witt gen stein, leavis, and literature

8/4/2019 Witt Gen Stein, Leavis, And Literature

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Wittgenstein, Leavis, and LiteratureAuthor(s): Cyril BarrettSource: New Literary History, Vol. 19, No. 2, Wittgenstein and Literary Theory (Winter,1988), pp. 385-401Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/469344 .

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Wittgenstein, Leavis, and LiteratureCyril Barrett

WHEN PREPARING ecturesand Conversationson Aesthetics,Psy-chologyand ReligiousBelief1I wrote, in all innocence, to Pro-fessor F. R. Leavis asking him if, as he had been a friend ofWittgenstein's, he could tell me about Wittgenstein's understandingof literature, his judgment of Wittgenstein's literary merits, and soforth. I got a courteous reply, but the usual answer: Leavis did notinterfere in philosophy so why should Wittgenstein presume to inter-fere in literary criticism? Leavis's eccentricity was notorious, but nothaving met him, I thought this was rather severe, if not downrightsilly. Having now read his "Memories of Wittgenstein" I can under-stand his reply better.2 Perhaps this is a good point at which to start: adirect connection with the most unfavorable judgment on Wittgen-stein and literature.Leavis's remarks on Wittgenstein tell us more about Leavis thanthey do about Wittgenstein. But our present concern is with Wittgen-stein. Leavis smarted when Wittgenstein on one occasion told him togive up literary criticism: "When, once, he came to me and, withoutprelude, said, 'Give up literary criticism!' I abstained from retorting,'Give up philosophy, Wittgenstein!' largely because that would havemeant telling him that he had been listening to the talk of a dominantcoterie, and ought to be ashamed of supposing that Keynes, hisfriends and their protiggs were the cultural ilite they took themselvesto be" (RW 59).3 This passage alone tells us an enormous amountabout what literary criticism meant to Leavis, what it meant for Witt-genstein, and how much they misunderstood each other.4 It may alsogo some way toward explaining Wittgenstein's precarious grasp ofthe English language. He often writes, and is recorded as speaking,phrases like a character out of Wodehouse-"you're behaving like abeast," "Gosh," and so on.It says a lot for Leavis that in the same passage he acknowledges hishigh respect for Wittgenstein and his admiration for him as a re-markable linguist, while recounting his irritation at having his spokenEnglish corrected by him! The bitterest remark he can make-after aparody of the "smart fashion" and modish manner now "in at Kings,"a mocking reference to "what strike some of us as Cockney vowels,"and a hint of contempt that Wittgenstein should be taken in and re-gard this as standard English-is: "I reflected, however, that the


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386 NEW LITERARY HISTORYgiven trait of Wittgenstein's was sometimes decidedly Teutonic in itseffect" (RW 59). Never having met Wittgenstein I cannot judge, butthat is how it comes across to me in reports and in his writings. I haveencountered Viennese of his class, and, as a Dubliner, my reactionto their estimate of standard English is similar to Leavis's ofWittgenstein's.But these are trivia. The gravamen of Leavis's account lies in theremark: "Cultivated as he was, his interest in literature had remainedrudimentary" (RW 66). Rudimentary. Well. Ahrr. Yes. In a sense. Itall depends on what you mean by rudimentary, donit? Well, ahrr,yes. It is clear enough what Leavis meant. He recounts that Wittgen-stein used to ask him to read passages of that little-read account byDickens of his travels in London, The UncommercialTraveller. Witt-genstein would select the portions to be read. But "I was unable," saysLeavis, "to guess what it was in them that determined the choice-forhe seemed to know them already." He adds, somewhat pointlessly,that Wittgenstein also knew A ChristmasCarol by heart. Then followsone of the most fatuous, ill-informed, insensitive, but in a way under-standable, utterances of a sensitive, well-informed, discriminating, in-telligent man of letters: "To these works his interest in Dickens, so faras I could tell, was confined, and I never discovered that he took anyother creative writing seriously. It may of course be that in Germanthe range and quality of his literary culture were more impres-sive, but I can't give any great weight to that possibility5" (RW 66).The "5" refers to one of the neatest footnotes I have ever comeacross: "5 (!)"-supplied by the editor of Recollectionsof Wittgenstein,from which I have quoted.As I have said, Leavis's "Memories" tell us far more about himselfthan about Wittgenstein. But that is a matter for a separate article ora chapter of a book. (Incidentally, of The UncommercialTraveller,TheOxfordCompaniontoEnglish Literature[4th ed.] says: "It contains someof Dickens's best literary work"!)5 However, before abandoningLeavis there is one more item. Wittgenstein had heard of WilliamEmpson, the poet, a Cambridge man, and asked Leavis about him.Leavis's report of their conversation should be read in full; I can givethe gist of it only. "I replied that there was little point in my describ-ing them [Empson's poems], since he didn't know enough about En-glish poetry." That was true. Wittgenstein did not know Donne, andto understand Empson's poems one has to know his Donne. So Witt-genstein demanded that Leavis read the best of the six poems inCambridgePoetry 1929. Leavis chose "Legal Fictions." When he hadread it, Wittgenstein asked him to explain it. The rest of the accountis near farce. After about four attempts at explanation, each time


