Wittgenstein's Mistress Read online

  How I nearly felt, in the midst of all that looking.

  It was only the Parthenon, however, so beautiful in the afternoon sun, that had touched a chord.

  Still, for a time, I had almost wished to weep.

  But then looked into a guide to the birds of Southern Connecticut and Long Island Sound, for what it might tell me about seagulls.

  Why I had wished to stop at Corinth was because of Medea herself, as a matter of fact, even if the opera had nothing to do with that at the time.

  Although one doubts that there is any longer any evidence of her little boys' graves in either case.

  Then again, very likely there had been a pharmacy or a movie theater with the name Savona on it, at the least, and I had simply not been paying attention.

  Although I am now next to positive that the numeral on the back of the shirt was a seven.

  Or a seventeen.

  In fact it was a twelve.

  Once, I was one hundred percent positive that I was in a town called Lititz, in Pennsylvania, without having any genuine reason for being positive about that at all.

  As a matter of fact I had been equally positive, only moments earlier, that I was in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, until a name on a pharmacy or a movie theater indicated otherwise.

  Even then, I also understood that there could easily be a pharmacy in Lancaster called the Lititz Pharmacy, just as there could be a movie theater in Savona called the Rimini. Or the Perugia.

  Nonetheless I was one hundred percent positive that I was in Lititz, Pennsylvania.

  I also believe that I was still wearing that same soccer shirt now and again at the Tate Gallery, in London, on chilly mornings when I was carrying in water from the Thames.

  Or when I was enjoying Turner's own paintings of water.

  I did not keep any of the additional shirts when I abandoned that particular Volkswagen van, however, which only this tardily has to strike me as thoughtless.

  Obviously, since I so enjoyed wearing the one shirt, ordinary common sense ought to have told me to keep some of the others.

  Then again, doubtless I had no idea that I was going to develop such a fondness for it, at the time.

  For that matter it might just as easily have happened that I waited for my own garments to dry completely, in which instance I would have never developed any such feelings about the shirt to begin with.

  What was to have prevented me from listening to Maria Callas singing Medea with nothing on at all, even, while I waited?

  Actually it was quite warm, as I remember.

  But now heavens.

  Obviously it would have hardly been Maria Callas singing with nothing on, but only me myself listening that way.

  What ridiculousness one's language still does insist upon coming up with.

  And in either event I had already put on the shirt.

  And had also incidentally listened long enough to understand that what Maria Callas was singing was not Medea by Luigi Cherubini after all, but was Lucia di Lammermoor by Gaetano Donizetti.

  It was the famous mad scene in the latter which finally led me to understand this.

  Gaetano Donizetti being still another person whom I otherwise might have mixed up with Vincenzo Bellini. Or with Gentile Bellini, who was also Andrea Mantegna's brother-in-law, being Giovanni Bellini's brother.

  Well, I did mix him up. With Luigi Cherubini.

  Music is not my trade.

  Although Maria Callas singing that particular scene has always sent shivers up and down my spine.

  When Vincent Van Gogh was mad, he actually once tried to eat his pigments.

  Well, and Maupassant, eating something much more dreadful than that, poor soul.

  That list becomes distressingly longer.

  Even Turner, in his way, having such a phobia about not letting a single person ever see him at work.

  As a matter of fact Euripides was said to have lived in a cave, for that identical reason.

  Although Gustave Flaubert once wrote Maupassant a letter, telling him not to spend so much time rowing.

  On my honor, Flaubert once wrote Maupassant that.

  In fact the letter also told him not to spend so much time with prostitutes either.

  Had he wished, Flaubert could have written this same letter to Brahms, come to think about it, although I know of no record of that.

  Actually, he could have even written only part of the same letter to Brahms, and the earlier part to Alfred North Whitehead.

  When Gertrude Stein first met Alfred North Whitehead, she said that a little bell rang in her head, informing her that he was a genius.

  The only other time Gertrude Stein had ever heard the same bell was when she first met Picasso.

  Doubtless it is generally more difficult than this to tell just who is mad and who is not, however.

  In St. Petersburg, when he finally did find out how to get there, Dostoievski appeared to believe that everybody one met at all belonged in this category, or certainly that is the impression one is given.

  Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness, which happens to be one more sentence that I now remember I once underlined.

  Where I underlined this one was in the identical book in which I underlined one of the others, and which was also the book that Jane Avril always kept right beside her bed, as a matter of fact.

  This being the Pensees, by Pascal.

  I believe I would have liked Jane Avril.

  Well, and I certainly would have found it agreeable to tell Pascal how fond I am of his two sentences.

  Don't bother to get up, I would have even been delighted to insist.

  Actually, Euripides was finally forced to go into exile.

  This was not because he did not have enough seclusion in his cave, however, but because of things he had said that certain people did not approve of.

  Aristotle had to go into exile, too.

  For that matter Socrates had to take poison.

