,14=/,15=#,23=%,24==> 8Captivity and Return 1918{-20 I~T ~W~A~S to the end of empire that Wittgenstein went back_finis Austriae, and nowhere seen more dramatically than in the field. September, to be sure, was a lull or stay of execution. Victualling was a little improved after the harvest. A British and French attack in the Asiago sector was beaten off. Probably Wittgenstein was still in Vienna:1 on the 22 September, in a last formal act, the Military Medal won in June was conferred on him. But the end of the month, when he was back in Italy, brought with it the armistice in Bulgaria, the sudden defencelessness of Hungary, the demand of the Magyar troops to return home, the declaration that Austria-Hungary would become a federation of free states, and finally the request for a general armistice. This last the troops heard of on 5 October, and from that date on the Archduke Joseph and the other commanders had the hopeless task of persuading troops of various nationalities to stand firm for the sake of reasonable peace terms. And these were troops with torn uniforms and one set of linen, constantly informed by enemy propaganda of the national difficulties at home. In Wittgenstein's sector what was feared as much as a worsening of the peace terms was the unforeseeable effect of allowing hungry and leaderless troops to make a hasty retreat along the one line back home_as many did, Croats, Bosnians, Czechs, Hungarians, perhaps above all, but many Austrians too. These difficulties became particularly acute after the Allied attack of 24 October in the Sette Comuni (the district round Asiago). This was actually a feint, because the real breakthrough was intended to be on the Piave. At first 38 Honved ID (to which Wittgenstein's battery was attached) managed to hold the British and Italians and even to win back Mount Sisemol. Wittgenstein's correspondence with Engelmann and with a prospective publisher continued until this date. Perhaps (one shudders at the risk) the only corrected copy of his Abhandlung was sent him, rejected, at this time.2 It is always amazing how the small change of life_letters, minutes, promotions, decorations_continues to circulate amid the gravest crises. But soon Wittgenstein's division, and all Hungarian troops in XI Army had to be promised their return home. There were refusals to reinforce and resistance by regiments to the very approach of officers from higher formations: only the artillery kept up 1.His sister Gretl supposed him to be there on 16 September, GS to HW 16.9.18. His first field postcard to Engelmann is dated 9.10.18. 2.LW to PE 22 and 25.10.18 268 Wittgenstein: A Life the idea of a continuous line. And this was more or less held in the Asiago sector until 30 October. On the Piave, however, the great crossing took place on 24 October and by about 29 October the victory of Vittorio Veneto was secure. The Austrians sued for peace and a general retreat from occupied territory was ordered. Peace did not come immediately, but the mass return home had already begun. Troops tended to break up into national groups, to wear national colours, sometimes to set up soldiers' councils and to depose officers of the wrong nationality. It was in circumstances of this kind that Wittgenstein's brother Konrad (or Kurt) took his own life. Family stories vary: it may have been because his troops would not serve, or because he refused to commit them to a hopeless action, or simply to avoid the shame of surrender and captivity. All were clear that a highly developed sense of honour was his motive. Meanwhile many, even high-ranking officers, got on the next train to leave. Heinrich Groag had the presence of mind to tell a witless engine-driver to put a plate saying "Olmu$3tz' on the front of his train. In this way one detachment at least got home. Not so Wittgenstein: it is hard to think that his sense of obedience would have allowed it. He duly fell back on Trent and was overtaken by the British and French advance, really a walk-over, which began on 1 November. Trent was occupied, by the Italians, on 3 November and all Austro-Hungarian troops there were declared prisoners of war. On the Austrian side the belief was that the armistice had begun 36 hours previously, when indeed the announce- ment was made that terms had been agreed.3 In those 36 hours 300,000 troops were made prisoner, of whom 30,000 died in captivity. On 3 November also, back at home, the Emperor Charles handed over command of his armies; and, not exactly abdicating his powers and prerogatives, he placed them at the disposal of his peoples. Thus it was rather to their surprise that the captured Austrians found themselves sent, officers and men separately, not back home but into prison camps. Franz Parak went by slow stages to Cassino, under the monastery.4 Wittgenstein went first perhaps to Verona,5 then at some point to Como, and came on to Cassino only in January 1919.6 Parak has described the cheerless scene: two rows of huts, a camp road, a parade ground, high walls around, the bitter cold in winter,7 the 3.This was the Austrian view, which accounts for Hermine Wittgenstein's phrase "he was taken prisoner in that strange armistice'. No doubt the Allies were strictly justified. 4.F.Parak,"Als ich mit Wittgenstein in der Gefangenschaft war', morgen Kulturzeitschrift aus Niedero$3sterreich 33 (1984) 5.Here Wittgenstein borrowed 100 lire from an Oberleutnant Sturm: he was to remember and repay it, with much incidental punctiliousness, in 1925: see LW to LH 23.9.25. 6.So Hayek in his unpublished sketch, relying on Ha$3nsel, whose movements were the same as Wittgenstein's. 7.They slept under their kitbags, Ludwig told Arvid Sjo$3gren, and he had never been so hungry in his life. 269 8Captivity and Return 1918{-20 sun that drove them into their narrow rooms and onto their iron bedsteads in summer, the constant hunger. One day Parak noticed a new arrival: He had a thin face and a noble profile, was of middle height, and, to judge by his figure and general appearance, was not yet thirty years old. His tunic was green and open at the neck, with his shirt collar turned over it. He wore breeches, tucked into puttees. He was bare-headed and his hair seemed slightly curly. But the really striking thing about him was his manner of speaking: it conveyed an extraordinary definiteness. There was a characteristic movement of his head too: usually it was bowed, but from time to time he would throw it back and direct his gaze into the distance. This was Ludwig Wittgenstein. Parak notes that with the end of the war military standards of judgement were dropped and the prisoners valued each other much more for what they had been in civilian life or could contribute in lectures, readings, or conversation to the relief of the enforced idleness. Not all elements of Wittgenstein's background were immediately apparent. If anything he seems to have been more informal and shabby in appearance than the others. When the conversation turned to Klimt and in particular his portrait of Margaret Stonborough, Wittgenstein's reference to her as "my sister' amazed Drobil_"Are you a Wittgenstein?' The subject of this conversation was typical enough and is perhaps of a piece with the change noticed by Parak. In many cases captivity_to some extent the mere fact of defeat_engenders, by a natural displace- ment, a spiritualization. In numerous prisoner-of-war camps in and after both world wars (when conditions at all allowed it) lectures and performances would be organized, books would be eagerly sought after, and the intellectual discussion of personal and religious problems would deepen friendships in a way not so easily attainable in normal or family life. So, at least, it was at Cassino: not always, of course, at the highest level. We hear of a former, or perhaps would-be, actor who read poems with exaggerated expression: "One can't listen,' said Wittgenstein; "it's like having an electric shock.' There was also an exhibition of pictures painted in the camp: all but one were dismissed by Wittgenstein: a good picture, he said, should have the effect of a box on the ear. Parak also tells of some journalistic philosophy lectures that Wittgenstein avoided: but he did attend (for reasons which will appear) some pedagogical lectures on logic and educational theory, apparently a co-operative venture based on the textbook with that title by Anton Hergeth. He told Parak, forgetting Dr Coffey or perhaps indulging in harmless 270 Wittgenstein: A Life affectation,8 that, though he had written his own logico-philosophical treatise, he had no idea what a textbook of logic contained. In the event he found much to criticize in the lectures; naturally enough, since the Herbartian tradition, to which this textbook belonged, was familiar only with so-called Aristotelian logic: it had a limited insight into the variety of logical forms and, partly in consequence, regarded logic as a mere preliminary to philosophy, whereas the very title of Wittgenstein's work implies that he found the whole of philosophy contained in logic. But to all these public functions Wittgenstein characteristically preferred personal contacts with a small group or with an individual. We remember his asking, "Shall I find a friend?', when he arrived in England, and the importance to him of the Olmu$3tz group. He sought out suitable companions, Parak, for example, whose short story written in the prison camp, full of lyricism and home-sickness, Wittgenstein asked to see. Others he had found already in regimental life or earlier captivity. Of these the most important to him throughout his life was Ludwig Ha$3nsel, a profoundly Catholic figure, who was to have an influential career in Austrian education. After release, Wittgenstein sometimes stayed with the Ha$3nsels, used their house for his books and correspondence, and interested himself deeply in the well-being and moral education of the Ha$3nsel children. For the present, Ha$3nsel's seriousness and his philosophical education and aspirations made him an ideal companion.9 The two would take chairs out