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WITTGENSTEIN, LEAVIS, AND LITERATURE 387interrupted by Wittgenstein,Leavis shut the book and said "I'mnotplaying."" 'It'sperfectly plain thatyou don't understand the poem inthe least,'he said. 'Give me the book.' I complied, and sure enough,without any difficulty, he went through the poem, explaining theanalogical structure that I should have explained myself, if he hadallowed me" (RW 67). Incidentally, this is hardly compatiblewith Leavis'sudgment that Wittgensteindid not take creativewritingseriously.One could almost say all that is to be said about Wittgensteinandliterature-certainly the central and most important part of it-indiscussing Leavis'sbrief memoir. All the ingredientsare there: Witt-genstein'sknowledgeand understandingof literature,his attitude to-wardliterarycriticism,his criticalmethod, and his own literaryquali-ties. His influence on contemporary German literature-and,indeed, English and other literatures-is another matter,into whichI shall not attempt to enter here.

"Cultivatedas he was,"says Leavis. And he was. In music particu-larly-that is a very long story.Architecture:at least he builta house,with the help of his friend Engelmannand advice from Adolf Loos.He made a reputable sculpture of his sister. In painting he wasknowledgeable,if eclectic. He enjoyed the theater and the cinema-of that more later. And literature? His interest rudimentary?Andremained so?There is an element of truth in this, though "rudimentary"s notthe correct word to express it, at least not if it is meant in a pejorativesense, as it was by Leavis. Leavis implies that Wittgensteindid notread very much. Wittgenstein,whether intentionallyor not, gave theimpression that he was a man of few books. In a sense he was. Thiswas not because he read few, but becausehe thought that only a fewwere worth reading. These he read again and again, and mentionedincessantly.6There mayhave been gaps in his reading. He wasunsys-tematic, almost casual in his reading, and when an author did notappeal to him, he did not persevere. But by any standards, udgingfrom recorded worksalone, he was a wide reader.The correct sense of "rudimentary" hat might appropriatelybeapplied to Wittgenstein's iterarytastes would more closely relate to"fundamental"as used in "fundamentalism," ut this too is not quiteright. Paradoxically, it is very close to Leavis's own position-tooclose, perhaps. Primitive is another word, in the sense both of unso-phisticatedand close to the roots of literature,to story telling. If weconsider Wittgenstein's favorite authors -Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Dick-ens, Shakespeare, Keller-they all have a deep and serious moral


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388 NEW LITERARY HISTORYcontent in their work and a universal appeal. One should add theBible, but with caution. He read it constantly, in various versions,Latin, German, and English (not Hebrew, possibly Greek, thoughpresumably his tutors did not teach him Greek since he was not ableto enter a gymnasium,but went to the Realschuleat Linz which special-ized in mathematics and the natural sciences), and was sensitive to itsliterary qualities; but he didn't want to look at E. S. Bates's The BibleDesigned to be Read as Literature-"I don't want some literary gent tomake selections from the Bible for me" (RW 118-19).7 He was partic-ularly fond of TheBrothersKaramazov(though he is recorded as say-ing that The House of the Dead was Dostoevsky's greatest work) andTolstoy's Twenty-ThreeTales (LWM 52; RW xvi). Of the former, hewas especially fond of the Elder Zosima; of the latter, his favoritetales were "What Men Live By," "The Two Old Men," "The ThreeHermits," and "How Much Land does a Man Need?" His most fa-vored was "The Three Hermits."It is relevant to bring in here his somewhat surprising liking for thedetective stories to be found in the magazines of Street and Smiththat Norman Malcolm used to send him ("How people can read Mindif he could read Street and Smith beats me" [LWM76; L 90-91]) andfor western movies. He liked them for their moral rectitude and theirstructural purity. We know who the good guys and the bad guys are;there are offenses against the moral order; these are put to rights;there is a satisfactory conclusion: morally and aesthetically satisfying.He hated detective novels such as those Dorothy L. Sayers indulgedin. I presume he regarded her as the female equivalent of a literarygent, and in my opinion, he would have been right. This may explainhis fascination with Dickens's An UncommercialTraveller. It is full ofmoral tales, not, to my mind, particularly well told. (The laudatoryentry in the OxfordCompaniondoes not appear in Margaret Drabble'sfifth edition in 1985, a decision with which I concur, but it did de-serve mention in the entry under Dickens, if for no other reason thanrespect for the memory of Sir Paul Harvey.)This in a small way bears out Leavis's strictures. Wittgenstein'srange of appreciation in literature was limited, but not quite so limit-ed as Leavis's-he liked Sterne, for instance, despite his seeming fri-volity (RW 133-34). It was limited to prose writers of moral worth, aswas Leavis's, but these are generally recognized as among the greatestthere have ever been. And again like Leavis, he had little time forart-for-art's-sake, for what sounds well but means nothing, in the im-mortal words of a Wodehouse character apropos of Shakespeare. Forhim, as for Leavis, literary merit and moral worth were inextricablylinked. This did not mean that moral content alone was a guarantee


