2.3.1971, Grand Hotel Imperial, Dubrovnik
Dear Honorable Dr Spiel,
I promised you a contribution for your Ver Sacrum – You wrote, “something about Ludwig Wittgenstein,” and I’ve been considering the topic for a couple of weeks, since the day, in fact, I returned from Brussels – now I’m on the road again, Ragusa, Belgrade, Rome, etc., and I’ve concluded that to write something about Wittgenstein’s philosophy and above all his poetry, since for me the question concerns Wittgenstein’s utterly poetic mindset (MIND), his philosophical MIND, not Wittgenstein as a philosopher, is too difficult. I might as well have been asked to write something (sentences!) about myself, which is not possible. One cannot describe a state of culture and mind-history. The question is not: shall I write about Wittgenstein. The question is: am I Wittgenstein for even one moment without destroying him (W.) or myself (B.). I cannot answer this question and therefore cannot write about Wittgenstein. – In Austria, philosophy and poetry (mathematical-musical) are entombed in mausoleums, we perceive history vertically. On one hand it is terrifying, on the other, progressive – her fate: philosophy and art do not exist in the consciousness of her people, as they exist elsewhere, but in the consciousness of her philosophy and art(culture) etc.; Austria already knows what her philosophers and poets have yet to discover.
As for Wittgenstein: [er ist die Reinheit Stifters, Klarheit Kants in einem und seit (und mit ihm) Stifter der Größte. – Note: translation of this sentence temporarily abandoned] What we, the Germans, lacked in NOVALIS we now have in Wittgenstein – and a final word: W. is a question that cannot be answered – he is working on a level that excludes answers (and an answer).
Our contemporary culture, in all its unbearable manifestations, is such that its questions would be solved easily, where answers were always at hand – Wittgenstein alone is different.
And the world is forever to remain too stupid to grasp its own stupidity, a world utterly and forever without ideas – where ideas stand for themselves as ideas. This is fatal for the MAJORITY, but the majority is not worthy of consideration. So I do not write about Wittgenstein because I cannot, but because I cannot answer him, which is self-explanatory.
Best regards and all best wishes,
Yours, Thomas Bernhard
translated by Greg Baxter