David Rose reviews Wittgenstein Jr at Quadrapheme.The g...

David Rose reviews Wittgenstein Jr at Quadrapheme.

The group of students, including the narrator Peters, who seem to behave more like third formers than undergraduates, act collectively like some uncomprehending Greek chorus similar to that in Murder In The Cathedral; witnesses to Wittgenstein’s agony yet not fully touched or involved. They represent brute Life, destined always to be creatures of the sun-suffused shallows.They act out being philosophers, realizing they are only going through the motions. Significantly, they play-act death, play-act the deaths of philosophers: the death of Socrates; the death of Nietzsche. Displays of ersatz despair which throw into relief the real despair of ‘Wittgenstein’, which is fictionally underwritten by the suicide of his brother and the temptation to follow suit.

Yet maybe the students’ desire for despair is real? Maybe there is hope for them, spiritually?