David Markson - Wittgenstein's Mistress

As a matter of fact by saying that I am familiar with them I do not even necessarily mean that I have read a solitary word that either one of them ever wrote.

Actually the sum total of that familiarity may well extend no farther than to my reading of the backs of the jackets on phonograph records.

Such as the back of the jacket on Thus Spake Zarathustra, by Richard Strauss, for instance.

Or the back of the jacket on The Alto Rhapsody.

Possibly my including the back of the jacket on The Alto Rhapsody would appear to be less relevant than my including the back of the jacket on Thus Spake Zarathustra.

Certainly if I had never read the back of a jacket on The Alto Rhapsody I would not be familiar with the fact that what Brahms had based The Alto Rhapsody on was a poem by Goethe, however.

Neither am I forgetting The Damnation of Faust, by Berlioz, on the other hand.

Or Gounod's Faust.

Or Liszt's Faust Symphony.

Even if I am perhaps now showing off again.

In either event it was certainly not my intention to demean any German writers by remarking that I did not recognize their names.

Possibly any number of these writers were quite famous in Germany and the news had simply not reached me by the time I stopped reading.

Doubtless I would have heard of many of them within a few more years.

Then again, perhaps some of the writers whose books I took from the carton were not German writers after all. Quite possibly there were just as many French writers whose names I did not recognize. Or Italian writers.

In fact this could have been just as true of certain writers who wrote in Spanish.

Surely it is no more than chance that I had ever heard of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz herself, actually. Or of Marco Antonio Montes de Oca.

Moreover even after having heard of them I might very well have forgotten about them again entirely, if their names had not had a certain resonance.

So perhaps it was not necessary for me to have apologized to any German writers after all.

Franz Liszt was one more person who was in the movie Song of Love with Bach and Clara Schumann, by the way.

I bring this up just in passing.

Well, or because of just having mentioned Liszt.

And Rainer Maria Rilke was another German writer I could have said I was similarly familiar with, had I wished.

Although what I am really still thinking about is how you could actually see Wittgenstein thinking, that way.

Even if thinking is what philosophers obviously do, on the other hand.

So quite possibly the lot of them were like that. Possibly every single philosopher from all the way back to Zeno used to walk around letting people see that they were thinking.

Possibly they even did this when they did not have a single thing more on their minds than the most inconsequential perplexities, as a matter of fact.

Not that inconsequential perplexities cannot now and again become the fundamental mood of existence too, of course.

Still, all I am suggesting is that quite possibly the only thing that Wittgenstein himself had on his mind when people believed he was thinking so hard may very well have been a seagull.

This would be the seagull which had come to his window each morning to be fed, that I am speaking about. One time when he lived near Galway Bay, in Ireland.

Possibly I have not mentioned that Wittgenstein had a pet seagull which came to his window each morning to be fed.

Or even that he ever lived in Ireland.

Or rather what occurs to me is that I may have said it was somebody else who had the pet seagull. And in another place altogether.

On my honor, it was Wittgenstein who had it. At Galway Bay.

Wittgenstein also played an instrument, incidentally.

And sometimes did some sculpture.

I enjoy knowing both of those things about Wittgenstein.

In fact I also enjoy knowing that he once worked as a gardener, in a monastery.

And inherited a good deal of money, but gave it all away.

In fact I believe I would have liked Wittgenstein.

Especially since what he did with the money, once he did decide to give it away, was to arrange to have it be used to help other writers who did not have any.

Such as Rainer Maria Rilke.

Actually, the next time I am in a town where there is a bookstore to let myself into, perhaps I will try to find something to read by Wittgenstein after all.

Galway Bay has a much lovelier sound when one says it out loud than when one merely looks at it on the page, by the way.

Well, doubtless it has no sound at all, when one merely looks at it on the page.

In fact even such words as Maria Callas do not have any sound when one is merely looking at them on the page, come to think about it.

Or Lucia di Lammermoor.

Hm. So what color were my red roses when I typed those words also, then?

In any case it had never crossed my mind that one might actually name a seagull before, I do not believe.

Galway Bay. Cádiz. Lake Como. Pamplona. Lesbos. Bordeaux.

Shostakovitch.

Oh, well. Meanwhile I have just been out to the dunes.

While I was peeing, I thought about Lawrence of Arabia.

This is scarcely to suggest that there is any particular connection between taking a pee and Lawrence of Arabia, however.

The reason I thought about Lawrence of Arabia, as a matter of fact, was simply because there was only one other book from the carton that I was able to recognize, and that happened to be a life of Lawrence of Arabia.

The reason I recognized that one, as it happened, was because the name Lawrence of Arabia had been kept in English in the title, in quotation marks.

Actually, I might have recognized it as a life of Lawrence of Arabia at any rate, since the book also contained several photographs of Lawrence of Arabia, but I had already made the assumption that it was a life of Lawrence of Arabia before noticing these.

Once I did notice the photographs I was delighted to accept this as a verification of my assumption, however.

Lawrence of Arabia did not look very much like Peter OToole, by the way, even though in some of the photographs he was dressed like Peter OToole.

This would be Peter OToole the way he was dressed in the film about Lawrence of Arabia, naturally.

I believe I have mentioned having seen Peter OToole in the film about Lawrence of Arabia.

Although on the other hand when I say that Lawrence of Arabia did not look very much like Peter OToole, I should perhaps also say that I am in no way certain of what Lawrence of Arabia actually looked like.

Granting, I have just said it was only yesterday that I saw certain photographs of Lawrence of Arabia.

Still, when I say that the photographs I saw yesterday were of Lawrence of Arabia, this itself may very well be no more than one additional assumption.

Naturally I could not make sense out of the captions that went along with the photographs.

What I was basically basing this assumption on, therefore, was the fact that the person in the photographs was dressed in some of them the way Peter OToole was dressed in the film about Lawrence of Arabia.

Nonetheless one is still forced to allow for the possibility that the photographs may not have been photographs of Lawrence of Arabia after all.

Or even that the book itself may not have been a life of Lawrence of Arabia.

One doubts that either of these possibilities would be particularly extreme, but they remain possibilities nonetheless.

Certainly with the remainder of the title and every single word in the actual book being in German, there is no denying that some small margin for error must continue to exist.

Even if on second thought every single word in the book was not actually in German.