Lars Iyer's Blog, page 52

Spurious the blog, Spurious the book, being taught on the...

Spurious the blog, Spurious the book, being taught on the MA course Theatre, Film & Media at the English Institute of the University of Lodz

Simon Lavery reviews Spurious at Tredynas Days.

Simon Lavery reviews Spurious at Tredynas Days.

Presentlyour infantry also was left unsupported, while ...

Presently
our infantry also was left unsupported, while the different companies became so
huddled together that a soldier could hardly draw his sword, or withdraw his
hand after he had once stretched it out. And by this time such clouds of dust
arose that it was scarcely possible to see the sky, which resounded with
horrible cries; and in consequence, the darts, which were bearing death on
every side, reached their mark, and fell with deadly effect, because no one
could see them beforehand so as to guard against them.

But when
the barbarians, rushing on with their enormous host, beat down our horses and
men, and left no spot to which our ranks could fall back to deploy, while they
were so closely packed that it was impossible to escape by forcing a way
through them, our men at last began to despise death, and again took to their
swords and slew all they encountered, while with mutual blows of battle-axes,
helmets and breastplates were dashed in pieces. Then you might see the
barbarian towering in his fierceness, hissing or shouting, fall with his legs
pierced through, or his right hand cut off, sword and all, or his side
transfixed, and still, in the last gasp of life, casting round him defiant
glances. The plain was covered with carcasses, strewing the mutual ruin of the
combatants; while the groans of the dying, or of men fearfully wounded, were
intense, and caused great dismay all around.

Amidst
all this great tumult and confusion our infantry were exhausted by toil and
danger, until at last they had neither strength left to fight, nor spirits to
plan anything; their spears were broken by the frequent collisions, so that
they were forced to content themselves with their drawn swords, which they
thrust into the dense battalions of the enemy, disregarding their own safety,
and seeing that every possibility of escape was cut off from them. The ground,
covered with streams of blood, made their feet slip, so that all they
endeavored to do was to sell their lives as dearly as possible; and with such
vehemence did they resist their enemies who pressed on them, that some were
even killed by their own weapons. At last one black pool of blood disfigured
everything, and wherever the eye turned, it could see nothing but piled up
heaps of dead, and lifeless corpses trampled on without mercy.

The sun being now high in the heavens, having
traversed the sign of Leo, and reached the abode of the heavenly Virgo,
scorched the Romans, who were emaciated by hunger, worn out with toil, and
scarcely able to support even the weight of their armor. At last our columns
were entirely beaten back by the overpowering weight of the barbarians, and so
they took to disorderly flight, which is the only resource in extremity, each
man trying to save himself as well as he could.

Ammianus Marcellinus, The Battle of Hadrianopolis

But whenthe barbarians, rushing on with their enormous ...

But when
the barbarians, rushing on with their enormous host, beat down our horses and
men, and left no spot to which our ranks could fall back to deploy, while they
were so closely packed that it was impossible to escape by forcing a way
through them, our men at last began to despise death, and again took to their
swords and slew all they encountered, while with mutual blows of battle-axes,
helmets and breastplates were dashed in pieces. Then you might see the
barbarian towering in his fierceness, hissing or shouting, fall with his legs
pierced through, or his right hand cut off, sword and all, or his side
transfixed, and still, in the last gasp of life, casting round him defiant
glances. The plain was covered with carcasses, strewing the mutual ruin of the
combatants; while the groans of the dying, or of men fearfully wounded, were
intense, and caused great dismay all around.

Amidst all this great tumult and confusion our
infantry were exhausted by toil and danger, until at last they had neither
strength left to fight, nor spirits to plan anything; their spears were broken
by the frequent collisions, so that they were forced to content themselves with
their drawn swords, which they thrust into the dense battalions of the enemy,
disregarding their own safety, and seeing that every possibility of escape was
cut off from them. The ground, covered with streams of blood, made their feet
slip, so that all they endeavored to do was to sell their lives as dearly as
possible; and with such vehemence did they resist their enemies who pressed on
them, that some were even killed by their own weapons. At last one black pool
of blood disfigured everything, and wherever the eye turned, it could see
nothing but piled up heaps of dead, and lifeless corpses trampled on without
mercy.

[...] So now, with rage flashing in their eyes, the barbarians pursued our men, who
were in a state of torpor, the warmth of their veins having deserted them. Many
were slain without knowing who smote them; some were overwhelmed by the mere
weight of the crowd which pressed upon them; and some were slain by wounds
inflicted by their own comrades. The barbarians spared neither those who
yielded nor those who resisted. Besides these, many half-slain lay blocking up
the roads, unable to endure the torture of their wounds; and heaps of dead
horses were piled up and filled the plain with their carcasses. At last a dark
moonless night put an end to the irremediable disaster which cost the Roman
state so dear.

Thucydides, from The Melian Dialogue

We believe ourselves to understand thingsfirst when we h...

We believe ourselves to understand things
first when we have reduced them to what we do not understand and cannot
understand – to causality, axioms, God, character.

Not what lies behind the scientific image of
things – what is obscure, what is in itself and what is incomprehensible – lies
beyond all knowledge; but conversely it is the immediate, the sensual image,
the surface of things that face us that eludes us.

We wander and reach the goal – but, given
the relativity of all movement, who knows if we are not standing still and the
goal is coming to us. This would presuppose a movement of the objective world
of ideas. But on this ambiguity rests a lot of religious faith.

Art is our thanks to the world and to life.
After both have created the sensuous and spiritual forms of cognition of our
consciousness, we thank them by, once again with their help, creating a world
and a life.

Perhaps it is not just due to the stage of
humanity we are in, that it comes up with the highest problems, but not the
highest solutions. Perhaps it is humanity’s inner necessity, the essence of
man. The apple from the tree of knowledge was unripe.