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WITTGENSTEIN, LEAVIS, AND LITERATURE 389of literary merit. But perhaps Wittgenstein was more tolerant of sen-timentality and banality, if the moral content was sound, as in thecase of An UncommercialTraveller,than was Leavis. If so, they miss bya whisker.It is not, as Leavis suggests, that Wittgenstein was insensitive toliterature. He was, as I hope will later emerge, sensitive in abun-dance, and far more than Leavis, who, by comparison-Cambridgeborn, bred, and educated-was a country bumpkin. The test, I think,is their attitude toward I. A. Richards. Leavis was his disciple andever remained so. Wittgenstein initially had great respect for Rich-ards's critical acumen but very little for his literary theory, and finallyregarded him as totally misguided (LC 17 ff.). It is my suspicion thatLeavis's unwarranted and almost paranoic opposition to Wittgen-stein's attempted incursion into his precious territory of literary criti-cism (an intrusion comparable to someone walking inadvertently on apatch of newly-sown grass) was prompted not only because he real-ized that Wittgenstein was at least as good a critic as he was, and acritic in the same vein at that, but also because (most galling of all)Wittgenstein had seen through the frailty of Richards's theory onwhich he, Leavis, had quite unnecessarily based his critical practice.This was enough to make anyone but a saint become antagonistic,and that, in my opinion, Leavis was: antagonistic, not a saint. Witt-genstein, had he put his mind to it, could have been a better critic andwould have done the "Eng. lit." job far better than Leavis did: andLeavis knew this or faintly glimpsed it as a possibility.

The obvious literary theory for someone with Wittgenstein's viewson literature was the one Tolstoy expounded in What is Art? He wassympathetic toward it, but he realized its absurdities. "From Tolstoy'sbad theories that a work of art conveys a feeling one could learnmuch."8 He agreed with Tolstoy that the value of literature consistedin conveying sincere feeling and he shared Tolstoy's dislike of "intel-lectual," elitist art, but he did not go to the absurd length of con-demning almost all the world's greatest literature, including Greektragedy and Shakespeare, nor did he share Tolstoy's view that onlyChristian writings could be literature. Among the astute things hesaid about Tolstoy was his praise for his oblique, indirect method ofconveying ideas (a judgment the reverse of Plato's): "When Tolstoyjust tells a story he impresses me infinitely more than when he ad-dresses the reader. When he turns his back to the reader then heseems to me most impressive .... It seems to me his philosophy ismost true when it's latent in the story" (LWM 43).9This, of course, ties in with Wittgenstein's philosophical view that


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390 NEW LITERARY HISTORYthe "higher"-moral, aesthetic, and religious value-cannot be ex-pressed: it can only be shown (L 30). Hence the greatest and mostprofound moral and religious writings are in narrative or poetic form(or both) and are of the highest literary order. Indeed, I have beentold by scholars of Scripture that a necessary condition for being rec-ognized as a Hebrew prophet wasa high level of poetic ability.The literary theory that Wittgenstein constructed out of Tolstoy's"bad theories" is ingenious, and deserves to be quoted at length:One could call it not an expression of feeling but a feeling-expressionor afelt expression. And those who understandit vibrate in the same way andrespond to it. One could say: a work of art does not convey somethingotherthan itself.Just as when I visit someone I do not want to producethis and thisnaked feeling in him, but first and foremostto visithim, and obviouslyalsowant to be well received.

And first indeed it is downright nonsense (to say) that the artist shouldwant the other to feel by readingwhat he (felt) when writing.(CV58)Here you have a combinationof expressionistand formalisttheory.The paradigmof a literarywork for Tolstoy (asfor Wordsworth)wasa small boy going into a forest and encounteringa wolf, and return-ing to relate the encounter in such a wayas to conveyhis terror to thelisteners. On Wittgenstein'smodel, as I understandit, the boy wouldnot have to stir out of the house. He would construct the adventurein his imagination and recount it in such a way that the listenerswould experience something similar to the terror that a small boymight experience on encountering a wolf in a forest. In other wordsthe boy would have constructed a "feeling-expression" o which hislisteners could respond and reverberate.The feeling would be, so tospeak, entirely within the words he had put together. This makescomplete sense to me. It combines both the obvious truth of expres-sionism-that art in general, and literature in particular, conveysfeeling-with the no less obvious truth of formalism,that a work ofart is a construction, autonomous, self-contained, and does not de-pend for its value on what anyone feels, will feel, or has felt.The test of literary theory, as of any other, is in the breadthof itsapplication.Well, let's test Wittgenstein's heory as applied to some-one like Shakespeare, a big boy and strong enough to throw mostliterarycritics. Of ShakespeareWittgensteinsays: "Shakespeare,onecould say, displaysthe dance of human passions.He must, therefore,be objective, otherwise he would not really display the dance ofhuman passions-rather say somethingabout it. But he displaysit indance, not naturalistically" (CV 36-37). Not a bad start. He pro-gresses further on these formalist lines: "It is not as though Shake-


