Hopeful Monsters (21 page)

I said 'I see.'

He said 'You see what?'

I said 'You mean that no Russian leader could ever say, even to himself, that he wanted the five-year plan to fail, because if he did, psychologically he wouldn't be able to do what he wants, which is to embark on a reign of blame and terror.'

Melvyn said 'Didn't I say you're learning, ducky!'

I thought - Melvyn really does know more than me?

Then - But of course if one could learn to be tough and subtle with oneself, then one wouldn't need blame and terror?

I seldom talked to Melvyn about the work I was doing in Cambridge. I was studying mathematics; which was a prelude, I supposed, to specialising in physics. I do not remember what work Melvyn was doing: English? History? In spite of what seemed to be his committment to Marxism, he gave the impression of his work being of no importance. I said to him once 'But you mean Marxists, if they are serious, must have an inkling that they are engaged in something quite different from what they have to say they are doing.'

He said 'Don't be too sharp, ducky, or you'll catch yourself where it matters.'

I said 'It's quite like mathematics.'

He said 'Have fun with your mathematics, ducky!'

The most influential mathematician and theoretical physicist at Cambridge at this time was Paul Dirac: his exploratory work was held to be on a level with that of Bohr and Heisenberg on the Continent. I went to some of his lectures: he was a quiet, passionate man who spoke of things that were indeed, he seemed to suggest, just beyond one's grasp; they were like leaves, like shadows. But that there were such things as leaves and shadows meant, as it were, that there was some sun. Some of Dirac's mathematics I did not wholly understand: but in one or two publications at the time he tried to put into laymen's language some of the wider implications of what he thought he was discovering. This was quite a common activity amongst eminent scientists at this time: it was only later that they seemed to withdraw again into the fortress-jargons of their special disciplines.

What I understood Dirac to be implying was -

The laws of physics control a level of reality of which our minds by their nature cannot form an adequate picture: we deal with the world of appearances mainly through intuition. When an object we are observing is small, we cannot observe it without disturbing it, so that what we are observing is not the object but the results of the disturbance. When an object is big, we can say we observe it because the disturbance is for practical purposes negligible, but then what we are observing is inevitably to do with appearances. Two sorts of mathematics are required for a description of reality: classical mathematics, which concerns objects which are big and by means of which we can talk about cause-and-effect between them because this is how intuitively we see appearances; and a new form of mathematics which concerns objects which are small and in which we cannot talk about objective cause-and-effect because of the disturbances caused by the observer. Thus for human consciousness there is something that essentially cannot be pinned down at the heart of matter - and this is not to do with inadequacy of technique, but is built into the relationship between consciousness and language and matter. This is not to be regretted: it is a realisation necessary for understanding.

I had a friend at this time who was called Donald Hodge. Donald was older than me; he had come to Cambridge to study physics, but for the moment was trying to grapple with philosophy. Donald had orange hair and small steel spectacles of which the side-pieces were joined to points near the bottom of the rims. He and I would go for walks together by the banks of the river. In the winter the backwaters of the river became frozen so that there were the footprints of birds on the snow that lay on the surface of what had once been water. Donald and I discussed the relation between philosophy and what seemed to be being suggested by physicists.

Donald said 'But it seems to me that physicists are confused about what is the nature of language.'

I said 'But mathematics is a form of language.'

He said 'But when you say you cannot observe something but can only observe the effect of your observation - what else is it, indeed, that you ever think you are observing?'

'But a different form of mathematics is required to describe this.'

'But you make up a mathematics - '

'But you make up a language.'

Donald and I walked by the frozen water. I thought - We go

round and round: but sometimes, almost without our noticing, something gets through.

Donald had become a pupil of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who some ten years previously had become famous, at least among philosophers, with the publication of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. This book had been concerned, primarily, to clarify what were the limits of language.

Donald said 'I mean you use words, making pictures, to describe what is otherwise indescribable.

I said 'What goes on within an atom appears to happen by chance. This is indescribable?'

Donald said 'You can describe it in mathematics - '

I said 'As a matter of probabilities.'

'But you say that Dirac seems to suggest that there are certain entities that are not describable even by numbers.'

'There are certain numbers, yes, at this level, about which it is impossible to say that one is bigger than another.'

'And you call that mathematics?'

Donald had a way of curling his upper lip beneath his nose, as if he were indicating scorn or determination.

There were footprints wandering in the snow. The footprints made patterns. I thought - Why are Donald and I walking together? It is a possibility that he is in love with me?

Then - If Donald and I are in a maze, we can see that there is some pattern.

The concluding words of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus had been 'What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.' It was for these words above all that he, and the book, had become famous. Wittgenstein had seemed to be implying that nothing was sayable except that which was to do with reason. But he had demonstrated how narrow the area was that could be dealt with by reason.

I said to Donald '"Chance" is a word for what we cannot explain by reason. There is no reason why by some means we should not try to talk about it.'

Donald said 'By what means?'

I said 'We can look at, try to describe, the way things happen.'

I had been trying to get Donald to take me with him to one of Wittgenstein's seminars; I wanted to hear what was being said in the area that should, it had been suggested, be passed over in silence. But Donald had said that Wittgenstein insisted that his pupils should

undertake a whole course of enquiry with him, that there was no sense in trying to pick up bits and pieces; it was the process itself that might be felt to be dealing with whatever it was in silence.

Donald said 'Wittgenstein would agree that philosophy is more a matter of looking than of analysis.'

I said 'When you are with him, what is the style of what you talk about?'

Donald said 'It is often as if one were finding one's way through a maze.'