on to the barrack square or under the holm oaks and read Kant together in the mornings. Books they seem to have got from a library that "a Swiss society' (the Red Cross?) had presented to the camp. It was difficult for individual prisoners to have books sent them. Later, as we shall see, Wittgenstein was lucky enough to obtain special permission for just this. Previously not even his beloved Grundgesetze was in his possession and he had to recite from memory to convince Ha$3nsel of the glories of its preface.10 It was a comradely relation: "Du, Ha$3nsel' was the form of address for the rest of their lives. Such too was the relation with another friend who long remained such, the sculptor Drobil (we still have some of his later drawings of Wittgenstein and a head in relief; also the bust that Wittgenstein modelled in his workshop). The few notes and letters of Drobil that remain are terser than Ha$3nsel's_it is the contrast of the maker with the thinker_but both men belonged to the small class of 8.Wittgenstein frequently took himself to task for having misrepresented himself, and perhaps there was some justice in this. 9.Hayek reports that Wittgenstein first knew Ha$3nsel (at Como presumably) as a lecturer on logic, where he heard him in silence, but afterwards expounded symbolic logic to him. 10.He asks Engelmann to send a copy in May (LW to PE 24.5.19) but there is no reference to its arrival and LW to PE 31.10.20 may imply that there were difficulties about bookpost from the new Czechoslovak Republic. 271 8Captivity and Return 1918{-20 those who spoke with Wittgenstein as equals rather than disciples, and the officers' style of greeting rather typifies this. Parak's was a different case, as he himself engagingly makes clear. He was, one might say, "taken up' by Wittgenstein, who was interested in Parak's writing and in his being a schoolmaster. He allows us to see that he was overwhelmed by Wittgenstein. Parak, in return, read the typescript that Wittgenstein had with him: they walked round and round the barrack square after a day of rain and, as Parak expressed his enthusiasm, Wittgenstein took his arm. Thereafter they would meet in the afternoons: Parak would join the group_Ha$3nsel, Drobil, Jungwirth _to which Wittgenstein read Crime and Punishment; or else he and Wittgenstein would separately have a discussion of that book or of other literary matters; or they would whistle together, two voices, taking a theme from a Bach fugue chosen by Wittgenstein, Bach being his favourite composer at that time. The literary conversations (convinc- ingly sketched by Parak) belong to the history of Wittgenstein's development and will be touched on shortly, but to grasp the nature of Parak's relationship with Wittgenstein (the forerunner of many similar ones) we must show how it too developed. In the heat of the summer Wittgenstein (like many of the others) lay on his bed and brooded, meditating, Parak thought, revisions of propositions in his book. Actually we can see from the typescript that hardly any were made: he may, rather, have been preoccupied by internal problems, "mein Inneres' as he put it.11 At all events Parak felt that his own visits were now unwelcome and that in general Wittgenstein was avoiding him to a greater extent than moodiness would account for. He managed to broach the matter, with an interesting result. He acknowledged that he himself (like Wieland when Goethe arrived in Weimar) was as full of Wittgenstein as a dewdrop of the sun. Though only seven years older, Wittgenstein, he felt, was enormously his superior in talents and culture: impossible not to open up every pore to drink in as much of this knowledge as possible. Easily irritated and fastidious, Wittgenstein in time withdrew like a sensitive plant from this degree of attachment. The metaphor seems to have been Wittgenstein's, who went on to say that he had known only one other person of Parak's kind_his own mother. Wittgenstein's family noticed his attitude of holding her at arm's length and we can read it in his letters to the family: Viele Gru$3{se an die Mama, as if "Regards to Mama' were enough! We are bound to remember the Nichts mehr davon!, "Enough of that!', of Berlin days. There were to be other examples of women approaching too close, and of men being taken up (rather as Goethe, with the same arrie$1re pense$0e, speaks of a flower's being taken up)12 and planted in Wittgenstein's garden, not always to flourish. 11.LW to PE 25.4.19. 12.Gefunden, "Ich ging im Walde...', of his wife. 272 Wittgenstein: A Life Perhaps it can be said, echoing but not quite agreeing with Malcolm,13 that it was Wittgenstein's tragedy that he intensely craved for affection but could rarely tolerate the way it was expressed. Our concern in these pages is to see the development of such features and the factors that affected them. One change effected, or rather one develop- ment promoted in Wittgenstein, by the war and the prison camp was the maturity, the command, the power over others that led to cases like Parak's_a happy case, be it said, on Parak's side at least: circumstances soon parted the two, but Parak's memories remained warm and positive. The clarification of their relationship was evidently a well-judged one, well effected. There are other developments in Wittgenstein about this time that Parak's account enables us to identify. Their conversations ranged from criticism of Parak's own work, through comparisons of Dostoevsky with other authors to the discussion of Wittgenstein's religion and his projects in life. As so often in his case, it is easiest to start with the aesthetic aspect. Not all his judgements of value have equal importance. If at that time he thought Haydn the equal of Beethoven and anyway preferred Bach to both, there were soon to be times when Beethoven, or Schubert, was everything. To some extent composers must be explored one at a time. Perhaps we can read something more into his critical remark about Wagner's music_that one cannot translate word for word from one language into another. This I take to mean that the literary goals, the message desired, are too mechanically rendered in music by Wagner: a move away, this, from Wittgenstein's youthful identification with the Mastersingers and a move towards an inexpressive art, where what matters is not what is said but how it is said. This was indeed the burden of his criticisms of Parak's writing. This or that adjective (Wittgenstein could trace its true place and its origin to a story of Keller's) did not fit what Parak meant. Parak had not imagined things clearly. When Parak protested that the whole content of his story (it was his second and, he thought, better one) was being lost, Wittgenstein replied, Die Sprache ist alles, "The language is everything', or, to paraphrase Hofmannsthal,14 the whole difference lies in how a thing is said. In practice what said most to Wittgenstein, perhaps especially at this time, were works in which there was a strong sense of a moral lesson, but chastely presented. The Uhland poem praised to Engelmann, the Keller stories in general, are examples. To Parak he would rather read out a 13.Memoir (1984 ed.), p.81. Malcolm speaks of "his need for love together with the harshness that repelled love'. I speak rather of something in him that did not want love. 14."Aber in dem Wie, da liegt der ganze Unterschied,' says the Marschallin towards the end of Act I of Der Rosenkavalier: what matters is how one accepts the inevitable. 273 8Captivity and Return 1918{-20 parable by Mo$3rike than dwell on a passage where, Parak felt, Goethe managed to give literary expression to sexuality.15 This issue arose from their reading of Crime and Punishment, the question being why Dostoevsky shows only the saintly side of Sonia, while the sinful side is barely touched on, though of course it forms the essential background to scenes such as that where the prostitute reads to the murderer from the Gospels. The friends, and Wittgenstein especially, dwelt on this book for the sake of their own lives. Parak thought Wittgenstein had found Tolstoy's religion not satisfying. Too much should not be made of these changes of emphasis: Wittgenstein was to come back to Tolstoy.16 Still Dostoevsky is certainly the one cited in his later war-time diaries, and indeed just The Brothers Karamazov, which, he told Parak, was yet greater than Crime and Punishment. It was Dostoevky's "deeply religious attitude' that recommended him to Wittgenstein. Parak, with a true writer's eye, connects another of their conversations with the latter book. Wittgenstein had described himself as reborn, and Parak dismissed the hypothesis of reincarnation (because Wittgenstein had already said that it was pointless to think about, or to seek to atone for, a former life that we could not remember), but he recalled the remark when reading the last paragraph of Crime and Punishment: But now a new history commences: a story of the gradual renewing of a man, of his slow progressive regeneration, and change from one world to another_an introduction to the hitherto unknown realities of life. This then was the change in Wittgenstein that Parak believes took place. A religious conversion: a felt rebirth, which led Wittgenstein to give up all his possessions and to lead a quite different life, a life devoted to these other, inner, religious goals. Parak points to the contrast between Wittgenstein's life before and after the war in point of luxury, comfort, and the opposite. Parak attributes much to the collapse of the empire that had formed the background and base for the rise of the Wittgenstein family. Some weight must be given to this, even if Wittgenstein had known from the beginning of the war that defeat would be the outcome. The reality, no doubt, had a more powerful effect than the expectation. Another factor was that Wittgenstein needed to recover from the war: to master all those experiences a retreat inwards was required. Leavis recalled that in 1930 he had recognized Wittgen- stein as a kindred spirit, tense and electric with the