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WITTGENSTEIN, LEAVIS, AND LITERATURE 391speare portrayed human types well and to the extent that they wouldbe authentic [wahr]. He is not naturalistic. But he has such a subtlehand and such an individual touch, that each of his figures is mean-ingful [bedeutend],and worth looking at" (CV 84). This pictorial meta-phor has to be taken in conjunction with an entry in his notebooks forlater that same year (1950), the last year of his life, that deserves to bequoted in full. It is to my mind not only very accurate in its descrip-tion but also reveals something of Wittgenstein's classical taste: "Icannot, therefore, understand Shakespeare, as long as I am deter-mined to find symmetry in what is entirely asymmetrical. It occurs tome that his pieces are like enormous sketches,not paintings; that theyare throw-aways,rom someone to whom, so to speak, everythings per-missible. And I understand how one can admire that and call it thehighestart, but I myself cannot do it.-Someone who stands speech-less before these pieces I can understand; but someone who admiresthem, as one admires something by Beethoven, seems to me to mis-understand Shakespeare" (CV 86). All one can say to this is: hardluck, Wittgenstein, but you've got it about right. Shakespeare is noBeethoven, and, among others, Richard Mervyn Hare would ap-plaud. I happen to think that in every respect Hare is to be pre-ferred. That may be a cultural (not merely personal) prejudice. Yet Ithink Wittgenstein has got it right again when he writes: "I do notbelieve that one can couple Shakespeare with any other poet. Was he,perhaps, rather a creatorof language than a poet? I could only be as-tounded at Shakespeare; never get anything done with him. I have adeepmistrust of the majority of admirers of Shakespeare. I think it isunfortunate that, in western culture at least, he stands alone, and oneinevitably categorizes him falsely if one categorizes him at all" (CV84). Finally, 1946, just after the war: "It is astonishing how difficult itturns out to be to believe what we have not eye-witnessed. When e.g.I hear the utterances of admiration of eminent persons on Shake-speare over a multitude of centuries, I can never help suspecting thatthere has been a convention to praise him; although I have to tellmyself that it is not so. I need the authority of a Milton to convince meabout the truth" (CV 48). Why Milton? Because he was, in Wittgen-stein's view, incorruptible.Not all of this is original Shakespearean criticism, perhaps. As withmuch of Wittgenstein's thought, it is not difficult to find someonewho had similar ideas before him. What is special about him, howev-er, is what ideas he selects and rejects, and his reasons for selectingand rejecting them. If one were to discuss the (not all laudatory)points he makes, and discuss them at length with illustrations-thedance of the passions, the creation of living characters that are not


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392 NEWLITERARYISTORYnecessarily lifelike, the plays as sketches rather than finished pictures,the handling of language (Shakespeare as a creator of it rather than amere user of it), the overall estimate, more Arnold's

Others abide our question.Thou art free.We ask and ask: thou smilest and art still,Out-toppingknowledge.

than Milton's-one would have omitted little of central importance.If we turn, however, from dramatic to lyric and narrative poetry,we find him making a distinctly original contribution to literary criti-cism and literary critical practice. I have already alluded to it in com-menting on Wittgenstein's remark that Tolstoy was most impressivewhen he turned his back on the reader, when the meaning is latent inthe story. A good example of this is Uhland's poem "Count Eber-hard's Hawthorn," which Wittgenstein regarded as magnificent. Ittells the story of a German knight who went on a crusade. As he ridesthrough a spring wood he cuts a sprig of hawthorn and sticks it in hishelmet. He carries it into battle and over the seas. On his return heplants it. It grows and prospers. Every year he visits it and is delight-ed at its growth. When he has grown old, it has become a tree, underwhich he often sits, dreaming, as it rises and rustles above his head, ofolden times and faraway lands.On reading this poem-which his friend Paul Engelmann, the ar-chitect, had sent him in 1917-Wittgenstein replied: "And it is likethis: when one does not try to speak the unspeakable, nothing getslost. But the unspeakable is-unspeakably-contained in what is spo-ken" (L letter 6, p. 7). Some time previous to this, judging from hisnotebooks, Wittgenstein had given much thought to the "mystical"and inexpressible, particularly in ethics and aesthetics. However, it isonly fair to say that seeds of this way of thinking about art and value,the "higher," had been sown by his friend Karl Kraus. Kraus haddescribed Uhland's poem as "so clear that no one understands it." Onreading it, Engelmann tells us, it was brought home to Wittgensteinfor the first time what Kraus had been saying: that poetry can pro-duce a profound effect beyond but never without) the immediate ef-fect of its language.Morike was another poet in whose poems Wittgenstein found thischaracteristic, particularly in Mozart'sJourney to Prague, especiallywhere he describes musical effects in words-a passage, Engelmanntells us, which Wittgenstein would recite with a shudder of awe. Ittouched, as Engelmann says, on what for Wittgenstein was the centralproblem of language, "the border of the unutterable and yet some-


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WITTGENSTEIN, LEAVIS, AND LITERATURE 393how expressible" (CV 86). This links up with Tolstoy's insistence ongenuineness of feeling and simplicity of expression. Though he latercame to admire Tagore and would read him to philosophical meet-ings at Schlick's house in Vienna rather than discuss philosophy, atfirst Wittgenstein was unmoved by his writing. It seemed to him tocome out of an icebox, contrived, rather than from his own individu-al feeling (LC 4).

