Gems
I am still reading Wittgenstein’s Culture and Value, a book filled with small impeccable gems. What a thing to leave after one is gone: journals filled with impeccable gems written over a lifetime. One does not know where to begin when quoting it.
Kleinst wrote somewhere that what the poet would most of all like to be able to do would be to convey thoughts by themselves without words. (What a strange admission.)
Page 15e
I really do think with my pen, because my head often knows nothing about what I am writing.
Page 17e
Now it is time to leave the quiet place and go back home.
posted by Lynn @ 1:44 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Thank you Lynn for bringing attention to Wittgenstein's wonderful collection of gems in Culture and Value which by the way has a subtitle in my Danish translation "Scattered Remarks" (which is really not giving credit to the depth of his observations).
This book has meant a lot to me on several occasions in my life. You recently wrote about books you need to read to live. For me, this is one of them.
Another observation he makes in the section 1933-34 (I'm translating here) is the following:
I think I can summarize my attitude to philosophy by saying: You should really write philosophy as poetry
And another:
Nothing is as difficult as not deluding oneself
And then of course his use of Longfellow's lines as his motto:
In the elder days of art,
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part,
For the gods are everywhere
I take this as a fine expression and image of the intense search of Wittgenstein's for PRECISION.
Lynn, I think we should return to this book and now and then exchange a favorite quote.
All the best,
Orla Schantz
Orla,
It is good to hear from you. I look forward to exhanging quotations and thoughts.
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