experience of the war, 15.Das Ma$3rchen vom sicheren Mann as opposed to Gretchen's monologue, Wie ko$3nnt' ich sonst etc.' 16.For example, to use the Simple Tales in his teaching, itself a Tolstoyan (as well as a Dostoevskian) project. Also Wittgenstein's relation to his family and his wealth was to be more like Tolstoy's than Parak (p.14) allows. Neither were free. 274 Wittgenstein: A Life like Leavis himself.17 But perhaps most significant is what we have already observed. The war was a release to Wittgenstein. Hardship and danger concentrated his mind on the only essential thing and the demanding tasks of every day_Schwerer Dienste ta$3gliche Bewahrung, as it were_made life with his fellow men possible. He was no longer seeking what to become; he knew now what he had to be. Such, at this time, seems to have been his state of mind. Outwardly, of course, he had to become something, and the choice seemed to lie, Parak tells us, between the priesthood and the life of a schoolmaster. But four years study of theology would have been too much, and Wittgenstein planned to apply for entrance to the last year of a teachers' training college. "I'd most like to be a priest,' he told Parak, "but when I'm a teacher I can read the gospel with the children.' All this is to sum up in a few words (as that final paragraph from Dostoevsky does) a hard-won state of mind, inseparable from a deep and painful self-reproach and a sense of the sinfulness of past attitudes and actions. We have noted the passage in Ku$3gelgen where the respectable man becomes a miserable sinner. Wittgenstein understood this from his own experience. In prison camp and around that time we find him dwelling on the importance of acknowledging one's sin_Sonia urges this on Raskolnikov, and the saintly pilgrim in Tolstoy is the one prepared to admit that sin got the better of him.18 The brooding in the prison camp and the allusions to his inner state in his letters to Engelmann all fit into this pattern. A year or so later his sister expressed to Ha$3nsel her sorrow that she had as brother an unhappy saint rather than a normal human being who was happy,19 recognizing that this sort of unhappiness is one of the marks of a saint and has little to do with the gravity of any sins actually committed. It does not make sense to ascribe the title of saint in virtue of one phase in a life, but that this was a deeply religious phase in Wittgenstein's life is unmistakeable. He had always been, of course, a man of high principle; and such he remained. Examples are his request to be transferred to the Other Ranks camp at Cassino when typhoid broke out there; also a continued refusal to accept privilege, the description of which will bring us to the contacts that existed between the prison camp and the outside world. His family had, of course, been searching for him. Gretl was in Switzerland and had powerful friends among those exiled there by the war: soon too she was to be involved in the work of Mr Hoover's US Food Administration. With whatever recommendation, she wrote im- mediately in November seeking an "exchange' for Ludwig (a straight- forward release must have been meant). She had no success, but hoped 17.Personal communication. 18.Parak (p.15) speaks of the first example, Engelmann (ch. 3 of his Memoir) of the second. 19.HW to LH 13.12.20. 275 8Captivity and Return 1918{-20 he would be the better treated for her intervention.20 It seems that his exact whereabouts were not known (or became unknown again) for in a later letter she reports that her researches concerning Lukerl have come to nothing.21 By January, at any rate, contact with him seems to have been established and a little money and some cigarettes22 could be sent to him. The prisoners depended on their officers' pay, duly given them by the Italians, which was barely enough to cover messing. (For this reason Wittgenstein's promotion to Oberleutnant, gazetted for 1 November, was of importance.) But more than this was sought. In March a distant relation in Zurich (the same Elisabeth Gra$3zer who had forwarded letters between the Wittgensteins and Russell) wrote on the prisoner's behalf to the Secretary of State at the Vatican, requesting a release on compassionate grounds_Wittgenstein's mother having lost all other sons but one (and that one maimed in the war) and being in the poorest of health. No one in the family, said Frau Gra$3zer, knew of this application.23 Would the cardinal use his great influence? The cardinal was all politeness and attention. Signora Gra$3zer's was a noble and charitable act on behalf of an afflicted mother and the Holy See would do whatever was in its power to help: and, in fact, he did have letters sent to the Archabbot of Cassino (in case anything could be done locally) and, more effectively, to Baron Monti, the head of the Fondo per il culto (the usual channel for communications between the Holy See and the royal government, not yet officially recognized). He in turn invoked the Prime Minister's office, and though family reasons (being universally applicable) could not be recognized as grounds for release, Wittgenstein, along with two (only two) other Austrians, was to be given a special medical examination to determine whether release was indicated, with an assurance that generous criteria would be applied. Profound expressions of thanks and paternal benediction were exchanged. Wittgenstein's mother, finally hearing of it, was overjoyed. They had reckoned without the prisoner himself. He refused any exceptional treatment and would return only when his comrades could.24 He attributed the intervention to his family and was later25 to reproach his mother, though she was probably in this case innocent. Wittgenstein was dogged by privilege and by his friends: from England too efforts were made to obtain favours for him. Russell applied 20.GS to HW 30.11.18. 21.GS to HW 25.12.18 (unless this is actually a 1917 letter). 22.By now, it seems, Wittgenstein did smoke. Testimony of Arvid Sjo$3gren. 23.The correspondence is contained in two files of the Secretariat of State, 1914 ~G~U~E~R~R~A, 244{-2a, 89174 and 91234, copies of which were, with great kindness, made available to me by Dottoressa Liliana Albertazzi of Trent, their discoverer. 24.Parak, p.12 25.T.Stonborough, personal communication. 276 Wittgenstein: A Life to Keynes who was in Paris at the Peace Conference and to Trevelyan, who had served in the Red Cross in Italy; Keynes applied to the Italian authorities in Paris (writing to Wittgenstein through them), Trevelyan to the scientist and explorer Filippo de Filippi.26 There was little hope, though some, of obtaining Wittgenstein's release, much of securing permission for him to exchange learned correspondence and not merely short postcards. In the event, it was also made possible for him to obtain books, even bound books; hence the request to Engelmann for Frege's Grundgesetze:27 Russell's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy was sent in gatherings to speed it through the post.28 Russell's book was actually sent in Keynes's name: Wittgenstein's English friends thought it prudent not to stress that Russell, the conscientious objector, was his sponsor. And so contacts with his real friends, and in some measure his real life, began again for Wittgenstein. If only Russell would come and visit him! "If you were on the other end of the world and I could come to you I would do it,' he said in a letter,29 which Russell had copied for circulation to all who might help. Of course (and characteristically) Wittgenstein was being unrealistic: of all visitors to be allowed (and there were none) Russell would have been the last. As always work and life went hand in hand: it was to explain his work that Wittgenstein burned to talk to Russell. His life's work, and he longed to see it published. It was galling to lug the completed work round in captivity and to see nonsense left a clear field outside and equally galling to think that no one would understand his work even if it did get printed! So he exclaimed in a letter to Russell.30 Russell had already been sent the typescript, but the slender hope that he would understand it had now vanished: so at least the content of Russell's book (newly arrived, as we have just seen) suggested to Wittgenstein. Not a trace of understanding of the ideas on logic dictated to Moore in April 1914!31 But for all this pessimism, the contact with friends and with philosophy was reviving. In May and June he speaks of inner suffering, of not working, of constant thought about what chance there was that he might become a decent human being:32 by August he could even support Frege's letter, revealing that he too "had not understood a word' of the typescript sent him.33 Wittgenstein tells his sister Mining that he 26.Letters between the persons named, in the Bertrand Russell Archive, McMaster University. 27.LW to PE 24.5.19. 28.LW to BR 12 6 19, with note in Briefe, p.87. 29.LW to BR 13.3.19. 30.LW to BR 12.6.19. 31.See note 33 p. 236 above (and Moore's diary (20.1.15)) for Russell's failure to obtain an explanation of Wittgenstein's views from Moore. 32.LW to PE 24.5.19 and to HW 25.6.19. 33.LW to BR 18.8.19. 