Wittgenstein's theory of art criticism is too big a subject to discusshere, but something must be said about his ideas on practical criticismand on the practice of writing. Evidence of these is scattered throughhis notes and lectures.He set great store by reading aloud. In reading a poem out loud itstone and meaning come across in a way that no "explanation" willconvey. "A man says it [a poem] ought to be read thisway and reads itout to you. You say: 'Oh yes. Now it makes sense' " (LC 4). But, ofcourse, poetry cannot be read any old way. This raises the theoreticalquestion, which I shall shelve here, of what is the correct way of read-ing poetry. In practice the short answer is: that way of reading thatmakes sense to the listener (including oneself). This will vary frompoet to poet and even from poem to poem. For instance, there ispoetry which should almost be scanned, where the meter is crystalclear, and other poetry where it is in the background and should behidden. Wittgenstein gives an interesting example of reading Klop-stock, the eighteenth-century German poet who integrated Greekmeters into German poetry and even put the stress marks (~- -, andso on) in front of his poems. At first Wittgenstein read his poems inthe ordinary way and "had been moderately bored." Then hestressed the meter abnormally. When he read the poems in this way,he smiled, and said to himself: "'Ah-ha, now I know why he didthis.... This is grand' " (LC 4). He also made gestures to express hisapproval.Another technique (a commonplace in practical criticism) on whichWittgenstein laid stress was comparison or juxtaposition. He uses it indealing with what he calls "aesthetic puzzlements." A sentence soundsqueer and, at first, you do not know what is queer about it. Or it hasan American sound to it. You suspect that a certain word is archaic.You can check this by looking it up in a dictionary or asking someoneif the word is used today. Of course, the word might be archaic or anAmericanism (or both) and not account for the queerness of the sen-tence, and yet this "explanation" would satisfy you. "I couldpoint outthe wrong thing and yet you would still be satisfied" (LC 20). This isthe theoretical problem.


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394 NEW LITERARY HISTORYAs for the art of writing, it is clear from his published notebooks,and those unpublished manuscripts lodged at the Bodleian Library,Oxford, that Wittgenstein was preoccupied with it. Again and againthe same thought, or seemingly the same thought, is expressed, inslightly different form, until he is satisfied he has expressed it as hewishes it to be expressed. Here again we find the influence of Klaus.Klaus stressed the importance of language, even of the comma. Forhim defects of language manifested defects of logic and ultimatelymoral defects (L 127). I shall return to Wittgenstein's own style.On literary writing he seems to take a Flaubertian line that is con-sistent with his critical stance-namely, that writing as an art formmust be objective. This is well illustrated in his reflections on Engel-mann's anecdote of how he found old manuscripts by his relativesand thought them so exquisite as to be worth publishing (CV 4). Butwhen he comes to make a selection he thinks otherwise. "Nothing,"says Wittgenstein, "can be more remarkable than to watch someonedoing ordinary everyday things when he thinks he is unobserved." Itis more remarkable than anything a poet could put on the stage. Yetwe see it every day and think nothing of it. "Yes, but we don't see it inthis perspective." So when Engelmann reads those letters, they areremarkable, but not art. They are a piece of Nature like any other,though we can elevate them by our enthusiasm. They are like boringsnapshots. Only art can present them so that they are of interest topeople other than ourselves. Indeed, we have no right to confrontothers with our enthusiasms, or they us. While this may be salutaryadvice, Wittgenstein exaggerates; artists do just what he deplores. Itis only by confronting someone with a snapshot, a letter, a joke, apoem, that we ourselves can decide its artistic worth. What is correctin what he says is that we should not presume the judgment of othersto coincide with our own (CV 4-5).Wittgenstein believed that literary expression should be spontane-ous. If you have nothing to say, don't try to say something: just keepquiet. According to Engelmann, Wittgenstein certainly never wrote apoem, not even when every intellectually interested young person ofhis generation tended to try his hand, "because no poem ever oc-curred to him spontaneously" (L 89). Indeed, the spontaneous idea"was so decisive for him that he would only recognize a philosophical

proposition of his own if it had occurred to him in the right words."It is hardly surprising, therefore, that his advice, in his notebook, to amediocre writer is to guard against replacing a raw and incorrect ex-pression too hastily by a correct one (CV 79). In so doing he may killoff the seedling of an idea that had some value but will now witherand no longer be worth anything.