  One can be startled to remember that all of these things happened in Greece, I imagine, from where all arts and all freedoms came.

  Although several of Andrea Mantegna's frescoes were destroyed by bombs during the second World War, and that was in Italy.

  Still, many sorts of lists would appear to grow longer.

  October twenty-fifth, Picasso's birthday was.

  Even if I have no way of telling when it is ever October twenty-fifth.

  Or any other date.

  Simon's was July thirteenth.

  In any event I do not believe I have heard Maria Callas again even once, since that day.

  Well, I have scarcely been changing vehicles at all, lately.

  Then again I have heard Joan Baez. And Kathleen Ferrier. And Kirsten Flagstad.

  How I have heard these people is in much the same manner that Gertrude Stein heard her little bell, basically.

  Although where I also heard Kirsten Flagstad was on a tape deck at the tennis courts.

  Perhaps I have not mentioned the tennis courts.

  The tennis courts are beside the road one takes to the town. The reason I have not mentioned them is that I have had no reason to mention them.

  Nor would I have any reason to mention them now, were I not explaining about Kirsten Flagstad.

  What happened was that one afternoon I decided to play tennis.

  I did not decide to play tennis.

  What I decided to do was to hit some tennis balls.

  The tennis balls I decided to hit were not the same tennis balls that I once rolled down the Spanish Steps, incidentally. There is a small shed beside the tennis courts, which is where I had discovered these.

  The tennis balls that I rolled down the Spanish Steps had been in a carton in the rear of a Jeep, I believe.

  These tennis balls were in cans. Had they not been in cans, I am quite certain they would have lost their bounce some time before, and so doubtless I would not have decided to hit any to begin with.


  One can hardly hit tennis balls which have lost their bounce, which I understood even when the idea first came into mind.

  There were racquets in the shed also. The strings on most of those had become loose as well, but I selected one on which they had become less loose than on the others.

  For perhaps an hour I opened cans and hit tennis balls across one of the nets.

  There were no nets, those having been ruined by weather some time before as well.

  Well, there were remnants of nets.

  One pretends they are more than remnants.

  Or that one of them is more than that, which is all that is required to hit tennis balls across.

  Many of the tennis balls did not bounce very well in spite of having been in cans.

  Or perhaps this was because of the grass, growing through the surface of the courts.

  To tell the truth I had never been especially proficient at tennis in either case.

  In fact I had almost never played tennis.

  All of the balls are still at the side of the road, by the way. Frequently I notice them in going or coming from the town.

  Well, I noticed them just the other day.

  There are the tennis balls I hit that afternoon, was what I thought.

  Happily, this is not the same thing as noticing smoke and thinking, there is my house, since what I am noticing in such instances are always real tennis balls.

  One finds it agreeable to be positive as to what one is talking about at least part of the time.

  I have not forgotten Kirsten Flagstad.

  After I had stopped hitting the tennis balls I was quite sweaty.

  There were several vehicles parked nearby.

  Often, the air-conditioning in certain vehicles will still function.

  Had I been at the beach, I would have gone into the ocean.

  Not being at the beach, I started one of the vehicles.

  Kirsten Flagstad was singing the Four Last Songs, by Strauss.

  This will happen. One turns a key in an ignition, thinking only about starting the vehicle, or in this case about starting the air-conditioning, and one does not notice that the tape deck is set to the on position at all.

  I have often been perplexed as to why they were called the Four Last Songs, by the way.

  Well, doubtless they were called the Four Last Songs because that was what they were.

  Still, one can scarcely visualize a composer sitting down and saying, now I am going to write my four last songs.

  Or even lying down, and saying that.

  Although perhaps this is not impossible. One finds it quite unlikely, but perhaps it is not impossible.

  In either event it may have been Kathleen Ferrier singing.

  And the songs may have been the Four Serious Songs, by Brahms.

  Ever since Lucia di Lammermoor I have refused to make hasty decisions about such matters.

  Brahms has never been my favorite composer, incidentally.

  Granting that Brahms has been mentioned any number of times in these pages.

  Though in fact Brahms has not been mentioned that great a number of times in these pages.

  What has more frequently been mentioned is a life of Brahms, which is perhaps called A Life of Brahms, or The Life of Brahms, or possibly Brahms.

  Among other alternatives.

  In fact what has actually been mentioned are several lives of Brahms.

  Lives of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky have been mentioned as well.

  As has a history of music, written for children and printed in extraordinarily large type.

  Additionally, I have mentioned listening to Igor Stravinsky while skittering from one end of the main floor of the Metro- politan Museum to the other in my wheelchair.

  All of this has been purely happenstance.

  The fact that I have also mentioned a book about baseball is surely not to be construed as implying that I possess any enthusiasm for baseball.

  To tell the truth I do not believe I have a favorite composer.

  Curiously, however, for a certain period not too long ago, all that I was ever able to hear was The Seasons, by Vivaldi.