277 8Captivity and Return 1918{-20 can now work and we see some results in his explanations sent to Russell.34 The content of the book we shall consider elsewhere, but it is striking that Wittgenstein is intent on reducing the message he has to a single formula: The main point is the theory of what can be expressed (gesagt) by propositions_i.e. by language_(and, which comes to the same, what can be thought) and what cannot be expressed by propositions, but only shown (gezeigt); which I believe is the cardinal problem of philosophy. It is relevant too that this insistence on the limits to the expression of thought come at a time when more than at any other life decisions were called for. Rumour and news now indicated an early return to Austria, which Wittgenstein had feared would not be before Christmas.35 They had come down to Cassino in cattle-trucks, Parak relates, now they were to return in second-class carriages. The Italian guards left at Villach. Parak changed on to a train for Lower Austria; Wittgenstein went with the other Viennese. The two were never to meet again. Wittgenstein's official date of release was 26 August 1919, but his first letter from Vienna is dated 25 August: he tells Engelmann that he is not very well_es geht mir nicht gut_as far as his state of mind is concerned.36 That this return was a crisis in his life will hardly be doubted. One of the great Wandlungen or transformations that marked his career, like that of his father, was preparing. So his sister Hermine felt (Familien- erinnerungen, p.111). It was only natural. The war, which had saved his life, which had served him as a machine for living decently was over. He had to find his feet somehow,37 to find a place for himself in the world, not simply one prescribed by war or captivity. It seems in the logic of things that he had to leave the ambience of his family, and at this time he could not do it by going abroad. They were poorer for the war, no doubt, but incomparably better off than the poor of Vienna in that harsh post-war winter of inflation and starvation. He had gone into the army to suffer with the people: he could not now return to privilege. Previously he had had various valid excuses: that the money was not his own but his father's, that he was doing logic, the thing that he was good at: now logic had been brought to completion. He must now manifest in his life what he had tried to convey, so indirectly, in his writing. 34.ibid. and LW to HW 1.8.19. 35.LW to HW 19.7.19. 36.LW to PE 25.8.19. 37.Mich wieder zu finden, "to find something of myself again', in LW to PE 2.9.19. 278 Wittgenstein: A Life So much to provide an outline of the motivation for the two first steps we know of after his return. He gave away his money to his brother and sisters; and he began to live in lodgings found for him in various houses. His address was no longer to be the address of "the rich Wittgensteins': he dissociated himself from them, without losing touch, like some latter day Alexis, living below stairs in his father's house, intactam sponsam relinquens. The parallel that his sister Hermine draws38 is with another Alexis, Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov. Alyosha has no money, but unlike the careful Ivan, will never lack what is necessary, since others will gladly give to him, and he, just as naturally, will accept. We shall see that this last point is true and important, but true with qualifications. The facts then were that he insisted on a division of his possessions. At first he simply came to the bank and announced, to general conster- nation, that he did not want his money.39 Long discussions with the family lawyers were necessary before they could be brought to realize, as one put it, that he wanted to commit financial suicide.40 In the course of these he insisted over and over again that in no way was the money to be kept aside, covertly reserved for him, as Onkel Paul explosively recommended.41 All must go ahead as if Ludwig had not survived his father. (It seems there was an exception made in that Gretl, who had not suffered so much financially in the war, was not to be included in the new division.)42 We find the same arrangements repeated in 1926 when the widow's portion of his mother fell to be divided:43 once again Ludwig was insistent that nothing should slip through to him, and his insistence when something was important to him was really formidable. There were those who smiled_"Ah sooy!' said Adolf Loos_when they heard that the gift was in favour of Wittgenstein's own family, but from several points of view it was the only possible solution. The money was not a heap of gold but a share in a set of interlocking properties and portfolios. A stranger or a charitable institution could not easily be a shareholder. Besides Wittgenstein's aim was to free himself of his inheritance, not to use it, however indirectly, for his own purposes. Finally, as he told Engelmann,44 he did not think any good would come of devoting his wealth to humanitarian purposes. 38.Familienerinnerungen, p.110. The habit of seeing themselves as akin to characters in their favourite books went on in the family for several generations. Some were so named or nicknamed_Mining herself, for example, and among nephews we find a Pierre and a thinly disguised Andre$0, also referred to as der Sohn Bernhard, the "son who can do no wrong' in Soll und Haben. 39.PE to F.von Hayek 8.3.53. 40.A phrase reported by Mr R.Rhees. 41.It was long before he could be reconciled with his nieces over this failure, as he saw it. 42.The family account, but confirmed by Wittgenstein in an undated letter to his sister Hermine (apparently after the crash of 1929). 43.Papers previously in the possession of Mrs Clara Sjo$3gren. 44.Letter to Hayek already cited. 279 8Captivity and Return 1918{-20 There was no criticism of his sisters in all this. They were sharply aware of the responsibilities of privilege. Gretl was probably at the time touring America campaigning for aid to starving Austria. She had sent in a trainload of condensed milk at her own expense from Switzerland. More benefactions were to follow. Hermine, in hospitals during the war, was now training herself to provide a day home for poor boys. Indeed later Wittgenstein was often to avail himself of the help of his sisters, freely given, for some charitable project of his own, always a personal project, be it noted, something undertaken for and by an individual, not a subvention to a charitable organization. Later still, similarly, Wittgen- stein would apply to Keynes for assistance in some plan: Keynes took it good-humouredly,45 which shows that friends could accept in Wittgen- stein's case the proposition that it was right for him to use their money but wrong for him to keep his own. Was there more behind this personal imperative than the need to share hardship? In this context a later notebook entry of his has been quoted: he would not like to see his family poor, because in their case they would be losing such power as they had.46 It is implausible though that Wittgenstein meant to renounce power for himself: rather he wanted only what power he could produce for himself from his own personality. (We shall also later see him usually aware of what was his due in the way of earnings, frugal in spending them, generous in disbursing them as anonymously as possible.) This matter of his money settled, he had to adopt a way of life. A religious life was not yet finally excluded. Ha$3nsel used to tell of a visit to a friary (Brothers of Charity or Franciscans, both were envisaged) where Wittgenstein was put off by a surly porter; and there seem to have been a number of tentative inquiries, such as are no rarity for religious houses. In December when Russell met Wittgenstein (the meeting will be described later in the chapter), he found him incredibly changed. I had felt in his book a flavour of mysticism, but was astonished when I found that he has become a complete mystic. He reads people like Kierkegaard and Angelus Silesius and he seriously contemplates becoming a monk. (BR to OM 20.12.19) Still, Russell judged that this was "an idea not an intention'; Wittgen- stein's intention was to be a teacher. 45.More good-humouredly than Wittgenstein could easily believe, as LW to JMK (May 1929) shows. 46.From a 1931 notebook: quoted in LW, sein Leben in Bildern und Texten (Nedo and Ranchetti), p.148. 280 Wittgenstein: A Life If not religion, then teaching: so he had said in the prison camp.47 In some ways it fitted his temperament very well: the Wittgensteins had, we have noted, a gift or a need to instruct, and a tendency to see all education as moral education. The two sisters, Mining with her day-home, and Gretl with her studies of psychology, exemplify it. Moreover we have already seen that Ludwig may have thought of himself as a sort of Alyosha, reading from the Gospel and inspiring his group of boys for all their lives. And yet, was it not a misuse of his talents, the use, Mining said, of a precision tool to open a packing case? "You remind me,' he said in a characteristic simile, "of someone looking through a window who can't make sense of the strange movements of a passer-by outside. He has no idea of the violence of the storm outside nor of the difficulty the other has simply in staying on his feet.' So he did see this choice of profession as demanded by his inner problems, not those (as has gratuitously been suggested)48 of life amid the moral temptations of Vienna, for they were problems he had felt (and a decision he had come to) in the prison camp. They were his perpetual problems, exacerbated by the depressions of a defeated country. Was he honest enough with himself and with others? Could he endure others and their meanness (that also more evident in times of demoralization) without undue impatience? How could he react to the affection of his family felt to be stifling yet not brusquely to be rejected? These, and every scruple of a conscience that both aspired too high and criticized too minutely, we have been able to observe repeatedly. Why should they now not lead him into a sort of renunciation of the world, into the choice of a straightforward occupation, where there was no need to be only half-convinced of its value, no ambiguity about one's relation with one's fellow-men, and, as in the religious life, a certain freedom from distraction which was at the same time a freedom to devote oneself to an inner life of meditation and spiritual development? And what other such occupation was open to him? There is every sign that he took seriously the lesson of his own as yet unpublished book_namely that he had now thought his way through to the end of philosophy and had nothing to add: he said as much to Keynes and Ramsey a year or two later. "I have no longer any strong inner drive towards that sort of activity. Everything that I really had to say, I have said, and so the spring has run dry.'49 In practice there was in any case no way of doing philosophy without returning to England, which could not be envisaged in 1919. Not only had he no standing in Austrian 47.This shows incidentally that it was not socialism and the Austrian Schulreform that inspired his choice of profession. 