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WITTGENSTEIN, LEAVIS, AND LITERATURE 395This is not just good advice. It has an idea behind it that is some-what mystical, namely, that the word or expression and the idea arealmost one and the same, and must come into consciousness simulta-

neously and spontaneously. He found it a strange confession forKleist to make when he wrote in "Letter of One Poet to Another" thatit would be most pleasing to a poet if he could convey the thoughtsthemselves without words. Yet toward the end of Philosophical nvesti-gations he muses on the phenomenon of choosing and finding theright word and knowing that it fits.'0 One cannot summon it fromthe deep. One must wait for it to come. And yet when it comes oneknows it is the right word or phrase, proposition or expression. Moststrange.Another thing that fascinated Wittgenstein was that in sayingsomething of literary value one has to say new things and yet, clearly,old ones; in general you must say only the old, and yet somethingnew. This interest in originality and tradition crops up in variousforms. There is the question of keeping to a set of rules: some mustbe broken if there is to be innovation, but they cannot all be broken atonce; otherwise, what is being done will not be understood (LC 6).But to confine ourselves to more practical matters, what Wittgensteinhad in mind he expressed as follows: "You must ransack the old. Butfor a building"(CV 40). In other words, old materials must be usedbut something new must be built of them. They must not merely bereassembled.Coming nearer home, he said: "One can write in a style which isnot original in form-like mine-but with well-chosen words; or, onthe other hand, one whose form is original by growing new fromwithin. (And obviously also one which is just cobbled together some-how from old pieces.)" (CV 53). Wittgenstein's own style certainly didnot belong to the third class. Nor-partially-did it belong to thefirst class; that is to say, it did not belong to that part of it which isunoriginal in form. But, in spite of his modesty, I would want toargue that it belongs to the second-that the form is original becauseit grows from within.It is hard to see how the TractatusLogico-Philosophicus an be re-garded as anything but a stylistic masterpiece whose originality ofform grows from within. It is architectonic. But, whereas a Gothiccathedral is an original solution to both technical and formal prob-lems, it conveys nothing but itself. It is magnificent. That is enough.No more is needed. The Tractatus,on the other hand, is a work of

philosophy. Whether it is a work of literature or not is a matter fordebate. Its thought content is beyond the understanding of nonphi-losophical literary critics and students of literature who have no for-


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396 NEW LITERARY HISTORYmal training in philosophy-and of many philosophers who have nospecialized knowledge in the philosophy of logic and of mathematics.Be that as it may, its literary form is dictated by the structure of itsthought and each stone, each proposition, in that edifice has beencarved as carefully, and has been as well articulated with its neigh-bors, as the stones of a cathedral.To say of the Tractatusthat it is stylized is to utter a truism. It is inthe tradition of medieval summae n which every question is presentedin logical order and treated in logical fashion with divergent positionsexpounded and either defended or answered. Spinoza in his Ethicsand some other works did something similar, but on the Euclidianmodel-ending each proposition to be proved with QED. This modeof exposition has, besides its clarity of exposition, a structural ele-gance whatever the value of its arguments. The Tractatus,though log-ical in its exposition, is not so repetitive in its form. It is assertiverather than argumentative. Therefore, though its divisions and sub-divisions are related logically, their logical relationships are not artic-ulated, as they are in the Summa of Aquinas or the Ethicsof Spinoza.This gives them an added aesthetic charm. Thus the Tractatusbegins:1 The worldis all that is the case.1.1 The world is the totalityof facts,not of things.1.11 The worldis fixed throughthe factsand throughthis, that it is all thefacts."which is reminiscent of the opening of St. John's Gospel:

In the beginning wasthe Word,And the Wordwas with God,And the WordwasGod.

Section 2 proceeds to analyze facts; 3, propositions; 4, language; 5,truth functions; 6, the form of propositions; until we come to 7, asingle sentence: "Of what one cannot speak one must be silent." Thestructure is looser, more rhythmical, less predictable and repetitive,less classical, more "modern" than Aquinas's or Spinoza's structures.But it hangs together, leads one step by step in an ordered fashion, asolemn progress of thought.C. D. Broad described the Tractatusas highly syncopated. Wittgen-stein agreed. "Every sentence in the Tractatus,"he told his friend anddisciple, M. O'Connor Drury, "should be seen as the heading of achapter, needing further exposition" (RW 159). That was what hewanted, partly because the conventional way of presenting philo-