  Even when I would be positive I had something else in mind, The Seasons would be repeatedly what I heard.

  Such things can happen.

  They can happen with art just as readily.

  Now and again I will be convinced that I am thinking about a certain painting, for instance, and what will come into my head will be a different painting altogether.

  Just the other morning this happened with The Descent from the Cross, by Rogier van der Weyden.

  Right at this moment I can see that painting.

  Doubtless this is only natural, since I am again thinking about it.

  Even if I had not been thinking about it, for that matter, certainly I would have had to begin to do so when I typed those last few sentences.

  Nonetheless, when I was thinking about it just the other morning, I did not see The Descent from the Cross at all.

  What I saw was that painting by Jan Vermeer of a young woman asleep at a table in the Metropolitan Museum.

  There I go again.

  Obviously, the young woman is no more asleep at a table in the Metropolitan Museum than Maria Callas was undressed at that embankment near Savona.

  The young woman is asleep in a painting in the Metropolitan Museum.

  There is something wrong with that sentence too, of course.

  There being no young woman either, but only a representation of one.

  Which is again why I am generally delighted to see the tennis balls.

  But all I had started to say, in either case, was that I had not been thinking about that particular painting at all, even though that was the painting that came into my head.

  Although what I was more specifically trying to solve was why I would keep on hearing The Seasons, by Vivaldi, even when I was thinking about Les Troyens, by Berlioz, say. Or about The Alto Rhapsody,

  For that matter why am I now suddenly seeing an interior by Jan Steen when I would have sworn I was thinking about one painting by Rogier van der Weyden and still another by Jan Vermeer?

  All of Vivaldi's music, including The Seasons, was totally forgotten for many years after he died, incidentally.

  Well, and Vermeer was neglected for even longer.

  In fact nobody ever bought a single painting by Vermeer when he was still alive.

  Vivaldi also had red hair.

  As did Odysseus.

  The things one knows.

  Even if, conversely, I cannot call to mind one solitary item about Jan Steen.

  Or that all I am able to state categorically about Rogier van der Weyden is that one still cannot see the original of The Descent from the Cross the way it wants to be seen.

  In spite of the windows having been washed nearby.

  Or even if I also only now realize that everybody in it is as Jewish as everybody in The Last Supper, presumably.

  There is nobody in the painting called The Descent from the Cross by Rogier van der Weyden, whatever any of them may believe in.

  Shapes do not have religion.

  And doubtless it was somebody else, later on, who decided to name them the Four Last Songs.

  My favorite composer is Bach, as a matter of fact, whom I do not believe I have mentioned at all in these pages.

  I have just realized something else.

  On the front seat of the vehicle in which I turned on the air-conditioning, after having gotten sweaty from hitting the tennis balls, there was a paperback edition of The Way of All Flesh, by Samuel Butler.

  Which presumably answers the question as to where I came upon the footnote about Samuel Butler having said that it was a woman who wrote the Odyssey.

  Or perhaps the book contained some sort of preface, dealing with the life of Samuel Butler, which brought up this fact.

  I am more than positive that I have never read a life of Samuel Butler, however, even in t
he form of a preface, what with knowing even less about Samuel Butler than I do about The Way of All Flesh, which I am just as positive I have never read.

  And doubtless I would have scarcely looked into the book on that particular afternoon in either case.

  If only because of having set fire to the pages of a life of Brahms not long before, in trying to simulate seagulls, surely I would have wished to devote my attention to the tape deck instead.

  Even if there is still another life of Brahms somewhere in this house.

  I have no idea why I have said somewhere when I know exactly where.

  The life of Brahms is in the identical room into which I put the painting of this house, which until a few days ago had been on the wall directly above and to the side of where this typewriter is.

  The door to that room is closed.

  Sea air has contributed to that deterioration.

  Hm. I would seem to have left something out, just then.

  Oh. All I had meant to say, I am quite certain, was that the life of Brahms is standing askew, and has become badly misshapen.

  Doubtless I was distracted for a moment, and then believed I had already put in that part.

  As a matter of fact I was lighting a cigarette.

  Sea air would have contributed to the deterioration of the tennis racquet as well, come to think about it.

  Then again, one gathers that the strings on a racquet will generally come loose in any case.

  When I say gathers, I mean used to, of course.

  In fact one frequently seemed to gather all sorts of similar information about subjects one had less than profound interest in.

  It is not even unlikely that I could name certain baseball players, should I wish.

  I cannot imagine so wishing.

  Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

  Sam Usual.

  Actually, any number of the men in my life were greatly enraptured by baseball.

  When my mother was dying my father watched games endlessly.

  Well, perhaps I understood that at the time.

  I understood it when he took away the tiny, pocket sort of mirror from beside her bed one evening, certainly.

  One finds it difficult to conceive of Bach being enraptured by baseball, on the other hand.

  Although perhaps they had not invented baseball at the time of Bach.

  Vincent Van Gogh, then.