48.This hypothesis appears in W.W.Bartley III, Wittgenstein. 49.LW to JMK 4.7.24. 281 8Captivity and Return 1918{-20 academic life, but he despised it: showing his, or any, philosophical work to a philosophy professor would be casting pearls..., he said.50 Altogether he had little taste now for Austrian intellectual life. His letters to Ficker are irritable and a meeting with Loos, to whom he must have hurried just after his return, was a severe disappointment: I was horrified and nauseated. He has become infected with the most virulent bogus intellectualism! He gave me a pamphlet about a proposed "Fine Arts Office', in which he speaks about a sin against the Holy Ghost.51 This surely is the limit! I was already a bit depressed when I went to Loos, but that was the last straw!52 Friends told also of a meeting with Kraus (surely not before the war) where Wittgenstein could not, or did not, restrain himself from saying, "Of course, with your repulsive vanity, you wouldn't understand something like that.'53 Teaching may have been an honest choice, but was it itself a poor substitute for the religious life? It is possible to read such a view into Wittgenstein's remarks when he finds himself in the same state of mind as Engelmann: What happens, I believe, is this: we do not advance towards our goal by the direct road_for this we (or at any rate I) have not got the strength. Instead we walk up all sorts of tracks and byways, and so long as we are making some headway we are in reasonably good shape. But whenever such a track comes to an end we are up against it; only then do we realize that we are not at all where we ought to be.54 If so, this would be an instance of Wittgenstein's failing because of lack of faith. It would explain his later feeling that he had been called but had failed to respond. Still, some of the time it looks as if he thought he could become "a monk in the world' as the starets desired for Alyosha. For the immediate decision, a short stay at Neuwaldegg and a longer period on the Hochreith were enough (he left Engelmann guessing); then by 25 September he was already enrolled in the Lehrerbildungsanstalt (the 50.LW to LvF 22.1.20. 51.Failure by the state to recognize a true artist: so Loos in his preface to richtlinien fu$3r ein kunstamt, 1919. 52.LW to PE 2.9.19. Verschmockt, "bogus beyond words', sums up pungently Wittgenstein's reaction to what he saw as profanation and hypocrisy. A dedication by Loos in 1924 shows that the two did not quite lose contact: he thanks Wittgenstein for the ideas he has had from him (Anregungen) and hopes that his friendly feelings are returned. (Ins Leere gesprochen, copy in the possession of the late Arvid Sjo$3gren.) 53.Heinrich Groag, personal communication. Engelmann also speaks of a meeting, and says that Kraus took Wittgenstein for a madman, so violent was he towards Kraus's acolytes. 54.LW to PE 16.11.19: the interpretation is that of K.Wu$3nsche: Der Volksschullehrer Ludwig Wittgenstein, pp. 44f. 282 Wittgenstein: A Life Teachers' Training College_"so-called', as Wittgenstein ironically adds) in the third district, just across the street from where he and Engelmann would one day build a house for Mrs Stonborough. He was also lodged nearby. "My circumstances have changed quite generally, except that I am no wiser,' he darkly says. The new address was to be changed twice within a month. The same letter ruefully records the difficulty of the regression involved in attending such a college: So here I am sitting in a schoolroom again, which sounds funnier than it is. In fact I find it terribly hard; I can no longer behave like a grammar school boy, and, funny as it sounds, the humiliation is so great for me that I often think I can hardly bear it. (LW to PE 25.9.19) In fact the normal student at such an establishment would be a young pupil-teacher, with not even a Matura like Wittgenstein's, let alone a trace of his high culture or of the wide frame of reference that his studies and the war had given him. One is reminded of Ignatius of Loyola learning Latin in Barcelona at the same age: "Great captain turned schoolboy' as the hymn has it. But, for Wittgenstein, it was not in fact to be Linz all over again. The director recognized the distinction of this strange ex-serviceman (not a quite unexpected figure in the aftermath of war) and would gladly draw him into his office for conversation. His intelligence and the power of his personality always won him a general respect in educational circles. His background too was guessed at: it was here that he dissociated himself from the rich Wittgensteins, claiming to be only distantly related to them.55 But this seemed to him a difficulty, and of course his dissimulation made it worse. The work at the college was simple enough. Wittgenstein was excused all academic subjects on the evidence of his Matura, leaving him only with specifically pedagogic subjects to cover, including singing, organ, violin,56 rural economy, and calligraphy. A letter written in rather stiff Kurrentschrift, Gothic script, is preserved in Ha$3nsel's family: Wittgenstein all his life wrote a fair round Roman. The certificate from the college characterizes his performance in this field as befriedigend, the third mark of five: in all the other subjects named, lobenswert, the second. Lobenswert too were his practice lessons_in some of them we hear of his reading fairy-tales to the children: "It pleases them and relieves the strain on me.'57 55.LW to LH (September 1919). 56.Actually we later find him playing by preference the clarinet, learnt for this purpose. 57.LW to PE 19.2.20. 283 8Captivity and Return 1918{-20 The textbooks used in the college are well described by Wu$3nsche58 as containing generalities designed to make the new teacher think through his aims in each lesson, prepare his material, look round for associations and devices to impress it upon the memory of his pupils. All of this Wittgenstein in his later practice conscientiously did. Less clear, and perhaps not relevant at this point, is whether his aim like that of traditional pedagogy was the assimilation of rehearsed material, or rather the winning of new skills through activity. It will be seen that this question, essentially the question whether he subscribed to the ideas of the new Schulreform, must be answered with a yes and a no. In practice he thought out his own methods of teaching, certainly departing from tradition in this, but there was also much in the Schulreform that he rejected, notably its attitude towards discipline and the voice to be given to children in the running of a school.59 But that is for discussion in the context of his work when trained: for the present no more than lip-service, and little enough of that, will have been paid to its ideas in his college. And the practice of the college was one of training in the strict sense (Abrichtung rather than Bildung, hence perhaps Wittgenstein's irony noted above). Certainly in his later philosophy and in his attitude towards children, we can see him attaching importance to this as an element in human thought as well as in social life. His own life in this period oscillated between involvement with his family and holding them at arm's length. His lodgings near the college were soon exchanged for the house of a family friend in Hietzing. Mima Sjo$3gren, born Hermine Bacher, was the widow of a Swedish engineer, director of one of Karl Wittgenstein's steel mills: her father had been director of another. She had been a close friend of Ludwig's sisters since his early childhood. Now her sons too became part of the extended family, partly because it was felt she needed help and guidance in bringing up the boys alone. The Sjo$3grens shared, therefore, in the carefully planned festivities and they visited the Hochreith in the summer or the various large Vienna houses at the weekend. Mima would make small artistic contributions on these occasions, but more than that she was among them, the amateurs, much nearer to a serious artist, and was appreciated as such. Her gifts are still evident in a series of portraits. In photographs Mima stands out as an attractive and striking woman even alongside Margaret Stonborough. Two of the sons, Arvid and Talla, impinged in different ways on Ludwig.60 Talla, tall, handsome and amiable, visibly a Swede, was typecast, in the way families have, or 58.op.cit., pp. 49ff. 59.See E.C.Hargrove: "Wittgenstein, Bartley, and the Glo$3ckel School Reform', JHistPhil 18 (1980) 453ff. 60.These impressions are largely based on the recollections of contemporaries, including the late Arvid Sjo$3gren himself. 284 Wittgenstein: A Life the Wittgenstein family at all events, as the less serious character: everyone would like him, but there would always be the problem what he would do He was an obvious victim for Mrs Stonborough's benevolent management of the lives of others. So he was seen at all events. (His part in Ludwig's life was to come much later.) Arvid, tall also but heavier, was quiet and offered more resistance. He had a candour of soul and self-sufficiency that promised to take him through life. Something in his seriousness, the literalness and directness of his vision, attracted Ludwig_they had met before only in wartime leaves, when Arvid was noisier, a schoolboy. Now he became the frequent companion_we shall see that in due course he accompanied Ludwig on his trips abroad. