He's seen it before, W. says, in some of his more desperate students. In the half-wild ones, who've come off the streets after years on the streets. In the half-mad ones, who want only to lose themselves in some great task of scholarship, but who are made for everything but a great task of scholarship.
In our time – and this is an indictment of our time - a figure like Kierkegaard becomes a magnet for all kinds of lunatics, W. says. It's desperate, he says, but also moving in its way: the way the work of Kierkegaard draws the lunatics towards the light. It led me in the right direction, W. says. It saved me; he has no doubt of that.
'First, for you, there was Kafka, W. says, and then there was Kierkegaard. First my obsession with Kafka – which launched you towards your undergraduate studies, and then my obsession with Kierkegaard – which launched you, threw you, towards your postgraduate studies. Because that's what you sensed, didn't you, even in the midst of Hulme? That's what was drawing you through Kierkegaard's books, one after another?'
It was a kind of path, up which I was running red-eyed and dry-skinned. A path, up which I went breathlessly, with my heart fluttering and my blood seeming to roar in my ears. – 'And you're still running, aren't you?'
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