It was at times like these that Donald and I were apt to walk for a certain distance in silence.

What I had learned about Wittgenstein was that he had been at Cambridge before the First World War; he had returned to his native Austria to fight in the Austrian army. It was in the trenches that he had written most of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. In it he had tried to explain - Language constructs models of what can be called 'reality': what language cannot do is suggest what might be the connection between the structures of language and the structures of reality. But this had traditionally been a central task of philosophy. So, in a sense, Wittgenstein seemed to suggest, philosophy was over.

After the publication of the Tractatus Wittgenstein had himself given up philosophy; he had taught in an Austrian village school; he had designed a severely functional house for his sister in Vienna. Then at the end of the 1920s he had suddenly returned to Cambridge: he had thought that there was something more to do in philosophy.

Donald said 'But we think we can use language, yes, for the clarification of language.'

I said 'But the point is still that there is something quite different going on.'

Donald said 'What?'

I said 'Some sort of therapy.'

Donald curled his lip up under his nose.

I said 'Any success we have is to do not with reason, but aesthetics. Or even ethics. Doesn't Wittgenstein say something like that?'

Wittgenstein had written in the Tractatus just before his final sentence about silence - 'Anyone who understands me eventually recognises my propositions as nonsensical when he has used them

to climb up beyond them. He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder . . . then he will see the world aright.'

Donald and I watched where the footprints of birds and animals had gone round and round and made patterns in the snow. I thought - Well what is a pattern? A pattern is not a thing that you can analyse. A pattern is there when you see it; but it is not just in the snow.

Donald said 'It is true that Wittgenstein is interested in aesthetics.'

I said 'Rum tiddle di um turn.'

Donald said 'And what does that mean?'

I said 'It is a song called "Footprints in the Snow".'

I had begun to have an obsession about meeting Wittgenstein. Donald said that his seminars took place in an austere room with just a table and two chairs; when students came, they had to bring their own chairs. I thought - If Donald will not take me to him, I will meet him as if by chance.

- Then I will be doing some experiment with chance?

I said to Donald 'Does Wittgenstein ever go for long walks in the snow?'

Donald said 'I don't know. What he does like doing, apparently, is to go to the cinema in the afternoon to a western film and to sit in the front row.'

I said 'Does that stop his thinking going round and round?'

Donald said 'I suppose so.'

I thought - So I might bump into Wittgenstein at a western film?

Then - But you and I, my beautiful German girl, we did not think that we would go round and round: but we were frightened?

Sometimes when I got back from these walks with Donald I would find Melvyn sitting beyond the framework of his doorway as if waiting to be looked at like a picture. He would say 'Been nuzzling with the brood of Mrs Tiggy winklestein?'

I would say 'Yes, they are doing very well, thank you.'

Melvyn would say 'Had any good silences lately?'

When I wandered into Melvyn's room I knew we would for the most part talk nonsense. I would think - Perhaps being with Melvyn is the equivalent of sitting in the front row at a western film: after a time thought stops; there is just the area in which one thing happens after another.

Then - But is not aesthetics to do with the fact that the structures of reality coincide with the structures of one's mind -

- That was what we were talking about, you and I, my beautiful German girl?

I would sit on Melvyn's chaise-longue and say something like -4 Well the crack-up of the Western world seems to be coming about quite nicely.'

And Melvyn would say - 'I don't want it to be coming along nicely: I want there to be a great many people killed.'

And I would think - In a western film a great many people get killed -

- A sorting-out; that is to do with 'aesthetics'?

Melvyn only once tried to make a pass at me. He helped me up to my room one evening when I was drunk; he sat on the edge of my bed and got me half undressed and fiddled with me for a short while. He said This little piggy went to market.' If I had been more sober I might have said - 'It looks more as if this little piggy's staying at home.' After a time he gave up, and left me. I thought -So you see, if you let things go, one thing happens not so badly after another.

Then - But why did I let you go, my beautiful German girl?

I was obviously still confused about sexuality at this time: I would lie on my bed and try to make my mind a blank. But images would come in: of horsemen riding across plains; of Melvyn with his cherub's mouth like sick at the edges of drains.

I would think - In physics, there are people trying to find out about an atom by breaking up its heart. (I thought - Stop thinking!) In philosophy, there are people trying to break it up to see it has no heart. (I thought - Stop thinking!)

In the outside world there were more and more ghostly figures standing unemployed on street corners. I had said to you, my beautiful German girl, 'In the end, people either will or will not destroy themselves -

- We will or will not meet each other again.' You had said 'But which?'

We had sat facing each other with our backs against trees.

It seemed to me now that this was some form of annunciation.

So - Get up and go on!

- You think you can stop thinking?

- Oh such a situation might be aesthetic!

Melvyn had a friend called Mullen who sometimes visited him in his room. Mullen was a notable figure in Cambridge: he was tall and thin with a face like a hatchet. He strode through the streets in

a long blue coachman's overcoat and a wide-brimmed hat: he seemed to expect people to get off the pavement for him. He was a poet: he was said to be writing a book about aesthetics; he was also an authority on Karl Marx. I would think - I should be cultivating people like Mullen!

- Or is it proper that I would rather, like some mad archaic god, go bumping and bouncing off walls to find my way through the maze?

Melvyn and Mullen were both members of the club, or society, known as The Apostles, the members of which felt themselves to be part of an intellectual and cultural elite. They were an apotheosis of the Cambridge tradition of it being the mark of an elite to hold everything open to question: to manipulate nihilism by sleight-of-mind. I had once said to Melvyn 'Stalin would have made a marvellous Apostle!' Melvyn had said 'But that moustache!'