Reading Scholem makes me melancholy, I tell W. on the phone. He knows everything! He's an expert on all matters! That's because studied for 40 years and then wrote, says W. How many years did you study? Are you studying now? But you're writing, aren't you? You're writing constantly.
My problem, says W., is that I don't know anything at all. I have no base of knowledge upon which to draw. I'm an abyss of ignorance, W. says, which I think I can overcome through frenzied reading and frenzied writing, working as close to the deadline as possible. But in fact, it's obvious to anyone that everything I have written is a product of frenzy and not patient, calm scholarship, which has no aim but the cultivation of knowledge.
W. remembers his scholarly years with quiet reverence. He had no aim other than reading, thinking, and broadening his intellectual horizons. Great vistas opened themselves to him at his desk. He was close to the great names and the great books, which he always read in the original language, however long that took him. He sought out the oldest and most obscure of volumes. He wandered through the archives of great European cities.
But what would I understand of all that?, W. muses. What would I know of the life of a scholar? In truth, I am only a product of my time, a depthless age, an age of surfaces and first impressions. What book have I read that I did not first encounter in some online summary? What idea that I did not meet through a hyperlink? Wikipedia: that's my research tool. Google Scholar: that's the closest I've been to the great archives.
That was all long ago, says W. of his scholarly days, it's all gone now. He hadn't met me then, for one thing. Didn't I teach him about the value of writing? Wasn't I the one who drew him up from the musty depths to the bright light of publication? My shamelessness taught him a lesson, says W., he admits that. My shamelessness and my depthlessness: didn't he learn something from that?
He would like to say, says W. that he longs for nothing other than to plunge back into the murky waters of scholarship, but it's no longer true. My example fascinates me, he admits that. I am a man of the new world, as he is not, says W. He is a man of the old world, and I of the new one, shameless and free of profundity.
What sense have I of the true measure of European civilisation? What of the mountain range of thinkers behind us, and the desert that is growing all around us? And by what curse was he led to me, the ape of knowledge, the ape of seriousness? But he was led to me, W. admits, and now there is something apish about him.
Scholem notes that there is a tradition of doubling the figure of the Messiah, W. tells me. The first Messiah belongs to the old world, and to the catastrophe that destroys the old world (Messianism always entails catastrophe, W. says). Every horror of the old world is concentrated in him. He can redeem nothing, and what can he desire but his own catastrophe?
But then there is the Messiah ben David, in whom all that is new announces itself, and who finally defeats the antichrist. He is the redeemer, W., says. He brings with him the Messianic age.
Which one are you, do you think?, says W. Which one am I?