When man describes himself as a fragment,
not only does he mean that he has no whole
life, but more profoundly, that he has no whole life.

That man is a being who can reach the
ultimate problems but not the ultimate solutions has to do with the fact that
he has to act as if he knew the future –although he does not know even one step
of it for sure.

How deep is mankind’s destiny embedded in
the fact that its two highest ideas – infinity and freedom – are literally only
negations, only the removal of obstacles!

What is decisive and characteristic of man
is what he is desperate about.

The meaninglessness and confinedness of life
strikes you often as so radical and inescapable that you totally despair about
it. The only thing that elevates you above this is to grasp this and to despair
about it.

The concept of consolation has a much
broader, deeper meaning than we usually attribute to it. Man is a being who
seeks to be consoled. Consolation is something other than help – even the
animal seeks the latter; but consolation is the strange experience which lets
suffering remain but, so to speak, abolishes the suffering from suffering. It
does not concern the evil cause but its reflex in the deepest part of the soul.
On the whole, man cannot be helped. That is why he has invented the wonderful
category of consolation – which comes to him not only through words spoken by
others for this purpose, but also from hundreds of circumstances in the world.

You can elevate man to the idea, but you
cannot lower the idea to man. [...]

In practice the worst errors are those
which come very close to the truth. [...]

The high point of lust is already surpassed
when you become aware of it, while suffering only reaches its high point with
it.

Simmel, aphoisms (via)

Friendship, this relation without dependence, without epi...

Friendship, this relation without dependence, without episode, yet into which all of the simplicity of life enters, passes by way of the recognition of the common strangeness that does not allow us to speak of our friends but only speak to them, not to make of them a topic of conversation (or essays), but the movement of understanding in which, speaking to us, they reserve, even on the most familiar terms, an infinite distance, the fundamental separation on the basis of which what separates becomes a relation.

Blanchot, Friendship (Oh the irony!)

… it was very plainly not just what the old mansaid tha...

… it was very plainly not just what the old man
said that was so moving, it was almost entirely the way in which he said it,
the total naked absorption of the mind in is problem, the tried-out words
suspended for inspection, the unceasingly pitiless evaluation they were given,
the temporarily triumphant going forward, the doubt despair, the cruel
recognition of failure, the glorious giving of solutions by something from
somewhere, the insistent rebeginning, as though no one, not even the speaker,
had even been there. Without cant, without jargon, and in terms of examples,
this abstract mind went concretely forward …

William Gass, remembering Wittgenstein

I never took note of Wittgenstein’s lectures, but concent...

I never took note of Wittgenstein’s lectures, but concentrated
on trying to follow his train of thought. In retrospect I think it right to say
that I understood next to nothing of what was going on, though I found Wittgenstein
most impressive and stimulating.

Each conversation with Wittgenstein was like living
through the day of judgement. It was terrible. Everything had constantly to be
dug up anew, questioned and subjected to the tests of truthfulness. This
concerned not only philosophy but the whole of life.

Von Wright, remembering Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein in those days often warned us against readin...

Wittgenstein in those days often warned us against reading
philosophical books. If we took a book seriously, he would say, it ought to
puzzle us so much that we would throw it across the room and think about the
problem for ourselves.

He had he said, only once been to high table at Trinity and
the clever conversation of the dons had so horrified him that he had come out
with both hands over his ears. The dons talked like that only to score: they
did not even enjoy doing it. He said his own bedmaker’s conversation, about he
private lives of her previous gentlemen and about her own family, was far preferable:
at least he could understand why she talked that way and could believe she
enjoyed it.

He liked the north of England,
too: when he asked the bus conductor on a Newcastle
bus where to get off for a certain cinema, the conductor at once told him it
was a bad film there and he ought to go to another. And this started a heated
argument on thus bus as to which film Wittgenstein ought to see and why. He
liked that: it was the sort of thing that would have happened in Austria.

Karl Britton, remembering Wittgenstein

I took my camera with me – which was the cause of another...

I took my camera with me – which was the cause of another
scene with Ludwig. We were getting on perfectly amicably – when I left him for
a moment to take a photo. And when I overtook him again he was silent and
sulky. I walked on with him in silence for half an hour, and then asked him
what was the matter. I seems my keenness to take that photo had disgusted him –
‘like a man who can think of nothing – when walking – but how the country would
do for a golf course’. I had a long talk with him about it, and eventually we
made up again. He is really in an awful neurotic state: this evening he blamed
himself violently and expressed the most piteous disgust with himself … I only
hope that an out of doors life here will make him better: at present it is no
exaggeration to sat he is as bad – (in that nervous sensibility) – as people
like Beethoven were. He even talks of having at times contemplated suicide.

Ludwig was horribly depressed all evening. He has been working
terribly hard of late – which may be the cause of it. He talked again tonight
about his death – that he was not really afraid to die – but yet frightfully
worried not to let the few remaining moments of his life be wasted. It all
hangs on his absolutely morbid and mad conviction that he is going to die soon
– there is no obvious reason that I can see why he should not live yet for a
long time. But it is no use trying to dispel that conviction, or his worries
about it, by reason: the conviction and the worry he can’t help – for he is
mad. It is a hopelessly pathetic business – he is clearly having a miserable
time of it.

He is morbidly afraid that he may die before he has
put the Theory of Types to rights, and before he has written out all his other
work in such a way as shall be intelligible to the world and of some use to the
science of Logic. He has written a lot already – and Russell has promised to publish
his work if he were to die – but he is sure that what he has already written is
not sufficiently well put, so as absolutely to make plain his real methods of
thought etc – which of course are of
more value than his definite results. He is always saying he is certain he will
die within four years – but today it was two months.

David Pinsent, on Wittgenstein