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WITTGENSTEIN, LEAVIS, AND LITERATURE 397sophical ideas-whether in dialogue or in the developed paragraphand chapter of the treatise-did not appeal to him and did not suithis style of thinking: his thought came in bursts and was expressed inaphorisms. This is clear from his notebooks. All that needed to bewritten down were headings-crisp, often cryptic, assertions or ques-tions or even exclamations. Anything more is superfluous if thereader can flesh it out for himself. In this way a great deal is gainedin clarity of exposition and precision of expression. The main pointsin the process of thought are clearly laid out and the whole can beseen at a glance, instead of being obscured in a welter of verbiage.This makes demands on the reader. And this is another reason whyWittgenstein adopted the style. In his opinion a philosophical ideashould dawn on the reader and not be shoved under his nose. Philo-sophically this has not been entirely successful: conflicting ideas seemto dawn on different interpreters. But from the point of view of styleit is hard to deny that the form grew, original, from within. Othershave used aphorisms, but none so systematically and architectonicallyas Wittgenstein.The PhilosophicalInvestigations,his other major work, is a differentmatter, but not so different as some people think. It clearly lacks thetight structure of the Tractatus, if for no other reason than that itsenumeration does not move forward like shafts rising from apier-i1, 1.1, 1.11, 1.12, 1.13, 1.2, 1.21-but more conventionally-1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ... in the first part, and i, ii, iii, iv ... in the second.When Wittgenstein came to write Part II of the Investigationshe wasalready very ill and for long stretches of time too exhausted to work.The Investigations is like Beauvais Cathedral, magnificent in overallconception, complete in part and sufficiently complete in the uncom-pleted part to convey some idea of what the completed work mighthave been like. But the Investigationscould never have been quite likethe Tractatus, since Wittgenstein's attitude not only toward philoso-phy but toward that book in particular had changed-not so radical-ly as some people think, but in many important respects. His thoughtwas no longer architectonic, but free-ranging within limits, requiringa different style. Ironically he thought that his new style would cor-rect the "error" of the Tractatus,its lack of exposition. He even con-fessed to Drury: "Now I find I am vain about the style in which I amable to write my present book." Admittedly there are paragraphs andeven units and sections that have a resemblance to chapters, but ifWittgenstein thought he was offering an exposition of his thought inanything more than bursts, he was deceiving himself. The overall ef-fect of the Investigationsis not dissimilar to that of the Tractatus.Takethe following, which might have come out of Ionesco or Beckett:


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398 NEW LITERARY HISTORY"Now I know!" What happened there?-So, did I know nothingwhen Ideclared now I know?You [du]are looking at it wrong.(Whatpurpose does the signalserve?)And could the "knowing"be called an accompanimentof the exclamation?(PI II, xi, p. 218)

What the Investigations lacks, but does not need, is the simplicityand rigor, the ordered structure of the Tractatus.Wittgenstein makesall this clear in his preface. The book, he tells us, is concerned withmany subjects. He had written down his thoughts as "remarks," shortparagraphs, some of them forming chains of thought, others involv-ing- abrupt changes. "At first it was my intention to bring these alltogether, summarized, in a book whose form I imagined differentlyat different times. But essentially it seemed to me that in it thethoughts should progress from one subject to another in a naturaland uninterrupted sequence" (PI p. ix). After several attempts, hefound it could not be done. He crippled his thought if he tried toforce it in one direction against its natural inclination. Then he real-ized that the reason for this was connected with the very nature of theinvestigation he had undertaken: "That is to say, it compels us totravel through a wide territory of thought, criss-cross, in all direc-tions, hither and thither. The philosophical remarks in this book arelike a lot of landscape sketches that originated from those long andtortuous journeys" (PI p. ix). Many of the sketches even had to berejected and others made, only to be rejected in turn. But a few pass-able ones remained. After editing, these were assembled so that aglimpse of the landscape could be given: the book, he concludes, isreally nothing more than an album. Be that as it may, its form, whichagain is original, not to say unique, grew from the inside, resisting allexterior interfering stereotypes. It should be noted, however, that inform it more closely resembles the plays of Shakespeare than theclassical forms of Beethoven.Besides the form of these works, a word must be said about Witt-genstein's use of language, his diction. This would call for a fulltreatment by someone with a vastly greater feeling for and knowl-edge of the German language than I possess. But at least somethingcan and should be said here. He was not a master of the Englishlanguage, so far as one can judge without ever having met him. Hecertainly had no right to correct Leavis's English. But his handling ofthe German language, so far as my hold on it (far more tenuous thanWittgenstein's on English) allows me to judge, seems to me to havebeen masterly, if idiosyncratic. It is for that reason that I offer my


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WITTGENSTEIN, LEAVIS, AND LITERATURE 399transliterations rather than rely on the polished translations of hisapproved translators. I do not say this in any spirit of rivalry, merelyto show that an alternative is possible. To quote his own phrase, he asoften as not hits the nail on the head with a clear, concise, and tellingexpression. His expressions were often colorful, vivid, and imagina-tive-"pain manages to get a foothold here, whereas before it was all,so to speak, too smooth," or "What is your aim in philosophy?-Toshow the fly the way out of the fly-bottle" (PI I,??284; 309). Some-times his imagery can be amusing-we don't call a person musicalsimply because he says "Ah!" when music is played "any more thanwe call a dog musical if it wags its tail when music is played" (LC 6).Wittgenstein did not shrink from using colloquialisms if they ex-pressed his thought better than conventional philosophical language.Indeed he eschewed philosophical language, which hinders thoughtby interposing itself, or, worse, often passes for thought. How hiscolloquialisms sound to a German speaker I cannot tell. I ferventlyhope they do not sound as his English and American colloquialismssound to me. On this Leavis was right, though Wittgenstein's use of"beastly" smacks more of the Drones Club than of Bloomsbury.All of this deserves lengthy, though not too solemn, examinationfrom both a literary and philosophical point of view. From the liter-ary point of view, to determine (among other things) to what extenthe manipulated the German language, exploiting unusual usages,and to what extent he bent or forged it to his purposes. From thephilosophical point of view, to determine how it served his own phi-losophy in particular and philosophy in general. Important questionsarise here. If, as seems obvious to me, Wittgenstein was a literarygenius, of whatever grade, should other philosophers attempt to imi-tate him? On the other hand, if his way of presenting philosophicalideas is an indictment of the conventional method-I say "if": it is byno means clear that it is-how can (or could) the conventional meth-od be "improved"? It is comfortable for those who are not geniuses.Moreover, which style should we adopt-the classical, Tractatusstyle,or the Shakespearean, Investigations style? There are dangers eitherway.

