How has it become coupled in us, the fear and loathing of the present world and the messianic sense of what it might have been? How, in us, the sense that our careers – our lives as so-called thinkers – could only have been part of the collapse of the world, combines with our delusion that we are the preservers of a glorious European past, and that we even have a share in that past?
How, in us, is the sense that our learning – which is really only an enthusiasm for learning, for our philosophies, all our literature - is of complete irrelevance and indifference, joined with our mad belief that it bears upon what is most important and riskiest of all, upon the great questions of the age?
In our imagination, W. says, our offices in our cities at the edges of this country are like the Dark Age monasteries on the edge of Europe, keeping the old knowledge alive, and our teaching samizdat, outlawed because it is dangerous, the secret police infiltrating our lectures and preparing to take us away.
Of course, when he says us here, he really means him, W. says. And when he says we know nothing, he really means I know nothing, because he at least knows something, W. says.
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