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship, which continued even after Arvid was obliged to wean himself away: Ludwig demanded too much, he came to think. His friends had to be too attached to him, too absorbed in the friendship. Ludwig talked a great deal, certainly, about one's life, but needed a lot himself. He was put out if he arrived for a visit and the lamp outside was not lighted or when he found Arvid preoccupied by some carpentry he was doing for one of Ludwig's sisters. You needed calm to be Ludwig's friend. But Arvid had this and, just for the present, as we have seen, it suited him to be a disciple of Ludwig's, perhaps the first friend that can be so categorized, Pinsent and Engelmann being on a more equal footing than this almost nephew. A disciple, but a thinker too: Ludwig always saw this side of Arvid. In every book, every incident of life, that they discussed, Arvid would have his own perception. The influence then was a subtle one, not the imprinting of one personality on another. One practical decision that Ludwig contributed to was regretted later by some family members: he advised Arvid not to study, with the result that the boy became a mechanic rather than an engineer. It was to happen again and again that younger members of their circle were advised to take up simple practical occupations by Ludwig and his sister Gretl, and it obviously jumped with Ludwig's own inclinations at this period: the idea of an academic study of anything important is explicitly rejected in his book. Remarkable, though, is the willingness to intervene in another's life. "The older generation,' Thomas Stonborough, a nephew, used to say, "didn't stop short at the other person's rights.'61 Later we find (by inference from a letter of Arvid's)62 Ludwig chiding Arvid for not being concerned for ("not giving a shit for') the salvation or spiritual welfare of his friends. Arvid answers that he has to let others, even his fiance$0e, go 61.Personal communication. 62.AS to LW n.d. (perhaps 1931): Da{s ich ein bi{schen auf das Seelenheil meiner Freunde schei{sen, mag stimmen. (This sort of vigour of language was characteristic of Wittgenstein's spoken expressions of opinion, as many friends relate.) The first half of Wittgenstein's letter had been concerned with Arvid's virtues. 285 8Captivity and Return 1918{-20 their own way: in his best moments he can serve as a signpost (which just stands there). If Ludwig was more than a signpost in this matter of higher education, Arvid at the end of his life himself talked as if it was somehow meant to be so. Others regretted it more than he. To this house, then, and these preoccupations, Ludwig came as a lodger in or towards November. His help with the education of the boys may have fallen in with the plans of others, his distancing himself from the Alleegasse with his own. Fruit of the stay was the lifelong friendship we have touched on_it gave him first of all company on a journey to Holland to meet Russell. But fruit also was a lifelong rift and awkwardness in his relations with Mima. Arvid himself thought she had fallen in love with Ludwig. Surely there must have been some difficulty for her in negotiating his need for warmth and his aversion to contact, the attraction and repulsion of Schopenhauer's porcupines, which Wittgenstein seems to have felt especially with women. And he was now at his most sensitive_we shall see it in the difficulties his sister Hermine has in dealing with him: easier for her to write to Dr Ha$3nsel. At all events, Ludwig left Hietzing and returned to the third district, a change of home "accompanied by operations which I can never remember without a sinking feeling'.63 Thereafter relations were difficult: to be sure, a visit from her to him a year or so later was rather carefully planned, but in general his family were careful not to invite Mima when he was likely to be there; and we find her son Arvid doing the converse in an undated letter more than a decade later.64 The episode is characteristic in its mixture of what Wittgenstein, nearly always lamenting them, called inner and outer aspects. In this case someone else's behaviour or expectations impinged on him, and he had to carry out operations on the environment and on himself to become master of the situation, operations which gravely affected the inner life that he was striving to put in order. It is in such a light that we must survey the main areas of preoccupation for him in this year of transition, a year in which it was only natural that he should have the greatest difficulty in finding his feet, as his family indeed saw. The first area, already partly covered, was that of family and friends. Detached from his family, he had yet to spend Saturday afternoon regularly with his mother,65 and this presented a difficulty for reasons he had described to Parak in the prison camp. Ha$3nsel and his wife provided a refuge, when measles or other family preoccupations would allow:66 for this Hermine Wittgenstein thanked 63.LW to PE 24.4.20. 64.AS to LW n.d.: "If Mama should be away just at the time when you're here,... I'd ask you to come to us.' At this point, mid-1930s?, Mima shared the Perrongasse house with her son and daughter-in-law. 65.LW to LH 24.9.19. 66.For the measles see LW to LH (March 1920). 286 Wittgenstein: A Life them most touchingly, and also made presents of a kind most useful in days of hardship, with the most tactful explanation that these latter could of course not be regarded as in any way fulfilling her duty of thanks.67 Ha$3nsel, then, though not too often; and occasional visits to the sculptor Drobil; and a very occasional visit from Paul Engelmann,68 with whom Wittgenstein felt he could really talk. This was hardly enough: in March, after a visit to Russell which falls into another context, Wittgenstein wrote: How much I'd like to see you again! I'm no longer in any condition to acquire new friends and I'm losing my old ones. It's terribly sad. Nearly every day I remember poor David Pinsent. Because, however odd it sounds, I'm too stupid for nearly everybody. (LW to BR 19.3.20) His way of thinking, perhaps, made no sense for most people. (Arvid, the new friend, was an exception.) And yet his aim must be to accept others. Perhaps this helps us to understand his cry, to Engelmann this time, "Normal human beings are a balm to me, and a torment at the same time.'69 The second area of preoccupation was the college and his training. We have seen the humiliations involved here were not easy for him and we find him in January 1920 both writing to Engelmann that he was in a state that was terrifying for him70 and appealing to Ha$3nsel for advice and even help: Things are not going particularly well for me, internally, because relations with my fellow-men constantly preoccupy me in an unpleasant manner. And so I toss around in my head the question whether I should stay here or go away, but still have come to no end-result. (LW to LH 16.1.20) It looks as if this led to one of the attempts to enter a religious house, and thus that the attempt had at least some of its origin in a dissatisfaction with how he was treated in the college (perhaps this is what he meant by das Meritorische meiner Angelegenheit, the merits or details of his case, where he could not be helped)71_but the attempt will have had some of its origin also (which is most important) in his own inability to accept or deal with this circumstance. Inner or outer? It is impossible to say, and when Wittgenstein speaks of having contemplated taking his own life "not from my despair about my own badness, but for purely external 67.HW to LH, a number of letters from 1919{-20, printed in Wu$3nsche: op.cit, pp. 327{-9. 68.In the other scale we have sixteen letters LW to PE in the year in question. 69.LW to PE 16.11.19. 70.LW to PE 26.1.20. 71.LW to PE 21.6.20. 287 8Captivity and Return 1918{-20 reasons',72 it may have been circumstances like those at the college, which have a strong inner element, that he meant. It is perhaps significant that this letter to Engelmann is the very one already quoted which speaks of advancing, directly or indirectly, towards a goal. For a period in January Wittgenstein felt that rather than advancing, he was vegetating.73 A third area of preoccupation was the closing, so to speak, of the former phase in his life, the attempt to publish his work.74 Here too some feeling that he was not getting his due was inevitable, for he was exposed to nearly every ill that authors are born to. Immediately on his return from captivity, he took what was probably the third typescript75 of his work to Braumu$3ller, who had been the publisher of Otto Weininger. Some recommendation from a philosopher was requested, which he easily persuaded Russell to provide. This received, Braumu$3ller was prepared to take the book, but only if Wittgenstein would pay for the paper and the printing. Wittgenstein, however, had not got the money: he could indeed obtain it, but, as he told Ficker, I don't want to, because I think it's not decent behaviour, from a social point of view, to force a book on to the world (of which the publisher is a part) in this way. My job was to write the book: its acceptance by the world must proceed in the normal fashion.76 A fair enough reaction. But (as related in the letter just quoted though with a slight ambiguity as to the timing) Wittgenstein had also turned to "a professor in Germany' (Frege, obviously) in hope to have his work published in a periodical there.77 Frege's failure to understand a word of the work seems to have been overlooked, but not for long, since there ensued an exchange of correspondence which left Wittgenstein "thorough- ly exhausted from giving what are purely and simply explanations'.78 In the end (we have only Wittgenstein's own account of the matter) Frege 72.LW to PE 16.11.19. 73.LW to BR 19.1.20. 74.Most of the information that now follows, and much more, is contained in G.H. von Wright: "The origin of Wittgenstein's Tractatus', an introduction to Prototractatus, reprinted in his Wittgenstein (1982). 75.One was certainly with Russell, another probably with Frege. 76.LW to LvF (mid-October 1919). For this section the references can generally best be found in von Wright's essay just cited. 