooms in warm water, adding a squeeze of lemon juice. We drink the tea.

We speak of our desire for despair — real despair, Ede and I. For choking despair, visible to all. For chaotic despair, despair of collapse , of ruination . For the despair of Lucifer, as he fell from heaven …

Our desire for annulling despair. For a despair that dissolves the ego; despair indistinguishable from a kind of death . For wild despair, for heads thrown back, teeth fringing laughing mouths. For exhilarated despair, for madness under the moon.

Our desire for despairs of the damned. For crawling despairs, like rats, like spiders. For heavy despairs, like those on vast planets, which make a teardrop as heavy as lead …

Our desire for the moon to smash into the earth. For the sun to swallow the earth. For the night to devour both the sun and the earth.

We speak of our desire for extinction, for cool mineral silence. For the Big Crunch, for the end of all things. For the Great Dissipation, when electrons leave their atoms …

Our desire for the right to exist to be revoked. For the great lie of life to lose its force. For all to end in the great Beckett-play of the end …

We speak of our desire for the universal wind-down. For our bubble universe to pop on the mouth of God-the-idiot. For the great going-under. For the death of death of death. For the end of the end. For no more time. For no more mores …

He wishes his melancholy would take a European turn, Ede says, like Wittgenstein’s.

EDE: Here, drink up! Maybe we can ’shroom our way to the fundament …

A walk on the Backs.

Thought is also about knowing where to stop, Wittgenstein says. Sometimes, the thinker must desist from asking, Why? Sometimes, the thinker must let thought rest in peace.

His brother spoke of peace when he set off for Norway, Wittgenstein says. When he embarked for Norway, his brother hoped he would solve every problem in philosophy .

Norway would be his trial, his brother said, on the eve of his departure. Norway would be where he’d see if he was worthy of being called a thinker. Norway was where thought would writhe inside him, his brother said. Through him. Norway was where thought would flash above him, like the northern lights.

Norway was where he’d think his severest thoughts, his brother said. The most terrible of thoughts. Where thought would hurl its spear into him. Where thought, merciless, would run him through .

Norway would be too cold to let philosophy survive, his brother said. To let what we know as philosophy survive. The frozen air of Norway would kill all philosophical germs . Norway was death, his brother said. A certain kind of death.

By summer, he’d have solved all the fundamental problems of logic, his brother said. He’d have burrowed through the autumn, the winter, the spring. He’d have burrowed all the way to the Norwegian summer, to the never-ending day, when everything would be clear.

The truth, at first, would be unbearable, his brother said. Hard to get used to. Hard to endure . Because truth was also a judgement. Because truth would judge you, and find you wanting.

The truth would know his sins, his brother said. The truth would expose all his darknesses.

There would be no secrets in the Norwegian summer, his brother said. Nothing would be hidden. The truth would know him. God would know him, in the summer light.

The truth would search him, his brother said. It would search through him. He’d breathe the truth down to the bottom of his lungs. He’d inhale and exhale the truth.

His soul would be light , his brother said. His soul would weigh nothing . He would feel his soul rising in the Norwegian summer. His soul would float into the air like a fire-balloon.

And there would be silence, his brother said. There would be nothing he needed to say.

He’d barely sleep, his brother said. There would be no need for sleep in the never-ending day. There would be no need to rest. No need to dream under the never-setting sun.

The stars would dream, above the sky. The planets would dream for him, as they fell through the darkness.

His heart would be bright, his brother said. His heart would pulse like a jellyfish in the sunlit waters. And pale stars would show in the upper heavens. And God’s angels would be there, just above the sky. And God’s throne would stand in the middle of the sky. And God’s face would no longer be hidden. And God would be everywhere, just as light would be everywhere. There would be no corner of darkness where the devil might hide.