But, to return to literature.Throughout his notes and lectures Wittgenstein said many inter-esting things about the theater, about tragedy in particular, about the"happy ending," about the epic, about masks, indeed about the waysin which literature reaches out into the other arts and how they relateto it. I just note this: there is no space in which to discuss these re-marks, even superficially.


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400 NEW LITERARY HISTORYBut the little that has been said above has, I hope, laid forever to

rest Leavis's suggestion that Wittgenstein's interest in literature had"remained rudimentary." Apart from anything else, he numberedamong his friends in Vienna, besides Kraus, the whole circle connect-ed with Die Fackel which included Otto Weiniger, Trakl, the Zweigs,and Rilke. Not the company for a literary dud. Leavis might havebeen surprised, were he to have paid heed to it, by this testimony byEngelmann, who clearly understood Wittgenstein's earlier philoso-phy: "The sphere of intellectual life in which I gained most throughWittgenstein's influence ... is that of literature" (L 82).UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK

NOTES1 Lecturesand Conversationson Aesthetics,Psychologyand Religious Belief, ed. Cyril Bar-rett (Oxford, 1966); hereafter cited in text as LC.2 F. R. Leavis, "Memories of Wittgenstein," The Human World,No. 10 (1973), 66-79;rpt. in Recollectionsof Wittgenstein,ed. Rush Rhees (Oxford, 1984); hereafter cited intext as RW.3 This response is repeated when he adds: "(I thought) the easy aggressiveness of theinjunction was the consequence of frequenting the Bloomsbury milieu in which he was'Ludwig' to Keynes and company" (RW 65).4 For its insight into Leavis's misjudgment of Wittgenstein and his feeling on thematter, the passage that follows deserves to be quoted in full: "he couldn't in any caseimagine that criticism might matter intellectually." As everyone knows, Leavis did anenormous amount to establish English literature as a serious subject in its own rightwithout having to resort to such support as Anglo-Saxon could lend (like a poor songand dance artiste who resorts to stripping in order to revive the flagging attention ofher audience). The passage continues with such pomposities as: "a great creative workis a work of original exploratory thought," "philosophersare alwaysweak on language" (!),and "his unmistakable genius as hardly more relevant to my own intellectual concernsthan a genius for chess" (RW 65-66).5 The Oxford Companionto English Literature,4th ed., ed. Sir Paul Harvey (Oxford,1967), p. 845.6 Norman Malcolm, in Ludwig Wittgenstein:A Memoir(Oxford, 1958) (hereafter citedin text as LWM), recounts that Wittgenstein "had read The BrothersKaramazovan ex-traordinary number of times." This could mean that he had read it no more than twice.7 Paul Engelmann, in discussing Wittgenstein's enthusiasm for the Vulgate version ofthe Bible, remarks: "in contrast with versions such as the German and Greek (theHebrew original he was unable to read)," which implies that he must have been taughtor taught himself to read Greek. See Engelmann's memoir in Lettersfrom Ludwig Witt-genstein,Witha Memoir,ed. B. F. McGuinness, tr. L. Furtmfiller (Oxford, 1967), hereaf-ter cited in text as L.8 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, ed. G. H. Von Wright, tr. Peter Winch(Oxford, 1980), p. 58; hereafter cited in text as CV. Here, as with the Investigations(n.10) and the Tractatus (n. 11), I am using my own transliterations of Wittgenstein'soriginal text, while citing the standard translations.


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WITTGENSTEIN, LEAVIS, AND LITERATURE 4019 According to Plato, The Republic 3.394: "Poetry and fiction fall into three classes.First, that which employs representation only, tragedy and comedy, as you say. Second-ly, that in which the poet speaks in his own person; the best example is lyric poetry.Thirdly, which employs both methods, epic and various other kinds of poetry" (trans-lation by H. D. P. Lee [Harmondsworth, 1955], p. 133).10 Ludwig Wittgenstein, PhilosophicalInvestigations,3rd ed., tr. G. E. M. Anscombe(New York, 1958), Part II, par. xi, pp. 218-20; hereafter cited in text as PI.11 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, tr. D. F. Pears and B. F.McGuinness (London, 1961), ?1-1.11.

witt gen stein, leavis, and literature

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