77.Beitra$3ge zur Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus, where Frege's "Der Gedanke' (sent to Wittgenstein in the prison camp) had been published. Wittgenstein's letters to Frege were lost in the Second War. We have only Heinrich Scholz's notes on their number and general content. These record about ten items of correspondence from the prison camp (among them this request), and four in the autumn following. (Frege's letters to Wittgenstein are also a sad loss, and a strange one. In the 1930s Wittgenstein told Scholz that he had only letters of a personal nature from Frege and was anxious to keep them. But nothing of this nature was found among his papers, though many personal letters from others were.) 78.LW to BR 6.10.19. 288 Wittgenstein: A Life wanted him to "mangle the work from beginning to end, and in short make it a different work altogether',79 another impossible condition. Now it was Ficker's turn. Was there any chance of publication in Der Brenner? If so, the manuscript would be sent. For the present I will only say this much: the work is strictly philosophical and at the same time literary: but there's no gassing in it. Gassing, das Schwefeln, was the great danger both in literature and in philosophy and the only way to get a true view of just the questions that Ficker and Kraus were concerned about was to banish it. Wittgenstein's next letter to Ficker has often been quoted: My work consists of two parts: the one presented here plus all that I have not written. And it is precisely this second part that is the important one. My book draws limits to the sphere of the ethical from the inside as it were, and I am convinced that this is the ONLY rigorous way of drawing those limits. In short, I believe that where many others today are just gassing, I have managed in my book to put everything firmly into place by being silent about it. "To put everything firmly into place'_a bold claim. No wonder that Ficker was not expected to see this at once. No wonder, perhaps, if he failed to see it. At any rate he excused himself to Wittgenstein, at first (evidently) expressing some doubt whether Der Brenner was the right place for the work, but offering to show it to a professor of philosophy (perhaps a teacher in a Gymnasium). A fierce letter_a Brandbrief,80 Wittgenstein later called it_was the answer. I agree with you: I myself don't know where a home can be found for my work. If only I myself could find a home somewhere else and not in this lousy world. As far as I'm concerned you can show the manuscript to your philosophy professor (even though showing a philosophical work to a philosophy professor is the same as casting pearls...). However he won't understand a word. And now just one more request: make it quick and painless for me. Tell me no immediately rather than ever so slowly: that's Austrian delicacy and my nerves are at the moment not quite strong enough to endure it. (LW to LvF 22.11.19) Ficker (as can be seen from Wittgenstein's later letters) immediately offered to be the publisher of last resort, despite the unusual character of the work and the consequent risk to his small publishing house. Again an offer that Wittgenstein could not accept: he would not risk "the existence 79.LW to LvF in the letter just cited. 80.This usually means a peremptory letter, e.g. a dun's. 289 8Captivity and Return 1918{-20 of any human being whatsoever' for the publication of his book. It would be different if Ficker himself thought the book worth it. Any book, even if it's written with absolute honesty, is from one point of view worthless: because really nobody need write a book, given that there are quite other things to do in the world. On the other hand I think I can say that if you're going to print Dallago, Haecker, etc. then you can print my book too. (LW to LvF 4.12.19) Here Wittgenstein's preoccupation with das Meritorische seiner Angelegen- heit, with the merits of his case, is very intelligible. To be noted rather is the kindness with which he overcomes his resentment: And now: all best wishes and don't fret yourself on my account. Everything is going to turn out all right.81 Similarly in January we find him telling Engelmann that Ficker will lose all he has if he does not stop publication of Der Brenner: Kann man ihm helfen?, Can anything be done for him?, is Wittgenstein's immediate reaction.82 It was always his gift, or his curse, to respond at full strength in whichever direction: incapable of half-tones himself, he was impatient of them in others. His despondency is intelligible too:83 now he had been rejected, as it were, by Kraus (through Jahoda), by Weininger (through Braumu$3ller), by Frege, and by Ficker. There was some possibility of Insel Verlag, since Rilke was ready to intervene on his behalf, but (perhaps correctly, since nothing came of it) Wittgenstein seems not to have put much faith in it. There remained whatever hope he might derive from prospective visits to Russell and Frege (for both were planned, and the former at least was eagerly anticipated). The visit to Russell is a high point in this year. Perhaps because we see Wittgenstein intensely engaged in the "active use of his reason', which only certain persons made possible for him,84 and because on this occasion we can see him through other eyes, less jaundiced than his own. Russell had discussed the book sent him with Nicod, a brilliant young French philosopher of mathematics, and with Dorothy Wrinch, a pupil and prote$0ge$0e, later an eminent crystallographer.85 Now he needed a 81.LW to LvF 5.12.19, though with the sardonic postscript, aptly dated 6.12.19, "By the way is there a Krampus (St.Nicholas's shadow figure) to haul off naughty publishers?' 82.LW to PE 26.1.20. 83.Whether this was factor that led to thoughts of suicide is discussed below: the dates do not quite fit, since on 16 November when he wrote to Engelmann about such thoughts, he had not yet had Ficker's first negative letter. 84.He himself attributes this power also to Engelmann, LW to PE 29.12.19. 85.LW to PE 26.1.20. Most of these details, confirmed as here by letters, are most easily found in Russell's Autobiography, vol. 2, pp. 95ff. 290 Wittgenstein: A Life discussion with Wittgenstein himself, and they decided on Holland for the meeting as being a neutral country . It may also have played a role that a cousin of Wittgenstein's was Austrian ambassador there. The decision, in any case, was made in October, and the procuring of a passport and an entry visa was not altogether straightforward. There was also, as can be imagined, some difficulty for Wittgenstein in financing the trip: both his renunciation of his own wealth and the general currency difficulties of those days will have contributed. Wittgenstein therefore asked Russell to sell for him all the books and furniture that he had left stored in Cambridge since before the war. In fact Russell bought it all (at a valuation). Some of the furniture was described above in connexion with Wittgenstein's rooms in 1912, and the books (now the property of the Bertrand Russell Archive) have in this way fortunately been preserved to give us an idea of Wittgenstein's exacting pre-war taste, as I have tried to show above. "The best bargain I ever made', said Russell, for they were worth more than the Cambridge dealer supposed, who disliked the design of the furniture.86 Russell arrived in The Hague early in December. Wittgenstein turned up, the first opportunity, it seems, on 12 December. He brought Arvid Sjo$3gren with him for company. Russell meanwhile had been joined by Dora Black, who came from Paris to discuss their future together. But the meeting of the two we are chiefly concerned with was exactly like pre-war Cambridge: Wittgenstein has arrived_just the same as ever_it is a great joy to see him_he is so full of logic that I can hardly get him to talk about anything personal. He is very affectionate and if anything a little more sane than before the war. He came before I was up and hammered at my door till I woke. Since then he has talked logic without ceasing for 4 hours...87 And so it continued for a week. They went through the book point by point and Russell found Wittgenstein "glorious and wonderful, with a pasionate purity I have never seen equalled.'88 Wittgenstein too was delighted, the more so because Russell promised to get his work published in England, in German and English, doing the translation and writing an introduction himself. Meanwhile Dora Black worked on free thought in Dutch libraries and Arvid filled the time as best he could. All four would meet for meals, where the conversation (in Dora Russell's recollection) was superficial: Russell says Wittgenstein was quite witty, which perhaps comes to the 86.We know this fact, and the price paid (#80) from correspondence with Jolley (the dealer) in the Russell Archives (File W 51). 87.BR to Colette (Lady Constance Malleson) Friday (12.12.19). 88.BR to the same (16.12.19). 291 8Captivity and Return 1918{-20 same thing. As regards the war Wittgenstein gave the impression of being both a patriot and a pacifist. He spoke of having fraternized with Russians on the Eastern Front and of his admiration for them. Wittgenstein was very proud, Russell said, and would not mention the privations of life in Vienna, or would laugh at them. He had no greatcoat but only a little mackintosh cape with no warmth in it. We have already mentioned how astonished Russell was by the depth of Wittgenstein's mysticism. He suggested that what Wittgenstein liked best in mysticism was its power to make him stop thinking: but Wittgenstein would not agree. Still it was a happy meeting, as both men show in their letters at the time. (Russell's memoir89 written later when differences had sharpened gives a more satirical view.) Wittgenstein was at his best practically too, as he soon had to show, for Arvid contracted a severe influenza. The visit to Frege was cancelled and the two had to make their way back to Vienna by the uncertain trains of postwar Germany. At Passau it turned out that there were no passenger trains to Austria before the Christmas holiday, but Wittgenstein, with the force he was capable of, saw to it that room was found for them on a goods train, and on it he looked after his friend and brought him safely home. For the publication of his book there now seemed to be no difficulty (though we have already seen that he had other preoccupations in January that weighed heavily upon him). With an introduction by Russell, any publisher would accept it, so, for example, Reclam, whom some friend of Engelmann's had recommended. And it seems they indeed would have done so, and when Russell's promised introduction arrived (none too promptly for Wittgenstein's taste) at the beginning of April, Wittgenstein set about having it translated for Reclam, though he saw at once that there was much to disagree with in it both where you are critical of me and also where you are simply trying to elucidate my views. But that doesn't matter. The future will pass judgement upon us. (LW to BR 9.4.20) In the event when he saw the translation, all the refinement of Russell's style lost, he thought that nothing remained except "superficiality and misunderstanding', and so he refused to have it printed, saying to Reclam that it might serve solely for their own orientation in regard to the work. Russell was not to be angry with him...90 If Reclam should consequently refuse the work Wittgenstein would comfort himself with the following argument: 89.Autobiography, vol.2, pp.100{-1. 90.There are many affectionate phrases in this very direct letter. 292 Wittgenstein: A Life Either my piece is a work of the highest rank, or it is not a work of the highest rank. In the latter (and more probable) case I myself am in favour of its not being printed. And in the former case it's a matter of indifference whether it's printed twenty or a hundred years sooner or later. (LW to BR 6.5.20) Splendid words, but hardly the language of practical publishing. In fact Reclam did not take the book and Wittgenstein finally told Russell that he would take no more steps to publish, But if you feel like getting it printed, it is entirely at your disposal and you can do what you like with it. (Only, if you change anything in the text, indicate that the change was made by you.) (LW to BR 7.7.20) A sad letter this: it was the day he got his teacher's certificate, and could embark on that life; but he actually says: How things will go for me_how I'll endure life_God only knows. The best for me would be if I could lie down one evening and not wake up again. (But perhaps there is something better left for me.) We shall see. This brings us back to the aspect from which we originally considered the pre-publication history of Wittgenstein's book_the sort of preoc- cupation it was and the effect it had on his inner life. (The further history of its publication, which was essentially out of Wittgenstein's hands, we reserve for a chapter on the book itself.) Clearly it was a history of disappointment and irritation, but it was hardly the main determinant of his moods. It confirmed rather than caused his gloomy view of the world. He can still think of suicide and wish for death when prospects for publication look good. If it were not impossible to reconstruct the exact motives for Wittgenstein's despair in the first half of 1920, it would be intrusive. But it is a striking fact that his mind turned to thoughts of death and suicide just when he was committing to the press his book that ends in silence. (In his wartime notebooks, too, his last reflections were on the legitimacy of suicide; and in the late summer of 1918 he had faced the alternatives of killing himself and finishing his book.) The frankest and the gloomiest of his thoughts he expressed to Engelmann, and it is no accident that it was also with Engelmann that he discussed religious matters. Engelmann's thoughts on religion, he tells him. are not yet clear enough; perhaps these things cannot be said at all:91 the thought is (surely) that a written formulation is impossible_to talk face to face about religion or one's own problems with someone who 91.LW to PE 9.1.20. 293 8Captivity and Return 1918{-20 "understands man' (and such Engelmann seemed to Wittgenstein) is of course possible and was always the nearest thing to a remedy in Wittgenstein's case. To contemplate suicide was for Wittgenstein to sink low. He might be led to it by purely external circumstances, which was all the more shameful, but in that case those circumstances had affected his inner state. His misery was thus always somehow or other a result of a sense of his own baseness and rottenness; and the thought of yielding to it, as by suicide, signified a loss of faith, what Wittgenstein also called going to the devil. This paragraph is a cento drawn from his letters to Engelmann in these months, one of which describes Wittgenstein's attitude very explicitly: In fact I am in a state of mind that is terrible to me. I have been through it several times before: it is the state of not being able to get over a particular fact. It is a pitiable state, I know. But there is only one remedy that I can see and, that is of course to come to terms with that fact. But this is just like what happens when a man who can't swim has fallen into the water and flails about with his hands and feet and feels that he cannot keep his head above water. That is the position I am in now. I know that to kill oneself is always a dirty thing to do. Surely one cannot will one's own destruction, and anybody who has visualized what is in practice involved in the act of suicide knows that suicide is always a rushing of one's own defences. But nothing is worse than to be forced to take oneself by surprise. Of course it all boils down to the fact that I have no faith. (LW to PE 21.6.20)92 So he wrote to Engelmann after a month's silence on Engelmann's side, a silence occasioned by despair at Wittgenstein's rejection of Russell's introduction and with it (apparently) all possibility of publishing. There is no need for us to exercise ourselves in speculation about the "particular fact': it is evidently, as usual, an amalgam of all his difficulties_with his family, in his studies, with his landlady, above all with his many failures. It is a state of mind intelligible only in one who, of course, wants to be perfect, as Wittgenstein later protested to a friend. Engelmann understood him very well, and explains it in his memoir: If I am unhappy and know that my unhappiness reflects a gross discrepancy between myself and life as it is, I have solved nothing; I shall be on the wrong track and I shall never find a way out of the chaos of my emotions and thoughts so long as I have not achieved the crucial insight 92.See also LW to PE 16.11.19 (going downhill, thoughts of suicide for external reasons), 26.12.19 (very low spirits), 26.1.20 (in a terrifying state, the help that Engelmann is), 19.2.20 (external conditions affect his morale), 30.5.20 (misery, caused by his own baseness, he has sunk to the lowest point). 294 Wittgenstein: A Life that that discrepancy is not the fault of life as it is, but of myself as I am. (Letters &c, pp.76{-7) If we take seriously Engelmann's account of what brought him and Wittgenstein together, and seriously also Wittgenstein's avowals of inner failure (taking this to be above all an awareness that he was not by nature suited to be perfect), we are as near as outsiders can be to understanding both the temptation to suicide (three brothers and his admired Weininger succumbed to it) and the fundamental betrayal of his faith that it would have represented. The multiple occasions for such a temptation that we have seen are all variant forms which this lack of self-mastery assumed.93 It was a kind of despair at the human condition: at that time and place the climate of history favoured it, but we have also been observing how its roots were set in the whole process of Wittgenstein's formation. "Well, we shall see!_', underlined as usual, was Wittgenstein's conclusion to the saddening letter last quoted, apart that is from his customary respectful greetings to Engelmann's mother. Something would happen. In fact, it came from himself: for the summer, instead of visiting Engelmann at Olmu$3tz and then going on the Hochreith, he got himself taken on as assistant gardener at Klosterneuburg: I was longing for some kind of regular work, which, of all things I can do in my present condition, is the most bearable, if I am not mistaken. (LW to PE 19.7.20) And there, indeed, he did in a quiet way flourish in the benign atmosphere of that wealthy foundation, like some great Cambridge college but with too few fellows, which dominates its little town and its wide vineyards, just far enough north of Vienna not to be easily visitable. There, even more of an Alexis now, he lived in a gardener's hut, near the canons' graveyard ("The dead don't talk,' he told Arvid), tired enough each evening not to feel unhappy, well enough fed by the head cook, who had taken him to her heart and gave him pastries, even meat sometimes, from the canons' table.94 Meanwhile his applications for a teacher's post in Lower Austria were being considered. 93.W.W.Bartley's Wittgenstein ascribes much influence to guilt over homosexual episodes in the Prater (reached nightly from distant Hietzing?). I have not paid much attention to this hypothesis (such it must be, though with what foundation is not clear). It is above all an unnecessary one, as I hope to have shown, and it is in fact totally incompatible with the frank discussion of Wittgenstein's difficulties which I for one have had with close friends of his from that time. For that matter, would Engelmann's memoirs or Wittgenstein's own later confessions be conceivable on the Bartley view? For the best refutation, however, see Rush Rhees and J.J.Stonborough (a nephew) in The Human World, 1972. 94.LW to PE 20.8.20, to LH 10.8.20. 295 8Captivity and Return 1918{-20 There we leave him for the moment and turn to his book. For himself it had been a time of crisis and his future state of mind was still dubious; but perhaps (as had been before his mind in the prison camp) a new history was commencing, a story of the gradual renewing of a man, of his gradual regeneration.